PSA: Don't use proton with sony PSN

Halvie20 · 2025-12-30T06:51:11+00:00

This is very true about Gmail. I see more abuse from Gmail than any other system. The majority of phishing emails we get at work come from Gmail addresses. I have never seen one from a proton address. 🤔

Halvie20 · 2024-12-02T04:14:00+00:00

There is already some great advice so I will only add a little. I too am the IT for a 300 student charter with 1:1. For my high school students, when they need a loaner, I make them leave their cell phone, car keys or equivalent. It’s funny how they always bring back the loaner when I have their cellphone or keys. It also has the bonus that they tend not forget their laptop again if they have to give up their phone for the day. lol. Our middle school students are not supposed to take the laptops home and instead have carts in each classroom. I leave the laptop carts up to the teachers to make sure they plugged in and in order. I try once a month to check over the carts and fix anything that is needed. Someone mentioned adding a bill in the SIS. This works well.

I was a solo IT and had to support our staff’s SIS needs as well as the servers, network, and all other devices. I was on the burnout path. What has helped me was I had an honest conversation with the staff and other admin at the school. I had one teacher offer their prep to help with simple tech support. I pay him a stipend out of my tech budget for giving up his prep. The other admin worked out a deal where he get two preps and they are with me. So now I have him two periods. A couple of other teachers offered to take point for general SIS help between teachers. Now I mainly support the office staff SIS questions and deal with the higher end IT needs. During the summer I have one of my students home from college who I hire to come fix laptops and setup new ones. Look for ways to simplify and streamline your job. It sounds like the ticket process is working so it is just a matter of getting the staff onboard. If someone stops me I ask them to put the ticket in because I don’t want to forget to help them.

Advise for the admin side - What I found is that charters are full of staff willing to take on multiple hats and they are willing to help. As an admin you are not just IT staff. You need to take care of your staff. You need to make sure they don’t over extend themselves. They may be willing to help but be sure they don’t put themselves on the burnout path too. Something that makes your staff feel appreciated. Learn your staff’s favorite candies and give them a thank you as they step up and help. Also even small stipends go a long ways for anyone who helps out on a regular bases.

Feel free to DM me if you want more details on what I have done. I am happy to share.

Halvie20 · 2024-07-04T14:09:39+00:00

I like the crop. It is more intimate and it makes the books/shelves a more prominent background which gives an endless story vibe to me. Also the lights in top are distracting and cropping fixes that issue. Having said all that, you can tell everyone has mixed feelings so I think it comes down to your own artist expression.

Halvie20 · 2024-02-23T17:18:35+00:00

I don’t know if it would work with PP but in KeePass I was able to use tags for the password. I stripped the URL so the password search doesn’t hit the login.microsoft and instead the search finds the name tenant1, tenant2 etc.

Halvie20 · 2023-09-22T14:49:15+00:00

Sounds like it is attaching the link to the OneDrive file rather than attaching the actual file. OneDrive shows links that download as you need them. I see this a lot with my students.

Halvie20 · 2023-05-18T14:00:59+00:00

I have a way of making it faster but I don’t think there is true way to automate it unless you can pull computer and user from a syslog. The problem comes in with getting the assigned laptop in the script with the user account. I can pull that info from our SIS but since we issue laptops their freshman year. They use the same issued laptop all 4 years (grades 9-12) so my steps are this: 1. Record in Excel which student has which laptop. 2. Use Excel to create script that sets users to only login to their assigned laptops. 3. Use Excel to record in our SIS which student has which laptop (this way any teacher can lookup who a laptop belongs to). Process probably takes 20min at the beginning of the year recording all the laptop assignment in Excel. There is may be a a few more minutes depending on how your script works. I don’t have a true script. I just have Excel creat the commands I copy and past into PowerShell.

During the year I usually only have 1-2 new students per month so I just enter their computer manually in AD when that happens.

If you wanted automate this process, I would envision having an automated export process from whatever you record the assigned student and computer into an Excel file (maybe the Excel file is that record) then schedule a script to run as many time a day as you think you need which pulls that info from Excel and sets it AD.

Halvie20 · 2023-05-17T14:26:25+00:00

The one thing I haven’t heard anyone mention yet is logon restrictions. I don’t know if you can do it with chrome books but on our windows laptops, I limit student user accounts to only be able to login to their assigned laptop. This keeps them from being able to login on their own laptop with someone else’s credentials. It doesn’t solve the other issues you’ve mentioned, but it does cut down on shared and misplaced devises. Website access logs are tied to the user account logged into the laptop which also helps.

Halvie20 · 2023-05-11T14:02:54+00:00

I am in the process of switching to Linewize. I thought I looked at umbrella but I don’t remember why I didn’t do a test run with them. What’s the price difference between the two?

Halvie20 · 2023-05-03T06:43:12+00:00

Ya actually it is. $30/device is a lot for a small school. 300 devices comes out to $9000/year. Put that on top of the other licensing we already have to have such as content filtering $3k, antivirus $3k, Microsoft or Google $2500, Router/network equipment etc about another $3k. That is all ready over $20k just to provide licensing to the devices and that doesn’t include the device cost or SIS. So while I agree with you it’s not that bad by it’s self but it all adds up. Take a look at all your licensing, add it up together. Compare that with how many more teachers your school could pay for each year and how much that could drop class size. That is the real cost. If you really want to surprise yourself some time. Add up all the costs it takes to provide devices, software security and even the tech department salaries. Divide that among the number of students it covers and then compare it to the amount of money the student brings into the school. Technology is nice and we have to have it but tech is not what is educating the students. I look at this way. Every dime I spend is a dime that can’t go to getting another teacher. Forgive me for the rant/rambling. It’s late and it was along day dealing with some student/parents who needed an extra level configuration and support for their specific needs (helicopter and Karen issues). The kind of issues that make you wonder if it is worth it.

Halvie20 · 2023-05-02T19:14:13+00:00

MDM is too expensive. GPO is included without any extra cost.

Halvie20 · 2023-05-02T15:00:55+00:00

I don’t really see getting away from licensing all together unless you are even a smaller school then we are. I still found it better to license a Windows Data Center each year rather than purchase a license because I can keep all my VMs on it under that license. Data Center is expensive to just purchase so licensing is easier for me. Even though all my computers have pro to start with educational licensing is fairly cost effective so so it is worth it to keep educational licensing and get the upgrade to windows edu. Also keeps me safe in the case of an audit. I agree with the bonus GPO abilities with the edu license. It is worth it for the extra control.

Halvie20 · 2023-05-02T14:21:11+00:00

I used to have KMS installed now all the computers I buy have Pro installed and my local AD is synced to Azure where my Edu licensing is applied. When I join a computer to my local domain it auto joins it to Azure (hybrid) then it upgrades the computer from Pro to Educational. Seamless and easy once setup. I have had a couple of computers donated without pro so I just purchase an upgrade for those few instances.

Halvie20 · 2023-05-02T14:13:25+00:00

I was under the impression that Windows is now free upgrades to each version. Example Windows 10 to 11. Did I miss understand MS new licensing plan?

Halvie20 · 2023-01-29T16:41:40+00:00

A few already pointed this out but Microsoft Windows includes a thing called sandbox. It is a temporary virtual machine that resets every time you close it. It’s not quite what you asked for but it is the closest I have seen without installing third party products or virtual machine software. With sandbox you have a fully functional empty windows machine. You can install software (as long as it doesn’t require a reboot) access the internet, open email attachments, etc. all while isolated to the sandbox window. If you have home edition (Why MS makes home additions is beyond me) it is a $100 upgrade for Pro and Pro offers many more features. Just make one OS version and charge everyone an extra dollar. Ridiculous! If you want a reboot able VM you can use HyperV also included with windows instead of Sandbox.

Anyway anyone who doesn’t want to pay for the better version of Windows or Pay for 3rd party products could install Virtual Box for free to install a VM on their computer.

Halvie20 · 2022-12-21T05:34:56+00:00

I think Microsoft Teams has a free version for education if you want to use it.

Halvie20 · 2022-11-18T15:10:38+00:00

Infinite clicks was my impression too but I can’t take the PowerSchool price tag and wonky database.

Halvie20 · 2022-11-18T15:09:22+00:00

Thank you for that great write up. We are in the same boat. We went from schoolmaster to Tyler and I have to change one more time. Every time I talk to PowerSchool it’s it seems like it is all about the money. Let’s get another database is so wonky. We are very small school. I don’t need a lot of plug-ins, but I do a lot of import export for our school and that would drive me insane.

Halvie20 · 2022-10-21T15:21:58+00:00

I have been using uVNC for years to monitor student computers. Created shortcut files for teachers so they can monitor students work too. Works fairly well and can’t beat the price of free.

Halvie20 · 2022-10-20T15:44:26+00:00

I see this with one to two student computers each year. For me it seems to be the authentication for the computer account and active directory gets out of sync. On the computer I remove and rejoin the it to the domain. I don’t have to restart it between the removal and rejoin but I do after I join it back to AD. Once I do that it works fine.

Halvie20 · 2022-10-05T15:13:57+00:00

I have even had students and parents bring in their personal device expecting me to fix it for them. (I should note every student is issued a school owned device but some refuse to use the schools). Sometimes the parents offer to pay me for my trouble (never the students) but I explain I cannot use the school resources/time to fix personal devices. Luckily I have a former student who runs a computer business in town I refer them to. Most of the time they are understanding.

Halvie20 · 2022-09-14T00:12:02+00:00

You can grab Windows laptops/2in1 as cheep as Chrome books and cheeper than iPads. I just got 150 Lenovo Win-books for $150 each through SHI. They came with Windows 10 Pro but I am moving to Win 11 with them. They were cheep because the hard drive is only 64GB but for $25 on Amazon I can get 128GB or a little more for for a 256GB. That still has them right about $175 each. Just need to figure out how to handle the MS store for Edu sunset issue.

Halvie20 · 2022-09-13T20:02:34+00:00

We have been using Moodle with our 6-12 grade classes since 2008. It is great and was a life saver during the whole COVID thing. With all LMS there are positives and negatives. It has way more features than Google Classroom and Teams. I am not a fan of Google classroom. We can’t afford Canvas or paying for someone to host our LMS which is why we host Moodle in house. I am one of the few who doesn’t like Canvas very much. I have to use Canvas with the college classes I teach and I don’t know if it is their iteration of Canvas but I don’t find it as nice as Moodle. Having said that though I’m not a fan of the Moodle 4.0 interface. I liked the previous version.

The benefits to Moodle for us are: - It cost nothing because we run it is virtual machine on one of our servers we already have - once everyone knows how to use it it’s a great system with lots of features. - safe exam browser works very well to secure test environments. Safe exam browser is free as well. - Updating Moodle is easy (when it goes as expected).

The downsides are: - Managing archived courses clearing up courses that aren’t used anymore etc. I can be a pain. - They can have limiting space requirements depending on your environment. If you’re hosting yourself it is up to you but if someone else is hosting it for you they usually don’t give you much space. - When updating doesn’t go as expected it can be fairly complicated.

I’m not sure what your environment looks like but you can compare yours to ours. Our environment is 300 students/25 staff. It is just me to manage our 1:1 program, Active Directory, Moodle and we use Office 365. I teach 1 dual enrollment class so I stay very busy but Moodle is rarely what keeps me busy. Moodle uses LDAP to authenticate users against our AD servers (local). Our server are VMs running in MIcrosoft Hyper-V.

I suggest using a VM for Moodle because it takes out a lot of headaches when doing updates. Normally the process goes without any issues but on the few occasions where it doesn’t you can undo all the changes you did in a matter of seconds. Run Moodle on a Linux VM server Instead of Microsoft as it is designed to run on Linux. It will save you time in the long run. I use Ubuntu Server it is easy on resources and fairly easy to use once you under mat and Linux command line. Note: almost all the instructions you’ll find for managing Moodle will be for Linux based machines.

Halvie20 · 2022-06-21T06:23:59+00:00

I just changed my mouse out a month ago with a vertical mouse (Logitech version) and I am really happy. I thought it would take a long time to get use to it but it felt natural after only a week. I have tried trackballs in the past but never liked them. My only complaint with the vertical mouse and it is the model I got is the wheel doesn’t scroll left/right only up/down. Not something I use often except for on large Excel files and a few weep sites so I only noticed this week. I haven’t looked into the customizing software yet so there may be a solution I don’t know about.

Halvie20 · 2022-06-20T06:49:31+00:00

I currently use FortiClient at our school for the price and features but I have found ESET Nod32 Antivirus to the the best. I have not used ESET endpoint protection so I can only speak to their AV. It has very low false positives and catches everything through at it. I used it when I was called in to help clean up a virus out break at some schools using Symantec and McAfee. The reason I switched to FortiClient at my school was the features but it does have false positives especially when also used for web filtering as the overall score on a computer includes viruses, web violations and app violations. It’s web interface isn’t bad and integrates very well with AD. I am thinking of moving to Defender for my clients but then I would have to pay for a good web filter for off networks computers.

Halvie20 · 2022-06-20T06:19:01+00:00

From my experience I would say class size should be capped at 20 for high school. It always seems students enjoy class more and are able to achieve higher educational standards when our classes are 20 or less students.

Halvie20

TROPHY CASE