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Two reasons really: 1. The £70 fee introduces ownership responsibility. If the 1:1 would be free pupils would just trash the device. 2. We looked at offering the 1:1 for free but there was no budget for it. You can think of it this way: Year 7 pupils get a new Chromebook for £70 and they can keep it after Year 11. Not a bad deal.

Our School is asking parents to pay a £70 fee to cover the cost of the Chromebook and safeguarding licenses + Chromebook bag. We pay for the Chromebooks and pupils can take them home for free when they finish year 11. If the device is damaged parents need to order a replacement device from the school, unless you are pupil premium which in this case everything is free. In this case it's weird that parents can order any Chromebook model. Some of them will splash out on brand new Chromebook Plus and other will buy refurbished unit from eBay. Where is the equality in this for pupils ?

We used Smoothwall for 10+ years. It's a good web filter device, average firewall and web filtering report was quite hard to read at the time. With SW pricing we could never afford a spare firewall so there was always a one point of failure on our network. When we moved to UniFi we had to separate the firewall and web filtering to two different products. Securly is our web filter and UniFi - firewall. The Smoothwall subscription costs covered the cost of Securly license. As for the features, here is a list of the Gateway & Routing options that UniFi offers: https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/sections/13671944731927-Gateway-Routing Like I've mentioned before they are adding more features on a weekly basis. For example this was added last week: https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/15179064940439-UniFi-Gateway-DNS I manage multiple schools so for us UniFi really works well:

UniFi Switch - Layer 3 Routing: https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042281174-UniFi-Switch-Layer-3-Routing - - - Updated - - - DM me if you need any help. We are using Dream Machines across all our schools.

I could not find an app that would mass convert .notebook files to other format. We ended up asking teachers to convert their document to PowerPoint over one year and will uninstall SMART after that time. We also introduced a Prowise Presenter website for teachers that can open .notebook files. Teachers really liked this app as it's education oriented and it offers all the features they need. We also ordered a couple of Prowise TVs to try in our schools.

We did. No more VPN for over a year. We never offered RDP.

We replaced our Cisco Meraki with unifi few years back. Everything works and I'm happy with the system to the point where we also replaced switches CCTV with Unifi.

This post is just sad...

We tried it for a month and it works. You can only host network equipment there, so no phones, connect or CCTV equipment. We didn't go live with this as you need a gateway anyway to use all the UniFi functionality. For home use I would go with UniFi Express https://uk.store.ui.com/uk/en/pro/category/cloud-gateways-wifi-integrated/products/ux - compact box with built in WiFi 6 AP and you can manage up to four additional UniFi Network devices If your home network is larger try the Cloud Gateway Ultra: https://uk.store.ui.com/uk/en/pro/category/cloud-gateways-compact/products/ucg-ultra

Do you mean performance slow or slow development ? I'm really interested as we are planning to switch over in September and there are not many other syncs platforms that I can find that don't require a server. Last time I've checked Locker offers a cloud version of their product, but it's limited in functionality compared to their Windows application.

We are currently using Salamander at all our schools. We looked at Locker and I really liked it. With Locker you are in the control of changes, but the application doesn't offer as many options as Salamander. It's also Windows based so not good for schools that would like to go 100% cloud. Salamander offers more customization, but we had multiple problems where leavers were not suspended for months (multiple misconfigurations by the support team). Also their support was impossible to contact in September for the last few years. We are planning to move to Wonde Edusync purely because it's cloud based and you can change sync settings yourself. Also I don't like how Salamander syncs our Google users by using Google Cloud Directory Sync.

Step 1: Move all services to the cloud. Step 2: Start using Chromebooks. Step 3: Worry that there is nothing to do as Chromebooks just work. Step one requires a lot of planning, time and money if you would like to move 100% to the cloud. Here is a short list of problematic services: - Print Server migrated to PaperCut Hive or another cloud alternative. - SIMS migrated to Arbor or Bromcom - Paxton Net 2 migrated to Paxton 10 or other - CCTV if it requires an app then it needs to run off a website. - IT rooms - you need to convert IT teachers to use cloud based apps. We still don't know how to convince teachers to use cloud version of Adobe. Start with yourself and daily drive Chromebook for a month. This will show you what you are missing. Then migrate pupils devices and offer some staff Chromebook Plus devices.

Yes the system is amazing and they recently added new camera models for £79 per unit with similar specs to G5 Dome https://uk.store.ui.com/uk/en/pro/category/all-cameras-nvrs/products/uvc-g5-dome-ultra https://uk.store.ui.com/uk/en/pro/category/all-cameras-nvrs/products/uvc-g5-turret-ultra

Last time I checked you can only stack 2 UNVRs but they are planning to get rid of this limit. We are at two UNVRs, everything works fine but we max both UNVRs, so can't add any more cameras. https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/14881658961303-UNVR-Stacking The 2nd option is to buy 3rd UNVR and just keep it as a separate system, for example internal on stacked UNVRs and external cameras on 3rd UNVR.

Official UniFi Hosting is good if you only use UniFi network devices like APs or Switches. You can optionally pair with a UXG series gateway for full-stack UniFi networking. The new Dream Machine Pro Max might be a better option. It can support up to 200 UniFi devices, there is no subscription and it's also a firewall, but it's not fully cloud based.

In our secondary school the UDM Pro manages 85 UniFi network devices, over 800 school own devices and pupils are allowed to use their phones. On a daily basis there are over 1200 online devices connected to the network. UniFi Dream Machine struggles a bit - it's just slow to load pages, but it does the job. We use Network, Connect, Protect (on separate NVRs) and planning to add Talk in near future so this new appliance is perfect for us. Also can't wait for the version 4 OS and the shadow mode.

I'm ordering two for our secondary school when this is out in the UK.

I've contacted Adobe about this free license and no one came back to me.

Could anyone guide me how I can add subdomains to the Google Admin panel. This is to do with unification of school domain names. At the moment each school is using random domain names: - Trust: @random-domain.co.uk - School 1: @random-domain.org - School 2: @random-domain.net - School 3: @random-domain.sch.uk I've bought short [domain.co.uk] and activated it in Google Admin Panel. I would like to add sub domain names to domain.co.uk for other schools so the config looks like this: - Trust 1 - @DomAin.co.uk - School 1 - @[school_1_name].domain.co.uk - School 2 - @[school_2_name].domain.co.uk - School 3 - @[school_3_name].domain.co.uk Is there an option to add a domain in the Google Admin panel or do I need to create DNS records in our GoDaddy Domain Management, if yes I'm not sure what type of record.

I'm also working on a similar project but with smaller trust. So far we centralised: - Web filter and safeguarding solutions. - Sign in platform - Web Hosting provider - Network Infrastructure - Phone systems - Paxton System (Paxton 10) - CCTV Now the trust would like us to unify the domain name for all the schools. We already secured domain name but the transfer will take some time. We also need to centralise printing solutions. Just not sure what to use as I've heard quite a few horror stories about PaperCut Hive here.

Our config is very similar to your proposal across all our schools: 1. MAT-owned devices (WPA3, MAC Address filter, VLAN) 2. Pupils Chromebooks and classroom tablets (WPA2/3, VLAN) 3. Guest (WPA2, VLAN, separate broadband) We just had to push the new WiFi names in advance (2 -3 months) and then removed the old WiFi SSIDs. There were few devices like reception label printers and other small bits that had to be manually added to new SSIDs.

Can you connect the USB Touch cable from the TV to the Vivi box, so there is no need to connect the Touch USB cable to the laptop / computer ?

Thanks for recommending this. I've asked for a trial of this product.

+1 for this. It's free and easy to configure on devices or you can apply to the whole wifi.

I would love to see the DfE version of this for the UK ? This would save everyone a lot of work and time.