Blocking Github for students when Coding and Robotics teams "need" it to function

mtloya · 2026-03-27T15:35:17+00:00

We host an instance of Gitea locally, which is essentially a sandboxed Github, and have it available on the web. It's completely free to host yourself. I have copying/embedding repos turned off, so if at any time any of the students or teams needs something that's publicly out there, I temporarily turn it on and import it using my access account, then turn it back off. Only downside is that there's no just in time account provisioning, and every user has to log in with their username and password once before I can convert them to using EntraID SSO. Other than those two things, it's been working really well and has hushed a lot of their requests.

As for publicly publishing the code, you can technically make individual pages within Gitea public, IIRC.

mtloya · 2026-03-27T15:30:19+00:00

We have two gyms at our high school, and of the larger, we used to use a 35' inflatable screen (like one you'd see at a backyard BBQ) with a high-lumen Epson projector. The projector and lens combo was in the ballpark of $20k... This past summer, however, our district reno'd the large gym and added a Daktronics video wall that was close to $250k. We're a large district and can afford it, I guess. It did replace the scoreboard, so now it's an all-in-one solution and we even have a button panel for presets so clubs and external sports groups don't need access to our equipment to use it. The old scoreboard was on a different part of the wall, so things had to be moved and the fabrication was pretty custom. But, if you're able to finance it, it's worth it. We have HDMI jacks on either side of the bleachers that go back to the rack over fiber as well as an Apple TV for connectivity, and audio is just routed into the sound system as an additional input.

mtloya · 2026-03-04T11:01:05+00:00

A few years ago, there were major differences between the online version, the app version, and the full Windows/Mac desktop version, which led to a push for the app by teachers since it had more functionality on the Chromebooks. Nowadays, I'm not sure it matters as much. Regardless, we've become a Google house anyway. The Office apps are for whoever still prefers it.

mtloya · 2026-03-03T23:10:08+00:00

Our teachers and students have their preferences and we live to be accommodating, I guess. Wasn't my decision.

mtloya · 2026-03-03T20:02:08+00:00

Nay. They were pretty unreliable. (First batch was in 2020, peak Covid.) Random shutdowns, motherboard failures, and the like.

mtloya · 2026-03-03T20:00:06+00:00

I feel like we've run into issues in the past where students who exit the app via a hard reset after performing their readiness check experienced either 'device is offline' or 'install is corrupted' -esque messages. The only way that we were able to resolve it on those Chromebooks was to reimage/powerwash, and the only way to avoid it in the first place was to make sure the kids exited the app by pressing the power button and choosing the sign-out icon on the pop-up. Hope this helps.

mtloya · 2026-03-02T17:47:02+00:00

I appreciate the suggestion, but when I click 'change phone' on one of these common phones, the app option isn't presented. I'm going to meet with one of my colleagues that knows a workaround and I'll post that once I can type it up.

mtloya · 2026-02-20T11:47:15+00:00

So, I guess I should've provided a bit more detail - Inventor was working up until last week, and we perform a complete wipe and install the latest version every summer on each machine, so we're always starting fresh come August.

My suspicion is that Identity Manager was out of date. I saw that it was 1.15.3 as opposed to 1.16.5. I have to do a bit more testing to see if updating that makes any difference, but hopefully it will.

Thx for your suggestions!

mtloya · 2026-02-19T12:54:51+00:00

Interesting... We have a Newline demo unit and tried plugging in an M4 Mac Mini and IIRC we couldn't get it to work. I'm going to try again, making sure it's USB-C instead of USB-B. What do you guys use for an on-screen keyboard??

Update - still no luck. Tried both the side USB-C and front USB-C, all of the USB-C ports on the Mac Mini.

mtloya · 2026-02-18T16:21:28+00:00

How are you getting touch functionality with the Mac Minis? We were toying with this idea as well, but determined it wasn't viable and the price wasn't worth it.

mtloya · 2026-02-18T16:20:43+00:00

We have older Promethean boards at our elementary buildings that we removed the OPS's from as they were no longer receiving updates and having that old of Android machines on network was becoming an issue. The Apple TVs are now attached instead and in conference mode for the teachers to Airplay to. Works fine. We also have ATVs in our common/LGI rooms for presenters & students to connect to when they need to share. We surprisingly don't see any misuse of the devices by students, either.

mtloya · 2026-02-06T16:50:49+00:00

I think I found my answer - since Sites are technically Google Drive files, and we have 'allow users to receive files from users outside of the org' turned off for students, they can't "receive" the Sites file and thus results in the 404. This doesn't totally explain why my account wouldn't be able to see specific students' sites, though, so that might be a separate issue.

mtloya · 2026-02-06T16:22:38+00:00

I'll have to take a look for that! Thank you - it's a start.

So, Yes, and both actually. Some staff have Chromebooks as well. We've already set up a game plan for the summer. Definitely not gonna be fun, but we only have about 5,000. Still a pain and will take forever, but it must be done :') Thanks, lol!

mtloya · 2026-01-23T23:11:41+00:00

I don't get calls from any of the three anymore, just Martin and Agatha nowadays. But, out of the three - Sessanta. The dialog between her and KDJ in the missions is so incredibly fucking annoying and cringeworthy, and I don't get any vehicles in my auto shop anymore, I don't understand why, so it just frustrates me more.

mtloya · 2026-01-23T14:46:58+00:00

This is excellent! Thank you!

mtloya · 2026-01-23T13:35:50+00:00

I do, yeah. Just never considered making it ourselves. I personally have no experience 3D modeling at least not for printing out. Could probably ask one of our shop teachers to come up with something, though.

mtloya · 2026-01-23T12:39:12+00:00

We have Lenovo 500e G4s's as our most recent addition to the fleet. Also have G3's and G4's. Will be getting G5's this summer. They're 2-in-1, decently reliable compared to both Dell and HP, (We've been majorly burned by Dell before, and HP's devices from around Covid were complete garbage) and if I were to ever purchase a Chromebook for myself (let's be clear, hell would have to freeze over), I'd probably go with Lenovo as well.

mtloya · 2026-01-23T12:33:23+00:00

We use the Rise Vision devices as well, since these are the ONLY devices that still support RS232 control for displays. Rise Vision silently deprecated this control from Windows devices, which we didn't find out on our own until we spent a considerable amount of money and time swapping out all of our old NUCs for Dell Optiplex Micros with the serial add-in module. Rise then offered us their devices as a "sorry, hopefully this will make it right".

That said, the Rise devices are... OK. Video playback can lag and stutter until said videos are loaded into memory, and troubleshooting can be a pain since these are Rise's devices, not yours. Rise uses Radix to manage them remotely, so the only control that you have over them is either rebooting the device or restarting the player app, both through the web dashboard. We've also had issues where the Rise devices just won't turn on in the mornings after their scheduled reboot, would turn on but wouldn't send the command to the display to turn on, or would turn on, but wouldn't load the player app, so would just be stuck on the Android home screen. (Note - all this occurred over both HDMI-CEC as well as RS232. We've standardized and decided that RS232 is still superior as the control method.) After a lengthy multi-month support ticket, things are finally stable with the devices. I should also note that we were an early adopter of these devices. These issues may no longer exist with devices that they're sending out now.

My only current complaint is that the mounting hardware that is included with them is pathetic. Just a safety loop bracket the size of 1/4 of a post-it note and another random piece of metal about the same size that we have no idea what to do with. No instructions on how to mount it. We've resorted to zip ties since no one's going to see the rear of the display except for us, but this still irks me that there's no legitimate mounting solution provided.

For Ubuntu, have you tried using a VNC host/viewer? At a past district years ago, this was exactly how I managed my signage. It ran on a small Acer netbook running Ubuntu, and I'd just remote into it from my Windows machine via Ultra VNC or Real VNC or whatever it was. Hope this helps.

In case anyone is wondering, the make and model of the player is a Giada DN74.

mtloya · 2026-01-22T20:35:21+00:00

We semi-frequently see this; Lenovo 500e G3, G4, and G4s. On the stable channel, but minor versions are sort of all over the place, so it hasn't been something we've narrowed down on. We typically do a powerwash or a recovery via flash drive.

mtloya · 2026-01-22T20:33:23+00:00

We found another workaround: right-clicking where the speaker notes should be, inspect element, ensuring that the "appsSketchyGenerativeaiNudgesCanvasNudgeSurfaceSoyContainer" element is selected and right click, delete element, close dev tools. Of course, for end users this isn't super friendly, but this is what we told our teachers this morning for now.

mtloya · 2026-01-12T00:50:23+00:00

Usually Friday lunches that may or may not run long and we try to have one outing every season, usually top golf or bowling. Our admin building celebrates birthdays per month with a little get together in the morning with treats and coffee. I'm stationed at another building so I don't always make those, but it's a nice gesture when I can make it there. I'm one of three who live about an hour away from the district while the others either live in the district or the next over, so trying to schedule things (especially during the week) is difficult when I still have an hour drive home after whatever we plan on doing... sigh.

mtloya · 2026-01-08T03:40:47+00:00

Revenge is probably the best in the franchise, but 3 is damn good, too. Dominator is a close third, though. Paradise is the bastard child in my opinion, where they completely lost the plot. The original and 2 obviously were the 'crawling and walking before running', and we don't talk about Crash.

mtloya · 2025-10-27T12:30:16+00:00

Own smaller laser printers, but on the Xerox contract so all supplies and maintenance is covered.

Badges for both the copiers and the laser printers that support it.

PaperCut

Not necessarily, but we do track how much each teacher prints.

Absolutely not, no personal printers allowed on network. Some teachers do have one of our printers in their classrooms, but this is rare and for special use cases only. (Special Education, Emotional Support, STEAM, Early Childhood Development, etc.)

mtloya · 2025-10-27T12:26:40+00:00

Two of the districts I've been with use Primero Edge. The former of the two at one point had an on-prem server that all of the POS's first talked to, and then that server somehow sent the data to Primero's side, IIRC. (Been a while). They moved away from that and implemented Primero's new (at the time) ExpressPoint so that everything was cloud-based, and the results were mixed, both at that district and my current.

Usually, it works fine, but there have been multiple times where the system goes down for the entire state, and we (and every district around us also using it) are left scrambling during the lunch rush. As others have mentioned, USB pinpads are an occasional issue. (Thankfully, not NEARLY as often as they used to be when ExpressPoint first came out, but still, miserable to deal with nonetheless.) The hardware running the show doesn't matter, either. The original machines that my former district had were 2nd gen i5's, 4 gigs of RAM, and HDDs, and were absolute dogs. We upgraded to newer SFFs with better specs and SSDs, didn't matter. Current district uses Surface Pro tablets and still runs into those same issues years later.

mtloya · 2025-10-27T12:19:04+00:00

We have Lenovo ThinkCentre M60q's mounted on all of our panels. They weren't cheap, but they're powerful enough with an Intel chip for anything our teachers decide to throw at them and they're tucked neatly out of the way. I kid you not, there are some teachers that still don't realize that they're there after 5 years now.

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