DrBeaker

But... I thought Macs, ixxxx devices etc just "worked"? Also the two I'm hearing about are this Jamf or Mosyele. How do you find this Jamf stuff? Pros/Cons.

Not at rant at you OP but it makes me chuckle how everything has to be electronic nowadays. Signing-in systems, accident book, door access etc. Why? The one that annoys me most is electronic payslips - I still have payslips from all my jobs, but the electronic ones employers force you to use "expire" after 6x months. Funny how the bit of paper I've got from over a decade ago hasn't expired! Rant over. Google Forms FTW but who's going to end up adding changes etc. Scope creep is a major possibility with this "free stuff". Remember just because you might be technical enough to set it up and maintain it, doesn't mean the next person will be. E.g. Things my predecessor used to do I don't do as I'm not employed at the same scale, so simple answer there = No. Also what if there's an incident and there's some issue with entering it into a home-brew electronic system? Version control, history etc.

We've got Inventry now. Apart from some initial setup issues, seems OK. Best thing - I don't have anything to do with it now, it's all down to Reception and the SIMs admin to input people into there etc and Inventry pulls it through from SIMs. Had a few issues one was about AV and backup. I told them AFAIC it's not my machine so that's your problem, not my problem.

Is it worth getting fined over or the school being fined over something like 99p?

The solution IMHO is the teacher should take responsibility for making sure pieces of work they need (the MP3 files in this case) are obtained with legitimate licences to cover their use. If those MP3s end up on the school network and are found to be illegal - is the teacher going to get blamed or the IT department? Or solution number 2 the school purchases them and/or a licence. There's no real other solutions AFAIK. I've told teaching staff in all my roles they're breaking the law if they breach copyright and illegally obtain things like this. Not trying to be the "blocker" but this is the reality. If they can't afford it, they need to look elsewhere. Sounds harsh but remember how much these teachers are on compared to support staff. i.e I want Photoshop but as a school we can't afford it, so I can't have it - tough.

This is what really really grinds my gears with teachers. If that was a class without pens, would it be an IT support problem? If that was a class without paper, would it be an IT support problem? If that was a classroom without lighting or heating, would it be an IT support problem? But with all respect, how is that an IT problem? That's a teachers job to provide them with the items they need to do the class. In cookery lessons some schools provide the ingredients for students, some don't. The school doesn't go to the local Tesco and nick the ingredients off the shelf to provide them for the students.

Funny how us IT techs just doing our jobs makes us "a blocker" but I know what you mean. Maybe we should get some T-shirts made saying that? Considering these are supposed to be educated people I'm amazed how little they seem to understand sometimes.

No the less cabs the better, sometimes you've got to play the hand you're dealt though if you work in an older school for example. A lot of ours is listed so what can be done is limited. All within the distance run of Cat5/6 etc too? That's amazing and an incredible achievement! Are your schools relatively new builds?

Serverless? Still seems to be a bit of a con sometimes IMHO. e.g. with Adobe CC, they put the price up - if you still want to use it, you have to pay the price. How's that going to be any different with other cloud service providers etc as the years go on? If you want to move providers what about the egress charges? It all comes down to the SPoF is the Internet connection and the bandwidth of it. We know how far behind the UK is in terms of broadband infrastructure compared to other countries.

Only 2? No plans for IT suites?

Depending on available ££'s obviously - but .... 10G fibre backbone to the edge/core cabs. At least 1x 48-port PoE switch in each edge cab 1G to the desktop PoE WAPs + wireleess controller VoIP Phones On-site File servers seem to becoming redundant? At least 2x hosts for virtualisation UPS in each edge cab Big-ass UPS in main cab Generator (pipe-dream I guess)

How did you deal with the different resolutions i.e matching the TFT to the native rez of projector versus the native rez of the "Teacher" TFT?

Did a quick test of this last week in classroom. 2x identical TFTs. 1x TFT connected to the DisplayPort output via a DisplayPort-DVI cable (Teacher monitor) 1x TFT connected via VGA output - output from VGA on PC to VGA splitter, then split to the monitor and the projector (Student monitor) Not had chance to test the SMART board functionality with this setup.But the basics seem fine. - whatever is shown on the Teacher TFT is only shown to them. Whatever is shown on the Student TFT is automatically shown on the projector. We've had issues with teachers using Windows Key + P to clone/extend screens so this also seems to eliminate that problem. So the idea seems promising. How has everyone else who has setup their classrooms like this found it to be? Has it worked OK? Any resistance to it from staff or have they found it beneficial?

Has you got a safeguarding lead in school at all? Would be interesting to hear their opinion on this for classroom management, cyber-bullying etc?

I did world book day support for our Library in my previous place for 5x years. I always enjoyed the day. Getting to know the favourite books of some of the students and staff etc. It was interesting and I enjoyed it. I did think sometimes however the choice of outfits for some members of staff was a bit questionable, considering they worked in a school.

In my experience when it comes to IT suites Staff seem to complain about islands, complain about benching, complain about "not being able to see the students screens", complain about the students being too close together.... etc Unless they have something like a slowly rotating desk in the middle of the IT suite that goes 360 degrees during the course of the lesson that covers all the computers , doesn't it just come down to classroom management techniques and classroom management? I just think they like to complain.

For classroom or your own use at home/work? For myself at work I've either used whatever I was dishing out to staff/students. Othertimes I've brought my own kit as I wanted something better or more high-end and it's still my kit afterall and only me using it. For classrooms - For years we brought the cheapest mice and keyboards we could find. That caused us nothing but problems. Now I buy either the same as what @Rob_D suggested or the same mouse but a Kensingston keyboard. Never had a problem with proper branded stuff.

Fair point - but this is only now being added into the native Os. Prior to this you had to have multiple apps that would get you anywhere near the same functionality.

I've had people come to my office and ask "How did you do that?" when moving windows between screens - both staff and students. It's just normal to me now. I just need more graphics power or more desk/wall space to get any more monitors! Windows development of new and actually useful features in recent years seems to have really just evaporated into thin air. They push apps like Candy Crush etc into Windows 10 and make it a real struggle to remove them. But they don't seem to bother with developing multiple monitor support, taskbar etc with a multiple monitor setup. E.g. It took until Windows 10 for them to get the function to be able to snap 4 Windows to the corners in Windows 10. E.g. In Xp they actually introduced the zip format built into the file system, then in Windows 8 and above - remove the DVD functionality purely to save a few pennies. I don't get it. If it was a car we wouldn't go back to ones without ABS brakes, central locking etc and consider that "progress" TL;DR: Reduced functionality in Windows OS's over the years.

@AJWhite1970 We've got some kit replacements planned and a load of new monitors. I might try and do this in some of the classrooms. I've been intrigued by this concept and your post for a while. Apart from space issues with multiple monitors, I can't see any issues. We have some bog-standard TVs that the common complaint is "I can't freeze it" - it simply doesn't have that functionality as it's just a TV, so this solution would be ideal.

For work - I use Crucial. For home - I use Crucial. Never had any issues. Last time I brought some for a home device that wasn't from Crucial - it was faulty from the get-go, so always now Crucial. Maybe a bit tiny teeny weeny more expensive than sourcing it from other suppliers - but what's the point? For me my time's more valuable than saving a few quid - especially if for work stuff, the customer service and hassle-free experience from them is worth the extra price IMHO.

Hi All, Bit of an unusual topic I guess but with the stress and hassle of our jobs, thought this would be an interesting and more light-hearted topic to discuss. With EDC type of things - I wondered what everyone else's work keyrings are like. I'm always looking for ways to improve or add useful things to it and wondered what everyone else had on theirs? Mine currently consists of: Various work keys Small swiss army knife Micro-torch ("dollar-store" type) USB Memory stick Few personal keyrings (why not) Keys to office drawer/cupboard Mini-sharpie Wondered what other people's keyring bunches are like? I feel like a jailer sometimes as unfortunately we haven't got any fancy door access control systems with RFID etc so it's good ol' keys for me.

69 Schools??!! How on earth do you manage all that? How big is your IT team?

I'm not at an expert with DNS by any means, but when I changed ours from our old to new domain although it went live within a few hours - I noticed it took about a week for the DNS to propagate all the changes. Sometimes at work/home I'd get the new page/domain name, sometimes I'd get the old site/domain name and a few times I got nothing at all. Give it a couple more days at least.

Thanks @Jobos. What spec are you running on them at? Stock or been upgraded with RAM/SSD? Do you have any issues with running Wake-on-LAN on them? I've found some to be a bit intermittent with the WoL functionality, they don't seem to properly wake up.