pete

^ The whole AUP is a cause for concern really (and not just the terrible spelling, grammar, word misuse, conflicting instructions, repeating the same information, not writing for a student audience). Section 15 (may be given the right to change passwords from the one originally issued) clashes with Section 1 Page 3 (Initial default passwords issued to any student should be changed immediately following notification of account set up.) A generous read is that a PE teacher who last used a computer in the 90s writes this ("on-line") and the IT dept tolerate it because it keeps them quiet for an afternoon. A non-generous read could be summed up as "WTF bangs on about IRC/AOL messenger/MSN Messenger in a student-facing policy anywhere in 2025?" and who on earth let them write this?

I use it to make sure the parent's devices are up-to-date, with occasional ad-hoc remote support. Their setups are pretty vanilla. I have it on the gaming PC at home and told it not to fiddle with drivers on that computer.

There's a thread about this over on Anme where a school/trust pushed back and ParentPay relented. May be worth a read.

^ When I ordered it (a while ago) it was a transparent google-branded USB stick. They are quite persistent in finding out how you're getting on with it.

We use a wiki (Dokuwiki - picked 'cos it's decent and very portable for least faffing in a DR situation - other wikis are available). It's (mostly) structured as: Broad trust-wide info (software, procedures, how to do stuff with specific hardware models etc). Things like "here's a good basic config for switch model X" or "here's how MIS exchanges syncs to M365 using Salamander" or "audit policies for DCs should be set as follows". Here's how you integrate Cloudflare + Let's Encrypt for cert renewal. How to do things with/use the tech. Device/Site/School-specific info. How things are configured for specific schools/devices/services. How Salamander is configured for School X. Config backups for switch Y. What service Z provides and depends upon at School X. Our IT-facing documentation assumes a competent IT person is reading it. They may be unfamiliar with the school, but they should know what they're doing.

Smoothwall recently released a video teasing "hey, we're planning to integrate SW Monitor and SW Cloud filter in one dashboard for DSLs". Any plans to integrate with on-prem SW at all? Our setup (schools connected together, all filtered via SW on-prem in a third party datacentre) doesn't migrate nicely to cloud filter without losing functionality.

Graphing is also very C-level friendly when negotiating project budgets.

++ On "install the app". Also, show them how to untick the account in the app so it doesn't ring when they're on holiday.

If SLT can find money for those, SLT can find money for cameras.

We just set "use of phone cameras for photography/documenting work" as a managed exception in photography lessons, since the camera they have on them is typically the best camera for the job. If the DfE can add their GCSE results app as an acceptable exception, then actual examined work can be too.

^ No period changes for either school. Bromcom couldn't find any changes in the database audit trail the staff members and absence updates we passed on for them to test/investigate. Every, meanwhile, haven't answered my "how do you think this happened / where did these updates come from?" question.

Third question if you're still reading this. What audit trails are available if (for example) a teacher is helping a student with their assessed coursework?

I'd also comment that their marketing blurb around "our badges can't be forged" is disingenuous as they can be trivially (photocopy/photo) copied, removing the need for a more technical approach. What (if any) countermeasures do they have if someone shows the photo of a badge on a phone, or a photocopy of a badge? Is the login dialogue just looking for a valid QR code? Or is it looking at the context / surroundings to see if anything's not right?

My question would be: How do you deal with trends? If (for example), a Pixar movie about pigs has just been released and 80% of students in a year choose "pig" as their second factor, I can't honestly say to an auditor that the year group has effective MFA.

(I've got tickets open with involved suppliers). Possibly a niche request but...... We feed staff absence data from Bromcom into Every HR via Wonde. Typically that's 6-10 updates per week across the whole MAT. Yesterday we had ~1540 updates for School A and ~840 for School B, many of them adjustments to historical (September 2024) absences and very petty things like setting the end time of an absence from 16:00 to 15:59. Our staff absences recorders haven't done anything daft (and certainly don't have the time to edit that many entries), which means Bromcom, Wonde or Every have done something daft. Would anyone else using a similar setup mind asking their HR team if they got an unusual flood of staff absences updates this week? cheers Pete

If the platform allows me to have N+1 second factors per account, one goes on the phone and another goes in the password manager.

Which URL are you using to access the iiyama DMS? If we create an account on iiControl (https://iiyama-dms.com/#/dashboard) we're successful, but other documentation suggests we need an account on https://dms.iiware-support.com/login to manage our touchscreens (TE7512MIS-B1AG). Using the credentials or email address from the iiyama-dms.com site doesn't work and there's no apparent way to create an account on https://dms.iiware-support.com. cheers Pete

One of our primaries have asked for the iPad version of this: https://grammarsaurus.co.uk/portal/morphs/ (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/morphs-spelling-game/id6760487650) to be pushed out to them. It's only been available for a week or so in the App Store. According to the developers, it just requires an iPad from 2018 or better (they're on 9th Gens from 2021) to perform without any problems. Except the in-classroom experience would suggest that's not correct, taking ages to load the levels or just not launching correctly. Has anyone else tested this out on similar hardware? cheers Pete

The English dept at one of our school are currently using (very likely) similar camcorders to you. Their only complaint is battery life and for ours there are still third-party batteries available. If I were buying new, I'd probably pick a GoPro (Hero 4K will squeeze in under £200) as that's what one of our drama depts use and the audio quality (small stage with 2-3 performers, camera on tripod) is deemed sufficient for exam boards.

If SchoolNameA and SchoolNameB no longer exist (becoming SchoolNameZ with the DfE) then Nominet give you 3 months grace (up to 6 months if you ask for it) to move services away from the domains for schools that no longer exist. You get one domain per DfE number. Email domainsupport at support dot nominet dot uk for confirmation.

Academies can (https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/schools/pupils-info/) reject that 15 school day timeframe and instead treat them as SARs. But they should to apply that across the board to all requests - not pick and choose. 15 school days is minimum 3 weeks. Maximum 9 weeks. If it's the start of a term, then the 30 days for a SAR gives you more wiggle room. 30 calendar days is 30 calendar days. If it's mid-December....

Are they more than 500 miles from you? 😀 https://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html

Have you ever received email from them successfully? Can you email them OK? Is something actually listening on port 25 of that IP (31.221.81.58)?

*Opens the SARs folder for 2025-26* 13 SARs so far, across 5 schools. 2 rejected (person making the request didn't have authoritisation to do so on behalf of the data subject) 10 responded to (info provided with appropriate exemptions for data on other people) 1 in progress. FOIs: 30 or so but they're usually the same person/group making the same request of multiple schools and a lot of that is set at MAT-level. Detection: With regard to whether you're detecting them or they're being missed, put transport rules on the enquiries@ / admin@ shared mailboxes such that certain phrases trigger a CC to the dpo@ shared mailbox. Test it out so you're not pulling language from mail signatures though. If a SAR comes in and says "this is a subject access request for Bob" or "this is a SAR for Bob", our staff are good at notifying the appropriate people. If the sender hasn't used the magic phrase, they're not always great at spotting them. A number of FOIs (especially people using mailgun/mailchimp to bulk send them) end up in Junk/Quarantine and can get missed, but IMO that's on the sender to do a reasonable job of sending the email in a reliable manner: FOI from bob.bobblington@gmail will get delivered. FOI email that's got an "Unsubscribe from this mailing list?" link at the bottom - depends heavily on email content and may end up in spam.

We've used Phoenix, Millgate and Memtek over the years and don't have any complaints.