jmak

Replying partly to test my understanding. I'd assume this doesn't just include PII, but also anything about the complaint, such as type, time and place of incident, which could lead to identification of other people involved.

DigiExam sounds very expensive and it'd swamp budgets I've had in the past. However €6.50/£5 per pupil isn't much compared to the average amount spent on entering public exams or as a proportion of the funding per child. If it does everything you need to run exams, it sounds like quite good value. I still can't imagine many places funding it...

Obviously entirely anecdotal, but 6 people in my family have had the Pfizer jab and 2 have had the AZ jab (me being one of them). Other than slightly sore arms, I'm the only one who had side effects. Jabbed at 3.30pm; got up at 5.30am to give someone a lift to the station and I was shivery, mild headache and aches all over. Took paracetamol and was fine but lethargic (which could just be down to getting up at 5.30) for a few hours then aches came back. Took more paracetamol which was enough to get rid of the aches. Repeated at dinnertime and had an early night. Woke up the following day feeling sparkling and new!

IT support init. It's got a plug....

I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem for anyone in here.... But some of you might have partners who think that having a metal container with a metal lid is enough and who might need reminding that the lid has to be securely in place for it to keep the mice out [emoji2369]

I think you need to do it before installation of Windows. I always used to remove it from the WIM before deploying using MDT (same approach works with SCCM). I think a lot of people now and the commands to the task sequence during deployment - if you only have a few machines or if you're leaving them to run unattended that might work for you, but it speed down deployment too much for me. The other option is to use a customised start layout which hides the apps and then use app locker to prevent them running, but in that case they would all install with every new user - some people find that works fine, but in the machines I was running, the first login was too slow. Most of the options are described in this thread, but it's long and involved: /showthread.php?t=165029

It's thought to give stronger and longer lasting protection and possibly is more effective against variants other than the one you had. I know 2 people who had covid-19 twice (confirmed with pcr test both times - they're both frontline healthcare workers who were exposed a lot). They've both also now had two doses of the vaccine.

I have a fair amount of sympathy with the idea of prioritising teachers for vaccines, but no more than other school staff who come in to contact with pupils. There's also some evidence showing that more of the spread in schools was between staff than from pupils to staff. Also, while I ideally no one would catch Covid, the reason you've been offered it first is because statistically you're more likely to come to harm if you get it. A 45 year old teacher (never mind all those in their twenties) is at lower risk of a bad outcome than you are. There's no perfect way of deciding what order to administer vaccines, but over all we'll all be better off if everyone who's offered one takes it up.

I'd start with either your supplier or the local agent: https://www.google.com/amp/www.egyptyello.com/company/336288/Kyocera_Mita%3famp=1 If you're feeling brave, you could try ordering from AliExpress: https://m.aliexpress.com/i/4000172566161.html But no guarantee on whether it's actually the right part or how easy it will be to install.

In a previous job at various times I went through: 30 minute commute each way, 5 days per week 1.5 hours each way, 5 days per week 2 days per week office (distance varying between 30 minutes drive, 1 hour train or up to 4 hours driving - any further and I stayed overnight) 5 days per week working at home My favourite by far was 2 days per week in the office; easy to arrange my life around, no commuting most days, productive time undisturbed, enough human contact to keep me sane. After 18 months of barely seeing anyone due to 5 days per week working at home I was ready to take any job that involved working with people.

As a species we have an innate tendency to look for patterns. This is one of the reasons for our success but has the side effect that we tend to find them whether they're there or not. The aim here needs to be to get as many people vaccinated as possible. I'm not sure whether trying to explain that there's no justification for pausing the roll out and pushing ahead would be better, or whether they're right to pause and wait for some more data as a way of achieving the desired outcome. If people already don't trust you, telling them their fears are unjustified might not get you very far. What the reasons are for that lack of trust is an entirely separate issue.

I can see the temptation of only having one of the 2 cables terminated (haven't seen anyone recommending only running one) if budget is really tight, but if it's not terminated, presumably you don't get a test certificate for it and wouldn't find out it's faulty until years down the line.

So presumably once the kids are taking their tests home (my understanding is that it's only the first 2 or 3 that will be carried out in school) it'll be back to getting a PCR test to confirm.

The £25 USB C "dock" I use at home supports VGA (and HDMI, DVI, Gb LAN, USB, pass through power). Not sure if have the confidence to roll out out to 30 classrooms, but it's been in daily use for a year.

Going back to the very first post, I can't see any reason to pull out perfectly good PCs from classrooms*. I also would have thought it's essential for all teachers to have 1:1 portable devices. There's been discussion on here for years about whether teachers should be provided with personal devices. In the past it was arguably a luxury as teachers could do all their work in school and working at home was a choice. I'd say that the way things have been over the last year has shown that giving teachers 1:1 mobile devices is essential and if money is short, you probably need to compromise on fixed PCs in the classroom. I always found it quite effective for teachers to have their own devices, especially when there was a docking station; at lesson change over if a different teacher came in they could have their lesson set up on their device and just plug into the docking station, avoiding the waiting for the last teacher to log off, new teacher log on, then find their lesson resources. Any combination can be made to work well, all solutions need a decent plan for how it's going to operate. *Just thought of a reason: you could use them for a computer suite refresh to save some money to fund there teacher devices if that's on your list.

Definitely one to watch, but I heard a representative from the ONS on the news last night and they said that their survey (which has been used as the best guage of community prevalence for many months now) is still showing a decrease in England and Wales. Hopefully it's the increased testing [emoji1696] In other news, I'm trying to decide whether I ache all over because 1) I used a fork to aerate 200m² of lawn yesterday, 2) I'm having reaction to the vaccine I had yesterday or 3) it's all in my head....

Shouldn't need one - the licence is embedded and you can download an install disk direct from Microsoft.

I believe you can deliver brilliant and innovative lessons on any subject and make them more engaging with ICT. I also think that one to one devices in school is at least 15 years overdue and use of ICT should be embedded in every part of education, like it is in the real world, but that doesn't mean buying iPads and telling teachers they must use them will progress anything My point is that if you're going to change the way people work, it takes a huge amount of energy, drive and leadership. If you ignore the way teachers and other staff feel and the other demands that are being made of them, you will inevitably fail. Right now, I see a lot of hard working, tired, over stretched teachers and even if you give them a tool to help them do their job, it's one more thing to deal with. If your aim is to be right, just go ahead and do what you know is best. If your aim is to facilitate sustainable change and get best value from your teachers and hardware, sometimes a bit of compromise is useful.

By your figures (which I don't disagree with), after 3 years you would have paid £39k to lease them. Buying outright would have cost £42k. 180 three year old iPads should be worth more than £3k (£16.67 each), so you can either trade them in, in which case the unit cost for the replacements will be much cheaper, making outright purchase cheaper over 5 years even if you did choose to replace them. I'd expect them to last five years. It can be a good way of budgeting if you don't have capital to spend and I wouldn't rule it out. It has the advantage of ensuring always having modern equipment - although I'd say that's less of an issue with iPads and other Apple kit than almost anything else as they do tend to last.

We had a good experience with Ricoh. The price was competitive and the machines were reliable - most service calls were due to abuse and then they eventually got to the point where there were wear and tear items, but that was after over a million impressions. I suspect the service level depends significantly on who covers your patch and how close they are based to the school. Our guy lived a few hundred metres from the school, so he always either came the same day on his way home or first thing the following morning before he went anywhere else. Some of his sites were over and hour and a half drive away, so I suspect they didn't get quite as good service, however good his intentions were. Talk to your neighbouring schools and ask Ricoh if they've got any schools using them local to you. I knew that the maintenance technician lived locally before we signed [emoji57]

I'd agree with@brimstone that it's a massive lost opportunity if ICT equipment is used as a glorified web browser and camera. However, I've watched that happen and even with good intentions and a strategy, it takes a huge amount of energy from teaching staff and leadership to deliver on that. When you look at the other curriculum pressures and demands on teachers currently, I would understand if that continues to be how they're used. Teachers are having to provide both in classroom and online lessons or resources at the minute and it's clear that even if schools fully open, they'll be under huge pressure to provide catch up learning, which is (rightly or wrongly) likely to focus on literacy and numeracy. That will inevitably reduce the amount of energy available for developing innovative ICT usage. I'd be choosing hardware purchases with that in mind and spend the next three years helping the curriculum team to develop a strategy that would make better use of more advanced equipment next time around. That doesn't rule out iPads, but it's not unrealistic to think that whatever you buy might be used as a glorified web browser.

Price sounds very low. From recollection, last time I looked for a school with 300 pupils and 30 staff, we had 1 multifunction and 2 desktop LaserJet printers and our costs were around £7.5k per year. That was a framework price and it was cheaper than the 3 quotes I got (no formal tender, as we used the framework contract). That included lease, toner, maintenance and paper (which was bought separately). Maybe your team is already wrote restrained with printing

Is this for devices that don't have a manufacturer's barcode of any kind? I notice on their website, it mentions that it had auto-discover for a large range of devices and claims even to be able to find out what software version they've running automatically. The last system I used, as a default I just used whatever barcode was on the device and gave it a name according my naming convention. I then used sticky labels to add a human readable name on each device. When they inevitably came off, I could just scan the manufacturer's barcode and print off a new sticky label. I found that almost any type of label I used eventually peeled off or became illegible.

It's s cartoon, but it covers most of the salient points. Hopefully it'll make things easier for those of us forced to battle to repair things despite them being designed to make it difficult. I've decided today should be a less than averagely cynical day - it might cheer me up [emoji846] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/10/humans-throw-away-too-much-crap-it-has-to-stop?

It's a few years since I looked due to our lease cycle, but we changed from Kyocera to Ricoh and they were competitive and my experience of their service was very good.