Jamman960

I've just brought 2x 2920 24g-Poe+ switches to act as our Core, I keep looking at the modular chassis switches but our network and budget isn't quite big enough as yet

I dont think there is a maximum, common sense should come into it somewhere though. Our head allowed pupils to come in dressed in games kit and male staff to wear smart casual shorts/shirts for today only and has allowed staff and pupils to leave their ties off in recent days.

With cisco if you look in the manual or google for password recovery along with the model number there will be instructions on how to reset it - normally it involves pulling the power and interrupting the boot process then setting up a new running config, once you're in you can copy the statup config back over and change the password so you end up keeping the previous config Cheers James

We went from local inkjets with stock being managed by individual teachers to centralised stock then to large lasers and finally replaced our various mfds(all different brands) with the same model Toshiba's in 5 locations along with papercutmf and card readers for pull printing. I almost miss having to repair inkjets lol

We had a nightmare with the 2 Kyocera copiers we had, had engineers out weekly although I think the service company were more to blame Replaced all our copiers with 5 Toshiba's and have had 3 service calls since September

I can imagine their network admin cringing while reading that... if he ever finds time to read it when he's not sourcing new computer servers!

I've recently built up an asset spreadsheet and put stickers/barcodes on everything, for all new purchases in the last year or so I've been recording invoice ref, purchase date, supplier and cost in addition to the usual location, serial etc. We're an independent and no one seems particularly interested in the details although I give them to the bursar every year around audit time. As part of my recent attempts to get the IT budget reviewed I calculated the purchase value for everything using rough figures and it was pretty eye opening especially when calculated over 10 years using ideal lifecyles, the 5 year budget forecast to match came in at double our existing budget which has been falling every year. It was also interesting to include the cost of future growth(wireless network, tablets on short lifecycles).

take a look at Foldr, it allows access to windows file shares directly... haven't tried it as yet since no one will buy me ipads to test with... I'm happy to have them but want to integrate them properly As for the numbers on backgrounds - wouldn't it be easier to have the number on the ipad/case itself?

I'd go with airserver or reflector, far cheaper than Apple tv and more intuitive as staff don't need to change inputs. I'd go Apple tv if a pc weren't needed Edit - thanks Gray-gear, didn't realise airserver was that cheap for edu. All prices I've seen have been pretty close for airserver/reflector.

I'm currently trying out Diladele B.V. - it uses squid 3 but the reporting looks pretty good so far its not free but 399euro's/year isn't bad

Our biggest spend is likely to be site wide WiFi, hopefully we can also replace a large portion of our workstations as well as starting our tablet trials. I think we've got the governors on side and taking it seriously following our recent presentation, we've been getting half the amount we need to keep things ticking over in recent years and its beginning to show

I wonder whether it varies based on tech support availability? when I first started in my current school the head, deputies and head of ict(teaching) all had admin rights, tech support previously consisted of 1 day per fortnight. I gradually reduced rights to the point that I'm now the only admin, my line manager gets told the password if I'm not in and need to sort something over the phone but other than that no one gets given admin access... One of the deputies decided to install the sparkle box toolbar everywhere! I did visit one small primary where everyone was using the admin account including pupils... This stopped pretty quickly

surely on this logic we could purchase pc's with no os, stick on a copy of w7 then upgrade to w10 followed by w10 ent via Ees/ovs-es?

it should be doable although it might be worth considering OpenDNS, I wouldn't rely on it in a school for anything more than a last line of defence but for home/not so tight filtering use it should be fine.

I'm planning for around 10 but will be looking to upgrade ours in the next year(6 years) or so if we go for 802.11ac AP's and a voip phone system

Had to install this earlier today -http://support.intoscience.com/?p=382 Links to an msi.

Thanks guys, I probably will just go with it and stick it in Eco mode. I'd never heard anything like this other than advice to stick around the 2000lm area to ensure the board can be seen without needing blinds or lights out our normal projectors are 2300lm which seems about right.

Hi all, I've just been shopping around for a matt whiteboard to use with an interactive projector I'm looking at purchasing. I'm planning to go for the Epson 595wi with Touch + pen interactivity. while looking around I came across the following: "It is an accepted industry practice that you cannot go too far over 2,000 lumens on an Interactive Whiteboard surface (which is what is used for this board), otherwise users might get eye damage from the light bouncing back." https://www.jp-uk.co.uk/interactive-whiteboards/projection-whiteboards/sapphire-av/sapphire-harmony-spb2400-94-16-10-2400-x-1200mm-projection-whiteboard.html This is the first time I've come across this and hadn't really thought about eye damage from an image being too bright. The 595wi is 3300 lumens which way over the top but is the only one with finger and pen interactivity so far that I can see. With it being a Ultra Short Throw projector the image is likely to be well over 2000lm although eco mode might help. Has anyone else come across this 2000 lumens guidance?

I was in year 9 in 99, the school had just finished moving over from suites of Acorns to PC's running NT4 if I remember correctly. Started my first IT job in 2004 doing installs and support in schools all over the place

I've never used them but have had a few cold calls, they sent a nice calendar last month also... I'm planning to stick with my normal suppliers.

AUP's are certainly on the agenda, we're essentially starting from scratch and building up from there and involving a number of SLT members in the process. Xirrus's AP level filtering may be a good solution as it'd be possible to allow skype/whatever in selected areas and not others.. I haven't yet ventured into costings for this though Yep it'll certainly involve huge changes to existing schemes of work and lesson planning, I really don't see how a sink or swim approach would work out well for anyone.

We're in the process of discussing a future 1:1 rollout, iPads appear to be the device of choice and I'm starting to come round to the idea. Training is one area we can't seem to agree upon, we've had a company come in and recommend 5 group training days with an ADE at a cost of ~£10k for our 55 staff. Not only is finding 5 days going to be impossible but the cost is also on the extreme side - also how are we going to induct new staff to a similar level? On the opposite side of that my line manager has visited a school who sent their teachers home with iPads over the summer break with brief instructions and told them that pupils would be bringing them in from September, apparently this worked?? My thoughts would be to work out what our key apps are going to be and deliver some training ourselves to ensure that our staff are ready to deliver successful lessons when the pupils get hold of them, How has everyone else approached training? I can see 1:1 devices being a fantastic addition if done correctly but at the same time it could easily go the other way and end up affecting our pupil numbers (We're an independent) as well as being a huge waste of money.

I'm using Meraki to manage our very limited(7!) ipad deployment and it seems to do exactly what we need it to do, once I can get hold of a mac mini I plan to setup Profile manager as well. during the deployment session at the recent Apple Education Leadership Summit a large Russian school(1200+ pupils) was using it to manage their fleet and appeared to be happy with it. Regarding Android tablets - I've found many issues that would put me off attempting to integrate them until they release Google Play for Education here. My main issues are: 1. No VPP equivilent - Apps need to be purchased for each ID and then can't be moved on, you also don't get any discount on bulk purchases(half price via VPP in qty's of 20+) 2. App support varies between devices and many review pages on apps are full of people proclaiming they don't work on their device - what happens if the device you've chosen is one of them? 3. Device support & OS Upgrades - Once a device is no longer current gen many vendors stop releasing firmware updates so 3 years down the line you may be running a very old version of android and who knows whether apps will continue to support it Google Play for Education should solve some of these, I personally don't particularly like Apple products due to their lack of flexibility but in a way that's exactly why they're good in schools

As ever Apple aren't at BETT but did host their "Apple Education Leadership Summit" here in London on Tuesday. My post on Facebook while waiting for the introduction to start went along the lines of "The things I do for work.... Not particularly an Apple fan but I'm at the Apple Education Leadership Summit. Come on Google sort out Google Play for education in the UK!" Right now we're looking at going down the Apple route for our potential 1:1 scheme, while I'm more of a windows/android fan I really can't see either working particularly well on such a large scale without a serious amount of hand holding and technical issues. Unfortunately iOS devices just work and do so at all levels, they may not offer what we would traditionally want from true enterprise devices but can offer the end users more or less a trouble free experience and the chance for the devices to become tools used seamlessly in the classroom. I really hope these GPlay for Education devices and the software holding it all together is good enough to challenge Apple, the biggest barriers I see so far are App/Device compatibility, Vendors not releasing updates for devices that aren't current, the lack of a VPP equivalent and to some extent the overall interface not quite being as intuitive. Our current barrier to all of this is funding, for some reason spending £70k to get us started isn't going down too well if Google can address all of the above our project might just get off the ground

We Went for schoolpost, it mails parents and provides a portal/mailbox so parents can reply using forms and cant claim to have not received a message.