Rob_D

Is it even predicting the future or is it just the same old nonsense with different faces?

We use Cloud Design Box for our SharePoint so that's laregly driven how thigns work for us, espeically on the curriculum side where we have staff only Sites/teams for each Currculum area, and then staff and student sites for teaching resources in each subject. On the non-teaching side, we have what CDB calls Collaboration Sites (SharePoints with teams attached, that are only shared with that department) for all the main support departments (Office, HR, Finanace, ICT, Maintenance, Catering, Medical, etc), then CDB Communication sites (sahrepoint pages without teams and with less stroage as default, that are shared with most/all staff/student) for things like, school policies, staff directories, CPD, First Aid). And then we still have a general "Staff Shared" site where all the things that don't really fit anywhere else go. This seems to be working well for us, but I don't think there's a best way to do it. Having a single site with folder level permissions is easier to set up and (I'm guessing) looks more like your local "Shared Area" so there's less of a learning curve/resistance from staff. But managing all the permissions and keeping everything tidy is going to largely fall on IT Support (as it did with the local Shared Area), and you'll have to keep on top of the stroage as SP sites only have 1TB by default (but can go up to 25TB) Having multiple sites gives users more ownership and setting permissions largely at the site or library level makes it easier to see who's got permissions, these combined allow staff to manage their own shared areas more. And if you've got things like staff directories or similar "information for all staff" type folders, then making them into a sharepoint page can be more user firendly. The flipside being it's very different from having the single bucket of files that IT Support manage for us, so there's more staff training and acilimitisation (which IME leads to more staff pushback). And it takes longer to set up and get right in the first place. For example when we first move to SharePoint during lockdown, we did a single site with everything on and it took a couple of hours to set up. What we have now has taken the best part of a year to get right. That said, if you're already doing "subject/department sites" on the Currculum side and it's working okay and you've not had much staff pushback, then I'd continue that on the non-teaching side.

I feel like I'm missing something here, but it feels like your solution targets the (IMO quite small) intersection of "crisis" stiuation serious enough to require site lockdown, but with enough time to have a confrence call and discuss the situation. How would your solution deal with, for example, the "help a crazy person with a shotgun is trying to break in" situation where there isn't time to have a confrence call and you need to just the school put in immidate lockdown? (The kind of thing we'd do now with a panic button)

A lot of the main players (Smart, Promethian, C Touch) have their own management tools for the boards that deal with updates, apps, etc. (At least that's what they kept saying at BETT).

I got the Promethian LX series demoed at BETT, which looked very much like the kind of thing you're after. If the staff are accessing the MIS and using regular computer type functions, I'm assuming you have a second, desktop monitor plugged into the OPS unit (rather than having to bring the MIS up on the big screen where everyone can see it). So doble check whatever you go for has some kind of video out (it's not something I would expect as standard).

We're looking at moving from X to Instagram.

We have no plans to stop using MDT any time soon. But if you want an alternative, then FOG might be worth looking into. https://fogproject.org/

We use Barracudas for C2C mostly works fine but I do find the recovery console pretty clunky. How much space do you have on your NAS vs what your using the cloud?

Logged into chrome and youtube with my work google account and I still get ads. Although I don't have specific youtube policies or anything applied to my account.

As I recall, the general consensus here was that putting MDM on students' personal devices was at best treading into a legally grey area that you'd be better steering clear of. And a quick look makes blackout sound functionally like a stripped down MDM. Also: https://www.madeformums.com/news/blackout-phone-app-privacy-concerns/

June 2006 here.

We've done some stuff with Smartphone Free Childhood. From what I've seen, it seems quite popular with the more engaged parents, but the same parents (and SFC themselves) seem to be very pro phone pouches, and to be fair so are a lot of the kids. They like the idea of removing temptation during the school day while allowing the kids to have their phones while travelling to and from school (for safety or/and because they have electronic buss-passes). TBH, the pouches require those to work as well.

I'm sure someone somewhere has, and they're probably very happy about it right now. But seriously, I think it's more first mover/most mature solution type of thing (like zoom during lockdown).

Not got anything yet, but we're looking at deploying either Youndr or Hush pouches from September.

What would you consider a "normal" non-sport club? The most mainstream/popular I can think of are drama, dance and band/music.

When you think about how ubiquitous school sports days are vs other subject days and the fact that sport is one of only (two?) things to have dedicated slots in the major news programs, it's clear that sport (either doing or watching) is a pretty massive national priority and still considered the default form of "free time activity". (and it's good for you, so that's probably no bad thing) Today's adult population is still dominated by people who remember going out for a quick kick about with their mates every evening (whether they liked football or not). I wonder how/if it's going to change over the next few decades as people from generations who grew up after kids stopped doing this start to become the majority.

They've always had great goodie bags. Most of the team's "grab and go" toolkits are switchshop ones now.

I guess it's about providing enough friction to make it not really worth it. How many fewer times are you likely to check your phone if you have to unlock something to get to it vs just dipping into your bag and grabbing it. And if you want to go that rout why bother buying a neodymium magnet when you can apparently unlock youndr pouches with a pencil. Youndr (who seem to be leading in the space at the moment) really push to make sure the pouch is part of a overall strategy with good buy-in from staff and parents they seem to be very much about the pouch being part of a holistic approach. The impression I got for the guy at BETT was that they wouldn't just sell into a school who's plan was to stick all the phones in pouches and hope that fixes "the problem", but rather work with them to come up with a plan that might actually work. While I'm still decidedly in the "It's only going to work if you have a good, well enforced policy. And if you have a good well enforced policy then do you really need the bags?" camp, but I see a lot more stories of it being heralded as a net improvement than it failing.

I kind of get taking a small group of kids (especially older kids) to see and maybe get some hands on time with the classroom tech. Perhaps the compromise is to have one day where students are allowed and limit it to 10-15 per org.

What's the little ICTDirect box supposed to do?

I guess it falls into the same basket as radio. (If you include all the regional ones, the BBC has dozens of radio channels that run pretty much 24/7, that's got to cost a reasonable chunk of budget.) They could mean "no ads" in the same way regular BBC channels and iPlayer "don't have ads" but content is preceded by a trailers for other BBC content (or that one time, the trailer for the thing I was about to watch), which would theoretically push people to the main BBC channels/iPlayer and increase licence fee revenue from UK residents. And it does say they'd have Ads for people outside the UK. As an aside, I'm cynical enough to think youtube will run ads eventually regardless of what the BBC want.

I wonder how long the USB-C ports would hold up to all the unplugging and replugging, especially when they're yanked around to reach a laptop put in backwards in the adjacent bay. The yanking is also why I'd really want replaceable cables (but not too easily removeable otherwise they'll disappear).

You can get descent HP Elitebooks from ICT Direct for about £300. Either way, you still have the problems of them not getting plugged half the time, getting trashed/sticker-bombed because there's on-one that has any ownership of them, half of them going missing, half the chargers going missing. In the end you wind up removing the chargers from the trolley or having to buy additional chargers because staff don't trust the battery life to last all through their lesson, which is probably more to do with the laptop only having been on charge for about 10 minutes over the last 3 days than battery degradation, but they'll still assume it's due to poor battery life and never trust them on battery again. If you're buying general use laptop trolleys, budget for the devices to be replaced every 1-2 years. I've always rated the lapsafe trolleys.

I didn't like the opening for Academy, but after they got to the ship started really enjoying it.

Probably, but depending on how it's been set up you might need to rebuild the minipc. Can the people that you got the pole from help at all?