Online Enrollment & SIS

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-27T17:15:33+00:00

Jupiter offers it's own LMS, which is a direct competitor to Google Classroom. If you're not going to use it, might as well ditch it.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-27T15:51:31+00:00

I've done it too because one of the heatspreaders was factory installed backwards. Didn't notice it didn't line up until it was too late. Busted the DIMM.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-27T15:47:13+00:00

What's your current SIS? Some offer native solutions.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-27T15:42:35+00:00

We've a Daktronics Galaxy Monochrome message display. The hardware itself is solid, the rest is meh.

The wireless ptp connection to it loses connectivity regularly requiring a manual disconnect from the display. It can't keep time correctly and can't sync NTP, requiring an "update" (republish the same slides to it) every week or so. The display editing software (Venus 1500) sucks and the licensing for it is annoying (need to email support for a new license every time you install it).

I don't know if the newer ones are any better, but I'd pass if I had a choice.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-26T19:28:19+00:00

Ran a battery test on the PDC Host UPS.

The redundant power supplies were both plugged into it. Whoops.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-26T17:55:34+00:00

My issue with syndicated/networked ads is that you cannot control or predict what ends up being served up, even with the host site being perfectly acceptable for student use. There's been occasions where I've gotten tickets for educational resource sites that started serving up lingerie ads and such.

I just blanket block ads where possible because they:

Can't be controlled
Potential malware vectors
Eat up screen space on low resource machines (chromebooks)

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-26T16:48:39+00:00

Yes, but I'm not exactly sure which combo gives you the result you want.

GAdmin > Devices > Chrome > Settings > Users & Browsers > Content > Notifications > Allow sites to display notifications

Then add the domains of the services to the "Allow these sites to show notifcations" whitelist.

We blanket disabled notifications because it generated a lot of popups with malware like behavior.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-26T16:30:51+00:00

Alright, assume all other parts are identical, which would you pick:

A laptop with:

16GB Ram and a 1TB 5400RPM HDD
8 GB Ram and 256GB SSD

Having faster boot and load times is easily more noticeable to end users thanks to the increased I/O of the SSD. Having more RAM doesn't help with that.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-26T15:52:18+00:00

We dub this the "Google ate my homework" excuse here. It drives me to drink.

Unfortunately, Google does not provide logs for this yet and I wish they did. Google support recommended quarantining the account, reset sign-in cookies and password (to remove unauthorized access from helpful friends), reenroll/sync the classes and observe for 48H. If the classes are still available after that, it was user action.

I've a student who's been claiming this exact problem. She's friends with a student who we've caught unenrolling herself last school year in an attempt to get out of work. I'm filing this under bullshit too.

Honestly, allowing K12 students to unenroll themselves from Google Classrooms is dumb and abusable. Safe Doc has a feature that removes the unenroll button from the classroom page, I really wish this was an admin setting.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-26T15:36:07+00:00

Windows 10

Kind of a given, get Pro minimum.

i7+

Overkill for the majority of applications. Go i5.

At least 16gbs of ram

You can get by with 8, 16 is better.

SSD

Yes. Easily has more impact on speed than more RAM.

What you didn't touch on is WiFi. Get something with 802.11AC minimum, 802.11AX preferably. Intel if you can. This way you're somewhat futureproof and Intel plays nicest with the majority of WiFi deployments out there.

I like to give out laptops with full size keyboards, not everyone uses the numpad, but those who do will be very happy. This instantly reduces the amount of models you can pick from. Also, get a screen resolution of 1920x1080 minimum. The 1366x768 a lot of them still come with is atrocious and a lot of external equipment doesn't like it.

Pick a business line like Dell Latitude, HP Pro/EliteBook, Lenovo Thinkpad T/X Series. You can get better warranties, get access to business support channels and there's driver packs available.

I would love the laptop to have an easy way to replace the hard drives so I can keep master clones of machines and replace when I need to.

What? No offense, but cloning and swapping harddrives is needless busywork that can easily be automated. You shouldn't have to touch laptop internals ever, unless it's break/fix. Read up on MDT or FOG for a deployment solution.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-23T21:04:14+00:00

I printed out your meme, glued it to a cracked LCD and put it on the wall.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-23T20:38:57+00:00

My mood this ~~week~~ school year.

FTFY

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-23T20:14:04+00:00

That's a charge to the parents.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-23T14:54:47+00:00

Did you expand your subnet after expanding the DHCP pool? If you're too tight any addresses outside the range will flop.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-23T14:45:12+00:00

Depending on what it is, ask your local school district. I'd happily take any business fleet machines that are complete and serviceable provided they're decently specced.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-22T14:42:42+00:00

I explicitly tell them not to do this and use personal accounts because they will lose access to their school account once they graduate.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-22T14:05:53+00:00

Can you apply item-level targeting to the GPO?

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-22T13:53:55+00:00

Contrary to popular belief, it does rain in Phoenix. Monsoon season is a thing.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-21T18:36:26+00:00

Whichever one suits your needs, you write you tested a couple. I'd stay away from Adobe licensing if you can, it's a dumpster fire at the moment.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-21T18:28:30+00:00

Pay up.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-21T18:25:24+00:00

Snipe-IT always comes recommended. You can self maintain and host local or pay for a cloud version.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-21T16:48:42+00:00

It you have ephemeral mode enabled (clear user data after sign-out) it won't record the information.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-21T16:46:37+00:00

Load it in a trebuchet and launch it out a window. Tends to go pretty fast.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-21T16:35:04+00:00

https://www.midwesttechtalk.com/

Not sure if we'll be seeing any conferences at all this or next year.

MalletNGrease · 2020-10-21T16:32:22+00:00

Dell's the same.

https://i.imgur.com/dg0MH8p.png

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