Ditto

I have not really got involved in this thread, but I did laugh when the quote "But rules are rules" appeared, especially after the recent FIA statement and lots of comments in this thread. A neologism (if 10+ years is still neo), from political satire, comes to mind - omnishambles!

Absolutely a no-no and the you were right to complain - not least as the rudeness is out of order. I suspect several laws have been broken here. The school needs to fix this asap as they could find themselves in hot water. The was a recent case that is covered on another thread about a ring doorbell and covering other people's property - your situation is different but there are some parallels. The case got lots of comments but the judgement in some parts was contrary to what some edugeekers expected. If you want to look at the case in detail see https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Fairhurst-v-Woodard-Judgment-1.pdf

I absolutely have seen the same with SLT and trust leadership all the way to the top. What they are also completely missing, is the fact that the are spending public money and not fulfilling the role of spending/investing accordingly. Whether full procurement or not, that should happen with all significant school spend, whether it's school meals contracts, cleaning contracts, IT support contracts or MIS software contracts.

Just finished the second chapter. Really interesting to see the names for the console that were considered. Also, the fact that one of the names considered was used subsequently used by another huge company not long after - see Chapter three has just gone age-restricted - very annoying.

As school census returns include the school MIS in use, next year is going to interesting to watch in turns of churn. I'd be interested in any predictions from @bringmoredata, but in time we will know the impact of the recent forced contractual changes. Personally, I suspect we will see records broken in terms of churn, but that SIMS will hold on to more than we might expect, and that'll bring ESS a certain amount of guaranteed income for the next three years.

Anyone know if their school is part of the Stone King collective action - https://schoolsweek.co.uk/400-schools-sign-up-to-take-collective-action-against-sims/ Clearly, SK view things differently to DfE.

Is it perhaps related to this - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-local-restrictions-in-education-and-childcare-settings/contingency-framework-education-and-childcare-settings which was updated yesterday.

What a complete waste of electrons from DfE. They've completed ignored the main issue on the timeframe and their earlier advice has now only exacerbated it.

Just checked Screenly website - that's an interesting model and pricing structure. I know convenience can have a cost, but the per screen price seems to high IMHO, but with the right skillset, I can see why OSF works for those that can. I guess on a cost benefit analysis, if you costed your time, how does it compare against the paid for version. Yodeck's marketing is interesting. I guess they are not compelled to mention free OSF is available, but it shows you need to do your research!

In the end, the sworn statement got resolved and the 14 days was from the point of the positive test was confirmed. The spanner in the works was 4 children, half the travellers, needing to do daily LFT's for their Pass Sanitaire. Our travel agent have been pretty weak. The change to requiring Pass Sanitaire was brought in last Friday - they didn't notify us until well after the weekend. Each test, if negative, activates the pass for 24 hours. All slots were probably already taken by unvaccinated French/EU children, but there was zero availability. A skiing holiday without a lift pass is not a skiing holiday. What was really annoying is the travel companies website had a statement to not worry if we couldn't book locally in Tignes and flippantly suggested trying Bourg St. Maurice or Val D'Isere. Presumably they know how mountain travel works!!! They've done absolutely nothing to address the problem. We were in the situation of potentially having to go and having 4 kids not allowed to ski. The just announced news that from this Saturday, only essential travel to France is permitted has made it all irrelevant. Your partially right in terms of family disappointment, my eldest son is going to be very disappointed. For me it's a massive pressure release.

Are you paying the sort of fees suggested by Screenly's competitor Yodeck in this promotion https://www.yodeck.com/screenly-alternative/

Are you on Windows 10? I don't know much about it other than every time my laptop reboots, Wondows Hello come up. I think it has some non-password options. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/can-i-sign-in-to-windows-without-a-password-a72b85ae-75ae-4cfa-5c7d-186a61fcce92

See you on the lily pad . I'm going to let it lie, but.... T-Shirt anyone?

I'll take the frog risk, but that statement is utter tosh! Sorry, but I couldn't let that one go. I'm happy to have a rational discussion, but as someone with hands-on professional experience as a software engineer, as someone who ran global software development teams based in England, France, both sides of US, China (Xi'an) and Japan (in parallel) costing £millions and who also worked with India based engineers and testers, I feel I know a fair it about this. Your statement "closer coupling of users, program managers, and coders in an ever more rapid feedback loop" is very relevant as is the comment about design approach, but the open stance - no!

Pfizer's anti-viral pill's latest results show encouraging results in reducing hospitalisations and death. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/pfizer-says-covid-19-pill-near-90-effective-final-analysis-2021-12-14/. The challenge it would appear is to get the course of treatment started quickly once an infection is known about.

I'm afraid I can't help directly, but am aware of an eight year old thread which might have some general points to consider http://www.edugeek.net/forums/mis-systems/126740-sims-sql-databases-maintenance-plans.html

I'm surprised Bottas didn't have a 'breakdown' at the end, at a spot requiring a further deployment of the VSC. That would have been a bit devious The same sort of vigorous debate would have kicked off though, that I'm sure about!

To follow up on the earlier post about data sources, this one is a good graphically chart to show booster vaccines per 100 people. All UK countries very much in the top globally.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries this is one source to have a look at the data in a perspective of your choice.

One small positive - booster jab numbers are showing a small upward trend with yesterday reporting the second highest numbers since roll-out.

I'm not sure it matters much and most importantly I hope everyone recovers quickly, but when I got notification to isolate 4 days ago, the following link already had this advice on Omicron - i.e. where suspected, all contacts need to isolate regardless of vaccination status. It must be quite challenging to keep all the gov pages up to date, but I have come across inconsistencies. The biggest issue I see is the end date of isolation. Track and Trace says one thing based on first symptoms, but the the original NHS Covid -19 app works off the test result date, which they ask you to log.

We have a number of mobile staff who each has a work mobile phone. A predecessor set up a standard (non controlled) gmail account which everyone commonly logged into and stored each other's contact details. But, staff also stored their client contacts which should be confidential. The old issue of whether details are stored on the SIM card or the account has reared it's head, apart from the fact this approach is a really bad idea. So, the functional requirement is that a secure central administrator manages a central staff contacts list for all mobile phone users to have access to. It also think other staff would have a legitimate interest in seeing the list, but not all staff. The second requirement is for each mobile user to be able to maintain their own confidential contacts list, but we would need central admin control of those lists. I would expect for remote removal needs supporting for when staff move on. I've deliberately put this in the phone's forum rather than the M365 forum as I did not want to pre-empt the solution, but we are M365 users and I am told mobile users are usually logged in to their staff account. We do have a non-profit Google account but the Workspace functionality is not being used currently, but I'd be happy to change that. Equally, I'm open to other ideas. I guess the other factor to take on board is we don't really have a high level in-house administrator, so the solution needs to be managed day to day by someone in the HR team or an office manager. If it needs to be initially set up by an admin, we need to give clear instructions to our IT Support providers - unfortunately they are not very good with suggesting solutions or being pro-active with best practice.

None of the settings helped. This shared address is for safe-guarding so it's important it works. We had a meeting with our IT Support and he stuck to the 'It's your home internet... probably". I stepped in and shot that down rapidly and did mention I had experience in support. There was no contest from there. After a bit more waffle, he agreed to escalate to 3rd or 4th line support. We don't mind what level is required, we just need it resolved. What I did find out is the email that was sent to me arrived 3 days later, on the day of the meeting. What struck me is it might have been the day both our DSLs were accessing the same mailbox. Whether that's relevant I've no idea, but maybe. The other thing we managed to get is a screen shot of the folder that sometimes appears. It's labelled Sync issues and has a whole bunch of emails. The one I can see mentions error 80040119-20010c01-800408c4-1390. I don't have the relevant access, I wonder if this article is relevant? The only other info I have is that this shared mailbox is an 'old style' one, not a later style. I've on idea what that means but that article suggests email sharing isn't particular well managed (from the view of someone who was used to concepts like data consistency and transactional units - although I do conceded managing this is distributed systems is more challenging than in my early days!)

And back! Even though the 48 hours going out would be two bank holiday's, we think we have a local private option to get tested that would meet that requirement. What I suspect might scupper us from the link is a completed ‘sworn statement’ (déclaration sur l’honneur) form self-certifying they are not suffering from symptoms associated with coronavirus and have not been in contact with confirmed cases in the preceding fortnight, and that they will self-isolate for seven days after arrival. As I'm not out of isolation until the 15th, the rest of the family presumably are contacts of mine and they couldn't make that declaration. From a personal point of view I can accept that, but the rest of the household will be bitterly disappointed, but that's been an experience for many of us have had since this virus came along.

Could I ask in what way it's changed? I'm due to fly to France on the 27th Dec, but the 'Déclaration sur l'honneur' as best I can work it out requires you to sign that you've not had contact with someone known to be covid positive in the previous 14 days. I was identified as such starting from last Sunday 5th and end isolation (subject to no on-going symptoms) on 15th Dec midnight. 14 days would take us to 29th which would stymie the trip. If my family are regard as contacts (seems reasonable!), I would think they couldn't sign if the end of isolation counts as still a known covid +ve case. The nuance could be relevant to insurance covering forced cancellation. As an aside, I wouldn't be at all surprised if other restrictions come in before then in which case it'll be a mute point. *** Edit, I do realise Brussels is in Belgium, so France could be different ***