jamesrhart

No, I understand and no offence taken - exam.net are listed as JCQ compliant. But to take your particular point it says: “A word processor: must have been cleared of any previously stored data…..”. The word processor starts with a clean page and so has been cleared of all previous data and we don’t use portable media. In terms of getting out of the app, students are still invigilated and our invigilators have had specific training for exam.net - again we trust the product the same as we trusted GPO and applocker beforehand - only now exam.net also monitor for anomalies - they are open that they had one issue several years ago, their monitoring picked it up and before the exam has even ended they had called the school and closed the hole within days.

I’m not sure what you mean by an unfair advantage, they are using their normal way of working on a device that they are familiar with (in terms of the hardware), the locked down browser removes all other aspects when the exam starts. We used to deploy fixed PCs and the students found these difficult to work with as the keyboard travel, screen size etc isn’t what they are used to, then we ended up deploying the same devices the students had in a permanently locked down mode, now we use the same device the student has (a school device) in a locked down mode. This boils down to how much you trust the software, we do, it’s been proven across Europe, how much do you trust they don’t bring something else into the hall?

Correct, school issued and school owned device, so not the pupils.

We moved to exam.net at the start of the year, worked really well (uses safe exam browser in the background), students turn up with their school issued device and just use the allocated code based on individual needs, we place a few spare chargers and devices in the exam hall just in case.

We have about 25 users trialling it, we purchased 12 month licenses for them and will then feedback as to worthwhileness - mix of academic and support, feedback is quite positive so far… but the costs are high….

We are, happy to have a chat if that helps.

Just be aware that we found tools like Python (which we need for coding) can be used to bypass certain system restrictions.

This is the response I had: Yes, EWP recently became part of the Texthelp group. Please see more info on this below: Texthelp Group Changes ExamWritePad was recently acquired by Texthelp. A company who shares our belief that everyone has the right to understand and be understood. What is changing? We’re changing our operations to allow us to simplify areas such as ordering and payments. Your End User Licence Agreements will remain exactly the same and not impact your experience. You will still be able to buy and use the same product. You will also be able to continue to benefit from Customer Success and Technical Support that you have been receiving to this point from ExamWritePad. When did these changes come into effect? These changes came into effect on 27th September 2024. If you have any questions, please get in touch with us at [email protected].

You could pre-provision devices, we do this to speed up deployment, we do it ourselves as we don’t use a third party, but they could do it for you before shipping. This would load apps and policies in advance. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/autopilot/pre-provision

They paid for the wrap which is on the opposite wall, pictures below:

We did it ourselves, all of the work was done in house except for the wrap on the rear wall which was designed with Lenovo and installed by them (this isn't shown in the photos).

Yes, I presented it at SLT and the head supported it. It wasn't cheap as the whole room needed work (it looked very different before!), I'm really proud of the space. Happy to talk through any of it if that would help anyone else, just PM me.

Yes, we purchased via Insight, they were great in helping us. Some pictures below:

We've set-up a new eSports suite with 14 Legion PCs in a dedicated space, it's working well for us, we haven't had to worry about admin accounts yet, IT run the updates as required. Happy to chat it through.

We replaced our WiFi about 6 months ago and stuck with Meraki for the replacement, Juniper were also strong contenders. We have around 180 APs and around 650 students but we’ve got a large site and some old buildings with thick walls and then new ones with insulation that kills WiFi. We went 1:1 Surface in September and everything worked perfectly for us.

Yes, it depends how they are connected. If they all have direct ethernet connections then it's quite quick, but if they are connected to each other over RS485 then it has to do one at a time and is painfully slow doing it!

That’s our normal procedure. We are bulk password resetting this year to ensure they are all ready for day 1 when every device goes out. Anyone new we know their initial password and will log in for them. We assign primary user in autopilot before hand as well as naming the device LT-%USERNAME%. Technically with autopilot we have no need to log them in, but we are just trying to speed up the first login and also for this year our wifi replacement has been delayed due to stock issues (ordered in March!) and so it will be less stress on the wifi as they all get their devices at the same time.

Short answer is that I don’t know as ours are all set as the student as the primary user and we don’t expect anyone else to use their device. We’ve gone with i3 Go 3’s as well and then Pro 8 i5 Evo/256GB. The Go 2’s we already have are not i3’s and whilst they work fine we wanted a little more ‘grunt’.

We deployed Surface Go’s 1:1 to our Y7 in September and we are now (literally on Monday) preparing 500+ devices to go out to our prep 5 to year 13 at the end of August. We have Go 3 from 5-9 and Pro 8 from 10-13, all with keyboard and pen, the pen we see as essential and one of the main reasons for going Surface. All our teachers run Pro’s with wireless displays in classrooms and no fixed PCs and so they are very comfortable with the devices. We run the full MS stack, autopilot/Endpoint Manager, defender, full A5 licensing, universal print with papercut and are AAD joining devices, they have no on prem connection/requirement whatsoever, monitoring and safeguarding is classroom cloud and filtering is lightspeed relay. Core apps (e.g. Office) auto deploy, other apps (e.g. SolidWorks, 2D Design, Adobe) are published to the company portal allowing students to install on their own/when needed). Going by the Y7 devices they work really well for us, if anyone ever wants a chat about our setup I’m happy to have a Teams call.

There’s a difference between hide and block. We always found that hide worked fine but block did indeed break the OneDrive client. Hide is a halfway house as if you know paths or use legacy software you can still access and see C.

When we spoke with Arbor at BETT they said that the product wasn't yet geared for independent schools...

My updates went on fine last night (including DC’s), the only issue I had was on our newer cluster whereby the cluster service didn’t start after reboot, I manually started it and everything worked.

1GB to the desktop is lovely, but the limitation is likely to be the switch connection back to the core, then the server connections, and of course the internet speed, ultimately everyone is sharing. We are going 1:1 with surface and a while ago made the decision to make wifi our primary medium, admittedly the IT suites are all hard wired still but we’ve been running a year group with surfaces on AC wifi (AX going in over the summer) and haven’t had any performance issues, the IT suites are all being pulled over the summer, note that we don’t run roaming profiles, which might be a consideration. If you’re current desktops have wifi, why not just pull the network and try it.

It's really appreciated with the product, the work you do on it and the fact it's free, it really saves our bacon. Maybe it's worth contacting Mike Tholfson at Microsoft and see if there is a way of integrating for free at some point in the future, he's a big advocate of the immersive tech etc.

I thought as much, we're finding potential students with it being their normal way of working.