Chris_Cook

I'm presuming you are on SSDs? Are these big enough, or failing? Its possible to clear out the profiles too frequently, if students re-use the same PCs every other week for example. Are the logins slow all the time, or just during lesson changeover periods?

With LLDP its a matter of balancing easy of discovering the network structure vs not giving out to much info to people who shouldn't know it. Its quite low bandwidth (1 or 2 packets per minute, and only goes to the next device). If you're not familiar, you can use an LLDP utility, network switch, or Wireshark with the 'LLDP' filter to see the port number, hostname and IP address of the switch you are connected to. Quite handy if you are not familiar with your network, or if you need to look up which switch port to configure a VLan on etc. You can also see which IP phones are plugged in where, and use things like LLDP-med for auto config etc. Provided your switches have been setup securely, then its probably not too much of a risk. If you where worried, then limiting it to uplink/sfp ports, or rx-only would be beneficial. I'm not sure what the default settings are on procurve. Most of the switches I've come across, its just completely disabled across the board by default.

Salary Scale E Point 9 – 15 - £26,472 - £29,214 p.a. (depending on experience) 36 hours per week / 52 weeks per year (Working hours 8am-4pm, or 8:15am-4:15pm Start Date: As soon as possible Coombe Academy Trust is a successful and collaborative multi academy trust consisting of two secondary schools, three primary schools and a central team in the Royal borough of Kingston upon Thames. The Trust is seeking to appoint a motivated individual to complement our friendly, professional IT Service Team, and have the commitment to be part of an innovative and forward-thinking academy trust. The role will be providing front line support to staff, students and other users of the Trust IT systems. Working as part of a team to ensure support requests are logged and dealt with in a timely manner and under the direction of the IT Managers to maintain, repair, install and update school devices and systems. Job Advert No Agencies or CVs. Closing Date 9am Monday 7th August 2023 http://www.coombeschools.org

Its similar to this: https://bbs.homeshopmachinist.net/forum/general/35006-look-what-followed-me-home-today

Found an old Acorn/BBC econet box hiding in a cupboard the other day. The mains socket was still labeled "Do not switch off"... One of our network shares was called "WP51", after Word Perfect 5.1 from about 1991. There's a CNC Lathe in one of our cupboards, I'm not sure if its the Dos or BBC version. The software seemed to run in Dosbox, but I've not had the time to try it live, as the dept don't use/need it. I've also got myself an Avolites Pearl lighting desk from the mid 90's that I still use.

So the 2 main issues were duplicate contacts, and old staff contracts not having ended (so staff seemed to be on multiple contracts if they have changed roles). Its entirely possible that these are peculiarities in the way our schools have used and entered data onto sims. My point would be to allow some time for correcting this as it can be quite admin intensive and issues might well be school-specific. With the duplicate contacts, we made the conscious decision to wait until after migration to fix, as Arbor is easier. We also had issues where the same email address was linked to multiple entities on Arbor - EG family email addresses. This causes issues with parents logging in if say the child has this email address as personal email address. Its easy to fix, just causes odd error messages and takes time. The staff contracts was picked up months after migration.

You need to get your data and admin staff to use it and run through some of your critical day-to-day/annual activities like admissions, attendance, reports, data collection, behavioral management etc. Once you've chosen, the leads in these areas need to do some training/setup sessions with your new provider. You will get much better user acceptance once you've done this. Its no good your IT savvy staff picking the best or easiest looking to them, if you've got to make major changes to your processes. Something you and your staff need to accept is something mentioned in another thread : Bromcom and Arbor (And all the others) are not sims and work differently. (Better in many cases, but some will argue not all). However, many of the differences are why you are changing. You also want to make sure your data around parental contacts and staff contracts are good in sims. The data migration is very slick, but we had a lot of tidying up after our migration.

Do you use the google admin console, or some other MDM solution?

I think this is possible, just set the setting for the OU for the users instead of the OU for the chromebooks

rclone can be useful for this, but its not the most user-friendly bit of software. I've found large files upload quite quickly, but lots of small files can take much longer as there is a speed limit with google I think.

Can you work something out with your finance team? Maybe get another budget setup for replacement chargers, then at least it can be reported on at the end of year how much has been spent. Another option might be to allocate a charger per room and fit it inside some sort of electrical enclosure.

You would almost certainly need to have a 63a connection for all of that. The equipment will have a data plate with the power rating on it. It will probably be in Watts. Each 13a socket or extension lead can cope with about 3000 Watts but only if it's fully uncoiled. Otherwise it can melt and catch fire. I would question if that grill came wired like that from the manufacturer. It should probably have a single 32a connector on it. I'd want to make sure that someone hasn't just wired 2 13a plugs in parallel as that would be exceedingly dangerous. I don't think I've ever seen a legitimate piece of equipment wired with 2 plugs. This is definitely one of those things where you need to get a qualified electrician to check it all out, as the risk of an electrical fire is quite high. That could get very expensive very quickly. You also need to get the feed to the fuse board checked that it has capacity for another 32/63a.

Does anyone have any good recommendations for large(ish) laser cutters for schools? We are looking at replacing out aging GCC Mercury II after many years of driver issues and now the laser tube needing re-gassing. Hardware wise its been good though. Ideally I'd want something that works with more than just windows (we are moving 1 to 1 with chromebooks as much as possible). I'm not sure if that's a big ask. Windows 11 compatibility is something we would need.

I'm struggling with this as well this week. Do these work arounds work with a radius server on 2012r2?

It might be worth checking them when cold and with a different gauge. Temperature from driving can increase the pressure. It might be that they just didn't check the spec for the car.

I think I'd start with an audit of what software is getting used across your organisation, and then look at your cybersecurity implementation. Also your internet connection. Unless your currently stuck with o365, then its worth looking at the apps across the other platforms - especially Googles offerings. Some apps might not play nicely with cloud storage. Our finance has no end of issues with google drive and offline MS office for example. But most staff found google apps easier that the online word etc that we were using at the time (this has almost certainly improved, but worth checking). The more cloud you go, the more you need to invest in things like 2fa, and password complexities. You need a reliable (and redundant) internet connection these days. This is really a general requirement though. Its worth taking your time over, and getting potential cloud systems in front of actual users is critical to good take up of the systems. Don't just ask power users and the Computing department, as they can probably make anything work, or might pick a more powerful system over the easier to use system. Its also worth looking at your MIS as a related but separate project. There are big gains to be had with cloud in terms of collaborative working and the ability to support multiple hardware/OS platforms. But it all needs to support T&L and the admin/leadership needs of the school(s) - otherwise you will struggle to get staff off the old reliable system.

If you are with LGFL, then they should have licences for schools.

We are currently setup as a combination - each building for user-facing wired devices, and then separate site-wide vlans for each type of wifi, BMS, CCTV, AP management etc. With less devices being plugged in and moving to Wifi, I'd probably base it more on the type of device and level of security it needs. Obviously Vlans alone don't give the security, but its a start for firewalling things off. One of the big reasons for us was to reduce the risk of network loops taking down the whole network. These days with more up to date switches, STP handles this better.

When we did this a while ago - admittedly this is about a decade now - we went for Iiyama IPS screens. Its similar to what was in Imacs at the time. Its probably worth looking at the work environment. Glossy screens might give better colour reproduction than matt, but glare can be a problem.

We found the shredder method quite messy. It did destroy the ribbons though. I'm still picking bits up from years ago.

I'd recommend basing it around Google Slides if you have it. You can then just let them update it. As others have said, I would try and avoid being involved in the day to day running of it and just provide technical/system support. Chrome sign builder is good if you have something running chrome os you can attach.

Framework laptops are good. Pricey though. Refurbs from Dell, Lenovo etc are often good on a budget.

I thought POP was quite good compared to Promissor. But that's not saying much. I wasn't impressed by the secret password on POP when it loses connection.

Google sites here. Very easy for other people to manage.

We've had some issues with Lenovos, but not usually permanent faults. We do get a lot that seem to crash and not charge until reset. To fix that, you can hold down the reset/refresh key (above the 4 key) and press the power button. The other thing is having the device plugged in when when you press the power button. You can hard-power off devices by doing the reset above, but unplugging the power while you hold both buttons down. This puts it in a similar state to when its new, so the device won't power on without the PSU plugged in.