Rob_D

In what way? If they're too young to have some sort of mobile, then they're too young to be using the house phone without asking permission from the parent. And probably too young to be left home alone. Ergo, child needs to make a call, he asks parent and parent gives him the phone.

Got rid of ours when we went to FTTP last summer and it's not been a problem at all. We really only got sails calls on it anyway, and everyone in the house has a mobile. If anything, not having the phone tethered to the study means we're more likely to hear when it rings or have one to hand when needed.

Beyond pushing their wifi connection through your web filtering there's no a lot of management you'd be able to do without getting into some pretty murky legal waters (IANAL), and you need to not be managing the students' personal devices outside of the school day. When we looked at this years ago, the potential work around was Lightspeed's geofencing (other companies may do this), so devices were only "managed" when in school. There's a reason most 1:1 schemes seem to use a lease-to-buy model. While the student is at the school, the devices belongs to the school so you can manage it. As for YouTube. We used to hard block it, but during lockdown and after we've been relaxing that. Now we've got it set up so students have YT access only during lesson time, which seems to be working pretty well. (Eidt) sorry that moved on a bit while I was posting. We use Intune (or whatever Microsoft calls it now) to manage student loaned devices, so far it's working pretty well. It's not great for anything other than windows, but for windows devices it does what you need for basic management.

Have you got someone (or 5 someones) who will be monitoring the system 24/7/365? Surely the monitoring stations could be turned off overnight and holidays when they aren't being actively used? Otherwise, yeah. Having to get and maintain 5 extra PCs is an over-head.

Potentially it would add complexity. Would viewer PCs be any more hassle than using multiple hdmi over lan converters? Our viewer machines have pretty setup-and-forget (it's what LTSC/LTSB was built for).

Just to throw in something completely different... Our Qvis system has client viewer/monitoring software that connects to the NVRs over IP for remote camera monitoring (I always assumed most providers would have something similar). It would probably be an easier/better solution than having HDMI over eithernet/IP (which I've always found kind of flaky when I've tired it). If space is an issue you could use low spec mini-PCs on the back of the screens.

huh, I thought anyone could book as long as it was 6 months after your 2nd dose.

Got my booster and flu jab over the weekend. Now both my arms ache.

We're sticking with laptops for students. More sets of higher spec ones in school plus lower powered and DfE ones for PP students to use at home. (but we're in a pretty well off area) I'd be rather cautious about using student phones. Just because there's no way to "force" them onto the wifi, and it's potentially way too easy to toggle the wifi off while you whatsapp your mates. Not that you couldn't make it work, but you'd want a pretty bomb proof risk assessment.

So I've heard. Unfortunately, we are still working through our stockpile of the gen1 tests.

I will be very happy when I don't have to gag and sneeze my way through twice weekly tests.

Correct, I was being a touch sarcastic. Trying to work with different modules across different software generations sounds like a recipe for "unexpected features".

They've also said https://www.ess-sims.co.uk/resources/blog/next-generation-sims Which pretty much says development is starting now, with modules released as they get finished. Because that sounds like a good idea.

True, but I think you'd increasingly get the average Jo taking the attitude of "I'm double/triple jabbed and wearing a mask inside, them's pretty good odds to me" and ignoring stay at home mandates. You know, all the normies that were sold on the when you get your vaccine/get double jabbed/get your booster, things will start to go back to normal.

Hi all, The school has decided they like the idea of using biometrics for attendance and lesson registers (I'm pretty sure it won't get past the "it will cost how much?!?" stage, but what can you do). As we're already using Biostore for our catering, print release and library, it makes sense to look at them first. So has anyone ever used Biostore attendance? If so, is it any good? How much does it interface with SIMS? Thanks!

I honestly don't see the UK govt doing another national lockdown. And if they did I wouldn't expect much compliance. You just have to look at the Jan 21 lockdown compared to the Apri/May 20 ones. I remember going through town on my bike during the first lockdown and there were maybe half a dozen people all staying as far apart as possible. While in Jan all the weekend shoppers were out as normal. Among the staff here, another lockdown is just seen as a chance to work from home again.

We've had some success with Reflector in the past. https://www.airsquirrels.com/reflector

Could be seen as strawmaning or scaremongering. But if Amazon win (by win, I mean straight up ban visa credit) and people accept it, how long before you can only use the amazon-mastercard as payment? And if you use the amazon credit card do amazon pay themselves the transaction fee or would that still go to MC?

Server room AC is set to 17, but we don't work in there very much. IT suites are normally set to 21.

I can only speak for a UK suburban cul-de-sac. But based on what the Openreach guy told me, each property has it's own fiber link back to the splitter in the street cab.

Our school case numbers are reportedly down into single figures (down from 100+ in September).

But surely, by the time someone's been let go it's too late. You have a hole you can't instantly fill. And even if the people who were let go, go out straight away and get vaccinated, there's still a recruitment process they have to go back through, if they even want to go back to the same place that fired them. However you work it, there's going to be a (hopefully temporary) drop in the people doing these jobs.

Season 3 starts on TNT in the US in January (I think they had S2 on netflix a week or so behind the US network), and it's already been renewed for S4.

Just finished Fort Salem series 2 on iPlayer. Net, go back and finish Cobra (watched the first episode then got distracted).

Does that make it better or worse, as potentially shorter time makes it more crowded? (assuming most visitors are like me and only really go for 1 day)