BlackTie

Fair point - although our vendor has suggested that this might be an option. As ever it's a matter of balancing risk vs. cost...

Thanks for your thoughts. I had in mind something like these: PoE Products | WiFi Texas which as I understand it simply put 48V across the appropriate pair(s) in the cable, rather than negotiating the power requirements with the device.

Thanks - can you just to confirm you're talking about passive injectors (as opposed to active ones which seem almost as expensive as a POE switch!)? Was this with Meraki APs, BTW? Ta, Steve

I must confess - yes it is. We've enough switch capacity (in most places) but don't have POE switches - so a £50 8 port passive injector seems more cost effective than having to buy the equivalent managed POE switch..? Or might I be spoiling the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar..?

Greetings all, I'm currently looking at getting some Cisco / Meraki APs and am currently working through the practicalities of installing them. Does anyone have any experience of powering them from rack-mounted POE injectors? Are passive ones likely to suffice? Thanks, Steve

Equally, given the initial comment about internal hosting, it could probably be bundled up into a virtual appliance and distributed that way instead - although a little Linux knowledge might be required to get it up and running...

Depends what you mean by password protect, but yes. Here's how we work it at AGGS (note the version you're seeing is my test server, not the school's production system): Staff, and only staff, know the "site password." This means only they can create accounts and therefore add posts. Obviously, their accounts are password protected (safely salted and hashed in the DB). To read the posts within school requires no identification, since the (internal) server recognises an internal IP address range and allows you straight in. If you try and access the server from outside (i.e. with a public IP like a mobile or other external computer) then a 4 digit passcode must be entered. We share this with the students so (particularly sixthformers) can read the posts from their mobiles. To demonstrate, I've now locked down the IP address so a passcode is now required to read posts from anywhere. The passcode is currently set to 1234. Let me know if you've any further questions. It's currently built to host a single school at a time but could easily be extended to serve multiple schools at a time if there's any interest.

I wrote something for our school last year - there's a prototype at https://www.caliban.ws/noticeboard/ The "site password" to create yourself an account is: edugeek I've reconfigured my email server lately so email system is borked - if you're interested I can put some work into it again over the Summer - we've been using it here for over a year and it seems to function quite nicely...

In the most part they machines required a visit to deal with issues - I also resorted to redeploying which I'm not convinced is good practice. Given how new an experience this is, we're perhaps being somewhat impatient. I notice you mention laptops. I've considered replacing the teacher's desktops in classrooms with laptops and docks (discussed elsewhere) but have been put off by concerns over SIMS updates - amongst other things. Staff here tend to be quite fragile in their faith in IT - understandable given the level of investment historically - so I've been keen to ensure SIMS at least is as smooth and reliable as possible. Thanks for your comments so far!

All, We're relatively new to SIMS here, and I've only carried out a couple of deployments using SOLUS 3. While the experience has been mostly successful we often find only about 80% of the machines deploy successfully first time, and it then takes a while to get the remainder running successfully. I've spoken with a consultant who's working with us, and he's stated that, "in most schools SIMS updates happen as part of the normal working day." I wondered if that is most Edugeek's experience? I'm planning to run the updates during holidays to be sure things are working correctly - the idea of simply kicking off a SOLUS update when I get in at 8 AM and expecting things to be ready for morning registration concerns me somewhat. Am I being over-cautious or realistic? Keen to know your thoughts or experience... Thanks in advance.

Good plan - I have it in mind to start with about 10% surplus capacity of both - to guard against breakages, forgetfulness, shredded installations and hopefully for supply teachers as and when. Hopefully we'll maintain overstock for the first year or so, then let it dwindle as they approach EOL...

Top Tip! Had most of the others in mind but wouldn't have thought of that one - thanks!

This is what we've in mind - but also using the corresponding docks so everything in each room remains connected and all teachers have to do is suspend & undock followed by dock & restore. The theory seems to have worked well in limited trials, but very limited! As someone asked later, we are also planning to used Windows Enterprise's Bitlocker full drive encryption for security, and try to get Microsoft Direct Access running. If we go ahead with this, it's going to be a busy summer. Thanks for the input so far, everyone; the negative and the positive!

Greetings, all. Just coming to the end of a trial of some laptops for teaching staff. Our plan is to get staff to carry them from room to room using docking stations to connect to fixed hardware (network, projectors and the like). Proper docking stations, mind, rather than little USB jobs... I need to get some feedback from the staff involved in the trial but I wondered if anyone out there in EduGeek land had some pearls of wisdom over the use of laptops by teachers in school, as opposed to fixed desktops? All comments gratefully received - have a good weekend, Steve

Just wondering if anyone had any experience of using SWGfL's BOOST system..? We currently have an on-line reporting tool hosted elsewhere, but none of the other functionality offered. Keen to hear any thoughts - have a good weekend!