Ephelyon

In either event, I'd far rather we had BYOD tablets than BYOD smartphones.

There's a lot of sense in what you say, but unfortunately basing pedagogy on technology, rather than vice versa, is very much not recommended for a number of reasons and is certainly unlikely to get past senior educational thought leaders and decision-makers (even Mr Gove). Alex, you might want to look at the free Meraki MDM from Cisco; it works well for iOS devices though not so well for Android. As for SmoothWall issues, I'd set up a transparent proxy using background tab authentication. It's working well for us here with both iPads and Android tablets.

Some of the time it will work, but it's equally unrealistic to suggest that we should just "tick the box" of any misuse problems by passing the buck to the teachers. It's never worked that way.

Unfortunately I don't specifically, but this is the supplier who provided them with the tablets and they're shown in the videos: Tablet Computers for Schools - Benefits & Challenges They seem to be something like this but with a USB to micro-USB adapter supplied: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Keyboard-Case-Android-Internet-Tablets/dp/B004GHSRIA/

This is why you go for the keyboard case for (in our case) about an extra tenner. I agree with your points in general though.

@Marshall_IT, do we apply the "classroom/behaviour management" rule to our OWN workstations? Of course not! There's no way the teacher can be monitoring everything everyone is doing all at the same time unless they're spending all their time doing that, and that's then assuming they'd actually know what they're looking for (some will, some won't). Relying on the teacher to spot abuse/misuse in 100% of cases simply won't work; that's been the entire case for some manner of technological interdiction for at least the past decade. What @localzuk is saying is that all of this falls away as soon as the endpoint device lies outside the scope of management.

We managed to get 32 quad-core Android tablets (Zenithink C94), keyboard cases, a charging/storage trolley and a wireless access point on top for around £6.5K. Had problems with them at first which flashing a later ROM has solved, but now we have a bookable resource that enables 1:1 Internet access in e.g. a science lab. Fair enough, as said earlier, no school wants to be paying £60K for 1:1 pupil tablets, but what if they could spend a third of that to gain three classrooms' worth of mobile ICT suites if all they need to do that lesson is Internet research, take pictures or light access to school work (over RDP)?

I can't argue, but I'd have thought that comes down to the user, surely?

In order to avoid that very allegation, sometimes a school will deliberately set a pot of their own money aside and e.g. charge parents £10/month of what is effectively a £12/month agreement in real terms.

Without commenting personally either way, let me play Devil's Advocate here. The "Why Apple?" question: it's not Apple - it's iOS. There's far more malware out there for Android, for a start. Plus, free MDMs like Meraki are actually useful for iDevices because of the amount of configuration/management options you get... far fewer for Android or similar. Add in the iOS Configuration Utility - if you can work out how to use it! - and you're onto a winner. Considering how much the more decent non-iOS biased MDMs out there cost, I've not run the figures myself but if you add up the difference in price between say at least an iPad 3 and a decent Android tablet, per device, versus the per-device licensing costs for the MDM to manage Android properly... I don't know, it could be interesting. Also, a local school here introduced this scheme in Year 7 last year and has produced a very comprehensive document with 42 FAQs that would seem to cover the issue in great detail - whether or not you agree with all of that school's answers, I think it's still an interesting read. I certainly wouldn't say they hadn't put much thought into it. Here it is: http://www.upton-by-chester.cheshire.sch.uk/Websites/upton/files/Content/3605391/FAQ_about_iPads_at_Upton.pdf

I would imagine it could be provided and/or regulated by the Teaching Agency as this is a body that already exists and has formal responsibility for the training of teachers, among many other things. When it was the TDA it used to have the same responsibility for associate staff training as well, but now of course it doesn't as that was not considered part of its "pertinent work".

Another INTJ over here.

I think it's an interesting proposal without commenting for or against, so much of it being circumstantial and down to quality of implementation as others have said. What do we think might happen if the same approach were applied to school associate staff, with the relevant professional body imposing a similar scheme? Not all associate staff job roles would require it, but how would licensing by the BCS affect us, assuming of course that it was linked to CPD so as not to become a stick to beat us with?

If I can make it down for Fri/Sat I'll be looking to stay here: North London Hostel - Palmers Lodges Hillspring Nice place, cheap and 5 mins from Jubilee. Been there before.

Done. For information, we're using locally-hosted SIMS. One comment: many of the questions relate to the "reliability" of the MIS. While the inherent stability of any product is always a factor, I think it should be noted that, if you're hosting it locally, the way one might answer those questions - indeed, the way that I have answered many of them - is likely to be skewed by how reliable and well-developed the underlying infrastructure is (re IT strategy and Development Plans, available time and funding etc). It's something that applies far less, if at all, when using someone else's infrastructure. Consequently, comparing the reliability of any MIS product running on local vs hosted infrastructure will lead to apples and pears in a sense, as different schools using (for the sake of argument) a single cloud-based infrastructure or MIS solution provider are more likely to experience any reliability issues "across the board", whereas for a group of schools each using the same MIS on their wildly varying infrastructures, it's more likely that any issues experienced would have considerably greater scope for variety. (I'm not saying these questions or the survey itself aren't appropriate, just potentially some food for thought for when you come to justify the evidence used in the dissertation as it's a typical hole that people like to poke in academic studies - damn troublemakers!) Also, are you drawing a distinction between: 1) a MIS that could just as well be locally-hosted, but happens to be hosted elsewhere; and 2) a MIS designed from the ground up for cloud-based hosting (e.g. web-based perhaps)?

I remember these words from a good while ago: "When is a boy not a boy? You actually ask for socks for Christmas. You get socks. You are happy."

The Provision Map Writer product from Blue Hills Software is the kind of thing I'd recommend if you were in England and it was a programme that existed within a school or a school federation. It's usually used for things like monitoring the SEN provision and justifying the Pupil Premium spend over here, but there could be something like it out there that's more specific to what you want (and your location). For info: Provision Mapping - Inclusive Education – Blue Hills

Merry Christmas to all! =]

I couldn't believe the delicious irony when my viewing of Snowden's speech was cut short halfway through to be replaced by this:

Perhaps you could ask the admins where you are?

While RM does use many reseller channels to distribute its products, as far as I'm aware none can continue to do so once RM themselves have withdrawn their own product. May I ask the reason for your particular interest in CC3, considering support for Windows XP will end in April?

Quoting from a post on said forum: "I have managed to get a copy of RM Auditor from my school as a family member works as the network administrator and was more than happy to give me the files." RM software is a licensed product! Having said that, it's true that CC3 is no longer being sold and (to my knowledge) the same goes for RM Auditor. Some companies do end up giving away or turning a blind eye to the technically illegal and unlicensed use of older versions of their software, to be fair. However, I still detect dodginess...

Where did you get this from?

You can just update from Summer, did ours last night.

Sign-up pages do have that apprehensive feeling about them, I suppose? But in this case I think you needn't worry. Implementing custom APIs is something an organisation making use of Google Apps may go for if they want to, but it's by no means essential. An Application Programming Interface exposes the ability to make your own custom stuff integrate and work with what you're going for now. If you're setting this up from scratch and don't need to tie it back to anything else, you have nothing to fear from this. Many EduGeekers have implemented Google Apps at their schools without the need to start fiddling with APIs and the like. I think you'll be fine.