DrBeaker

I had similar with a TV, VGA and speakers in a classroom buzzing constantly. After reading similar posts and likely this very post itself - Installing one of these https://cpc.farnell.com/pulse/pls00548/ground-loop-isolator-3-5mm-p-s/dp/AV25542 solved the problem.

Temp today in my temp office https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp6L_D4lz7g

Especially annoying when people want to add last-minute things to plans purely down to they forgot, their incompetence, their lack of planning etc.

When we get a new phone system I'm going to put an extension in and forward those calls to the "IT manager" extension.

Building upon the Trello and Kanban board, I've set one up on a physical whiteboard and going to try that over the summer to see how well it works.

Groupcall Xporter is what we use. Only had issues the once with a new SIMs server getting stuff moved across, but they did it and did a good job of it. I remember a bit of hassle initially getting in touch with them and getting a callback.

We've got got similar type devices - Dell Latitude 3189's with an Intel Pentium 1.1GHz. I've found it's too slow for what they expect the device to do. The fact it runs at 100% usage a fair amount of the time proves it's not fit for purpose IMHO.

Must confess...I thought this thread was about unprofessional introductions by companies to staff e.g. new staff

Thanks for al the useful ideas everyone. I appreciate the feedback and some very useful ideas amongst everyone here. I'd never even heard of this Kanban board thing until your post. I've since read up and watched a few videos on the topic, it seems quite useful and simple enough to use. I need to keep track of the big jobs and small jobs, jobs that involve others like site, contractors etc, jobs that have been started - but simple enough to manage by myself as it's going to be me keeping the list updated etc and also me doing the work. So I don't want to burden myself with pointless admin work. E.g. I tried to put this into a word doc but it seems like it's going to be very convoluted to update and track.

Thanks for all the replies so far folks. It's just little old me at this school, I can manage the list (it's me who has put the jobs on there) but don't want to spend half my day doing paperwork for it. Be able to schedule things in when I know there's a window to get the work done and easily update them. You can tick that job off the list with the new pen!

The best compromise I've seen to date was with a normal whiteboard as the screen, an Epson short-throw projector that projected onto said board and a laser unit of some kind that interacted with the 3x to give interactive functionality. This post seems ironic as this week one classroom has had the roller whiteboard and interactive smartboard removed, in favour of an old interactive SMART flat panel.

It surprises me when schools get rid of their libraries. Although books aren't the "in-thing" these days. Our library in one school had an IT suite upstairs. I helped them get a projector and a screen installed for downstairs for world book day, they used it for various events and to show film club etc. We modernised the library to that point it wasn't simply abandoned and gotten rid of like a few schools I know have done. They had a TV with some digital signage on which was used for a while for book reviews etc. The library should be a place for students to go study, use a computer or tablet etc. They've been the foundation of knowledge for centuries and will still exist in one form or another.

That's a good tip. Thanks. How did you manage to get the time converted in Excel from minutes and seconds into total seconds? Are the labels in the column manual labels or a total from the cells?

We used Google Sheets at one place with comments etc. OK if one person is working on the job, but the longer it went, the more unwieldy it became and relied upon the person doing it to update the job comments and strike the job through as done. Otherwise no-one would know it had been done.

I didn't even know you could do that in Excel with F11! I've tried that just using your example and it's getting there. Did you format those cells for the time data, or just enter the data directly without any cell formatting or formulas for time? This is what I got first of all - the units on the Y axis just seem random from the data itself. I tried to format the cells to actually show minutes and seconds but maybe I've been overthinking it.

Hi All, Ok this might seem a very dumb question to the Excel gurus out there (I don't count myself as one of them). This is what I'm trying to do... I want to put some data into an Excel spreadsheet and then create a graph from that data. The information I want is the login times in minutes and seconds on our old computers. Then the login times in minutes and seconds on our new computers. To show that we've got a decrease in login times. I know the raw figures I have prove this, but I'm having a brain fart when it comes to this, putting it into a visual graph and I can't seem to figure this out. Anybody have any ideas etc. or done similar? Thanks

Hi All, With the summer holidays approaching - Just wondered how other techs either lone-techs or as part of a team manage their list of jobs to do over the summer? Might seem a simple enough question but I've tried Word, Excel, G docs etc over the years. Nothing has really been simple and easily enough to identify, manage, update and prioritise/re-prioritise jobs accordingly or plan this into a schedule of works sort of thing - not without a lot of time being taken to manage this paperwork. Has anybody got any good ways/better ways of doing this? Thanks

I saw something similar the other day. It made me chuckle but it when I was logged on as a test account. Will have to check to see if I get the problem again. I can't say I paid much attention to it to be honest.

It's the same as with us IT folk though, if we get a report of a site being unblocked or getting through the filtering - we have to test as all the accounts. So I'd imagine IT having a high false positive rate due to that. Same as IT folk having access to social media etc, we have to update websites etc or investigate when kids put stuff on about the school they shouldn't do.

After years of doing it - I'm SICK of molly-coddling the teaching staff. They're professionals, they can act like it. By comparison to support staff salaries, they are very well-paid so a few sheets of paper and ink are nothing if it's for "teaching and learning". Otherwise wait until you get to work and print it off. I would ask that teacher how they are going to be GDPR-compliant when printing at home? If us techies have to work from home, we don't get a laptop, the time back etc so IMHO (but YMMV) that excuse from a teacher about ink is a cop-out and doesn't fly with me. E.g. We had one teacher the once complain about the quality of printouts from her A3 colour laser printer - upon investigation only to find out she'd been printing off loads of stuff in full colour for her hen party!

But if you pull at that thread...."work" stuff, the school should be paying - home electric used for "work", broadband for the internet connection used for "work", a chair for them to sit down in to do their "work", heating, lighting etc etc. What would happen if their partner at home picks up the confidential printout from the printer - that's a GDPR breach then.

I know years ago we had some oddities with GPOs and Windows 7 Pro v Enterprise. That's the only real time that was an issue. Has it been tried on another SMARTboard to see if it works, or might be a dodgy SMARTboard?

This is what I have a TP-LINK Archer D2 AC750 - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00OA4YJFY/ref=dp_cr_wdg_tit_nw_mr User interface isn't the best out there but good enough. Still going for the max speed I can get from BT and good enough until it breaks or needs replacing. One reason I brought this one was for the guest wifi network.

How about something like this https://mightygadget.co.uk/best-vdsl-wifi-routers/ ? I've got a TP-Link router myself for the best part of 5x years and it's mostly pretty rock-solid.

Can you turn the wireless features etc off in this router? Then just literally use it as the router and get your own access points etc? I know with Virgin you can apparently put the hub into modem-only mode and then use your own equipment if you want. I've always used my own router with my broadband (not Virgin) and was surprised the last time I asked IT colleagues, I was the only one to do so. Everyone else used the ISP-provided router/modem.