Tall_Paul

We're starting down the road where, in a year or two, every student will have an IPad (currently have around 1000 HP mini netbooks running W7 scattered around the school). My feelings echo most of yours but as others have said our job is to implement what we are given. I haven't been asked my opinion on whether I think they are a good idea or not. We've got Meraki MDM setup and various Apple VPP accounts. It'll be interesting to see the state of play in a year or two.

+2 for ESET.

Google Image Search isn't working for me. Just returns grey boxes.

I don't use the SWGFL proxy and Youtube is working fine.

It would be nice wouldn't it. I think it's the least they need to do TBH.

Unfortunately SWGFL have really dropped the ball with this one. We've chosen to stay with them for a variety of reasons, but things like this really aren't helping their cause. And as for RM, well, I'd better not say what I think of them. Suffice it to say they will never set foot in my school again as long as I am ICT Manager.

We have our own proxy and are still having problems.

We've had loads of 'Googly' problems since Friday. Marvellous since we've just migrated from Exchange to GMail! SWGFL say they have a call open with Google but they haven't been given an ETA for the fix.

I use a variety of companies. It's amazing how prices fluctuate and, if you're ordering several hundred pounds worth, the savings can add up to a fair bit. Try: XMA Home Millgate IT and Telecoms | Sheffield | We are connected Softcat http://www.kingsfieldcomputers.co.uk SystemsAssurance

Unfortunately not. It's actually quite a snazzy water bottle (confuses a lot of people )

Call yourselves techies?! This is what a techie desk should look like! http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y167/connelp/20140819_154217_zpsjmo66mzi.jpg

I've been here 4 years now and, touch wood, nothing so far. As we don't hand out detentions and stuff like that I think they see us as fairly benign.

Are you happy with that? I know I wouldn't be! Time to grasp the nettle and go and speak to the Head\Principal. In my experience employers are rarely bothered about you working yourself to an early grave, but they will notice if things don't get done because you're understaffed.

5 minute walk from house to desk. According to Samsung Health it's about 650 steps.

Daft question, but when you do guys actually take your holidays? We're changing next year to fixed days, but I've been told we can only take a week off during term time so we will have to take some of the summer off.

I was told by a UPS reseller than modern UPS' are built nothing like the old ones and you'll get away with one change of batteries but more than likely have to replace totally after 5-6 years. We had a 4 year old, very expensive (when new) APC RT10000 and the inverter went (which meant the batteries couldn't be charged). That too made a clunking noise and the whole thing had to be replaced (I went for Eaton over APC in the end).

Not now (we use Corero). We did use it a couple of years ago though.

We've not had a SIMS server on site for about 5 years. It hasn't affected how we work. It's not a browser based offering though, a SIMS client has to be installed.

World of Tanks addict (almost 3K battles and rising!) - username same as here

Perhaps I should just PM you sparkeh, but others may find this useful. At the end of the academic year our students go up a year and all their classgroups change. I can handle the altering of groups within AD but will GADS pick this up and alter their groups accordingly? Otherwise there would be a horrific situation where someone who had gone from Year 9 to Year 10 would be a member (in Google) of all the Year 9 and 10 classlists. I'm guessing (and hoping) GADS handles this seamlessly but it doesn't harm to ask those of you who have experience.

Thanks for that. I've had a look but we don't need that level of granularity (plus I can script something myself to do it).

I doubt it'll work with SIMS unfortunately (have only found one that does, and it doesn't link back to AD so is useless for us). It's SIMS that's the problem really.

In relation to this, do you just add your students to a standard security group in AD or do you use something else? Having not yet fully set up our Google Mail for all our users does it let you email security groups?

We do something similar for individual student email addresses but for class emails I think you misunderstand. Our Principal want it tied into a student's academic classes (of which 1 student has many) so the teacher of that class can send an email to the whole of the class. So for Year 10 Science Group 1, Mr Jones can send them all an email with their homework. Fortunately our MIS (SIMS) lets you create bespoke reports and export them as spreadsheets so I have created two. One with all the classes listed, and one with all students and the classes they belong to. Unfortunately the data still requires editing so I'm creating a couple of VBA macros to do that. Then the idea is I will import these csv files (first create the groups, then assign the students to those groups) into AD using a Powershell script. Finally I'll sync all this with Google. It's a bit of a faff TBH and our class lists change throughout the year too. Fun times ahead!

Yes, will do. We're moving over to Google Mail and Apps this summer so the real donkey work will take place then (and it's also then that I'll take a good look at GASDS). The ideal scenario would be to download data from SIMS into a CSV and then, using GASDS, shove it into Google Apps but I cant believe it's going to be as straightforward as that. My current mindset is that if I have to do significant manipulation to the SIMS CSV then I may as well just shove it into AD and rely on the 'tried and test' GADS.