rogerdnixon

We use Sharpe Copiers are use their drivers - SHARP MX-M365N PCL6

Not tried with iOS devices - we use Chromebooks. But judging from https://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/apps.html you can. We have a mono print queue and a colour one. Mono jobs can be picked up at any copier and colour ones at our colour copiers. User either have a pin number or username/password for copiers to release jobs.

I share the printers/virtual print queues to groups generally and accept on behalf of the group so that the end user does not have to do anything. So I generally share then with our allstaff group or our all students group. If a student/staff is removed from the group they lose access and gain access if added. You just share with the Google Group and update the group membership however you want. I set students to auto print to an account called 'student printing' and deduct from their personal balance that I set as £5 for the year. Staff either auto charge their subject/faculty account or pick an account if they have several assigned to them. All our users use Cloud print as it works on any device and we use Google Apps and ChromeOS almost exclusively.

You can get Lucidcharts for Education for free - https://www.lucidchart.com/pages/usecase/education just ask for the number of licences you want.

Lucidcharts (similar to Visio - but has collaboration like Google Docs and free for schools) for server stuff. Google Drawings for network/switches - all hyperlinked together.

We use Ericom AccessNow combined with Ericom Secure Gateway. Pretty simple to setup on a terminal server. Allows users access to SIMS + there school PC desktop on anything with a reasonably modern browser. Not free - but not too expensive compared to other solutions. Onsite it also allows access to SIMS on ChromeOS as we have largely ditched windows now.

Different one every week - make them in the Summer.

If you use Google Apps - try the Chrome Sign Builder App (free) + Chromebit (£100 inc management licence)/Chromebox (£130 inc management licence) + TV/Monitor (depends on size you want). Gives you a very easy to use system that you can control from any device anywhere.

On a five year old Novatech desktop (i3 4Gb) Boot: 24 seconds from power on Login - first time: 20 seconds Login - second time: <1 second - almost instant This is on Win 8.1. We have replaced all the old mechanical hard drive with cheap Kingston 120Gb SSD's - cheap way to make a big difference to older kit. Also configure default user profile (start screen etc) as part or the imaging process + removed all the metro apps that don't get used.

This is what Google Classroom is for. You can fire out resources to your class. Classroom organises everything is Drive for the student. There are other more sophisticated solutions such as Hapara Teacher Dashboard which creates subjects folder for each student , shared with the teacher. The teacher dashboard allows you to fire files into the student's subject folders (either by group, individually or by subgroup).

On a private account they will need to manually check the button in settings 'Allow proxies for shared networks' in settings once logged in. Just a thought.

We use Siteground. Very good 24/7 support, will install and update Wordpress for you and now allow you to have a free ssl certificate for your site as well. Lot of easy backend control from their control panel. Start at about £2.75 pm.

We use 100's of ChromeOS devices at school - our main OS now. I'd strongly suggest that trying to use them in the manner you are suggesting is not a great idea. Users should be signing into them with their Google Apps accounts and then they access all their own stuff. Logoff and give to the next person. When the user logs on they pick up Chrome Management policies that are applied to their account. So you can lock them down as much or as little as you want very easily. Kiosk mode is really meant for display signage, reception sign in systems and the like - not for regular use. I'd suggest looking on the following G+ communities GEG UK, Chromebook EDU & GAFE Admins - all full of Google Apps and ChromeOS gurus. Want a longer discussion - happy to help.

We use Aerohive and have 58 APs around the site. Works well, all managed in the cloud. It offers very granular control over your WiFi which can be a bit intimidating at first, but is ultimately very useful to tweak the best out of your APs. This is important to use as we have a very wide variety of buildings that demand very different radio profiles to work effectively. We use LAN3 normally for APs who have been very good over the years.

Well from an IT Support point of view we have a couple that go round with us (+usb ethernet adaptor) and are used to plugin stuff (switches etc) when we need to access stuff directly. They are also just general purpose tools for IT - so most stuff is online here so can be accessed on ChromeOS. Use apps like ChromeRDP if you want to remote onto a Windows Desktop. If you are not GAFE (I'm guessing not because you ask the question), you can add the Office Chrome Apps if thats your thing. You could also install your favorite linux distro if you want to switch between ChromeOS/linux. You might even find after a while you get seduced by the simplicity and reliability of ChromeOS and forgot about that funny Windows thing (we did!).

If you manage chromebooks (so you have GAFE and buy management licences for your devices), you can set a chromebook to run in kiosk mode which could launch a specific site on startup as suggested. Without GAFE you could install linux - but that requires dev mode which is not for the uninitiated user. We use largely ChromeOS and to access Windows stuff (SIMS mainly) we use Ericom AccessNow. Everything else is Google Apps - saves huge amounts of money/time.

http://beta.speedtest.net/result/4900810758

Speedtest.net by Ookla - My Results Relatively new Virgin Media connection at school.

Google Apps for Edu. Unlimited storage for every user access anywhere on anything. Organise stuff via faculty sites. Works with little effort and zero cost. Does require a bit of user training on how sharing is drive works - but once they get it they are away...

Correct - unless you allow signin with private accounts - where the restriction won't apply offsite. Management policies apply anywhere.

You do need to enable YouTube as a service for your students for them to be able to view approved content (otherwise they will just get restricted content). For them to be able to upload content, you currently need to enable G+ as well (13+ only). We allow Y10+ to have their own school channels which are used extensively - particularly in PE/Drama etc.

There is, block https://accounts.google.com/AccountChooser & https://accounts.google.com/AddSession in the management console. See my blog post: IT Ideas: Some frequently asked questions about locking down managed chromebooks You might also want to restrict access to settings as well. Assuming a student did use a private account (and could) all they would get is restricted mode if you have set the restriction network wide. Seems to work very well and easy for staff to approve content.

Have you got authenticated email setup? Its in GMail settings down towards the bottom. You need to put a couple of records into your domain hosting. Article about it: https://support.google.com/a/answer/174124?hl=en We had some similar issues - just called enterprise support and they walked me through the process. Not had any problems since. You can go into individual groups settings and there is an option to turn off SPAM filtering of posts - but if you have a lot of groups - probably not practical.

Might be what it says - but thats not what we have found in practice. They are transferrable - well in all the cases where we have tried.

I'm happy to speak to anyone wanting more info on ChromeOS devices. We manage around 350 (Chromebooks/boxes/bases) for ourselves and devices for our feeder primaries who are sub-domains to our Google Apps domain. To answer a few questions: ChromeOS management licences at £19 and are a one off payment. They can be transferred between devices if a device dies. For teacher devices we get Asus Chromeboxes + licence + extra 2Gb + HD Webcam + (adaptors where need) for around the £170 mark. We routinely plug a wide range of ChromeOS devices into projectors and TV's. HDMI to VGA adaptor are around £3-4 on ebay. For printing, we use Papercut, which offers managed cloud printing from ChromeOS to our printers and copiers (which have embedded Papercut). Works reliably and makes firing out printers literally a couple of clicks. For Chromebooks we mainly have Acer C720's and Dell 11. Chromeboxes mainly Asus + lots of LG Chromebases. Perhaps that answers some of the questions - but I'm happy to chat to anyone who wants to know more. Roger We offer access to Windows apps (mainly SIMS) using Ericom AccessNow which lives on one of our rdp servers