edmokeski

Have to second the utility of GAM. Not something you want to put into teachers' hands, but as Google Admin it is such an amazing tool. This would be pretty easy to achieve if you have the ID of the class, as Tom said, by just feeding a CSV of student e-mails in and GAM will sign them up to the class whether they like it or not. I use it for exceptional, ad hoc changes that don't mesh w/ our sync, or for tweaking courses that sit entirely outside of the sync. New Visions Cloud Lab used to have a tool that would sync groups from a spreadsheet, too, but I think it's long deprecated, now.

If ALL blank, check your dataset isn't empty (e.g. problem w/ query). If add't'l blanks, check sizing - some object (tablix, rectangle, etc.) is probably straying off A4 dimensions. Also check out the iSAMS iCommunity. You'll find more people who do iSAMS SSRS more often over there.

Yes, we have this set up, and the user is presented first w/ a Google login where they put in their e-mail address. That then locates their account, twigs that it authenticates via Entra, and shunts you over to a MS login process (in a kind of popup) where you annoyingly often have to put in your e-mail address a second time. Mildly irritating but very much not the end of the world and worth it to maintian a single set of credentials. Means you can also rely on your Entra MFA and not worry so much about Google's implementation. And I definitely second Will here on the management licenses being a worthwhile purchase.

Am sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I think you have a little bit of apples vs oranges going on. The management licenses (Google Chrome Education Upgrade, I think is the one) for Chromebooks are a one-off but fairly unavoidable fee to bring them into your Workspace tenancy and manage them there. The tiered fundamentals vs. standard vs plus, vs teaching & learning upgrade is to do w/ user licenses. The answer there is a definite "yes," you can manage your Chromebooks perfectly fine w/in a Workspace tenancy that is entirely Fundamentals (including setting up to do your authentication via Entra, if that's what you're asking there). So the bad news is, I think you're going to have to spend a bit of money, but the good news is it's a lifetime/perpetual license and not an annual sub. I think they run in the neighbourhood of 30USD or 30GBP per device - can't quite remember which. Not impossible your Chromebooks came w/ the license depending on supplier arrangements etc. etc.? May be worth going back to check over all paperwork from when they were purchased just in case you get lucky on that score.

Have you worked out where it all is? I haven't had the issue in 6-12 months, so think maybe it's been fixed in a recent update, but in the past had issues with Spotlight going nuts and filling the disk. There'd be a huge amount of data in ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight which I had to clear out. It's something to do with Spotlight indexing being buggy. In the disk usage monitor in System Preferences, this would show up as "System Data" using tons and tons of space. I think, if you Google around for it, you can find some instructions on forcing the Mac to rebuild its Spotlight index that might fix it, or you can do as I did for a bit and just bin the stuff in that folder every six months. Doesn't look like it is happening again, so hopefully the issue is fixed as of or before Sequoia 15.7.2.

Ditto. Have had troubles with Uh oh errors since at least the start of term, more often erroring than not for some users (myself included), although others seem to have more luck.

OnShape was free, and the guys there seemed generally keen to be supportive of our pilot. I think in the end, though, it was just too big and 'pro' for what our DT were looking for, so it never really caught on.

Hi all, Thanks so much for telling me about your 1:1 programs. Given the cheap-as-chips price through LGFL, I was a bit worried about the 300e, but glad to hear that those who have had them haven't had too much trouble. I'm in a 1:1 school myself, but it is more or less the opposite of the school in question -- we're independent, they're voluntary aided; we're secondary, they're primary; we've gone iPad, they've opted for Chromebooks -- the biggest common denominator we have is G Suite (and, you know, that whole teaching and learning business). If any of you would be happy to speak to the school's Assistant Head directly about your experiences, or introduce him to someone else at your school who could, it would be great if you could DM me your contact details and I can put him in touch with you. Thanks!

Hi there, I've been advising a single-form primary who have decided they want to go 1:1 (starting with one or two years in KS2), and have settled on Chromebooks as the device for them (specifically they seem fairly set on the cheap LGFL Lenovo 300e ones). I know plenty of secondaries that have gone down this route, but haven't been able to directly connect them to any other primaries. So, stab in the dark, anyone out there with or familiar with a primary that's opted for 1:1 Chromebooks in at least KS2, who'd be happy to chat with the Assistant Head? Anyone out there have first-hand experience with these particular devices and happy to share some feedback? Bonus points if London-based. Thanks!

We've gone with some Zioxi as well: https://www.zioxi.com/product/ipad-charging-station-zioxi/ Solid furniture. Just wasn't keen on the included power strips, which seemed to be real cheapies that they'd just drilled screws through into the back of the cupboard. Cheap and easy to replace with the power solution of your choice, though. They make a basket version as well: https://www.zioxi.com/product/ipad-charging-station-basket-cupboard/

Well, as per paulkerton's response above, this can easily take on the lovely tones of the PC/Mac flamewars of yesteryear. Yes, the article's getting slightly dated. Obviously your mileage may vary depending on your priorities. Obviously also it's easy to pick out options on either platform that are impractical or expensive. (I shudder to think about handing out styluses to students -- the cost in lost ones alone, even at half the cost of a Logitech Crayon or HP AcitvePen.) Yes, e.g. Book Creator has gone web-based, but the web version has also introduced subscriptions (like many apps that have gone to web) instead of one-off app purchase, so in BC's case for us that'd be one-off 5k vs recurring 12k. Fab that a Chromebook can run Linux, but you're not buying them for the IT dept., so what's the practical use case? And for all arguments about keyboards, I refer you back to the simple question of "How much of what students actually do, that actually adds value to their learning, is long-form typing on a computer?" Plus, if you're desperate for keyboards, they make them in both wired and wireless form for iPads. We taught touch typing for a couple of years with a class set of lightning keyboards (until it became clear that it wasn't necessary, as the kids coming in had learned at primary), and some of our SEN students use keyboards regularly. Speaking of SEN, accessibility is another area where the iPad really excels. The only other piece of advice I'd offer is to listen to your teachers. As much as you may prefer to support platform X or Y, if your teachers aren't on board you may as well set the money on fire. Some of the most painful deployments I've seen have resulted from IT and teachers butting heads. Be pedagogy-driven. I've seen countless deployments that weren't, and have achieved nothing but shiny shiny, and "oh it's great, I can do precisely the same thing I always did, but on this beautiful piece of glass," or "We wanted X but IT only let us have Y, so nobody bothers." Or my fav, "We wanted X and IT wanted Y. We got the X devices we wanted, but IT will only support us doing Y in emulation on them."

We're about six years in to a 1:1 program with iPads, now. We went down the G Suite path, as back when we were deciding, the MS apps were deeply unfriendly to any mixed economy, and MS Classroom was hopeless. I understand that landscape has improved quite a bit, now. I agree that a tablet device has some drawbacks compared to a traditional laptop(-like) device, but I think the pro's still significantly outweigh the con's. The #1 question that needs to be asked, as a few others above have said, is "Why?" Why are you going 1:1? What do you hope to achieve? How will X device help you achieve it? We found that tablets just offered tremendously more flexibility for content creation, and even for some activities like formative assessment (Draw a graph of blah much easier on a touchscreen). They were also much more simple for users. SLT were very keen to NOT compel staff to use devices, so we knew that if they weren't dead easy, they were going in a drawer. By focusing on students creating content, rather than staff creating and students consuming, we've allayed some of the fears that a population of quite skeptical teachers had around how much extra time was going to get sucked up by tech. Some of them even now admit that it saves them time! Laptops and Chromebooks are definitely better for long-form typing, like typing up a big research paper. But how much of students' use is that going to be? Students still have to handwrite exams. One of the #1 things we had to reassure teachers and parents of when we went 1:1 was that we weren't going to start typing everything and neglect to prepare students for hand writing their exams. That said, we also had to convince SLT that they couldn't immediately throw all of our Windows machines into a skip. Teachers do a lot more long-form writing and have much better use cases for traditional computers. And certain subjects still needed ICT suites - particularly comp sci, but also e.g. DT (if anybody's got an iOS replacement for 2D Design that doesn't require students to sign up for their own accounts (looking at you, Autodesk ), I'm all ears!) and others at certain times of the year. Plus, teachers have often found that they want to multi-screen while teaching, presenting from the classroom computer while using their iPad to administer formative assessments, keep students on task with Apple Classroom, etc., etc.. On a more basic level, the battery life and always-on nature of tablets makes a huge difference. It allows them to become just another tool in the classroom. We used to have trolleys of laptops that never got used, b/c the time you had to invest in getting your lesson going on them meant you wanted to use them for the whole lesson if you were going to bother at all. Tablets you can take out, user for one activity, put away again. They don't get in the way, they don't take over, they just expand the possibilities. And the lack of moving parts, combined with a good case, does a lot for durability. The #1 thing I encourage you and your SLT to do before spending any money is research -- visit schools that have done it, ask about their motivations, their original goals, and how their experience has lived up to their expectations. Apple Distinguished Schools and Apple Regional Training Centres are generally very happy to host a visit (OK, Covid, so maybe tricky right now), and ditto Google Reference Schools. Am sure if those two have programs, there must be an MS equivalent as well. Re: pressure from parents for allowing personal use of hte devices, this is why we opted to lease devices and lend them to students (and hide the cost in our tuition fees) rather than BYOD, make a device part of "uniform," or even put a separate line item on their bill for it. It means they're school iPads, not iPads used for school, and it makes a surprisingly significant psychological difference. We've had very little pushback on this. Pushback has more been from parents who e.g. are afraid to take the devices away from kids at bed time. Anyway, I know that's long, but hopefully there's something helpful in there. Good luck! ps - I know you're MS so not probably giving much thought to Chromebooks, but I still think this is a good article to read when thinking about a 1:1 program: The Best Chromebook is... an iPad.

We've been using GSuite for six-ish years, now, so my impressions of MS may be slightly dated, but in my experience it's just faffier for teachers. More clicks/taps to achieve the same thing. As has been said above, MS products are full of irrelevant features and unnecessary complexity. The s/w just needs to get out of the way and let teachers teach, and Google has generally done that much better. The two top reasons I see schools go MS are legacy content and because MS is in the IT team's comfort zone (don't have to worry about setting up extra SSO etc. etc., all just works with what you were already using). If you're already running G Suite, I don't see any reason to switch. That said, my kids' primary went G Suite for lockdown, and even the simplicity of Classroom was too much for some families. If you have any money for it, something like Seesaw or Showbie might work better in a primary environment. We're a secondary, and Classroom has been fantastic for us, especially over lockdown. ps - When we first evaluated it, Teams was called MS Classroom. MS decided they couldn't make money off it, and re-pitched it for business as Teams while still marketing to schools. I'd generally rather be a product's primary audience than an also-ran.

Isnt' this exactly what people use AirServer for? I think they have a 'universal' version that does chromecast/miracast/airplay all-in-one. We don't use it here b/c we're 1:1 iPad for student devices, so just use AppleTVs, but I know other schools use AirServer. (RGS Worcester and King Edward VI Southampton, I think, are two candidates that come to mind. More, I'm sure.)

Spoke to our DSO, who thinks recording is overkill and is less concerned than I am, so probably worth checking w/ yours. Re: kicking out of the meeting, I haven't yet found a way around this in the meeting, but they shouldn't be able to do it in the livestream. Trade-off is, of course, the reduced interactivity of the livestream vs meeting.