SomeITBloke

Performance and usability seems to have fallen off a cliff since the move to the MV3 extension. Choice seems to be blue dot overlay constantly or delays before search terms / sites are actually blocked. I have tickets open for a number of school and apparently the DevOps team are due to release an update for the Chromebook extension, [3.0.28] but no details on a release for Edge and Chrome Browser extensions. Whether this fixes the issues remains to be seen.

Kapow Primary & TT Rockstars down here

IT support standards for schools has has been added to the DfE Meeting digital and technology standards IT support standards for schools and colleges

Bit of a strange one, this week I have starting seeing the following. When a Chromebook is connected to an external interactive display (4K) the Chromebooks internal display is matching the screens resolution, even though the device native resolution is 1920x1080, and everything goes tiny. Also when connecting a 3:2 device to a 16:9 screen the Chromebook display matches the external display, so you get black bars top and bottom of the internal 3:2 display, rather that black bar on the external display. It's like there has been an update to ChromeOS. I might have missed something but this is different behaviour the previously.

Highly recommend @RedwayNetworks_Michael We are at the final stages of a whole school CtC project and they have been fantastic throughout.

Anyone else having issues this morning? All my sites are stuck loading but status page shows no issues 😢

It could also be argued that if a failing school has decent wifi5 or and/or no wifi6 devices already, the £10Ks being thrown at it would be better spent elsewhere to improve the school....

Asked that question this morning, 2025-26 funding is based on a being a RISE school.

It might be that the MAT assigned to supporting your school is using Google rather than Microsoft, hence all support and resources coming in via Google Classroom.

And to think, people complain Google Workplace is too simple. 🤣

In exactly the same situation here too.

Oh the days of ripping a DVD and waiting for hours for it to encode on a Tiny Pentium MMX 233 only to find the audio out of sync or the final file bigger than the original vob file

One of my schools went with https://www.signable.co.uk/

How Many endpoints? 200 or less Action1

If you haven't got any OVS agreement in place and are looking to set one up, look at the possibility of an EES agreement that will allow you to purchase Extended Support for Win 10 ( £1 per device for the first year) That will kill 2 birds with one stone and buy you time while you come up with a digital strategy.

Yes, that matches the subject header of our email from the DfE that went to the HT

60ppm / 2 page scanning / 4 trays / internal finisher £117 per quarter 70ppm / 2 page scanning / 4 trays / external finisher / hole punch /booklet maker inc z-fold £307 per quarter service 4h onsite + toner and staples inc

Approx. 18 months in to a 60 month contract. Framework pricing via YPO

Mono - 0.0019 Colour - 0.015

I have been using the free tier in conjunction with Ping Castle & Action1. Using it more like Ping Castle, running periodically against the schools domains and public IPs along side the LAN scanner. I just have the client installed on single machine and then use that to scan the network, kind of mimicking what a bad actor would do. Can be quite the eye opener in the same way Ping Castle can. Only real downside in my usage scenario is it can only scan a /24 subnet at a time. Seems to be another great free way to check your networks security posture. At the end of the day, you don't know what you don't know.

Yep, had 3 so far today 🙄

That's what the Cycle to Work scheme is for.

UK ISP Virgin Media Suffers Broadband Outage After Routing Issue

The Microsoft Store for Education was retired in March 2023. Drop @VeryPC_Colin_M a message, he sorted out a letter for one of my schools last last year.