Aethon

The Red Kite Learning Trust has a number of vacancies for enthusiastic and hardworking IT Services Technicians at Temple Moor High School, Temple Learning Academy and Harrogate schools. Supporting a Senior Network Technician, you will be responsible for ensuring the effective working and development of the technical services including network, hardware and software in RKLT schools. Please note that these vacancies may involve working on multiple sites, providing support to both Primary and Secondary schools. See here for more details. Completed applications should be submitted by 12 noon on Wednesday 25 March 2020. Interviews will take place week beginning 30 March 2020 (provisionally).

Required as soon as possible an enthusiastic and hardworking Network Technician responsible for ensuring the effective working and development of the school’s technical services including network, hardware and software – supporting our Network Manager. You will have specific responsibilities for some key areas of the network including server management and security. You will be familiar with Windows, iOS or OSX operating systems, ideally across large and complex networks. You will be involved with the management and maintenance of systems including SQL Server, Office 365, Exchange, SCCM, and vSphere. We offer you excellent facilities and resources, a friendly and supportive working environment and the opportunity to contribute to our schools and the wider community. Vacancies | Temple Moor High School

It means you could enrol staff and student devices using your AD credentials. You could also assign them to locations (folders) based on their AD groups so that, for example, your staff will have access to different apps than your students or some people get more stringent password requirements than others. These credentials could also be used to automatically connect the user to their email or the wireless, if you are using a RADIUS server for authentication.

Been using it for around 6 months now and it's much more stable than the previous solution we used. The reporting functionality is particularly nice as is the ability to redeploy individual apps and profiles to single users. The account management and support teams are also pretty switched on and the account managers are very proactive with chasing up any problems or questions that you may have.

As has been kindly mentioned by @Achandler, we are using iPads and while we are outside Notts\Derbyshire we do have another conference coming up on the 26th of June (more info here: Harrogate Grammar School | iPads for Learning | 1:1 iPads for Learning Conference).

This is the best number to use: 0800 912 0207. It's the education team and they should be able to help you with any VPP queries, can't guarantee it isn't a stupid phone system though.

Oh well, if you want someone to tell you that... I think it rather depends on your definition of great but they have changed quite a few things for the better within the school - the students can access email, the Internet and various electronic resources pretty much on demand. With them having access to video recorders and cameras it's enabled them to be a lot more creative in the way they complete assignments and in the types of work teachers can ask them to do. (As the students can take them home, they all have access to the same resources and there isn't any concern about asking them to complete homework using equipment they may not be able to access.) So does this mean that you can buy a few iPads and suddenly your school is transformed? Not in the slightist. iPads are tools and nothing more; if people don't use them they won't accomplish much on their own. In order for something like this, particularly in a 1:1 setting, to really change things then it requires a whole school commitment to work. This means lots of planning and preparation getting the infrastructre in place, work on th eTeaching and Learning aspects and ensuring that the Governors and SLT are behind this and that Parents and Staff (both teaching and support) understand why it is being done and support the efforts to bring about this change. Now while all this may not apply quite so much in your situation with only 1 class having iPads - and in some ways you could substitue iPads for any other device like netbooks, Surface etc - it doesn't mean that this sort of Technology can't be used effectively within classroom and have some real benefits.

I'd think long and hard before having a class set of iPads as they are really designed for 1:1 rather than class use. That said, it is possible to set them up and to manage them without needing to have a lot of other equipment, or spending a huge amount of money. Before you do this though, I'd look at getting one for the teacher first just so they can see what the limitations are and what sort of apps they want to use and I'd also make sure you get one for yourself so you can look how to configure and manage them.

Look at Apple Configurator\iPhone configuration utility or a mobile device management solution. Meraki is free and does the basics but isn't terribly scalable. If you are going to have a lot of iPads, I'd see what something like Airwatch can do for you.

If you have SharePoint, Office 365 or even a hotmail\live account, upload the file to there and you can open it in the web browser.

I'd just attach an old keyboard and mouse (USB) to the Mac mini and use any old monitor - the Mac mini will need an HDMI connection but we use an HDMI to VGA converter and attach it to an old monitor.

The Mac mini does plug into the charger (depending on the charger, of course) and either using a remote or a KVM would work. Personally, I'd go with the server os as it isn't a huge amount more expensive and will let you get familiar with that side of things - always useful particularly if you may be doing more with macs down the line.

Meraki is alright for smaller groups of iPads, AirWatch is great but does cost money. Unless you are looking at stopping Students from installing anything, they'll always be able to install games though you can block their access to things like Games Center. If they are using the iPads at home and at school this is where you could start having a few problems. (One thing you could do with AirWatch is to block access to certain apps during specific times or setup a compliance policy to send a message to the student if they have something installed\configured that they shouldn't. Ultimately though, this sort of thing is all about student responsibility and classroom management.)

I'd find out how these are going to be used, if they are a class-set then something like a Mac mini is pretty essential. You can use this for pushing out apps and managing the iPads and it'll be far easier going forward than using Meraki - getting something like a Leba NoteSync multi-charger is vital though as you can use this to configure up to 15 iPads at once. If these are going to be given out to people, in a 1:1 arrangement, then I'd look at what you want to be able to configure with them. You can create profiles using a Mac mini or even using the iPhone configuration utility (free download and works on windows) or by using something like Meraki. To be honest, you'll probably want to have Meraki and a Mac mini once you start getting more of these things but I'd start having a play with Meraki and the iPhone utility as it will give you a feel for what can be done and they are both free tools.

(Shameless plug) Oh and if you are thinking about a mass deployment, this may be of interest... http://www.edugeek.net/forums/netbooks-pda-phones/106700-ipads-learning-1-1-device-conference.html