Jamman960

SchoolPost works well for this but not sure on pricing now, just need to upload indovidual pdfs or a zip file containing them all, so long as they have the pupils code and/or name in the file name it’ll generate the mails. It’s a great system for day to day comms as parents can sign into a portal and see them all as well as getting notifications to say they’re there.

I've just had a couple of Lenovo Chromebox Micro's delivered, they're just over £300 inc vat but are fanless and about the size of a large smart phone, just slightly thicker. currently running the Trilby PWA They've come with a 45w usbc charger but I'm hoping to sort out a Y cable to power both. James

I think device reliability is often determined more by the company providing the maintenance than the devices themselves at times, I found Toshiba devices to be very reliable with our chosen supplier, when they got taken over by apogee things went down hill, we then changed to Sharp devices with a decent supplier and once again found them to be fantastic.

I think it really depends on how you’re planning to do it, if you’re going to replace everything at once leasing makes sense but it’s hard to get back out of it once your device life cycles involve replacing so much kit. At my previous school we’d replace iPads for years 3 and 6, we initially leased but soon found that all the leases combined cost us more than buying a batch outright each year, typically operating leases cost about the same once you’ve factored in interest and you end up paying over the odds if you decide to extend leases or buy the kit at the end.

Can't say I've been impressed with Lenovo so far, it took weeks to get them out to repair a chromebook with a 3yr NBD onsite warrantee and when they did come out the engineer bodged the install so badly that the screen fell out before we gave it back to the pupil. On another occasion they've refused to look at a chromebook thats overheating stating it was within normal range despite it getting hot enough to erase the text on the asset label and cause random reboots.

Go speak to PE, I managed to recover just under 600gb from 1 user(they’re no longer #3 in the trust ) following a brief meeting… just need to tackle their 2.2tb shared drive now

Which registry key did you need to change to sort this out? Looking for another school but can’t seem to locate any word specific pols for more recent changes. James

Both sharp and Toshiba worked very well at my last place, avoid Kyocera like the plague - I’ve experienced them with 2 suppliers and they’ve been pretty unreliable, que jokes about offering engineers a room vs barely seeing engineers with tosh/sharp

Hi all, What would you expect to happen to engraved devices once they have left your school? Would you find it acceptable for them to be refurbished and sold on with the engraving still in tact if the disposal company couldn’t remove it? Context: A few devices disposed of in September were recently found by the police in a shop during a raid, they contacted us as they had the schools name on them.

I didn’t realise Salamander could deal with net2, are you running a single domain for the trust? Couldn’t you create a second group to be synced up via salamander on each site containing trust personnel? Assuming they’re also able to login to ad on each site I work for a large trust with separate net2 servers, we have salamander but don’t seem to be using it for net2, I imagine this would save a ton of work and inconsistency.

I've found it to be very useful for certain things, I needed to move DNS providers into Azure, I threw the current list of entries at it and asked it to output a script for azure. its also been useful for getting to grips with PowerBi, I simply tell it what I want to achieve and how the data is currently formatted and it generally comes up with the right answers.

Renaissance discontinued their app long ago, you can use the website directly from Safari. We setup a webclip pointing to our specific instance and the staff/pupils log in from there. As for the iPads - are you really "managing" 70 without an MDM? I would recommend settting up Mosyle and get them all managed - at least then you'd be able to manag the whole lot although if they're not getting updates they're now a security risk.

Very tempted to go for the 15 plus or pro.... if the wife lets me! Currently have a 12 which is still working far too well after nearly 3 years - I used to change every 24 months on the dot!

Has much changed in the world of Sims in the last year and a half? Having migrated my current school across to Engage I’m now going to a school using sims again 😭 guessing Sims 8/Next Gen have progressed as much as ever

We use cardhero from Lesar, turnaround can be slow at times if only putting small numbers through

I’ve found almost any Ethernet dongle works, I think there is a setting to keep the usb port active that you need to set before hand otherwise the usb port is disabled(for data/accessory connections) when locked Edit - it’s called usb restricted mode, more info here: https://www.pocket-lint.com/phones/news/145042-what-is-apple-s-usb-restricted-mode-and-how-does-it-work/#:~:text=As%20long%20as%20your%20iPhone,until%20you%20reach%20USB%20Accessories.

Pretty accurate analogy, when our previous bursar got wind I was even suggesting we switch I received a stern email telling me it'd need approval at every stage right through to governors. We've made the move to Engage and its been worth it, almost everything is now done within the same far more modern system. Just make sure you have a clear idea of who's doing what towards the migration - I ended up being landed with the whole thing and had to get an MSP to take over part of my IT management role so that I could dedicate time to the migration project. James

I approached it as a two stage project, the first is purely exploratory to identify what other MIS' are out there and how they can improve upon what SIMS already does for the school, it also explores the costs and effort involved in changing MIS. The core deliverable should be a fully costed recommendation. During the process key stakeholders go through various demo's and trial instances. The second project implements the recommendations of the first, this could be a complete MIS change or potentially improvements to how the existing MIS is used - potentially bolting on edulink etc

We looked at Hubmis last year, it seemed like the development was heading towards a more complete system by September 22 but we decided against it in favour of isams or EngageMIS, we went with Engage as it did more for us but could easily have chosen iSams. We have chosen to keep SchoolPost for parent comms . Changing MIS isn’t without its pains, ensure you have the staff to carry out the move. We moved from Sims and it took me a while to get everything implemented, I ended up being dedicated to the project instead of my normal role as IT Manager. James

This could work out very well for schools and pupils if the exam regulators are able to state that exams will be digital from ... - funding would need to appear, ensuring pupils are digitally competent ready for their exams would be a great motivator. They really need to look at the quality and robustness of the software platform being used, we've had no end of trouble with the GL Assessments platform failing to submit results at the end of tests - this cannot happen for some poor kids GCSE, IT managers really need to have confidence in the solution otherwise it'll be our necks on the line when pupils start failing exams because of IT issues. If these tests could become adaptive they'd be able to assess pupils levels within fewer questions & time which could also help reduce the burden of marking, requiring pupils to be digitally literate to be able to access the exams in a fair way across the board would be a huge step forward and would go a long way towards ensuring they are ready for university and ultimately the rest of their lives.

havent used Dynamo machines but our brother label printer came with some software called P-Touch which allows you to design labels inc barcode options and then merge from an excel list out to the printer, I assume dynamo have similar for theirs

I use manage engine Op Manager Plus, it’s not too expensive with the usual edu discounts

we have a usb ethernet adapter hooked up to a usb hub then an ipad camera adapter allowing lightening to usb - with the ethernet adapter connected to our lan the ipads get an ip then connect out to JAMF without needing to go via a mac. This has saved us so many times in the past, we use it at least once a week

We used reflector but have recently moved to AirServer. I’ve found AirServer to be more reliable and they don’t charge for upgrades vs reflector coming out with new major versions requiring new licences etc

I imagine your connection speed would be the bottleneck rather than disk speed, I’d expect the hardware itself to be able to get extra speed out of an ssd.