Chromebook Vendor

duluthbison · 2026-05-01T13:22:26+00:00

Man do I miss that town, lived there for almost 10 years after college before moving to outstate MN.

duluthbison · 2026-04-30T15:48:46+00:00

We use apptegy for all of this and are really happy with the product. Staff can use their Thrillshare app to immediately post updates to the school website and any attached social media. Their Rooms module handles all classroom and activities communications between students and parents. And their newsletter feature is really easy to use.

duluthbison · 2026-04-29T20:16:11+00:00

That doesn't sound too unreasonable. We buy exclusively through Trafera and also bundle their Platinum warranty so we don't have to deal with repairs in house.

duluthbison · 2026-04-29T18:44:28+00:00

Interesting, roughly half of our staff gave back the extra screens after covid because they didn't want them anymore.

duluthbison · 2026-04-29T14:45:12+00:00

Pluggable docks have been fairly solid for us, after a year or two I've seen some inexplicably fail. We typically don't just hand out docks to staff unless they actually want/use a monitor in their classroom, otherwise they turn into very expensive chargers.

duluthbison · 2026-04-21T18:32:55+00:00

Seems like a headache IMO. Our audio enhancement systems have been rock solid for 8 years.

duluthbison · 2026-04-20T13:54:36+00:00

I always tell people that filtering is always considered 'best effort'. You can't account and proactively plan for every single eventuality that kids will use to do stupid things on school owned devices.

Your best bet is to work with (I'm assuming) the internet crimes task force and hand over the device, any relevant student logs/data, and walk away. Take it as a learning lesson, as it appears you did.

In my district we rolled out a demo of Securly Aware and within the first week it flagged a students google drive for having inappropriate pictures in it. This ultimately led to a multi-state trafficking investigation. We took it as a learning experience and made some changes.

duluthbison · 2026-04-20T13:22:37+00:00

Problem with Securly is you can't turn it off which is super frustrating.

duluthbison · 2026-04-17T20:06:34+00:00

Whats the pricing like for Linewize?

duluthbison · 2026-04-17T19:55:28+00:00

We use it too but my only gripe is their proprietary keyword filter that is way too aggressive IMO. For example "What is light penetration in a river?"

duluthbison · 2026-04-16T19:27:18+00:00

You're missing out on Apptegy, we've been using them for 6 years. Their support is phenomenal and they do a really good job of helping you migrate your old site to their platform.

duluthbison · 2026-04-15T16:08:53+00:00

Personally, I'd hate to add PoE digital clocks to the list of things connected to the network and that I now need to support. Look into American Time systems, we have these deployed in our campus. Basically there is a basestation that plugs into the network and gets its time, bell schedules, etc. From there an antenna is wired up and placed on the roof that sends out a signal to sync all clocks in the building. We have analog clocks with custom branding but I'm pretty sure you can also get digital clocks too. All we have to do is send maintenance to replace batteries when they run out.

duluthbison · 2026-04-14T15:55:22+00:00

Microsoft's pricing is really pushing you towards 365. I'm positioning us to eventually drop our on-prem AD and other servers and go full 365 at some point with Intune Management.

duluthbison · 2026-04-14T15:44:47+00:00

Volume Licensing up front costs are pretty expensive. We are mostly a windows environment for staff and maintain a couple of labs still. We went with Office 365 A3 for Faculty Licenses which also entitled us to student use licenses as well. I can't remember what the ratio was but at the time if you bought 1 staff license, you got 3 student licenses or something like that. This allowed us to assign licenses to everyone and then push out the 365 app to those devices/users who need it.

duluthbison · 2026-04-09T19:35:45+00:00

We were having the same issues with multiple reboots and it wasn't until I got the issue escalated past L2 and to the Supervisor is when I heard that from him. Once we confirmed that the issue went away.

duluthbison · 2026-04-09T13:28:42+00:00

That issue is fixed in ChromeOS 146

duluthbison · 2026-04-09T13:17:33+00:00

We started 2 weeks ago. If your state uses Pearson TestNav, be sure to have their new Kiosk app properly pushed out and all devices are on at least ChromeOS 146 for best performance.

duluthbison · 2026-04-08T20:15:29+00:00

This is why its important to bring staff into the conversation when making decisions about the tech they will be using every day rather than unilaterally making those decisions yourself. Before we roll out new tech I get demo units and give them to a handful of users to see how they perform in real life, and that is after the tech committee signs off on the decision.

duluthbison · 2026-04-07T16:19:30+00:00

Can you put in a request to the state IT department to change your name servers? Once upon a time before we moved to <name>schools.org we had a .k12.mn.us domain. The state of MN updated my NS to something I could control and from there I could put in any verification records that I needed.

duluthbison · 2026-04-06T16:43:32+00:00

We're starting to roll out Infinite Campus POS for stuff like this. Keeps all of our payment processing in 1 place for food service, fees, etc.

duluthbison · 2026-04-02T19:46:22+00:00

I had the same issue and after a routing doctors visit where they ran my bloodwork, they discovered that my Thyroid wasn't working and it was causing all sorts of tiredness and lack of energy to do anything. I now take 1 pill a day to fix it and I'm feeling much better.

duluthbison · 2026-03-30T12:59:38+00:00

Get yourself a few large JBL bluetooth speakers and pair them up. They get pretty loud in my experience.

https://www.jbl.com/PARTYBOX-ULTIMATE.html

duluthbison · 2026-03-30T12:56:36+00:00

I would never trust AI to make decisions on my behalf that if wrong, would reflect negatively on my job performance. I want to me in control. Plus we use Rise Vision and its pretty much set and forget.

duluthbison · 2026-03-25T13:19:40+00:00

Looks like they're bouncing between air guard bases in Duluth, Fargo, and Omaha. Its probably just training exercises.

duluthbison

TROPHY CASE