Rob_D

Is this documented somewhere a change log, a support site request? If we do something like this, we tent to drop a note in the description field as to why it was locked and when. Would that be enough?

We've been using Cavendish (https://www.cavcoms.com/) since Easter without any major issues (2*1GB sync connections), reasonable price and great service. Before that, we had Exponential-E (https://www.exponential-e.com/) good service no real issues but not as competitive on the price when we came to renew - before that we were with them for about 6 years.

Never going to happen. There's going to be a big push and some hefty pressure to lift restrictions and "open up" for Christmas even if it means more lockdowns in January (that's my opinion anyway).

The point I always make when people ask about using Zoom is that, as we're just taking advantage of the free offering we don't have access to their tech support. So if you encounter a problem there's probably not a lot we can do.

We've got the the Big Ben chimes through to the end of the last post (pulled from the BBC's Sunday Cenotaph coverage) going out over our Bodet speakers at 11:00 (hopefully) to mark the silence. Otherwise, I don't think there's any whole school planning (something might have gone out for Tutor time).

Originally the whole bubble (aka the whole year group) had to isolate - as there's no social distancing enforcement within the year group bubbles. We sent a whole year group home before half term (presumably on PHE advice).

it looks like our advice from public Health England is no long to isolate whole year groups, but rather only send home students who are seated within 2m of the confirmed case in lessons. (Also no staff being sent home this time)

While I agree with everything else you're saying 100%, the driving analogy doesn't really work for me. It's like saying, put your mask on and ignore everyone else. Surely in both driving and covid you need to be mindful of your surroundings so you can react to protect yourself from other people's stupidity.

Could the child be issued something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07FYC725N/

Our local Sainsburys has had the fresh meat/fish/deli counters closed since the start of the first lockdown. In fact, they now seem to be in the process of ripping them out. Bakery's still open though.

We've been using ParentsEveningSystem (I think it's the school cloud one) for our bookings so it was an easy step to using their video chat system. We've done a couple of test events and bought and installed 100 webcams and headsets for the classrooms, and so far everything looks okay. First full parents evening is looking like the start of December.

All our staff have Onedrive and SharePoint Shared storage in addition to the onsite Shared Area. We're trying to move more resources into the cloud, but will probably always have some on-site storage for things that either require high security or low latency access.

Airhorn? But seriously, if this is on your landline, can you get wife's son to call you on a mobile so you can just ignore the landline (DND or unplug or something), or visa versa if it's on a mobile. At this point, I'd consider getting a new number. If you're mobile only, you could even grab a free payg sim for wife's son to call you on so you can ignore unknown callers on your regular numbers. (Given how bad/disruptive it sounds, it's probably worth the hassle - and you never know when a "burner phone" might come in handy).

You could use a VPN to spoof a US IP address and then just use the CW online on demand (whatever they call it).

Interesting wording here (emphasis is my own)... Maybe I'm reading too much into this and it's more about people who are isolating. But it feels like schools could send all the kids home if they wanted as long as they could provide the teaching online. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/new-national-restrictions-from-5-november

"Work from home if you can, but essential people (which seemed to ecomaps everything apart form leisure entertainment) can go in if they can't work from home" was the message in the last lockdown. The only real difference to last time is schools/unis staying open for everyone. At least now if the rates do stay higher it's a pretty good indicator that it's down to schools. Wouldn't surprise me, the general consensus at home is that nothing's changing between now than Thursday so might as well start now. Parent's golf club has taken the same tack, completely closing from today (at least until the parliamentary lobby group pushes through legislation to reopen golf clubs during lockdown - I kid you not, this is an actual thing)

I can see all the user admin stuff fine. But I can't find where I can view or administer the Google Classroom classes in admin.google.com and don't see anything classrom.google.com as I'm not a member of any of the classes. It's supposed to have been done through wonde synch from our MIS, so I have no idea what's been provisioned at this point. Is it that you've got your/the admin account as a member of each class? Or is there an actual admin console I'm not finding?

Afternoon guys, As I may have mentioned before, we're moving from just Office 365 to a 365/GSuite mix. According to the support company we've got in to help with the GSuite stuff, there isn't a classroom admin view where we can see all the provisioned classes and check/manage memberships when, inevitably, the teacher claims half their classes are missing or something. (Like the 365 Teams Admin console) I can't believe this is true? How can IT Support be expected to support without access to a high level view of the system? How have people who use GSuite gotten around this? Do you just make all your techs members of each class? Thanks!

Mostly, we have automatically generated helpdesk tickets for that sort of thing (of course, if you've not got one already getting a helpdesk package just for this might be overkill). If you're Office 365, you could do something flows and excel. Automated "email with options" to the techs with a "done" button that writes the time, tech and task to a central spreadsheet. All the tech has to do is click the "done"/"task complete" button in the email.

Boy plays pay-to-win MMORPG.

Wait, so (if I'm reading this right) there are 9 people living in, presumably 4 of the house's 5 bedrooms? (unless a couple of them are living in outbuildings)

We got some not terrible, but pretty low spec HP laptops. They seem to plug along fine for web based stuff and light document editing.

It's the JCQ document that simpsonj is referencing and the Access Arraignments Checklist Template the Exams Office have sent over says: "Are arrangements in place to disable network and prohibit applications access?" (footer says the document shouldn't be shared beyond our center)

For the last few years now our exam setup has been locked down domain accounts and ExamWritePad. Students can't get online, or do anything other than open EWP or notepad, save to the account's my documents (which is cleared out between exams), and print to the school follow me queue where the invigilators have print release. The whole thing made it super easy to grab a laptop (or even a desktop) and go. Now, I'm being shown documentation saying that laptops must not be connected to a LAN, which puts an end to our gpo managed domain accounts that can be used anywhere and being able to easily just hit print at the end of the exam. It's going to be a massive pain if we have to go back to having especially configured, off domain laptops for the exams and I guess the invigilators would have to use a USB stick to transfer the files to another PC which was domain connected to print from. How are other people dealing with this? (There must be a better way, right?)

After a particularly pushy salesman threatened my mum with "I know where you live..." I got parents some Phillips phones with night mode and set it so the phone only rings for a known number. Sounds pretty similar to what you have.