JohnRMoore

Hi, this was a long time ago, so perhaps things have changed? Our MAT has only two schools, but a third is on the horizon. We are looking to move to a single IT service provider, and all sites will use SIMS. The schools each have up to 500 students. I have been asked to look into general approaches for linking the sites, which are a few miles apart (if this makes any difference!). The only decision that has been made is that we do not wish to use cloud services for applications or data storage. We of course want as much simplicity as possible, with reduced costs. Like the OP, most articles on the internet point towards SD-WAN, which is clearly not the preference of you guys for some reason! Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Unfortunately I don't have access to multiple computers. I could (I suppose?) request that our network team create me a virtual machine?

Hi, I have used pulsar.exe to launch multiple instances of SIMS.net. Does anyone know of a way to launch multiple instances of Nova-t 6? I've finished a timetable which is OK except for one lesson where would prefer it AM rather than PM. I've blanked out those periods and left auto schedule running to see if it can find an alternative. (I've never had auto schedule manage to find a solution in this way, but thought if I can leave it long enough it just might find something!). It currently on 9 out of 12 levels after 2 days, and I need to try out a few other things on Nova-t. Any advice on how you get around this problem gratefully received. John

Yes this is for a school so the staff laptops are imaged specifically for staff with the software they use. Software is then sometimes remotely deployed, but occasionally the laptops are reimaged. This is all part of the maintenance contract, but I suppose the sudden urge for encryption wasn't anticipated early enough.

OK. Just asking because our IT would encrypt at the end of the year since the tend to rebuild anyway. I suppose it's the unusual nature of the timing that makes the difference, as it's an unexpected extra job. This is another school in our MAT.

Hi, if laptops need encrypting for GDPR, shouldn't they have been encrypted anyway? So if work needs dong in this regard, would I expect our IT suppliers to charge extra, or is this just part of the ongoing maintenance and upkeep?

That's a great idea, I can sense a policy emerging...

Yes, and when sharing with students, any methods will be fine (I currently share with google classrooms). But the rule of thumb could be that to collaborate on staff docs, put it on the staff shared drive. This will provide some degree of logical separation.

That looks good. So a simple rule could be only share via team drive, do not add users explicitly.

Excellent point. But I am looking for ways in which there is less chance that a well trained individual would accidentally share a document with a student. I know it will warn you if you attempt to share to a different domain, but as we only have one sub-domain, I am unsure what would happen if you attempted to share to a different subdomain, or perhaps to the main domain. If that would also warn, I think that would be sufficient safeguard, assuming, as you say, staff are properly trained. I need to demonstrate a risk assessment and I don't feel training is sufficient mitigation on its own, especially since Google is designed around sharing!

Hi, our students use google docs with a subdomain of 'student'. If staff also wish to use google docs, but for content NOT to be shared to students, what would be the best approach to allow staff to collaborate on google docs but minimize or eliminate the change of accidental sharing of content with students? PS if there is a more appropriate forum, apologies, please let me know PPS my current thinking is to create a staff subdomain, or for staff to use main domain (which could be confusing as they already use outlook email). It may be that neither would help, and we should ALL just use the main domain for neatness! Just so you know the ill-informed mess going on in my head...

Thanks all, comments have helped enormously. One provider I have contacted called schoolfibre run the filter on an external server, which seems quite attractive to me. Again, are there any issues here (e.g. bottlenecks on the internet, privacy, data protection) and what questions should I ask or what expectations should I have with regards to how contended the filter is, can we have different filter settings to others, is there any type of traffic that isn't filtered that other filters might cover etc. (are these sensible questions?)

I can't find a supplier that quotes based on devices

Thanks yac I've asked for a quote

I have a quote (filtering only) of £4.80 per student. Seems steep...?

Best on answers here (very helpful thanks) it seems perhaps I should be asking what is a sensible budget for a filtered broadband connection - would 2-3K still fit for both elements? PS our main school has 500 students. We have also formed a MAT which includes one primary and is set to grow.

Concurrent. School has 500 pupils and we are not big on use of IT!

This is probably my ignorance, but at home I use openDNS and supervise my children's internet usage. This does not cover everything, but I know with a bit of filtering on URLs I could knock out nine nines of what I need to. So aside from from the issue of bandwidth (max 50 users at a time) I am thinking that filtering should not be a massive technical challenge, and shouldn't cost much (yes, my ignorance again!) I have been shocked by some quotes we have received for a filtering solution. What is a reasonable annual budget for a broadband filter (small school, only uses IT where necessary e.g. CAD and coding)? I just reminds me of when we got a quote for £12000 per year for a 'managed' moodle! (which of course is freeware and I 'manage' it myself). Ballpark figures?

A rare opportunity for use to review our MIS provider as we set up our new MAT. My data manager peers seem to recommend iSAMS from a usability point of view and the fact that being cloud based I can administer all the schools easily. Is there any technical reason why this would not be a good choice, or anything I should be aware of? Currently using SIMS btw. (PS I have not looked at the cost of iSAMS yet!) I hope this type of question is OK, I am assuming if we stick to facts rather than opinion no one is likely to get upset?

Hi, when staff log behaviour incidents, their name usually gets attached automatically so that other staff know who logged the behaviour incident. However, we are constantly getting a number of incidents with not staff name visible. Does anyone know how or why this may be happening? Thanks John

Hi, We currently have a subdomain and emails set up to use google apps eg [email protected] where students (and staff) can login and share docs. To add confusion, the authentication for this is via our moodle. It's a mess I want to sort out, but I am lacking in knowledge. This is what I think needs to be done: create a subdomain staff.schoolname.co.uk use google active directory application to synch students to the students subdomain and staff to the staff subdomain break any links between moodle and google, and just keep the AD synch to moodle My thinking is that the separate subdomains will reduce the risk (if not prevent) accidental unintended sharing of docs between staff and students. I do not work in IT so it is highly likely that some or all of this is nonsense - can anyone advise? I am also confused because it seems that google apps (now g suite) is advertised as a paid for service but we use it for free. Will there be a cost to creating a new subdomain and using google services? Any help most appreciated. Thanks. John

Good point. I have put it in the hands of our network team. If they say no, however, it will pose a mighty problem for us! Perhaps this is an unforseen risk of integrating with proprietary software. I have to find out of other schools have the same problem, but I imagine anyone who is running the latest version of Word will be affected.

Hi, We have been advised by SIMS Support that to open our linked Word documents we now need to disable 'protected view for files originating from the internet' from within the Word trust center settings. Before I request this setting to be applied to all staff computers, is there any reason why disabling this security feature may be a bad idea? PS has anyone got around this in a different way? Thanks, John

Looking back, the response from SIMS was "Please apply On Demand Patch 21915. Contact your local support unit for a copy of this patch. " I was then able to make the changes, so it either worked or was coincidence!

Hi, I have exported and alternative curriculum structure to SIMS and populated it with a few students. The students timetables look fine, the staff timetables look fine, the room timetables look fine. When I go to lesson monitor, I can find all of these classes and the correct room shows for all. But when I open and then close the register to reveal the timetable view for that staff member, SOME of the rooms on SOME periods shows as ??? instead of showing the room code. I can't spot any pattern apart from all of the rooms do this before a random day next week. Does anyone know in what circumstances lesson monitor shows ??? for a room? Thanks John