TechMonkey

I vowed to never miss a parents evening due to the year I didn't go the teachers absolutely laid in to me (unfairly I may add). Every year that I went with my parents the teachers were nice as pie with minor points.

What IP address is it? Is it one you are expecting?

I believe this as well. I have suggested in the past, pre-COVID, that staff could arrange video chats with parents as needed but I was told that would add a heavy load to staff on top of Parent Evenings. No one liked my idea of making the load lighter by getting rid of Parent Evenings. I also find it odd that teachers have it drummed into them that nothing should be a surprise to parents in reports or PCEs, that the parents should have been contacted previously about things. To me this means the teachers are in regular contact anyway. It is even sillier here in that report cycles and PCEs seem to have no relation so they never get the report and go meet the teacher to discuss like in my day. In my head, X number of online chats spread out across a month/term is better than trying to cram them all into one or two nights. Especially if some parents are happy with an email to say their child is doing great just keep them reading/writing/particular task. I guess in schools with a lower level of engagement it has a place, that hard to get parents feel obliged to come in or can be chased up to come. I do remember teachers always saying when I was at school that it is the parents you don't need to see that turn up. But as with most things in Education, it will take someone utterly revolutionary and willing to swim against the stream to do it. They will get a ton of flack from all angles, including other educator,s and then eventually everyone will wonder why they haven't all been doing it that way.

But the springs are (roughly) parallel to the ground so won't compress at that point. Looking at the blurry video it seems to show compression at the top and one side but although my physics is rusty surely that will be offset by expansion on the other side?

Isn't it just a fly wheel? I don't understand what the springs are adding.

Works here on leased line through Smoothie. Just tried as a test pupil and works as well so shouldn't be anything horrific to unfilter

What about the Smoothwall Connect for Chromebook extension? Or has that been discontinued? https://kb.smoothwall.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002134924-Installing-the-Connect-Filter-Extension-on-Chromebooks-Using-G-Suite Not used it in anger but I'm sure we got it working easily when we looked into it EDIT: Looks to be a setup PDF too - https://help.smoothwall.net/FilterFirewall/Content/Resources/PDFs/ConnectforChromebooksSetupGuide.pdf

I did. Funnily enough it caused me great mirth when I locked the accounts, on direct instruction, they sent out emails to all staff to tell them what was happening and couldn't understand why staff couldn't read it

@Ditto and @mavhc - Funnily enough this is the route I started taking as we sync with AzureAD. But as far as I can tell records are only kept for 90 days. I'll keep digging.

Thanks Rob, I think this may be the tack I have to take. Print some emails out and hope that is satisfactory. Nice to be told about this 9 months later when most records are only 90 days!

Thanks psydii, but that needs to be set up beforehand.

@Vegas, thanks but the accounts are now open, they want a retrospective view. @Ditto, Unfortunately not. Never thought I'd need to know if an account was locked in the past! It is our Financial Audit, I guess they are trying to ensure we won't be hit by HMRC for not having proof. @mavhc, we want to show they didn't do any work (don't get me started on trying to prove a negative). Just because they were told not work doesn't mean their job is pointless, just that at that point in time they were not essential. None of the staff have work issued laptops and if their account is locked they would not be able to access any school resources. If they decided to do some work themselves that is on them, but the school was not facilitating them.

We have auditors in and they want proof we locked the accounts of those on furlough. We never had account locked as an audited item. Just wondering if the hive mind can think of a way to prove the accounts were locked. I don't think it is possible but I want to be able to say definitely. Many thanks

Odd stats, as I don't accept "lack of cyber security training" as a deployment method. Had a look though and Sophos figures show 29% for file download/email link so will half concede the overall point. Though that shows more that filtering would help most. Bad communication on my part though as I was more railing against the reductionist argument.

Love the way the blue car is indicating that way and just nopes out of there.

Well not really but hey ho.

This. I tell all users that they can not install software as it means anything could be installed and they would be gutted if their device was out of action. But let us know if you need something and we try and have it done within 3-5 days. Be up front and it puts the onus on them to plan. In emergencies, with a lot of teeth sucking, we have been known to do a days turn around and even a couple of hours turnaround. But they need to know that is an exceptional case and doing a favour, not the norm and any future request of that nature will not necessarily get the same response. Its been very rare that I have refused to install something and when I have it is very obvious why.

Gone boy, brown bread, passed this mortal coil, deceased, dead.

As Mav says, in school they will not play nicely with a proxy, but a transparent proxy should be OK. It depends on what they are talking about. If they mean using the Family feature of Amazon, then that may be a grey area. There are services like OverDrive and Wheelers that allow your library to lend out purchased books, so yes buy a book and share it. They also often can tie in with the Library system. Obviously there is an additional cost for the service. So in answer, just buying Kindles wouldn't be a good solution. Find out what they want to achieve and go from there.

You can get convertors, oddly some of the cheapy bulbs come with them. They just (obviously) add some bulk to the fitting so may peep out of some shades. Though Screwfix were trying to tell me the Edison fixing was being phased out! Have to say, now winter is here bulbs and lights are my best use. It is nice to come home to lights on. It is nice to not have to go around the house at the end of the day, or if I am going out. It is the classic automation tale, it is nice to have consistency with minimum effort. If my blinds were compatible I would be a very happy chappy. The only other nice one is a smart plug on a room deodorizer/smelly spreader. It is nice to come home to a nice waft!

We have a failover and wouldn't be without one. It is our previous main box that we got an extension of the warranty on. As far as I remember, the way failover works the license is only being used by one device, so there are no extra device licenses needed. Check with your account manager though.

Bit out of the box but Connectwise ScreenConnect helped us massively. Being able to connect to all our devices where ever they are and being able to offer the ability to see staff and parents devices at home is massively useful. Not going to say it is a magic cure but it is a lot easier to spot that little Johnny has spelt his username wrong when it is in front of you, rather than take their word for it. Just managed to troubleshoot a users device who is quarantined at home and their descriptive and technical skills were not the best for me to be able to work out what they were doing. The minute I saw their screen I could see they hadn't enabled the microphone.

Don't get me wrong, that was not meant to be a downer on Smoothwall. We use the firewall and are happy with it. My development comment was not to say it was being abandoned, just no major plans to improve the firewall alone. IPv6 is a whole product development. Other firewalls will have shiny bits, and fancy wizards and english led rules, etc, etc, etc. If you want or need those things, Smoothwall is not for you. If you want a fancy dashboard or reporting to give you all the stats, Smoothwall isn't for you If you just want a firewall that does what is needed and ploughs on regardless, it does that. On the flipside, I have seen some interesting ongoing developments about UI behind the scenes so I'm hopeful that will be getting better.

It does what it needs to and does it well. Don't expect any frills, or hand holding through a pretty wizard or word based firewall rules. Smoothwall are positioning themselves as a safeguarding company, so moving away from their security roots, so I have been told no major development will go into the firewall moving forward. I get the feeling that their expectation is that if you want advanced features you will get a dedicated firewall as an addition. Saying that the competitors do the reverse, many firewall devices have a filtering element but will readily admit it isn't their forte. But I will repeat, it does what is necessary and does it well.

We have used LimeSurvey in the past for this. It does proper tokens so can limit entries and dissociates emails from results.