edmokeski

We use iDoceo in a limited deployment (because it's fairly pricey, as apps go) and are satisfied re: GDPR. Data is stored locally within the app, aside from backups. Backups are stored to school Google Drive accounts (GSuite for Edu), and the app integrates with Google Classroom to autopopulate classes etc..

We use them both. SOCS is only used for keeping track of our sports fixtures & teams, etc. The one-way nature of data travel between the two is iSAMS' "fault" - the iSAMS APIs only allow for read access, with no ability write back.

Short of checking on the class list (via the Salamander Classroom admin user or GAM) shortly before sync, I can't think of one. You might be able to user PowerShell to script GAM to export the class list to CSV/Sheet at 23:50, if you don't want to have to log in yourself at that time.

Greenwich University fined £120,000 for data breach - BBC News £120,000 fine for Greenwich University can be your first example. And this was issued under the "lenient" pre-GDPR rules! Fines under GDPR have the potential to be orders of magnitude higher.

Think the view needs to be rolled back, here. First question is "Why do we want 1:1? What are our objectives? Are we looking for education gains in the classroom? Administrative or time-saving gains for teachers?" I know it's slightly more controversial than it used to be, but I maintain the view that Chromebooks and (even more so) Surfaces are better for the latter, iPads for the former. The biggest win on Chromebooks is that you can do the same Office tasks you always did, but slightly faster and cheaper (and with easier collaboration). I think tablets free teachers to do more creative things with their classes, if they have the support and vision to do it (while still letting you run G Suite apps for office productivity, if desired). But I also think it's key for SLT to provide that support, and I mean not just the excellent technical support of your IT team, but pedagogical support and training. Staff will be far less likely to bother with a new device if they can't clearly see how it benefits students and learning. One advantage of Apple over some of these others is the built-in support provided through Apple Solutions Experts and Apple Regional Training Centres. The former are resellers who can provide expert teacher training as part of the purchase (I think it's 1/2 day of free trainer time for every 25 iPads), and the latter are schools that offer free CPD on effectively using iPads in teaching and learning. I think the Apple education team that manage these programs really have their heads screwed on right, have hired some very sharp minds with excellent credentials in the teaching world, and totally get the need for a pedagogy-driven approach. That's not to say Google's not great - we use G Suite on our iPads - and there are some brilliant people working in that sphere as well, but I personally find the signal-to-noise rather worse on that side of the fence. On the other hand, I'll grant you that some of the new Chromebooks that are meant to double as Android tablets have some potential to achieve a lot of the same things, trading off mass and fragility (can't imagine those extra moving parts don't translate into higher repair rates) in order to better accommodate prolonged typing. Some decent dedicated Android tablets are also well-placed for the same uses as iPads. But if you want an Android tablet or convertible Chromebook that delivers reasonable speed, longevity, and user experience, then I don't think you're going to find one for a whole lot cheaper than the newest line of iPads. Sub-100 tablets are just going to turn staff off (too slow, too fragile, no storage, too inflexible, I can only imagine) and ruin your chance of a successful program in future. Not to overstate, but my personal opion is that your SLT would get more out of setting the money on fire. At least it will help you heat the building and won't poison your staff against the potential of tech. Anyhow, just my 2p. Obviously I have no strong feelings on the issue. ;-) Just seen too many schools flush money on poorly-planned, ill-conceived, and/or leaderless 1:1 programs, especially ones where so many compromises were made on cost (infrastructure, staffing, training, cheap kit) that they would seriously have been better off spending the money on something else (raises for the IT team! kegerator in the staff room!) and not doing 1:1. It's an ed tech classic that I can trace all the way back to my own time in school, when the tablets were made of slate. (In Soviet Russia, pad eyes you!)

Indeed, our person leading on GDPR is our Compliance Officer, but the job wasn't created specifically w/ GDPR in mind, but rather compliance with all of the ISI regs/guidance, H&S, etc., etc.. She is very specifically not our DPO, and we do not have a DPO (as per guidance mentioned above). I think this is probably pretty much the standard across the independent sector, until such time as guidance changes or precedents are set that suggest there is more to be gained than lost in having a voluntary DPO (or that some schools are big enough or data processing is "core" enough to make it a legal requirement to have one).

I thought that NM responsibilities were viewed to be a conflict of interest with these GDPR roles? Or is it just that an NM can't be DPO, but can be data controller?

We bought a bunch a few years back - on the verge of retiring them now. They've been totally satisfactory replacements for desktops in offices, work rooms, and suites. Scenarios where a NUC wouldn't have worked acceptably are few-to-none. Mounted to the backs of displays or under desks, all very tidy and freed up a lot of space on surfaces compared to the "sff" (hardly small by comparison) PCs we had before. Not sure NUC is as much the only game in town on this any more, though -- HP and Dell both make some pretty (genuinely) small form factors now in "mini" and "micro" ranges. Not sure how they compare on power consumption, however.

Check out the list of "Apple Solutions Experts" for education -- it's quite short, really. They are able to connect you with some Apple extras, like a 1/2 day of free CPD for every 25 iPads purchased/leased. From my looking, Trams and Academia both seemed quite good. Insight aren't an ASE any more, but I think they can still offer the CPD through a tie-up with someone else. If it's a longer-term thing you're planning, then I'd suggest wandering around the next BETT and having a chat with each of the ASEs to see who you "click" with. When I've had quotes, they were all quite competitive and nearly identical (and all leased via TechData, Bluestone or CHG), so it's the relationship and services that really differentiate. Also, many ASEs are Apple-only, but others (like Insight) do the whole range of kit (and will therefore want to try to get you to switch all your buying to them). Re: pro's and con's of leasing, I think cashflow is a big one (pro). One class set you may be able to put in next year's budget, but leasing lets you spread the cost over time and thus get in more than you might have otherwise been able to. Some leases might give you a very reasonable purchase option at the end of the lease, as well, and some resellers offer lease schemes with a parental contribution element if that's useful for you. We're a secondary w/ 1:1 iPads, so happy to chat in a little more detail about our acquisition/deployment if you want to PM. If you want to talk to someone at a reseller, I've had good conversations with Tom Able-Green at Academia, Jo Dowd at Trams, and Joel Nanton at Insight -- wouldn't hesitate to do business with any of the three of them.

Try getting iSAMS to let you into their iCommunity site and ask the question there. I can think of at least two iSAMS schools (KES/Stroud in Hants and Habs Girls in Herts) that have mentioned doing something w/ bussing etc..

You could use GAM to add them as a teacher to all of the classes. They might find it annoying to "teach" every Classroom, though. As an alternative similar to mjk's, you could add a shared/dummy SLT account as teacher to all classes. Not personally super-keen on shared accounts, though. What I do is use GAM to add them to a class on request, and take them off it again when they're done having a look. Fairly uncommon request, though.

Don't know what the full story is, but we don't use them. (*edit* - except for visitors) We do print release (PaperCut) by biometrics (thumbprint), AD login, or PIN. The whole ID card on a lanyard thing seems much more prevalent in the state sector (I've only ever worked in independents or overseas) - don't know if that's statutory/DfE guidance or something. Presumably the point is safeguarding and site security. You have a visible official ID at all times to show that you're allowed to be there, and without it you may be an intruder of some sort. Then once you've got it, obviously its purpose can spread to things like print release, cashless catering, physical access control, etc..

We use My School Portal for our school calendar. We’ve replaced all of our printed calendars. Parents can subscribe to ics feeds, which is a big win (better than adding events piecemeal), staff can all add events, and they are moderated by the school office. Events are also tagged, eg by year group, to help parents separate the wheat from the chaff. So as a parent I can sub via ics to all the year 7 events, get them in my phone’s calendar, and not get all of the sixth form events that are nothing to do with my kid. Definitely worth looking into! In our case, as far as sport is concerned, we use an integration with SOCS to pull across all the sport data, but MSP is really sufficiently feature rich to manage your sporting calendar on its own as well.

Despite our move to 1:1 iPads, our Maths dept still use My Maths. Like you, I've been wondering/asking for years when they might wake up and smell the coffee re: death of Flash. They did make an announcement in September that some content has been moved to HTML 5: https://www.mymaths.co.uk/news/2017/09/11/important-updates-about-mymaths-and-flash.html Can't say I have any idea what % of the total content this represents, but phrasing suggests they're aiming to be converted for next academic year? Am planning on following up @BetT.

Pretty sure HyperOptic only do blocks of flats. Personally, I'm stuck on BT DSL (FTTC available on every cab in neighborhood except mine. argh!) while the block of flats across the road get 1Gb on HyperOptic. Terribly frustrating. Am about to switch to Virgin for better speed (not hard to beat the 6-12Mb I get on a good day w/ BT) after Mrs finally got fed up enough w/ slow speed to drop her long-held objection. Apparently she had them long ago and swore never again. I'm sufficiently new in this country to not yet hold a grudge against them. Will see if they fix that for me in the next year! ps - If you're in London, there's also Relish, depending on coverage. They finally put up a new antenna nearer my home and promise 30Mb now, but going to try Virgin before I opt to rely on Relish's 4G.

We've gone with G Suite for Edu, but as Alan stated it depends on what you're looking for. We don't get parent communication from Google (for that we use My School Portal and School Post), nor do we get room booking (I like the one from School Cloud Systems, but we're going to just use Outlook as there's not much we need bookable). I used to run a VLE, and it never "worked" -- it's too much faff, too much in the way of actually teaching and learning, and they only ever seem to catch on with a top-down thou shalt VLE mandate. I'm curious that Firefly has stopped selling themselves as a VLE? When we went w/ G Suite we looked very closely @Firefly (and O365, which still handles our e-mail and some legacy office productivity needs, and Apple's offerings) but it seemed too much like our previous VLE. What I like about G Suite is the modularity, and the way that Classroom is so easy to use. (and the price tag) I definitely agree with your assessment that Google is always a step ahead of its main competitors in meeting the needs of education, although this has narrowed a little bit with Apple, and widened a bit with Microsoft, who I think are investing less in the market. We've wound up with what one might call a hotch-potch of specialised systems for each major function, but what we require of them all is federated logins and/or AD SSO, so that nobody has to ever remember more than their one username/password. Works well for us thus far.

Second kidpressingbuttons' comment re: foldr. We use it and it's great, but obviously it costs rather more than WebDAV.

How about OnShape? Cloud-based, so bandwidth matters more than processing power. Runs on basically anything with a browser. We're piloting next year as our DT computer suite just had to give way to sewing machines. Neighbouring school has been using it for a year or two and love it. Edit: One caveat -- our lawyer wasn't keen on having our students sign up for individual edu accounts with US-based OnShape, and as-yet their centralised account management is Enterprise-only (mega money). We'll be trying with generic accounts, but there will be some real drawbacks. Our neighbouring school's lawyer is a bit less concerned, so they've gone ahead and had the kids all create accounts.

I'm not aware of any way to do this w/ Slides. It's been a bit of a hurdle for us, as well, although for slightly different reasons. Would love to know if anyone has a solution. All I have found so far is Google Drawings, which you have to separately create and insert into Slides.

Thanks Fiza - missed this message until now. Onshape is what I think we're going to go with in the end. Seems to do everything needed, has an iOS app, runs in the browser so happy on Chromebooks, etc.. Only catch is the accounts -- legal and NM both not very happy w/ anything that makes students create new accounts that we don't manage, rather than having federated login to G Suite or AD/Azure/365. I think we're going to go with generic logins, as in testing so far it seems OK. Onshape support AD SSO, but only for Enterprise licenses... oh well. Can't have it all, I guess!

Well, they've kind of brought it on themselves. They've got a fixed amount of space, and they say they need to have a textiles area, so the ICT suite's got to go. With the best will in the world, there'll only be space for two fixed desktops in the room once they're done renovating. Definitely not my idea to replace PCs with sewing machines! But I'm supposed to recommend replacement software that'll run on iOS or Chromium, despite knowing not the first thing about CAD etc.. Whee!

Hi all, Our DT department still uses the ever-popular if long-in-tooth 2D Design package in their computer suite. Trouble is, after a redesign of the exam spec, it seems the computer suite needs to go, in order to make room for a textiles area. We're already 1:1 iPad, so I'd love to find an iOS solution to replace 2D Design. Anybody doing DT/CAD on iPads? It'd need to either export to a 2D Design-friendly format, so files can be opened on the one machine left for controlling the Rayjet laser cutter, or somehow magically talk directly to the Rayjet. Bonus points if it also does 3D and talks to the MakerBot, but I expect that's going to take a second, separate piece of software. The big caveat is account maintenance -- I'm happy to have something that can authenticate against G Suite or AD/365/Azure, but maintaining a separate set of accounts just for DT software is pretty much out of the question. (Creeping precedent!) Also open to ideas involving Chromebooks. Laptops aren't under consideration, as staff always complain that boot/load/etc. times are too slow, even with SSDs, and I don't want to spend money on a load of kit just to hear people grumble about it and not use it. Anyone out there doing DT w/ iOS or Chrome devices?

Have to say I'm w/ @Primus on this one. That's not really a solution to the question, I'm afraid. Can't go around setting everyone's firstname to Mr / Mrs / Miss for all purposes. I think it's something that needs a solution in Classroom, to display teachers' names differently to student members of the class. I'll submit feedback that effect, I suppose.

We're in almost exactly the same place, with the exception that we're 11-18. In addition to iPads and iSAMS, we're also a G Suite school, so something that talks to Classroom would be a big plus. The same topic has been coming up for us. Looked around at BETT and didn't find anything that impressed me. Printing planners is no small expense, and as everyone has an iPad, it seems an obvious solution, so I'd also be really interested to hear what others are using for digital planners. The one thing we definitely don't want is another all-singing all-dancing (all faff) VLE. We had a student focus group discussion about what they'd want from such a thing recently, and got some really useful feedback, so I'd definitely recommend one if you've not had a chance to do that yet.

Yes, if James or Joel are monitoring here -- some kind of how-to doc for setting up those alternate names in the admin console would be really useful.