2ilent8cho

After having SIMS for 15 years then moving to iSAMS a few years ago my condolences, I would not wish SIMS even on my enemies, nobody should have to suffer Solus 3. No MIS is perfect, but if I started ranting about SIMS it would cause a buffer overflow on this thread . iSAMS is bliss in comparison, fully web based so client platform neutral with individual Teacher, Parent and Student iOS/Android apps.

I would say get a basic iPad, education price without VAT should be between £230 and £240. The iPad (like iPhones) generally have a decent support lifecycle. The iPad Air 2 from 2014 is still fully supported with the latest iOS, how long before that Galaxy Tab stops getting fixes? Apple even still occasionally release updates for the older devices stuck on iOS 12 such as iPad mini 2 and iPad Air 1st Gen.

Apple provide the option to specify 3rd party filters that then apply on the device not the firewall, so the content is filtered onsite or hotspotted. We use Lightspeed as they provide a Plug-in for iOS for this. You configure it under a Configuration Profile -> Content Filter and specify the Filter Type as Plug-in along with the settings provided by the filtering product maker. See if your existing filtering product supports this.

Thats our main caching server stats, saved us 1.57TB of bandwidth in last 30 days.

This is just part of the MacOS Security in newer versions. You need to push a Privacy Preference Policy with your MDM to stop that from appearing. You can use this utility to generate one giving bash the accessibility rights which is what it looks like its asking for in that screenshot https://github.com/jamf/PPPC-Utility

Thats why its confusing, if it is that why are headlines Energy cap to go up by £693 a year? Why not say electricity cap to go from 25p kWh to 45p kWh for example, that I can get my head around.

I wish everything was very clearly in kWh and quick and easy to get too, some companies make it so hard to get this figure on quotes. They will ask silly questions like how big is your house, or sweeping statements on comparison website like you could save £400 a year. No, just tell me the unit price and the standing charge that's all I need, not 'We estimate your usage will be £1050 a year'. I don't even understand this energy cap thing, it does not seem to make sense, as I'm sure I could run up £10,000 a year in electricity if I wanted too.

Not come across this before, but my guess would be the printer has done an update and knocked off the Bonjour/Airprint setting? Have you gone on the web interface on the Ricoh printer and checked its all enabled?

Per year, its an extra 65p per device for Alert.

We pay £3 per iPad for Lightspeed, with almost 2000 devices.

IT Suites for the ICT lessons are all iMac's too and all Teaching Assistants and support staff have a Macbook aswell. They really are not as expensive as you think. £707 is the cost of a MacBook Air to us which is what non teachers get, teachers get the Pro, at £915 we would expect 8 years out of that. Best trackpads, decent screens, battery life of around 20 hours , we have recently refreshed our 2013 Airs with 2020 M1 13" Pro's after 8 years. We got rid of fixed teacher stations 9 years ago staff just 'Airplay' their Mac to a TV, or use their iPad Airplayed if they want to draw or write. We are just a high school with the same funding formula as other schools, but Senior Management invest heaving in ICT.

We're really annoyed they have no more iPads available. We did manage to get some 9th Gens late last year, but had an email to say more devices were available to order and cannot order what we need. We are 1:1 iPad deployment for students and staff with MacBooks for staff too so the devices that are left to pick from are completely useless to us so won't bother.

That Mac should be able to go as high as Catalina (10.15.7) . https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT211683 has the download links to older OS's , but they will make the App Store load to download. Are you signed into the App Store? I get a 'Get' button when I load any of the links.

Managed Apple ID's cannot use the App Store, its expected you manage the Apps and deploy them. You can however use the Managed Apple ID for the iCloud services whilst still using a personal Apple ID for the App Store. So just sign out of the App Store and sign in with their a personal Apple ID.

Look for the following file on a Mac with a working Sibelius install /Library/Application Support/Avid/Sibelius/_manuscript/LicenceServerInfo if it exists you have a licensing server and the contents should tell your the IP of it.

We replaced projectors with just 75" TVs in 2017 still going strong today. If they need interactive they AirPlay their iPad to the TV and use their Apple Pencil or use the standard whiteboard next to the TV in every room. Most choose to just AirPlay their Mac with a Powerpoint. Even 15 years ago when we had fixed stations and Promethan interactive boards + Projectors they were not used interactively bar occasionally in Maths. The standard TV's might be designed for 4 hours a day in the home. So that's 4 Hours * 7 Days a week * 52 weeks in a year, so will be running for 1456 Hours a year (Likely more as I think 4 hours average usage a day is low). Now lets put them in a school for us they would be on for 8 Hours a day (8:30 to 4:30). So 8 Hours * 5 Days a week * 37 weeks a year so 1480 Hours a year. Not really much of a difference. But lets say a TV does break , a 75" standard TV costs less than half so you could have 2 TV's and change for the cost of an Interactive, possibly even 3 TVs.

You just use bulk printing and print by House, Year, Form or Subject?

We moved from SIMS to iSAMS about 4 years ago at the high school, and from SIMS to Scholarpack at the primary schools, no way would we go back to SIMS. If we had to move off iSAMS I would likely be looking at Arbor , or anything else on the market. SIMS would be last.

I've got the 16" MacBook Pro too, but I just use the 13" M1 Pro for gaming instead as Apples entry level, low end M1 CPU runs them better whilst emulated than the i9 with the AMD Radeon 5500 in my 16" does nativity which is bonkers. Really sad Apple did not show off the high end devices yesterday, as I'm itching to see what their non entry level processors can do.

I saw the new iMac's in Currys last week, they look much better in real life than in the photos, but I still don't like the design without an Apple logo on the chin in the centre, if they had just done that I would have been happy. If I were getting a new Mac desktop I would likely get a Mini anyway, but I've been very happy with my M1 13" Pro I got last year, still find it weird playing something like Cities Skylines or 7 Days to Die which would usually send laptop fans loopy and its its practically silent, and the battery does not drain at an alarming rate.

If only they would support WONDE , then we could use it with iSAMS. We hate the ParentPay MIS sync too as its a manual spreadsheet job for us, we don't run SIMS anymore.

We went Apple TVs back in 2013 when 3rd Gen were the current model which are ancient now and still work with Airplay fine. There should be zero concern in investing in 4th Gens at this point when its A) Current B) Previous model is still working fine for Airplay.

We have over 300 Mac's and 1600 iPads across 1 high and 3 primary schools, no issue using Office 365 for the cloud and iPads/Macs for the hardware we use each products strengths. We were 1:1 with Windows and netbooks from 2009 to 2014 and then moved to iPads, if anything using iOS/iPads in a 1:1 deployment with pupils is a much better choice than Windows based devices, based on my a decade of experience in both camps. Any of the initial iPad annoyances have now gone (such as having to manually create Apple ID's), we have Apple School Manager, with Managed Apple ID's that integrate with Office 365 for authentication, coupled with JAMF as our MDM. We pay £235 an iPad, we are not going to get a Windows based device for that kind of money that will last all day on battery for lessons, and still be delivering that all day battery 4 years on and still be smooth to use. That's before we even get into the build quality of Windows devices in that price bracket. Why would we choose worse windows devices just because we are using Office 365? That just seems bonkers. Office 365 supports iOS devices well, so one being Microsoft and another being Apple does not even enter the equation.

Leasing iPads always seems very expensive to me unless there is something I'm not seeing. So our students get a brand new iPad in Year 7 and it lasts them until Year 11. We buy our iPads at around £235 each, a big Apple education specialist has on their website iPad leasing at £6.14 a month for a 3 year lease (Thats just an iPad , no MDM licence). So that's £221.04 to not own and have to return after 3 years, so for the sake of £14 is leasing really worth it? We have just over 900 kids, but lets just say 900. So the cost per year for us to lease would be 900 x £6.14 x 12 so £66,312. If we average the 900 out over 5 year groups, and just buy 180 iPads every year for Year 7 as they start the school it's £42,300 a year. Not only is in thousands cheaper for us, but we actually own the devices. We use old iPads for hotswaps if we have a student iPad in for screen repair or we could trade them in against the new iPads. Even the iPad Air 2 which came out in 2014 which is over 6 years ago is still supported with the latest iOS.

We have 1:1 for all 5 years with iPads, which meant we were in a lucky position to use remote online learning instantly last March. The lockdowns/remote working made them use digital exclusively and they now prefer it and have no intention of going back to how they use to work. Some departments like Science and Maths are using OneNote for Exam Papers and the teachers love it, it which means they don't have to carry piles and piles of heavy exam papers around to mark, spend hours photocopying , and they just mark stuff on OneNote electronically . We gave the kids those cheap stylus that work out at 8p each to help when having to draw a diagram on OneNote and the Teachers have the proper Apple Pencil for their iPads. We are going to start reducing the amount of printers and photocopiers we lease now as they are just not being used anymore, our staff are very comfortable using electronic documents now.