Speculator

Hi all, I've got a question for you. It doesn't quite fit under the "Technical" heading, but it's a a "how do you do it", so here it is: I'd like to know what your structure of IT Governance and decision making looks like in your school. We've been doing the same thing for 15 years now and I'm starting to wonder if it's outdated. So, to use my school as an example: We have an oversight committee that includes the ICT Manager (chair), our head of Learning and Teaching, Business Manager, E-Learning person, and two general teachers. This body reports to the Principal, who has final say, and often turns up to meetings too. The main areas of responsibility for the committee are budget, policy and strategic planning. Most of the time we're bogged down in budget, policy and logistics though. Two members of the committee are part of the Faculty Heads team, two are part of the Leadership Team, which is supposed to feed information to and from those groups. Aside from that we form working parties to address other needs around new projects and deployments. So anyway, I'd like to hear what others are doing around this sort of formalised decision making, if you can spare a minute. Thanks.

Yup, been using it for a year now. It's okay. Better student data integration than Moodle, they even managed to integrate it with our custom Filemaker-based student information system. The interface feels a little tired, but apparently that's being addressed with a new SP2013 based version. L8r.

Funny you should ask. We moved into our new offices a couple of weeks ago. It's been great, we did the work on a budget but still got a lot out of it. A rough account of the transformation is here - tisit-innit.tumblr.com Thanks.

Since starting this thread, I've got one for myself. It really is one of the easiest things to use. Casting from a Chrome tab or a mobile app is as simple as you'd imagine. If I had HDMI compatible projectors I think I'd fit them all out with something like this. L8r.

Yup, we actually kept our students on Google Apps rather than having them sign up with O365, because at least the signup process isn't horribly confusing that way. When they go to verify their account and it asks them to login to your Microsoft Account users have no idea if that's their Microsoft Account or their Office 365 Account... and rightly so. They're both 'Microsoft' accounts.

Thanks Domino, All very solid ideas. I'm actually getting quite a decent list, I'll post back here with the results when I've completed my research (a lofty term for asking questions in a few forums). The whiteboard idea keeps coming up again and again. It made me think - I knew you could get backboard paint, and it turns out you can get whiteboard paint too - why not pant a whole wall to make it a surface you can write on? L8r.

Hi everyone, I’ve been given the opportunity to expand our I.T. Department office space before the end of the year. We’re getting a new staff member and we haven’t got anywhere for them to work (and not really enough space for us now), so we thought we’d renovate our offices as a whole. I’ve been given the option of expanding into a soon-to-be-unused small classroom, which is easily enough space. I want to use the space well though, and do as much as I can on what will be a small budget. I’m a bit out of my depth with this sort of thing though, I’ve never had to rethink an office space before, so I was wondering if anyone out there has had to design or redesign a space for IT workers? If so, have you got any good ideas, good resources (books, websites etc)? I’m open to anything except making it look like Google’s offices. That would be cool, but let’s be realistic eh? All suggestions welcome!

Seconded!

Hi all, Does anyone know whether it supports 802.1x authentication? This was a problem with the AppleTV IIRC. L8r.

Hi all, I was recently lamenting that it's not available in my county, but I'd really like to try one. What service are you using to get hold of it in the UK? L8r.

Dammit, I did a search for similar threads before I posted this but it came up with nothing (now I look, I think I used the wrong search box, my bad). So anyway, I'd still love to hear from people in the US or UK that get one. If an admin wants to merge this into the other thread for neatness, please go ahead.

Hi all, So I was just banging on about Chromecast on my blog, and lamenting the fact that it's not available in my country (Australia), then it occurred to me that there might be some US Edugeeks who're keen on the device for classroom use. Firstly, are other people interested in the Chromecast for education use? Secondly, do any of our stateside friends on here have an order in for one? I'd love it if you could let us know what it's like! L8r.

We'll have to do that, there's not much of a choice. The point is not hat we can't but that we shouldn't have to. It's also an awful process of filling out forms with hundreds of students and then there's an email verification which is all quite annoying. Essentially this is very similar to what you'd go through with an iPad setup, but I think I speak for every Microsoft customer when I say that it's the manageability they provide that's at the core of why we choose them over iPads or Android. L8r.

I'm starting to think someone needs to do some rabble-rousing around this and the Store purchasing problem. Maybe we could put together some sort of open letter to Microsoft, or a petition? L8r.

Hi all, I think this is really for the Win 8 area, not the Office 365 area, even though it deals with both it's really more about a stupid failing in Win8. So, it turns out that there's no way to provide your users with a "Microsoft Account" for use in Windows 8 (with the store, syncing of settings etc). Rather bafflingly, an Outlook.com account works, but the institution supplied equivalent, an Office 365 account does not. So users are faced with an irritating situation where they have to maintain a separate set of credentials for these couple of services. If that wasn't confusing enough, the process for signing up for a Microsoft account with an Office 365 is even more baffling. During the process, the user will be directed to confirm their account by clicking the link in an email they're sent (pretty normal there, if ultimately unnecessary). The user receives the email, clicks the link and is then asked to logon to their Microsoft account. At which point they try to logon with their Office 365 account (because that's what they're used to), but it doesn't work because it's asking them to logon with their newly created Microsoft Account. But they don't understand the difference. I'm seriously considering shelving our move from Google Apps to Office 365 thanks to this confusing situation (they should understand the difference between a Microsoft and a Google account). Our setup with students using Win8 devices just got a whole lot more complicated, when I'd really hoped Microsoft would've integrated these two solutions to make it easier. I don't suppose anyone has a solution to the "Microsoft Account" absurdity? L8r.

Hi all, Just got this up and running myself. It's not bad, although markedly more convoluted that the Google Apps equivalent (however it does work a little better by not requiring password resets). It's nice that they have an equivalent at all I guess. Setting up AD FS was never something that excited me, but as Microsoft pointed out (I can't remember where, sorry). AD FS is true SSO, whereas this is "same sign-on". I'd imagine that if you want your clients to be able to fire up and logon automatically you're going to need AD FS. Anyway, it's there and it seems to work. It's a shame they couldn't have added in some sensible way to license users automatically though. L8r.

Hey all, Just wondering if you've seen this script? I've got it working nicely, running every hour to license any users that aren't assigned, and to warn if the license count drops below a certain threshold. I'm about to write a post in my blog about getting it working (it's kinda poorly documented). Thanks.

Yeah, the store apps are my biggest annoyance right now. What is the problem with folder redirection? Our redirection of My Documents and other library folders still seems to work. L8r.

Yeah, I agree with the last couple of posters really, anyone who's spent some time with it finds Windows 8 has no major failing. The complainers are mostly just big enterprises who're way behind everyone else anyway (still on XP in a lot of cases) and people who don't like change. I don't know whether I mentioned it, but we have BYOD program and the students in that bring a lot of their own Win8 laptops, they like them just fine. Also, I had a staff member who's laptop normally runs Win 7 loaning one of our Windows 8 Dell XPS's recently, she loved it so much she didn't want to give it back, and now she wants to get one of her own permanently. If anyone's interested, I'm blogging some of our Win8 and BYOD experiences at - blog.hald.me. So far, nothing has been negative enough to justify our worries about it all before we started (with Win8 or BYOD). L8r.

I have to disagree with you there. Microsoft certainly saw a threat from tablets, but you're suggesting it's not real. They saw it three years ago, and it is definitely real - IDC predicts tablets to outsell PC's by 2015. Microsoft sell a huge amount to consumers, and there is an Enterprise uptake with tablets too. They need to be part of that market, particularly if it's going to eat away 50% of their sales in only a few years. The numbers now prove that Microsoft was right to change Windows for the Post-PC era. It's just difficult to swallow the way they've gone about it if you're a traditional PC user. Your solution is quite a good idea. I've often wondered about it myself. Having two or three "device modes" for tablet/desktop and/or laptop would've been good. Anyway, I see some apparent leaks of the 8.1 preview have surfaced today and it does look a little like they've made progress toward something like that. I think you'll see a slightly more sensible and considerate approach now that Sinofsky is gone. Apparently his style was very autocratic, and he was the sort of personality who wanted to dictate the direction rather than listening to feedback. L8r.

From what I'm reading Blue/8.1 will be good for your existing hardware (desktops and non-touch laptops). It's basically an apology to enterprises who have and will continue to have loads of these machines. I'm happy about that, as I think 8 is broken for those machines. I can't see the update offering anything else more than bugfixes and minor feature enhancements though (the preview isn't that far away now, then we'll know for sure). So far our reaction from 80 teaching staff has been overwhelmingly positive, but that's down to them using it on the correct device. I think the naysayers on Win 8 are mostly mouse/keyboard users so hopefully the coming Blue update will make them happy and we can all just move on.

Hi all, We're running Windows 8 in a couple of guises here. We recently supplied all our staff with Windows 8 on a new Dell XPS-12 Convertible Ultrabook. The rollout (80 machines) is just about complete and the reaction has been very positive. The only complaints were caused by Dells drivers (which they've fixed). We've also got a BYOD program running some our senior grades. A surprising number of those students have Windows 8 laptops, they seem to be getting on okay with them, and they tend to work, although we have seen a common bit of weirdness with Win 8 connecting to our wireless, it sometimes fails on the first try, then the second try works. Finally, I just placed an order for 140 Hp Envy x2's to kick off our new 1:1 program in our lowest grade. In about 8 weeks we'll have this whole grade using these Win8 hybrid tablets. There's a lot to work out around all this, and I have to say we're doing well given some of the issues we've had (not least of all our crap staffing). But getting back to Windows 8, we're finding that the OS is solid, it really just needs a few quirks ironing out (as did 7 when we adopted that early on). All the noise the tech-press are making trying to pretend 8 is a disaster is wrong if you use it on a device it was made for. L8r.

A very good point, and a little slack of me not to think of that, being an Android user myself. Please, cosider it about "touch tablets" (Fondleslabs if you read The Register) rather than specifically iPads. Thanks.

Thanks m25man, this isn't supposed to be a likes/hates thread. It's only that if people choose to make it one, as you can see I haven't expressed a strong like or dislike myself. This thread is more about exploring what the reality of tablets in education is.

Some recent discussion of iPads off-Forum appears to verify a lot of the impressions I’ve had from hearing of the experiences of schools in the past. I really can’t say what I’m hearing fills me with confidence. So excuse me while I play devils advocate for a moment… We’re a school that has very few iPads, and in fact has none in the hands of students. We’ve really been waiting for someone else to convince us that it’s a worthwhile expense. But so far, I get the following impressions: - It’s quite easy to get money out of schools for iPads, because of their mainstream appeal, however no one seems to be considering the long-term viability (maybe that’s because everyone is trialling them, but I’m still not sure that justifies it). - Management of these devices is even more immature than the devices themselves. I like my iPad, but a fleet of them just looks like a drain on support resources. - There appears to be no solid justification of why we should spend more money to deploy a device that does less. Whichever way you cut it, iPads are far less capable than a notebook, and cost more. Given their two-year lifespan and the impost on I.T. support to manage the unmanageable then the cost of apps, management software and auxillary infrastructure, they are expensive. - They have limited compatibility with my existing systems. - They are quite limited for content creation. - iPads work quite poorly as a shared device. - Principals and other leadership like them, but really don’t know why. - Teachers claim they “engage” students. But as far as I can see they mistake engagement for novelty value (it’s something new). Once the novelty wears off they wont be any more “engaged” than they are with notebooks. So, that all seems quite negative I know. But I’d like someone to convince me otherwise, if there are real demonstrable (and I mean demonstrable, anecdotes just wont do) advantages to iPads, I’d love to hear them. For now though, I just can’t shake this feeling that this is the netbook bubble all over again. We rode out that trend because we saw it was unsustainable, and I wonder if the tablet trend is similar, just bigger. Thanks.