jmak

If there's a power cut there won't be any pupils in school as you won't be able to run the heating and the kitchen will probably close (the fridges will go off, so it's not just hot meals that'd be off the menu). Probably best to look at cloud based stuff - you have to assume that major data centres have backup power. A local school had a long term power cut due to a contractor cutting a major cable. They had a container sized diesel generator on site until the next holiday as they couldn't dig up the ground safely to repair the cable during term time. I'm assuming you're referring to the possibility of generalized power cuts, not just your building. In which case you're unlikely to be able to get your hands on a generator.

That sums up all of management theory in three A4 sheets [emoji2] As well as being a very effective way to plan your day...

^^This

Now that it's cables that plug into a USB power supply I think this has limited impact; when it was hard wired wall-warts with a different spec for each manufacturer it was a major issue. I always end up buying multiple cables for my phone: one for my regular charging point, one for each car, one to keep in my bag when I go out. Most of them don't last as long as my devices. No one in our household has any Apple devices, but I've got a lightning cable in the kitchen drawer because we have enough visitors with Apple kit that it's worth spending a few quid to have one.

I'd look carefully at what you use as classifications. Personally I prefer service impact as criteria to classify rather than specific tasks. P1: Issue impacting health and safety of staff or pupils P2: Issue affecting multiple systems and departments P3: Issue impacting a whole system or department P4: Issue affecting teaching and learning P5: Issue affecting integrity or performance of systems with little immediate service impact All issues reported through the recognised channels will be assessed and prioritised within X time of receipt* *Half an hour is more realistic than 5 minutes unless you have someone who's job is to monitor the helpdesk) Obviously if you're doing something that can easily be paused, resetting a password in under a minute will make your average resolution times look great, but if the same lame a$$ requests their 5th reset of the day you don't want to give them a stick to beat you with when you're trying to do something more important than fix their incompetence. I'd also look at implementing an SSO platform based on either Azure AD or Google Auth with self service password reset. Note to the wise: of you do that, make sure you don't get battered with KPIs that penalise you because your now taking longer to fix a smaller number of issues. What you've done is got rid of pointless issues and the ones that are left are more complicated and you should be rewarded for that.

OH works in a healthcare setting and their employer has come up with a sensible variant on the government guidance. If you're double jabbed and are notified of a normal contact with a covid case, you take PCR tests and go to work as usual. If the contact is from your household, you still have to isolate for 10 days as they consider the risk from continual exposure to be different from a contact on the street/in a shop. Seems a sensible compromise to me.

I'd love to discuss further, but I don't want to end up amphibian. My attempt to keep it on topic is that I suspect the reason they had Sheku on the bill is that post-covid*, they're desperate for audiences and want a big name as a draw. The BBC did broadcast it, but it wasn't their concert - it was independently promoted by the RPO as their 75th birthday concert. Very jealous of you playing with Robert Cohen. On a side note, IMO this Elgar performance was very good, but not quite at the top level of cello performances I've been to. I'd go with YoYo Ma playing Bach, Rostropovich playing Dvorak AND Sheku playing Shostakovich. I went to the BBC Young Musician final where he performed and won and I do think he's an exceptional talent. It was one of my all time best live music experiences. *Back to covid: I understand that people may well feel that they're not ready to go to concert halls yet and I know covid isn't gone, but Steve is right, there are lots of musicians who are struggling and who are brilliant. I've been to hundreds of concerts over the years and every one of them beats recorded music. As soon as you feel comfortable, give one a try.

The very thing [emoji16] Perfect venue for that, but Sheku Kanneh-Mason's performance of Elgar's cello concerto was outstanding too.

Not for a minute suggesting we shouldn't be wearing masks, but least in RAH it's 1) a massive space and 2) someone had the foresight to update the ventilation to a useful spec while they were refurbishing during last year's enforced closure.

Used both of these companies and highly recommend them.

I went to a concert in the Albert Hall tonight and we were there a month ago too. Last time mask wearing during the concert was probably about 75%. This time it was under 1%. I haven't been anywhere so mask free for over a year. Both times the pattern looked approximately the same whether it was the cheap seats or the private boxes.

Looks like it's a supported function: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/move-your-form-to-a-group-921a6361-a4e5-44ea-bce9-c4ed63aa54b4 I can't remember if it's possible to create Forms in a group/SharePoint site or whether you have to create it first and then transfer/share ownership. The linked article suggests that admins can transfer ownership of Forms created by people who've left the organisation. The other way to achieve this (following agreed and documented processes with suitable documented authorisation) is for an admin to re-enable a leaver's account and log in as them and change ownership.

Can you start a policy (procedures rather than technical) that teaching resources are created in a shared area? We mostly used Forms for office admin and I created then with a team as owner rather than an individual. They were then available to anyone who joined the department and preserved after people left. My personal view is that keeping teaching resources in a shared area is better practice; I've no objections to teachers taking resources with them, but work that's created while working for an employer belongs to the organisation. Keeping Forms is just a side benefit.

Yes - if the proper precautions are taken. Assuming you are already using G Suite, you should have a DPIA, but it probably doesn't cover what you're more proposing to use it for, so it should be revisited. The platform has measures in place to keep data suitably secure. Your SLT need to ensure that they have suitable controls too. Edit: This article has information about how it is/can be used in the NHS https://cloud.google.com/security/compliance/nhs-uk

Horn [emoji397][emoji397]

Leaves (In punny rather than pedant mode [emoji854])

I've found it pretty difficult to find a definitive answer really available on their website, but there is this from their blog from last year:

Flame [emoji91]

Ahead of his time in so many ways... Battery assisted personal transport anyone? A pocket sized TV - who'd watch anything on a screen that small?

For once I don't have any complaints about the politicians - it clearly is a very nuanced decision with no perfect or even straightforward answer. FWIW I think the CMOs have got it right; the health benefits are very closely balanced, but once you take into account societal benefits and - more importantly when we're thinking about the implications for individual children - the educational benefits, it's probably worth the risk. Key factors for me: 1) The risk of suffering myocarditis appears to be greatly reduced by only having a single dose of the vaccine. 2) The chances of long-term or serious consequences of myocarditis caused by vaccine in young healthy people seem to be very low.

It sounds like Cloudready should be fine on those devices, but if you're still struggling for performance you could try Puppy Linux. I've used it in the past to boot into a kiosk mode which only allowed access to Office 365 or Google for education. It looks like there's been quite a lot of development since then with different flavours for different purposes, but still gets good reviews and is very lightweight. I was using it to "upgrade" netbooks and running the whole OS from a USB drive (much faster than the spinning rust that was installed and much cheaper than upgrading to SSDs.

It even looks a bit like he's wearing a tinfoil hat!

One thing I learned the hard way was too remove any non-alphanumeric characters, i.e apostrophes as in O'Toole and hyphens from double barreled names. I generated usernames from a SIMS report so a few creepy through and it was much more straightforward to have a consistent rule.

I read it like this too. The other thing to bear in mind is that if the vast majority of people in a group are vaccinated, then you'll end up with the majority of people suffering severe illness or death being vaccinated people. If 100% of the group were vaccinated, then 100% of people catching it and those becoming ill and dying will be vaccinated - it doesn't mean it wasn't worth vaccinating.

Locket