Jamman960

I've not experienced this but some people claim to be more sensitive to RF than others, I'd suggest she get her child checked by an expert to prove they do/don't respond in a normal way to such small amounts of radiation, if she can provide a doctors note you'll make additional accomodations etc Did they have issues in previous years when I assume the child was in a different classroom? If her child's headache's have stopped then isn't the problem solved on your end? she might be able to push a school into considering this but her child is going to have far more trouble elsewhere in their lives if they really are affected by RF

When I replaced our workstations over the summer I figured it wasn't worth paying the extra for DVD drives and brought some ext drives from amazon instead as well as stripping a few from outgoing pc's, we've loaned out 3 so far and in at least one of those cases they just copied the disc contents to their network drive and returned it.

I seem to remember there being exclusion templates available within Sophos Central depending upon what services the server runs etc

Ours usually appear in DEP before we’re aware they’re out for delivery, it’s done by your reseller so it depends upon their workflows

Nope no need for credit, just need to configure the conference bridge as per the link(I did it a few months ago so can’t remember the whole process) then you’re off. It takes a few hours for the extra information to start appearing on the new invites, if I remember correctly it appeared within meetings arranged via teams fairly quickly then started appearing in outlook after a few hours.

What you want is a “Microsoft 365 Audio Conferencing for faculty” license, anyone with this assigned will have phone info included in their meeting invites, go through this - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/set-up-audio-conferencing-in-teams to setup the conference bridge. The license costs around £1.60 per month each, In our case we use this for governors who prefer phone conferencing, we have a singe license so I setup all meetings for them then distribute the details. James

We’re trying to get them to use school accounts without a huge amount of success, they started using the schools phone system for conference calls at the beginning of Covid for small meetings but as we only have 8 sip trunks full meetings weren’t possible. I suggested moving to teams but that got shot down as being too complicated. I’ve met them half way by purchasing the the Audio add on for teams allowing them to dial in... they now meet via teams on the phone for £1.60/mo rather than paying out an extra £50/mo in trunks.

Everyone can code is accessible by a wide range of ages and produces quick results, sure it’s not going to turn someone into a master programmer but the skills learnt would be transferable - driving a lorry is different to driving a car, learning to drive a car first helps significantly.

I'm hoping to upgrade but am holding out for Black Friday deals, got a fantastic deal on my Xs 2 years ago inc free spotify and have managed not to damage it so hoping to make some money back while its still worth something.

We tend to buy £15 bluetooth keyboards from amazon for our iPads - the Anker ones were fantastic and had builtin usb chargeble batteries but they seem to have gone. The ones we've had aren't particularly durable though with keys falling off quickly and not going back on easily or being lost(parts snap off entirely) iPads have been a great success here, if you'd suggested anything apple to me 5 years ago I'd have said not a chance but but essentially the simplicity of them for staff and students removes many barriers IMO and allows the learning to take focus rather than the tech. I'll read and post something more constructive later... rushing to get a golden image prepared for our IT suite at the moment.

Here’s a guide on setting up shared iPad, essentially pupils have to login to each iPad rather than each iPad having multiple students work accessible or sites being logged in to other pupils accounts etc https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mdm/mdm71124b400/web For our shared set we currently don’t use shared iPad, it didn’t work out very well when we tried it in its early days, we didn’t have a cache server either so logging on took too long to be usable. I’m tempted to try again at some point

They don’t do Mac servers as such any more, we have a Mac mini setup as a caching server to speed up app installs but you shouldn’t need this for a small number unless you want to use them in shared mode or don’t have a high speed internet link in place. We also use this to run configurator for recovering iPads occasionally although iTunes can do it in most cases. Vpp credit can be purchased via Apple approved suppliers

I guess it depends upon the state of the AD, I'd want to standardise across them all to iron out any niggles that may exist if they've all been created independently/differently but even that could be achieved without a complete fresh start, there's nothing wrong with upgrading.

STAS can be a real pain at times, I'd recommend running tests via the stas backend on the domain controllers to ensure it can contact the pc's in question via WMI/Registry, Occasionally firewall settings on the clients can interfere. on a few occasions I've had to delete the stas database on the server with the app installed to clear stale/conflicting entries, comparing logs on the firewall authentication log and stas backend can reveal issues such as two users logging into the same machine via user switching etc, on one occasion a user with a special character in their username caused the firewall to continuously try and log that user on causing regular disconnects. I've got to diagnose my own stats setup again shortly, I'm tempted to look at an alternative firewall solution when it comes up for renewal in May, there has to be a more reliable way to authenticate clients.

Thanks for the heads up This could make tracking down iPads interesting assuming the MDM is likely to only show the actual mac address, we occasionally end up trawling through logs to find when a certain iPad last connected to prove its been taken off site by a pupil. We also use it to spot ipads that are on the wifi using the wrong login but pairing with iPads will be a nightmare now had hoped this would be MDM configurable but its not appearing as an option in JamF school

If you're needing it quickly load balancing more FTTC connections is probably your only option, it took 9 months for Openreach to sort out our leased line, assuming your quote is so high due to distance/complexity I suspect it could be even longer. James

How does everyone handle new user provisioning? when someone new starts we need to provision various accounts for different platforms then we need to inform the parents of these details. We've also ended up giving out training materials during lockdown as in some cases pupils are starting having never been into a classroom(2 pupils last year). I'm thinking of putting an ordering system in place to formalise the whole process but wondered if anyone had done similar or whether I'm over thinking it all, the result would be us receiving an order per child/staff member detailing the requirements from the registrar, us fulfilling the order and returning login details etc to the registrar/hr who would then send the login details and intro materials to the parent/user. If anyone is doing similar what are you using to achieve it? I'm thinking about using a sharepoint document library with templates along with a few flows for notifications etc

They could probably make a fortune selling that TV on ebay as a broadband disruptor! would be great to know more about this one, sounds like a CRT but surely this would be far more wide spread and they'd be recommending replacement of X if it was operating as expected

On the whole it’s worked very well, we had lots of issues last term when staff ended up creating multiple meetings and not deleting old ones, pupils would end up spread across them, they were pretty much all user error. Our staff meetings generally went without a hitch once staff were used to it, now we’ve gone back to normal meetings though We actually used it tonight with around 120 pupils/parents connected to hear a live talk from an external speaker, I stuck around to mute anyone that dared to unmute themselves half way through...

It’s their sims code I believe but it’s not accessible from the ui, at the same time it appears to be generated prior to admission which saves some headaches I started off using admission numbers so have to use vlookup to match salamanders output to what’s in ASM

I started using NEC projectors before switching to LCD panels, one model pretty much fitted every setup. Still have a few in storage with barely any hours on the bulbs, can’t bear to throw them out and they’re worth hardly anything

Signinapp have done a lot for Covid compliance, if enabled the signin iPad can be completely contactless - the camera now always looks out for QR codes, there’s now a QR on screen for visitors to scan and be directed towards a web portal to sign in making it entirely contactless. Signinapp has been great for us, we have terminals at major entrances for staff, visitors to sign in and out, it also integrates with Sims for pupil attendance and user popularity (optional extra)

You need to export the cycle first and then export the timetable to sql - see here for more details http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/133793-nova-t6-changing-timetable-cycle.html

I've never used the windows version of the app but had similar nightmares with iPads bit late now but I'd recommend ditching the Sims Teacher App and instead get Edulink - its so much better and is entirely web based(apps are availible for mobile devices), it costs less than Sims' app.

There's a shortage at the moment, I was advised there would be a 4-6 week lead time when I ordered 4 weeks ago but ours are on the way today, even last week I was being told to expect them in a couple of weeks.