Zoom7000

It's the social media stuff that has really helped me. You can really leverage the power of platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn to build a strong personal learning network (PLN) that can really help you to get more recognised within the wider community and help to open up other opportunities. The great thing about micro blogging platforms like Twitter is that it's quick, easy and not too time consuming to engage. But with the right sort of engagement, can be super powerful!

Bett have an application process that goes live around June (I think!) where you can submit a session proposal. I submitted one last year but I didn't get selected. One of the VIP presenters at last years show introduced me to the Bett organisers and after a long discussion (where they learnt that I've been going for 15 years) this year they invited me to present. I'd definitely recommend putting a proposal in, but also connecting with them on social media.

Is anyone presenting at Bett 2020? I'll be presenting about Digital Transformation & the story of my Trust's journey to the cloud with G Suite for Education at the Teaching Theatre on the Google stand Wednesday 22nd January at 2pm. I'll also be presenting at the Bett Professional Development Theatre (South Hall) on Thursday 23rd January at 4pm, with Dr Neelam Parmar, who is the Director of Educational Technology, Digital Learning and Innovation in Ashford School and James Garnett, who is the Director of IT at United Learning. We'll be having a panel discussion around "Creating shared purpose between IT teams, Teachers and Senior Leaders" (We'll probably work on a much catchier title!) 😂 If you're at Bett on Wednesday or Thursday, then please do pop along and say hi! 😊

Lots of Theme Hospital style nostalgia related fun to be had with Two Point Hospital @ £8.49 which is a pretty decent bargain!

Can we ban this post for "potential danger to financial well-being of our users?!" 😜😂

True, it would be good to have the option to disable (if it doesn't already exist, I haven't checked!) but incidents like bullying would need to be addressed offline and it could be argued that an incident like this might actually highlight a bullying case. Not defending G Suite in any way, but just highlighting the importance of understanding and being able to identify bullying from an offline perspective, including the perception of the welfare of the victim.

Same here. I noticed the issue twice, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, both times the outage was about a minute, so thankfully it wasn't the end of the world.

There's no harm in migrating as many schools as you want under 1 single G Suite domain. Like Roger said, it would make life a lot simpler. In fact, the whole of Malaysia is under 1 G Suite domain with approximately 1.2 million users! More closer to home though... I manage a single G Suite domain with 2 schools in our Trust. Definitely recommend you do it that way.

Could this possibly be achieved by putting the school devices in to their own OU in the Admin Console and then applying the advanced policy to that OU?

If your students are in their own OU, you can restrict directory visibility from them in the admin console: Directory > Directory settings > Visibility settings > [select Student OU] > Directory visibility See this article for more information: https://support.google.com/a/answer/9401094?hl=en

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. 100% agree that it should be an "IT Team" decision to keep systems up-to-date especially where like in the case of Windows 7, you will be left with systems that are insecure. Unfortunately, there are a lot of IT Teams out there that are in the difficult position where SLT either feel like they know better and are willing to defer; they don't provide the necessary funding and support to carry out the work; or there is hardware, software or systems that simply don't work with Windows 10. Yes, all of the above are completely unacceptable positions to be in and there is no real excuse for it. But it is worth noting that some IT Teams might find themselves in these position. My post was alluding to what action they should take should they be in these positions. If anything, the WannaCry attack on the NHS brought the dangers to the forefront of the news and as such, SLT should be taking a heavy interest on listening to IT Teams and keeping systems and data safe.

Surely for those who haven't been given the go ahead by SLT to migrate need to raise the warnings to the DPO? Ultimately, if you have file servers on Server 2008 and are using Windows 7 post EOL date, this is technically a huge gap in the organisations data security and GDPR compliance? Not saying people haven't raised the alarms, but could it not be argued that this needs to go to ICO level if leadership won't budge as they might not "feel ready" to change to Windows 10/Sever 2019?

Indeed! I used to be one of LGfL's biggest critics for this very reason. Total inflexibility and unwillingness to listen to their customers. However, under the leadership of @JohnJackson they are a totally different entity to the experience of yesteryear and are very open to feedback from their customers and the value add that they are giving back to schools!

Yeah, we don't use SCCM. It's just worth the cost and the effort for the environment that I am maintaining.

What anti-virus software do you use out of interest. It might be worth checking to see if there is an option to block USBs via the anti-virus. We use Sophos Anti-Virus and we can block USBs via the Sophos Central console.

One of the things I've always hated about WSUS is that you can't control updates earlier than the Windows 10 version you have. E.g. I've rebuilt all of my PCs to Windows 10 x64 1903, but WSUS is littered with updates from 1507 upwards for Windows 10 x86, x64, ARM. It's such an annoyance to maintain and the cleanup wizard never seems to get rid of everything or anything at times!

From my personal experience, I would highly recommend LGfL via TRUSTnet (interestingly, they've now actually registered NGfL, who knows, maybe a rebrand is in the pipeline). In my opinion, no other broadband provider gives schools more value add as part of their broadband subscriptions than LGfL. Free Adobe Creative Cloud licenses and Sophox Intercept X for servers and workstations are almost worth the cost alone! But you get much much more!

I've sent you a PM, but simply create a spreadsheet from the txt file on the link above and ask them to unblock those IPs for the ports that I've posted above.

I think we have some at one of my schools. Send me a DM on Monday when I'm back in the office and I'll take a look.

Is that 10 second on initial login? I'm running Windows 10 images with pretty much all apps stripped out and I still get between 1:30 to 2 mins for initial login. I can't figure out how to speed it up. Most of my PCs are Dell AIO, quad core i5 with 128GB SSD and 8GB RAM. So definitely isn't a performance issue on the PC.

Running the Windows 10 Decrapifier is relatively easy. Lucky for you, I literally ran it on an updated image a few minutes ago. Make sure your newly installed Windows 10 (1903) build is running in Audit Mode. You can get to Audit Mode by pressing Ctrl+Shift+F3 1. Create a folder called Scripts on your C:\ drive. 2. Download this txt file here: Win10Decrap.txt and save it in C:\Scripts 3. Change the 3 letter extension from .txt to .ps1 4. Hit "Win+X" and select Windows Powershell (Admin) 5. Type the following and press Enter: set-executionpolicy unrestricted 6. Push "A" when it prompts you and press Enter. 7. Type the following and press Enter: cd C:\Scripts 8. Type the following and press Enter: Win10Decrap.ps1 9. When the script has completed, type the following and press Enter: set-executionpolicy restricted 10. Push "A" when it prompts you and press Enter. 11. Reboot the PC. This should do a basic "decrapifier" of Windows 10. If you a more thorough decrap, you can choose from some of these switches, but if you are unsure of them, then best to leave alone: -allapps: Removes ALL apps including the store. Make sure this is what you want before you do it. It can be tough to get the store back. -leavetasks: Leaves scheduled tasks alone. -leaveservices: Leaves services alone. -appaccess: Leaves privacy/access options alone - depending on your usage, some issues can be prevented by leaving them with default (unrestricted) permissions. They are set to restricted by default in this script. -clearstart: Empties the start menu completely leaving you with just the apps list. -onedrive: Leaves all OneDrive content fully functional. -tablet: Use this for tablets or 2-in-1s to leave location and sensors enabled. -cortana: Leave Cortana and web enabled search on. -xbox: Leave xbox apps and related items. -nolog: Prevents transcript from being created at SYSTEMDRIVE\WindowsDCtranscript.txt. -appsonly: Only removes apps, doesn't touch privacy settings, services, and scheduled tasks. Cannot be used with -settingsonly switch. Can be used with all the others. -settingsonly: Only adjusts privacy settings, services, and scheduled tasks. Leaves apps. Cannot be used with -appsonly switch. Can be used with all others (-allapps won't do anything in that case). Hope that helps!

It'll be up as soon as it's processed.

The best way around this is with staff education and training. I have done a lot of work at my MAT with our staff to deter them from using Microsoft Word/Excel/PowerPoint for this very reason to avoid confusion when working with files on Google Drive. Using the native editing of Microsoft Office files in Google Drive will reduce some of the sharing functionality in Google Docs. You will need to train the teachers on how to save the files as Google Docs files to unlock the full range of sharing and collaboration features.

We just had a Zebra ZC300 card printer implemented as part of our new build project. It seems quite clunky, but it's rated for 140 double sided colour cards per hour which seems to be the general norm for card printers. Just from my experiences, the quality of printing on ID cards seems to be pretty shoddy across the board too.

Unfortunately I don't have any sort of SSO to test this with and so my users just log in manually. According to this reddit post what you've mentioned above should just work, unless I'm missing something.