rogerdnixon

In total Staff + Students about 1200. We have a 1Gbit Virgin Media Leased line - not as expensive as you might think and probably over kill atm as we don't often hit over 200Mb/s at peak times unless its a football match!

I almost exclusively do this with group permissions rather than compliance rules (which is the other way but more effort). So for example all of our class Google Groups have the teacher as the owner and students as members. Posting is limited to owners of the group and only members can read messages but have no posign permissions. This is configured in "basic permissions" in the groups settings or but commandline using GAM.

We are largely Cloud-based (G Suite) now and have been for some time. However, as others have stated, there are things that get in the way - Solidworks, Adobe Premier and Sibelius. I'm workign on these as there are increasingly good alternatives online. For the server side of things, you still need DNS/DHCP (we use ClearOS now) and a Print Server really (Papercut offering manage Cloud Printing - which you could run on Linux). We also have locally hosted SIMS still which is useful for running scheduled reports for syncing to Google Classroom. However, WiFI management is cloud based - Aerohive, Filtering - Securly and most document/file storage. The big advantage other than cost is that it abstracts people away for the "school network" and works on any device anywhere. However, to be 100% cloud based (other than basic network services) is still a way off for use - give it a few years!

If you use G Suite or Azure AD you might want to consider Securly which is what we use. Some rather cool parental reporting and offsite filtering options with no local appliance to go wrong. We have used it for the last year and its pretty good.

Correct - but I would always limit who is an owner as they can delete the group etc. SLT could just be managers which in most cases is enough.

Then simply make staff members (ie. they are a member rather than a manager or owner) of the group who can post but not view posts and SLT managers who can view posts. Limit posting to member/managers/owners. You do all this in the "basic permissions" section of the groups settings. Remeber you can also put groups within groups which can make things simpler.

Yes. You set posting permissions to anyone on the domain (for example) and view topics to either members/managers or just owners. We use this a lot with public facing groups (collaborative inboxes) - public can post only members can view posts.

Its working fine again now.

James from Google said a fix is in the works for the end of the week.

Works well on Chromebooks running Android Apps - already used in the classroom. No need for the actual hardware - very cool app.

It works without the big expensive hardware device on ChromeOS with Android Apps. Maybe the best collaborative working tool I've seen of its type - might wean me off Realtime Board.

Good choice - we are 1:1 with R11's and they work really well. I've got an R13 which is a great device.

I'd suggest getting touch/flip devices so you get Android app support - Jamboard is just out and is an amazing colaboation tool. Make sure they know how to use Cast for Education and then they/students can cast to their main screen and if you have touch devices it makes interactive whiteboards irrelvant as the board is in your hand. Jam board: Our list of Apps: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0vcQ-UNCMvIQks2WnFkV29JTUE/view Key extensions are ones like Screencastify and Nimbus Screenshot, Share to Classroom and for us a custom SIMS app base on Ericomaccess Now

I've emailed James Leonard at Google - I'll see what he says.

We have used Gmail for years without issue. Unlimited inboxes, strong spam filtering, good admin quarantine, easy to configure compliance rules, free, unlimited archiving (vault) works on any device without issue - what's not to like. Set up one of out feeder prrimaries as a sub-domain today - took about an hour (setup SPF, DKIM,DMARC + admin quarantine + a few complience rules) and they were up and running. Never really understood why people would go through the pain/cost of a local exchange box.

You can set very granular group permissions - in the admin console - groups - access settings. This takes you to the groups settings. There you can access Basic Permissions, Posting Permissions, Moderation Permissions and Access Permissions. Basic Permissions suffice for most things. So we have a group called "students" which contains all students and some members or LG. The staff members are "managers" and the students are only "members". We have it set that only managers and owners can post to the group. We generally apply this to all teaching groups where the teachers are managers and the students just members without posting permissions. You can also add groups to groups if you want and it follows the same sort of thing. Under Posting Permissions you can get more granular and set finer controls and setup post moderation in moderatin permissions. Think of groups as a forum not just a distribution list - users can go to "Groups" and interact with the group there reply to threads as you would here. You can also allow say owners to edit other users posts. There is also a range of group types - we use collaborative inboxes quite a bit for public facing email address that then get viewed by group members who then take ownership of specific threads - helpdesk style. You can bulk set and change group permissions using the commandline tool GAM - and populate groups with it as well.

Reply I got from Securly when I contacted them (thought it might be content filter related): "We are aware of some changes Youtube is making with their UI and we are currently working to ensure we do not run into any problems with that. This issue seems to have something to do with Youtube using Polymer in the new UI which can cause the pages to refresh constantly. We are very close to the fix for this being released, but I'm not sure when that will officially be released. The problems you're experiencing I'm not sure are related to those changes or something else Youtube may be working on. Thank you for bringing this to our attention though."

We buy most of our ones from either C-Learning or Getech. XMA also do their own devices. All do management licences. The headline for management licences is £19 - but you should be able to go few pounds lower.

The management of Chromebooks is blissfully simple - but you do need G Suite to do this. I often say the longest bit is unboxing the device. However, all the O365 Web Apps will work fine on a Chromebooks and even the Android versions of Office Apps (on compatible devices).

We are 1:1 with Chromebooks. We have issued Acer R11 touch/flip devices - so they have managed Android apps - so very versitile. Being Chromebooks, management and setup of 1000+ devices is simple and just works. We have various options for parents ranging from day loan through to buy out right. You can see out current programme here The main challenges we have faced have been the time it takes to engage with every parent in the school and get them onboard. So this has involved parents events and a lot of phonecalls. However, feedback has been very positive and its certainly well worth the effort. Parents have the option of £10 annual insurance and this comes to use in IT Support. We keep a stock of Acer spares and turn around most repairs same day. Physical damage has been restricted to a handful of devices - most issues have been delt with by warrenty claims and Acer have been pretty rapid in their turn around. I'd not bother with third party insurance as we tried that with our first roll out and they were pretty expensive and useless! We did not start this until the use of G Suite was very firmly embedded in the school - we have had trolleys of devices for many years. Staff training is key. Staff have god like powers over devices with Hapara Highlights.

Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dell-Multimedia-USB-Keyboard-Chrome/dp/B013QU5L40/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1497906119&sr=8-3&keywords=chrome+os+keyboard We just use ordinary ones normally.

Yep - we use Securly - works well.

We use it alongside Securly webfiltering for all our devices. Works well.

We have deployed Acer R11's 1:1 - last lot was the most recent model N3060 and 32Gb SSD/4Gb RAM (we got for £215 ext VAT). Avoid the N3050/2Gb models if you can - noticeably slower. Pretty rugged and lasting well. There is a black model (738T - the one we have) and a white consumer model. I have my own R13 which is nice device - runs Android Apps very well and has just updated to 7.1.1. Little under £300 ext VAT.

We have used Aerohive for years - works well with our 1:1 Chromebooks. Highly configurable. One to consider maybe - don't know about others.