DrBeaker

Who sets that up though? Don't get me wrong I don't mind helping and supporting staff, but there's a limit - to the point when I'm having to do their job for them. What if the power goes off, what if the internet freezes, PC crashes, page freezes etc. Remember KISS. No need for a fancy wall clock. Why do we still do exam papers by hand - because it works - and the IT tech is too unreliable in an exam situation for a country full of kids sitting the exams at the same time. Right tool for the right job.

I still have Inkjet printers and Mono 6050 printers that I have to support. I was originally told they were getting rid of them - I've not heard anything else since. Staff here - still whinge "Oh, I haven't got a printer" - I've heard it 3x times today even! It's got to the point where it falls on deaf ears. At what point does it become laziness and a problem with staff attitude (which is a line management issue) that they simply cannot be bothered to get off their backsides and go collect their printout. Yes - I have a printer in my office (one of the nearly 15-20x year old 6050 with a "replace fuser" that keeps message nagging me). However I consider it a privilege as the only IT person here. However I have also had no printers previously in other roles and had to use an MFD, it does not bother me. We know IT people seem to get the worst gear What does bother is the sense of entitlement and attitude when the decision is made above my pay grade, for shared resources and reduced costs but it's IT who get the blame for decisions they haven't made - over a damm printer.

My logic is as wall clocks come under the responsibility of the site/estates team, therefore so should exam hall clocks and NOT IT.

Just my 2-cents, but in an exam situation students of GCSE level should surely be able to at least tell the start time and end time and hopefully be able to figure out how much time is remaining in the exam? Why does this require an IT solution? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/04/24/schools-removing-analogue-clocks-exam-halls-teenagers-unable/

Interesting.... a colleague at a previous place, only started using this in about 2016/2017. I didn't know development had stopped.

We've not had any issues since the update has all been done - some initial problems but all sorted now. 7.190.31.2 - SIMs (with the workstation printing patch installed) SOLUS3 agents have updated to 3.12.50.2 as well now (had some issues Monday when it didn't work, but sorted by our MIS team)

This might sound like a daft question - but if it lands in another country, how on earth are you going to get it back?

How about a list of arguments you've had with with staff, SLT over budgets, kit replacements etc?

Depending on what you want your system to do - I'd still say that's a mid-to-high end system that's nearing the end of it's useful life, but not quite yet. E.g. My laptop has a i5-3rd Gen 2.5GHz. It's 7x years old this year. The limit is not the max 8GB RAM and a failing CPU fan, not the spec of the unit itself. Save the vouchers for a while and put them towards another computer in a few months or next few years.

This is a common basic thing so many companies and organisations get wrong. Little-to-no communication about things from small things to big things. - Get people with interests in the issue in the same room - Give them some refreshments - Let each one have some input and voice their opinion and thoughts on said issue Come away with some valuable feedback and input on things from the experts, users and management. Everybody wins. I've found it requires people to be open-minded, frank and critical however whilst maintaining sight of what you want to accomplish.

Kind of reminds me of this scene from the Simpsons Movie Pick 5x options and let them decide. E.g. I'd love to put a UPS in every switch cab, a backup generator, school PA systems, live streaming webcams etc. Do I have the skills - most of them. Do I have the time - Nope. Do I have the money - Nope. It's all just a pipe dream then.

That's the annoying thing in our jobs - we have to say NO to be legal, compliant etc but we're the ones who get the aggro and hassle from teachers, SLT etc. You are bang on - there's NO simple way at current to do this for schools. I wasn't around in the BECTA days, but I assume this was something they would have worked on until they were dissolved? There's Youtube for Schools I've heard about but that's about it. Not everything for copyright, legal reasons etc would be available on Youtube either.

What concerns me is the amount of teaching staff, who think it's perfectly fine to download stuff from Youtube. Then use said content in lessons and for school things. These are the ones teaching the students. What kind of lesson and ethics message is that sending out to other staff/students etc? Guess it's a case of "Do as I say, not as I do" sometimes?

Surely a "A free, open source Flash player" is potentially a security issue? Moreso when Adobe themselves aren't supporting it. We're not talking about something like VLC here.

We have IE, Chrome and Firefox installed as standard (like most of us I guess) for exactly the reason you say above. With Windows 10 having Edge built-in also helps.

Well seeing as IE is pretty much end of life now - no software vendor is going to make sure stuff works for it anymore. We use one called Centurytech that has a massive message on the login screen about "incompatible browser" if it detects IE being used. If they can SEE and READ that message I wonder why they're in a school. Either that of force it to open in Chrome via a GPO. I will say that our users still use IE for a lot of stuff including Office 365. When stuff doesn't work in IE I tell them to use Chrome. Once our site is entirely Windows 10 we might set up a GPO to set Edge or Chrome as the default browser and have done with it.

Really? [emoji50]

Good for you being professional enough to do this. I had the unfortunate experience of having nothing when I started over a year ago. I've had to do a lot of graft and digging to find things out and something like this would have been a godsend.

Aren't *.SWF files shockwave/flash based? e.g. https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-will-ignore-flash-content-on-websites-no-longer-index-swf-files/332451/ From 2011 at 8x years old the content may be still relevant but the technology isn't. E.g. Boardworks who had flash-packed PowerPoint files, but no longer produce Boardworks CD Presentations and only do it as part of .... you guessed it..... online subscriptions. It's this old chestnut of allowing outdated content on the network potentially poses a security risk - essentially at 8x years old it's obsolete? i.e. you can't support it. I know we had that with Canon scanners here http://www.edugeek.net/forums/wired-networks/209253-visualisers-windows-10-a.html#post1794906 and https://www.sevenforums.com/drivers/46741-canoscan-lide20-64bit-driver.html where they simply didn't support them any longer.

We have RM Unify which does SSO into our school news page, Email, Office 365 etc. Anything updated/added into the MIS (SIMS) gets synced to the AD overnight. We don't use Teams much. I use OneDrive more and more myself. We use SharePoint for student stuff and news stuff. We have a RDS-based system where staff can then access the share drives via that. Works quite well to be fair.

Book of vouchers for date night, romantic dinner etc? That sort of thing?

Yet another thing to mark Windows 10 down as not a solid product fit for purpose. Why can't they focus on fixing bugs and THEN feature/system updates?

Out of interest - is this from an "R&D" viewpoint or a "we're moving away from RM" viewpoint?

At one place we had a coffee vending machine in our staff room. It was removed and replaced...... with nothing.

Yep pretty much what I do. I limit SIMs down to teacher stations and admin stations. A student machine won't have SIMs installed as 1) it doesn't need it and 2) adds a risk that students COULD access it. If a student is on a teacher PC, that's down to classroom management and teacher behaviour - NOT an IT issue.