FishCustard

We use a similar system, and it's just a case of writing a quick webpage to host the Google Slides player in an iframe, then using some JS to auto-refresh it every so many minutes. Host the page on an internal webserver, load it on your RPi or Chromebit or old PC - job done. Here's our 'host' page. Change the "600000" in the setInterval to whatever interval you want, set the Google Sheets URL appropriately and off you go. If your screens aren't 1920x1080, you'll want to change the width and height of the iframe and container div too. There's 32 pixels worth of controls and branding that you want to shove off the bottom of the screen, hence the iframe height is 32 pixels greater than the actual screen height.

Pretty much my experience too. I liked the features of Xibo, but it was built by people who never had to use the user interface....

We use Chromebits and Google Slides - receptionists can edit it just like a PowerPoint, and I've built a little webpage that hosts the slides and refreshes them every ten minutes to ensure content is up to date. Don't even need a Chrome Management License for that!

In our OVS-ES we get Office 365 A1, which comes with "Azure Active Directory Basic for EDU".

It's not going to blow anything up, but if your devices need/expect 56V and only get 45V they may not work.

This is a well-known phish - see the Phishing Emails thread. This regex: ([uu]nable|[Cc]annot|[Cc]lick here) ?(to)? (open|display|show|view) ?(this|full)? (e-?mail|message) should catch them, add a transport rule to quarantine/block based on it. I've added "(IMAP|POP3|SMTP) (message)? delayed" to the quarantine list as well for good measure given how prevalent this seems to be. Don't want the little buggers catching on and tweaking their call to action....

Personally I'd just turn the lock screen off - gets users to the login screen quicker.

You've not had a domain rebuild/switch-over since the NT4 days. I'm not sure whether I'm impressed or horrified!

I've got a 7th gen i5 with 8 GB RAM and an SSD. Nice enough, but I want/need to run Visual Studio, Photoshop, mremoteNG with various connections open, Chrome with two windows and about 128 tabs, Outlook (bleh), the Powershell ISE (x2 at the moment!), and various other programs (ID card printer, etc.). Oh, and I need a third screen!

At my last school we used aging Dell D600s for this - shoved Win 7 on them, domain joined, installed Impero, but that was it. We used them for exams, and so locked them down with Impero policies so that they would only run WordPad, but you could have them do whatever you want.

Indeed - these days my answer to the question in the original post would be "bin it with all haste"...

More pedantry - "the clock is like a digital heart, sending electrons through your device like the blood in our veins". Erm... no. The clock provides a timing signal, the battery provides the electromotive force.

There's a 40th anniversary tour?! I've seen it once, but I'm not going to turn down the chance to see it again!

Agreed. I know what I'm listening to in the office this afternoon!

I was thinking more along the lines of Yakety Sax, but I'd support all of those. You can add Beethoven's 5th and O Fortuna from Carmina Burana too...

10.4.11 if I remember rightly. Usable for very basic computing. I have one as a museum piece!

I wholly agree that how things are communicated is the biggest issue - but I'm still skeptical that banning things wholesale is preferable to focused education on the issue. Perhaps banning bags over a certain size would be a better, more proportional option for this school. (it would still be spun into nonsense by the gutter press, but is far more defensible) I do like the idea of playing music during lesson changeover - I'd probably use a rotating list of things to prevent a Pavlovian response developing, but if I ever go back to working in a mainstream secondary I'll definitely suggest it!

Another case of "let's not educate students about how to use X safely, let's just ban X and be done with it". That way nobody learns anything!

That sounds like my kind of system. Nice work! I love those systems where, once you've built it, you can just feed it a bunch of input and it'll just do everything. My user creation script is a bit like that - sets up all the things they could need.

Install one on your office PC for, er, research purposes.

Ooooohhhh I'm intrigued. I don't need it, as we don't use iSAMS and don't use student cards (special school = students escorted everywhere), but as a programmer I'm curious!

In house with an IDP Smart 30. Works well. External costs are wayyy too high, as well as being a hassle to manage. The printer sits on my desk and doesn't take up much space, and I can print the things on demand.

This reminds me I really need to have a clear out. I have two server rooms (please don't shoot me...) with various boxes of crap in them from our old site. I've sorted VGA and power cables, and can probably chuck some, but I still have a couple of mountains of random cables. Aaand a table full in the office (see below). And yet more in the workshop. It's INSET today, which means the perfect opportunity to tidy as there's naff all going on. Thanks Internet!

I agree entirely about having fewer passwords - but the comparison with Google/Facebook login (which use OAuth, not just copy-pasting passwords essentially) isn't a great one. OAuth and similar single sign on systems pass hashes around, not actual passwords. The idea that even trusted users can get hold of people's network passwords in plain text rubs me very much the wrong way, and IMO should never, ever be possible. I realise that if someone compromises an NC account then that is a whole separate can of worms, but the attack surface is significantly reduced with having separate, completely secret AD passwords. I suppose it's easier for us as only about 5% of our staff actually use their USO account - most don't have any cause to. My point about accountability was more along the lines of users being able to point the finger at IT should anything happen under their account. "I wasn't logged in, it was IT!". I agree that trusted support engineers are different to staff members, but it still goes against the message that we try to get across to users. "Never share your password, nobody should ever ask for it, not even your bank should ever know your PIN or ask for it, etc". The idea is that passwords are secret, and must stay that way. Things like this poke holes in that message. I do administer LGfL for my school - and please understand that I am the last person who would usually defend them! I agree that more warning should probably have been given, but then I'm never surprised at their inefficiency.

IMO being able to log on as other (real) users is a terrible idea. I never liked the fact that you could view people's USO passwords, and it sounds like you're using the same passwords for network accounts which is... not the best idea. Consider the case where someone did something nefarious on a PC, logged in as "jbloggs.999". Mr Bloggs could quite easily claim that "IT did it because they know all our passwords". Even if they don't claim that, it reduces traceability of actions. Yes, you could reset their password and do it, but at least then they'd know that something odd had happened. To say nothing of the fact that we should be training people not to share/give out their passwords or have them known by other people. If you need a test account to check things as a staff user then create a test account. I think this is a good change from an infosec standpoint - I agree it probably doesn't help GDPR compliance, but it's a positive step anyway. Now to get them to stop mandating password changes for NCs every 90 days (you know, against explicit GCHQ/NCSC guidance...).