rogerdnixon

I've looked at potential alternatives as we are coming up to our renewal and Lightspeed is really the only similar offering. However, a recent thread on Edugeek about their support kind of put me off taking it any further. But to be fair across 29 schools, Securly gives us few issues. The last significant one was an issue with the extension deployment last summer - other than that it just works and its easy to onboard new schools.

I'm retiring this summer. If you fancy leading IT in a large Google Workspace MAT feel free to get in touch. The post is for the start of July, so you would have a couple of months to work alongside me to get up to speed. Link: https://mynewterm.com/jobs/2644/EDV-2025-RLT-69316

If you are Google Workspace, a user with a Gemini Edu Enterprise licence gets this feature in Meet - plus a load of other stuff. Works very well.

You need Standard or Plus - thats the first thing. Some of my guides from a while back: https://wpsit.blogspot.com/2022/06/an-updated-look-at-google-advanced.html https://wpsit.blogspot.com/2020/02/google-mdm-for-windows-10-devices-more.html https://wpsit.blogspot.com/2022/06/using-managed-browsers-with-google.html My Slides on the matter from a Google event a while back: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1252J-86OI5Goy7uP7N7JY0XWQ7RCYvGuqr-gf9APSb4/edit?usp=sharing Should get you going.

The latest switches at the top end do support stacking. We have one site with two of their Campus Aggregations at the core and they are stacked together. Then a fibre link - one from each switch going to firewalls/switches etc. Their other Campus range also support stacking if you need it beyond the core and your pockets are deep.... Anyways - was super easy to setup and seems to work great.

Its users. So the person enrolling the device as a minimum needs a licence. Ideally you want to go Plus these - then its everyone + loads of security tools and features + other bells and whistles - well worth it.

We are full Plus across the Trust and use Google Windows management on our PCs. Works fine. Takes a bit of getting use to - need an pointers - let me know. Last few years I've done a talk about it at Google UK at the ANME Admin conference - might do it again if you are interested.

We use Securly Classroom which works well.

We have a number of primaries and some secondary's that mainly/all ChromeOS and where we have Windows in the Trust is cloud managed on the Google admin console. We look after about 14000 ChromeOS devices. So everything on Google Workspace, Bromcom MIS, CPOMS, cloud based Snipe-IT for inventory and Securly for filtering. Unifi for network kit at most sites, centrally managed. We have one of our secondaries as a reference school - so we take visitors - near Oxford.

If you have Google Workspace, a Gemini Education Enterprise license will do this. The Meeting notes in Google Meet are very good - to the point of being a bit creepy. You also get transcripts as well. Not cheap - but certainly works and you get all the AI bell and whistles in the other tools as well. The Meet, meeting not are probaly one of the most useful things.

We are a decent sized MAT with 29 schools and soon 31 - mix or large secondaries down to small primaries. Use to be a disparate mess of different systems and now we are all on one Google Workspace setup with 10000's ChromeOS devices. This as other have already said has a number of advantages: Easy to scale and manage. We have Plus licences and this give us some security super powers - on a multi school setup I'd highly recommend them - not to mention the >0.5PTb or cloud storage. ChromeOS devices are very quick to provision and other than physical damage require nothing after that. The productivity tools are very powerful. Google Sheets and Appscript have built many powerful systems and automations for us removing the need for paid for third parties. Collaboration is totally seamless across the organisation. Security - Gmails security features are outstanding and very easy to manage. Cool new stuff appears all the time - Google Vids being the latest hit with people. We do have Windows devices - we use Google Advanced Desktop Security to manage theses - so keeping things all in one management console. As a result we do still need a backend O365 setup - but that's just to access volume licences and that's it. I also teach (a little now), and the tools, especially Classroom are brilliant. We sync Workspace to our MIS's (Bromcom) directly - so users and Classes and so on are automatically made and updated with minimal effort. However, you will find others who love O365 - so each to their own.

Right click in Google Sheets bring up the menu: You can also use crtl - c/v/x etc and to be one up on excel ctrl-shift-v which I use also of the time. Never seen it not been an option.

With WiFi there are a lot of variables. We mainly use U6-Pros which have been totally fine - but do have one site that has U7-Pros and they seem fine as well. Things I've found that can drastically improve things: Mount the APs as they are designed to be mounted - U7-Pros are really ceiling mounts - so basically middle of the room typically. Manually set the channels and powers of all APs - so do this oat at a time after a manual channel scan. Can take a while to do - but worth it. Make sure the power is set appropriately - less is typically more - especially in more modern steel framed building. Unless there is a very specific use case for a wide channel - stick to 20/40Mhz Unless you have heaps of WiFi 7 or 6E clients - maybe turn off 6Ghz for now. Might be more trouble than it worth atm.

Just to clarify the Android thing, over the next 5 years or so Google is looking to use a common Linux backend for both ChromeOS and Android - rather than two separate ones. There will still be ChromeOS and Android - however, Android apps support on ChromeOS should be better.

1. As other have said - will be something network/filtering related. We have 14000 of them across the Trust and they just connect fine - we are mainly Unifi WiFi - but works fine on Ruckus/Aruba and Extreme - maybe running out of DHCP leases? 2. You enrol devices into management on the admin console and then deploy device and user policies to them. Apps are pushed to users - not devices (unless in looks mode). All the polices you could possibly need are there to lock the devices down as you want and customise the user experience. 3. Linux app I'd stay away from. Could only be used in a 1:1 setting and other than allow/deny access to them thats it. So if you do allow them - they can do anything they like. There are plenty of apps that can be used for pretty much anything - coding - Coding with Chrome, various online tools and Android options. 4. Two finger tap on the trackpad is right click. There are also a wide range of trackpad gestures you can use. Happy to discuss if you want more help or advise.

We did this for our secondary's a few years ago and did it either side of Feb half term in groups of 2/3 schools per week. The ones that did it over half term did not have to populate a weeks worth of attendance data retrospectively. Key things to make it as smooth as it can be: Make sure key people fully get onboard with the training - so attendance, exams, data, timetable and so on. People claiming to have done training when they clearly had not caused most issues for us. If you are a secondary - you will have a test site with your data - so run through what needs to be done to get this ship shape at the point of live site handover. Make sure the relevant people have access to support day one. Bring in the extra modules gradually - don't try to do more than the basic MIS and integrations day 1. We did our 20 primaries earlier in the year (from a variety of MISs) and that was late March to a few weeks after Easter. I think September day 1 go live would be brave as that's peak time for everything else. Did a new primary a few weeks ago mid term and it was fine - just be very clear in who needs to do what and when and make sure they do it. Good luck.

This is for teachers to manage - they moderate posts in Classroom and can optionally disable student posting if they want.

Took a quick look on our admin console and its not their as an app to add. I've reach out to the publisher. As far as alternatives go, if you have a modern MIS e.g Bromcom or Arbor - they have native tools to manage users and keep Classrooms up to date. We use the Bromcom one that works well. Other options include Windows Google Sync which we used before Bromcom which is fine. Salamander is another sync tool that can do it. Or you can create your own scripts and use the command line tool GAM.

We use Securly across our Trust (29 schools). Google Workspace throughout and a mix of mainly ChromeOS, but some Windows, ipads and a handful of Macs. Spinning up new schools is quick and easy and by and large you just set it up and I don't look at it on a typical day. Guardian app is good if you are 1:1. We have had a few issues with the extension recently and they are changing how they are hosting it. However, that seems to be resolved now. I've had a demo of Lightspeed which does offer a very similar feature set. Seems quite a bit more complex to manage and setup - but does appear to have some nice features. But not used it in production - so cannot really comment more than that.

Any recent Chromebook you just go into settings and enable Linux and let its do its stuff. You then have a Linux shell and can do what you like. You can download deb packages and install them and so on. You do need to enable the feature in the admin console. However, its not really suitable for students as they can really do whatever they like. So outside of IT Support and a few teachers who need certain Windows apps (using Wine which we install for them), we don't allow it.

We use UDM Pro/SE at our primaries. Filtering is cloud based with Securly and auths against out Google Workspace accounts - works well. Seocndary we load balance 2 x 1Gbps connections with PFsense+ and also use Securly cloud filtering. Although I am temped by by the new Unifi EFG...... AD was retired some time ago.

Chromebooks have native pdf annotation and editing and give very good results. Canva, which is free to Edu has a pdf editor which has allowed me to edit some files that Word messed up. Word does a decent job and if you right click a pdf of Google Drive > Open in Docs it converts to Google Docs.

We use IP address (although on Google ADS not InTune - but used to use InTune and used IP back in the day). Print Deploy does not work offsite unless you either make you Papercut server public - probably a bad idea or maybe use some sort of VPN. For offsite you want mobility print which has a cloud printing option. Means people can print from any network.

Yep - we do this as well. Just be aware advanced MDM need licences or is included in Plus.

We use Chromebooks across our schools. Never heard of EZ Write. Most users use Google Slides which is very good. Changing Slide order is just a matter of dragging them around. We also use Canva which give you all sort of fancy tools that can be deployed free for educational institutions. If you have stuff as Smart Notebook files - they can be converted to Slides. Export the file from Smart Notebook as pptx and then open up in Slides and you can select File > save as Google Slides and off you go. Typically a teacher might just share a folder of files with us and we would do this for them). You won't be installing custom fonts on a Chromebook. In Slides and any other Google tool you have access to around a 1000 Google fonts. I generally try to avoid the use of custom fonts as the never work well off the device where the font is installed.