TechMonkey

As seen on I am on dark mode, so used to flicking some posts to light to read pasted text, but on this one noticed the quote isn't affected by the light button, so you end up with a lightened post, with dark unreadable text in a quote. Just a niggle, easily gotten round with a highlight and probably the least of worries at the moment!

No inside knowledge of TES, purely speculation but when you think of the number of companies they have bought up in a pretty short space of time I very much doubt system, server or code base consolidation has happened yet fully, which means potetnitally each service is run on its own instance/cluster/raspberry pi. As said, this would mean each has to be updated individually, after checking what it might affect and then run tests as well as any supporting services they may have and general websites. I can imagine that is what is taking the time, and hopefully will highlight that they need to spend some of the money they are getting from numerous price hikes on the infrastructure.

This is now on our office board randomly Nice to be able to travel while stuck in the office!

Have run just Smoothwall in a few places. At current place looking to move to Fortinet (or something else) to allow easier management across multiple sites, centralised reporting and better identification of issues, threats and troubleshooting, and dynamic threat updates. But on a single site, it is solid and useable.

Do you know are current URLs moved into these new subcategories or are they just for new URLs? I'm presuming that the test will highlight there is the category available if you try out a URL for banning or to see what catches it. It is also another good reason for the at least annual filtering check, look at your categories and see if they are still fit for purpose. It is very obvious if a category no longer has all ticked and a cursory glance would see any names not ticked that you feel should be. Althought my first knee jerk reaction would be to say Smoothwall should inform all customers of these new categories, reality dictates it would be another email I would mark to read and eventually either archive or unmark as I notice it is now old. A changes support article might be a nice thing to have, that I can have a regular look at to see what has been added or moved. But I barely get enough to keep up with the MS update and change announcements, so filtering category changes would be a nice to have but not something I would notice not having.

Rough location might be good. When I was down Kent way ADM were fantastic. We paid an annual fee, just in case, but that could be redeemed for checks or services at the end of the year if we hadn't broken anything. It was great for when something when horribly wrong at a weekend, even though we didn't have to use them, having them contact us to say their engineer was on standby if we needed was a great comfort. They were also great to escalate issues to, such was wierd MS server issues or networking configs, that were beyond us or to get it off our plates if we were snowed under.

I had an email earlier setting up incident details with a link to the incident page Looks to be all closed so if you are still having issues I'd yell at support

It's something assigned to someone. Makes sense and covers a wider meaning than just homework. Naming it Classroom seems wrong as Assignments isn't the whole thing, classwork doesn't work as it might not be classwork it could be anything else, and Learning Activities may not cover it as it may be a task, not a learning activity. The issue of having it renameable is that it makes help articles harder to write or support as well as meaning moving between work places is trickier as it may be called something else.

IANAL but two trains of thought, one, that it has gone on too long that it would have to have a show of goodwill or some nominal payment to return ownership or, two, that there was no intention to sell the school, the price clearly cannot be for that amount of land and anything other than the house and the school was never up for offer, so clear case of bad paperwork so easy to unpick. But we know how lawyers and and the law can be.

Check your emails, I had one that said they were stalling the change and the enforcement for a bit with no current dates set.

Yeah, we are pushing Affinity as all we get is how we can't afford the Adobe per user license, but kids need to have it at home. And the above argument is all we get back. As well as (the more telling) how the teachers don't know how to use anything else and all their resources are geared towards Adobe. You should have seen the ruckus caused when a rumour went around that I was not renewing the license. Would have been humourous if I hadn't had to deal with it for most the day.

BuT aDoBe Is InDuStRy StAnDaRd. We CaN't UsE aNyThInG eLsE!!!!1

We were discussing a study that showed excessive use of AI leads to shallower understanding so doing less well in exams and tests. This is taken from a longer presentation, where the graphs were shown individually and explained better, but gives the idea. Although pupils get better scores on homework, less time is taken and exam scores are worse. Would that be the same in this schools case? No idea, but I fear that the surface level knowledge would be concentrated on, rather than indepth knowledge. Though I still want my Diamond Age illustrated Primer.

They don't say it is no longer an issue, they say they are reallocating resources due to the problem it was solving becomeing less needed, niche. It is financial decision. There are other options, like DynDNS, but with cloud resources being pretty reasonable and the ever-changing cybersecurity landscape I imagine fewer people are hosting things at home for access outside, or they are using systems that use proxy access rather than direct. I know Synology moved to a system where you access their website to access your home box rather than direct. As ever, what are you trying to achieve? Have you spoken to your ISP and asked if you could have a fixed IP?

Just had a quick look at config.office.com, and there are two settings - Open Directly in Office Client Application - Open Office document directly in Office application That both mention opening documents stored online being opened in the registered application or in the web browser. Depends on where you have your configuration setup though.

There is a setting in Office options that can make web documents always open in the desktop app, but that has to be set by the user, and I haven't looked into if there is a way to set that centrally yet. EDIT: THe setting would be useful wouldn't it!! In any Office app go "File" > "Options" (down the bottom of the the left column). Then select "Advanced", scroll to the "File open preference" section and set "Open Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files using:" to "Desktop".

If it is a static sig, then a mail flow rule will add it on, just ensure you have an exception if it finds the sig already there. Otherwise it is publish it to all staff with instructions on how to add it themselves.

Cloud based to Wasabi. No tape backups.

Have a good read of the DfE expectations and KCSIE. I seem to recall it says in one or both of them that (roughly) any device on a school connection must be filtered to some level and not be able to bypass. If you only have agent based, then a device not under your control can connect to your network and not be filtered. Now, would a DfE SWAT team helicopter down the moment that device connected? No. Would the wrong question asked by a switched-on inspector cause issues or deeper digging? Possibly. This may be mitigated by ISP hard filters or forwarders, but personally I would be very hesitant to rely on only cloud based fitlering and have nothing on your edge connection. Also, as sigma points out, DNS filtering is not compliant.

As there is no mention of independents or sixth forms/colleges/universities in the poll then yes, yes it is! 😋

I normally leave a year, to allow staff to get anything from last year, and then run a script that deletes all teams starting with a specified year. Not sure how retention would affect this.

ohhhhh, I thought this wasn't available until 19th. Nice surprise (probably a lack of reading comprehension more than a forward release!) Must finish Reacher first.

I have mixed feelings about this. There is a lot of advice and guidance about AI and about it in Education so why are school leaders not acting on that? I agree that exam boards need to get a kick up the posterior to move on things like online exams and how the whole exam process needs to be updated to fit the modern world, but beyond that a school or Trust needs to decide its own guidelines. I can't count the number of times teachers have said the Government or the DfE need to keep out of schools more, but here they want top cover?

I don't mean forums as in this hallowed digital establishment, but the kind I seem to get constant emails about that are bringing the top C-Suite minds together to connect, or round table, or discuss. I seem to get loads of them, they are free and sometimes look interesting, but my first thought is that they are just a money-making device for the organisers and I would be the product being served up to the suppliers on a platter. It is very flattering to be included, but are they worth the time or slap-up meal/drinks/networking? Then there are the conferences that seem to be run all the time for AI, Security, specific tech or manufacturers, or general IT future gazing. Excluding BETT, EduGeek and ANME conferences, do others find the time to attend these? I sometimes wonder if I am missing out. I also know I am not great at networking so often consider going to get out of my comfort zone and work on that, but I also feel that they would just be either a bit of a jolly or just a waste of time. Am I missing out? (Classic Betteridge's Law I'm sure)

Only issue I had was TPM entries being wrong and taking an age to update for AMD chips. I guess they must have fixed that by now.