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Reddit’s r_k12sysadmin Credits: @r_channels @reddit2telegram
Upgrade sonic wall or move to Unifi Security Gateway?
It's time to upgrade our firewall. We currently use Unifi for our AP's and sonic wall for our Firewall. I was wondering if anyone uses the Security Gateway and goes all through UniFi. Ideally, I think it will be better to stay under the same umbrella. Does anyone have any insight?
https://redd.it/ksgqgl
@r_k12sysadmin
Helping Mac OS staff to Windows?
We are a 99% Windows environment save the couple holdouts out of stubbornness who use their personal Macs for ease. I have finally convinced our principal (big player in all this) to switch and I was wondering if anyone has any good videos or resources to help ease that transition.
I have worked on PCs all my life and have never thought to even think of something like this so I don't know where to start. Quick google searches give me some stuff made 5+ years ago which may be fine but I want to see if I can find anything more recent.
Thanks in advance!
https://redd.it/ksisid
@r_k12sysadmin
Teachers as Technology Coaches
For those of you that have teachers are tech leads, are you willing to share any job descriptions, supplemental pay information, etc.
I would like to push for this at my district since we lost our Instructional Technology Coach.
https://redd.it/ksel2n
@r_k12sysadmin
Managed Chromebook - Closing lid will turn off
Hello friends,
Although the policy for a given OU is set to logout on closing lid action, the Chromebook will completely turn off once the lid is closed. Has there been any changes on policies recently? Possible actions are, sleep, logout....why does the machine turns off?
https://redd.it/ksecyr
@r_k12sysadmin
Zoom crashing when exiting fullscreen?
Okokok so I just got an email from a parent saying that this has been happening with every Chromebook the school has given her so far (3). When her son goes to exit fullscreen on the zoom app she says it freezes and then goes black. They then have to go and turn the chromebooks back on to hop on the call...
I looked and have found nothing about this at all, any help?
https://redd.it/kqm5jw
@r_k12sysadmin
Chromebook Purchasing
I'm looking into purchasing new Chromebooks next year for a few grades, and I'm curious what everyone else recommends buying that plays well with Google Meets and having more than 1 tab open. Our administration is requesting Touch devices and 14" in size, but I informed them that 11" may be more realistic to get.
We've had awful results with the AMD A4 processors, and our Lenovo N42 and N22's are almost EOL and have just as many issues as the A4 in terms of not powerful enough.
A few years ago, we got Lenovo 100e's with the MediaTek processor, and they have been fantastic...CPU usage in the Meet Quality Tool showing 50%, but the A4's are 95%
Kudos if you tell me what the price is you're paying.
https://redd.it/krnwpx
@r_k12sysadmin
Student Account on Classroom (Android) - You Do Not Have Access
We have a school that has now started using Classroom with students and one of the students parents has an android device.
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We previously havent set any policies for android as the school use Chromebooks, ipads and windows. and for the most part everything has gone well. Except for this one student and their parent with an android device.
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As they open Classroom and sign in as the student. they choose the account and then they get the message, "We are sorry, but you do not have access to classroom, please contact your domain admin for access"
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I can log in on ios and windows without issue, and can see the students classes, so it must be something android related in the google admin console. As I only have a kindle fire to test with (Working from home) its a bit difficult.
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Does anyone know what is causing this and if there is something I can turn off in the admin console to get this working?
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Thanks
https://redd.it/krrn9g
@r_k12sysadmin
I would appreciate your thoughts on this from an administrator perspective, especially the security of Remote Desktop.
https://www.reddit.com/r/edtech/comments/kpz1w5/remote_desktop_and_tablets/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
https://redd.it/kryns9
@r_k12sysadmin
Wifi help
This summer we are changing a bunch of things around, new public IPs, Cleaning up things, changing wifi passwords for all the ssid's and so on. Well this is the issue, I heard about something a long time ago that we can set something up, we give a code/token/something to a teacher that they can use once to get on the wifi. They will never need it again (and one time use) as the wifi is saved on their computer but if for some reason the computer loses the wifi (not restarting or anything), they will need to come back to us. The reason why is in the past we have had major issues with giving out the staff wifi passwords and in about 1-2 days, kids devices are on. Even had staff admit "the student wifi was not letting them so we put them on the staff and it works"... Right now if a staff member needs to add a computer or phone, they need to come see us. We do know that the staff password is out in the wild but they are somewhat keeping it from the kids as they know we get mad when a kids gets on the staff network and (get this) they get mad that the kids are not blocked from doing something... huummmmm. Need some insight on what everyone else is doing and where to start to read about this stuff and what to setup. Oh, we have a Ruckus APS/Switches with a Fortigate firewall.
https://redd.it/krxlv8
@r_k12sysadmin
Content keeper chromebook question
Okay, so I just got a chromebook from my disitrict. I connected it to my network. It has content keeper on it and when I tried to go to google on it first it popped up a content keeper pop up that said (authenticating network). The chromebook obviously then had the internet filter on it. My question is, can my disitict now see what the rest of the devices on my network are accessing? Or can the district only see what the chromebook that has content keeper on it is accessing?
Thanks!
https://redd.it/krxml4
@r_k12sysadmin
Chronic Google Meet Issues
It's really becoming a problem now. I have 2 kids using Google Meet for 99% of their calls.
Problem is randomly their microphone won't work. It's not because of a physical mute on the headset or because they're muted in the app.
Windows 10 + Chrome Browser. Two different computers same issue.
I've been through 3.5mm headphones, 3.5mm<->USB adapter, bluetooth headphones, it's the same problem.
It doesn't seem to be a problem for them in any other conferencing app. Going into Google Meet settings I can see the microphone but when it's happening clearly no sound is coming through. Go to sound levels in Windows, everything looks fine, mic sound coming through fine. Cycling chrome or a reboot usually fixes the issue but not always.
This is happening on two different machines. Does anyone have a suggestion?????
https://redd.it/krtbqn
@r_k12sysadmin
Google Suite Not Able to be Accessed on Local School Campus
Looking for fresh eyes to see something that I am not. We are having an issue with our network random days a week for over a month now where randomly in the day Google Docs, Sheets, etc. will randomly be unreachable. It usually clears itself up in 10-20 minutes, but since we are a school that is kind of not an option. Google has confirmed it is not them.
Our set up: Fiber internet with Spectrum Backup>PFSense Firewall on the most recent version of Firmware>HP Aruba 2920 Switches on version 16.09.0009>Extreme (formerly Aerohive) AP 230
Separate VLANS for Students and Teachers broadcast via wireless.
Issue still occurs over wired connection.
Traceroute on the firewall finishes fine, but traceroute locally gets hung on the hop between the core switch and the firewall.
Any ideas on what could be causing these issues or where to go from here. I have Wireshark recording/logs of event, but nothing looks out of the normal.
Thank you for your help!
https://redd.it/krrcq0
@r_k12sysadmin
What’s the best MDM?
We use all kinds of devices.
- Windows laptops for high schoolers
- Chromebooks for middle schoolers
- iPads for elementary
- MacBooks for teachers
A bonus would be if the MDM can track devices or image the window devices. Any suggestions? Thanks!
https://redd.it/krohaq
@r_k12sysadmin
Blocking External User from Sharing Files
There is a former student sharing inappropriate files from her Gmail account to someone inside my organization. We have been asked to block this particular user from being able to do so. After investigating, it looks like the only way to do that is to limit an OU to no external users or only Whitelisted domains. Is that correct?
We have a very simple OU since we don't use CBs and we are a very small school. We just have 2 OUs; 1 for staff and the other for students. I figured I'd just create a sub OU for this particular person and change that setting, especially I'm sure this will come up again. My concern would be if this person needs something from an external domain. Any thoughts?
https://redd.it/kr3qb6
@r_k12sysadmin
Remotely supporting teaching staff
Hey all,
Now that the UK has yet again entered lockdown fully I was wondering whether anyone has any experience with any services for remote support on staff laptops when they are at home?
As it stands our staff (5 schools worth, around 350-400 laptops) are all working from home, I am finding that across the schools staff are experiencing issues and there is very little we are able to do to support as we don’t have any remote access.
Staff are restricted from running .exes so installable single use solutions are a no go (TeamViewer etc), wondering if anyone has used any remote tools that do not requiring installing at all.
Cheers
Edit: Laptops have the bare bones software on currently, Office, Chrome and SCCM agent, SCCM isn’t front facing so not sure we can use the remote access within SCCM at all. Just found Quick Assist which is in Windows 10 however most likely not LTSC.
https://redd.it/kra2of
@r_k12sysadmin
The question about pay
So I work at a michigan public school district, its a district of 5 buildings and about 1700 students. Our department consists of our department head, 2 full time techs and a part time tech. The part time is being paid via grant right now. My boss is looking to try and get some more money to my coworker and I, our super said she thought we where underpaid, but we'd like to do our homework first.
We both work salary, mine is 30k, his is a little more since he's been here longer, we don't get any benefits, and we often work uncompensated OT. We do everything "tech related" from simple passwords, to network and server administration.
Where does that put us compared to other tech people in other schools? Do we even have room to ask for anything to begin with?
https://redd.it/kskbzd
@r_k12sysadmin
Chromebooks not working only at student's house
We had a student return a chromebook saying it suddenly became unusable and would only flash a white screen then a black screen. We gave them another one. They said it's doing the same thing. They say the white screen appears where you pick a wifi network then quickly flashes to a black screen. It keeps alternating between the black and white screen and they can't get a chance to pick a network. What could be going on at their house with their router that would cause this?
It was a brand new chromebook we gave him that was definitely working here.
https://redd.it/kshfz6
@r_k12sysadmin
Mysterious ooze from Meraki access point
We are finally replacing many of our old Meraki MR24 access points. Strangely many of them seem to be leaking this clear oily ooze. Is this a common thing for old APs? Haha
https://redd.it/ksemlv
@r_k12sysadmin
how long do you retain email accounts after people leave your district?
We've always just suspended accounts and forgotten about them. the time has come to change that policy and come up with a policy and enact it.
our email accounts are in Google Workspace, but regardless of platform---
Do you delete accounts immediately?
Do you suspend accounts for a period of time before deleting accounts?
Are there implications of re-creating a google account with the same username?
I know some locations have laws regarding how long to retain records - does that drive your decision?
https://redd.it/kscqpv
@r_k12sysadmin
Is upgrading from 500 MB needed
Hello everyone,
Our district recently upgraded the infrastructure. We run all Ubiquiti wireless controllers, 52WAPS, and switches within our two buildings. We currently have 500mb EDI and 100mb EPL. We have the option to use E-rate but it's difficult to gauge the need being that our students have not been in the building since March of 2020.
In addition. Our district has recently become a 1:1. I'm guessing with the addition of so many new devices that it's best to increase the bandwidth? We have 1100 students overall and 75 percent of them in one building.
What are your thoughts?
https://redd.it/kr2jr1
@r_k12sysadmin
What are you doing for WiFI Network security/password?
I came into this tech director job about a month ago and there is a lot to be fixed from the person before me. With content filtering, firewall, wifi settings, everything here was kinda just.... put together to work, but not connected as neatly as it should.
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Right now im looking at finding an alternative to our two wifi networks (guest) and (nonguest). I dont like having the "good" wifi blocked off by a password only the IT team knows, and probably all of the students. But I also dont want to force users to log in with a captive portal every time they use their device.
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Are other districts doing something different? I know I can push out network info via google admin console for chromebooks. But what about when a teacher brings their device in from home and want to connect to stream a video or something similar? This also impedes my content filtering, because any user that doesnt authenticate will be put in the default security group in Iboss and they wont have access to youtube anyways.
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Sorry for the ramble, but I would like input on Wifi solutions with content filtering.
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Thanks!
https://redd.it/krvnj1
@r_k12sysadmin
Google Meet Issue: This video is paused due to problems on the network
Has anyone had students/staff report this issue over the course of the last 60 days?
We upgraded our bandwidth to 2Gbps and all internal/external interfaces to 10Gbps
Within the last two months, we have gotten a crippling number of reports of this issue where Google Meet participant video will disappear in favor of the users avatar and if you hover over the user's tile, the message "this video is paused due to problems on the network"
We've opened cased with Palo (our firewall vendor), our ISP and Google.
Palo reports there are no drops or loss of packets to indicate the problem is with the FW or policies on the firewall.
our ISP has verified no physical issues on the circuit itself.
Google has us running webRTC, bandwidth and HAR diagnostic checks and is telling us that the reports indicate our devices are starting off with good connectivity then dropping bandwidth below 1Mbps.
When testing we notice that the issue only really starts to happen with the more tabs and apps that the chromebook has open. It almost always happens when presenting/sharing a screen as well. The interesting thing to note during our tests is that the presentation didn't seem to be impacted, even when the presenters avatar was present and displayed the video paused message, the screenshare never missed a beat.
I also noticed that Google changed their minimum requirements for conducting a Google Meet, depending on the use case ( our scenario seems to require an intel core based processor and much more RAM, vs the N series processor and 4GB of RAM our chromebooks have)
When testing we also notice that each and every time that message appears, if you pin the impacted participant, the video feed turns back on and remains on until the user is unpinned.
Could it be possible that the device is dropping bandwidth due to the lack of its own resources rather than the bandwidth not being available for it to use?
We've tested these cases outside of our network using the same devices and the problems persist. So I know that our network might have something to do with it, but we've been ruling it out more and more each day. And the issue seems to follow the devices, regardless of the network.
We already recommend that users only use the Meet application while running it on their Chromebook, but that's not always possible. We also recommend ensuring no extensions/apps are installed, particularly for Google Meet as well. Another recommendation is to share links to content rather than content itself and to only share the tab/app that needs to be shared rather than the whole screen.
Is anyone else experiencing an issue similar or this exact issue? Any information would be greatly appreciated.
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Thank you!
https://redd.it/krwn85
@r_k12sysadmin
Website Hosting
Good evening,
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We are currently using School Messenger and it's been getting rough as of late getting support and their back end isn't exactly the greatest. However, the price is nice. After discussing this with the super, we are interested in see what other people are using and if they are happy. I've even considered self-hosting with joomla/wordpress.
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I'm currently having a talk with Finalsite as they offer a great product at a tad bit higher price. Anyone have any suggestions or use Finalsite?
https://redd.it/ks15eh
@r_k12sysadmin
Has anyone used Tenorshare's 4MeKey before?
Of course iPads are returned with their iCloud accounts still logged in, and I can't always get back in touch with the owner. Apple has denied us the school management platform so these are some expensive paper weights at this point. I found the program called 4mekey but it seems sketchy. Has anyone used it or can confirm it actually works? I was under the impression removing an iCloud account is basically impossible. Thanks!
https://redd.it/krxm6x
@r_k12sysadmin
Need suggestions for iPad Case! (UPDATE)
Thank you, everyone, for all the suggestions and votes of the previous post. I have updated all the information to my supervisor.
So what happened was that my school have purchased iPads for our K6-8 students. We have distributed hundreds of Chromebooks to our K9-12 students with iPearl cases. Regarding the terrible experiences we had, that was when the nightmare started. Wanted suicide every morning when I stepped into the office, facing the number of broken devices. No matter how hard you were working, the broken Chromebook just keeps coming to the Dep. Seriously, WHY THOSE KIDS SO GOOD AT BREAKING THINGS!!!!! I only get paid $15/hr. And we have worked our ass off to fixing those devices, but still, everyone is having problems with us, like teachers, parents, etc. They think that we are just sitting in the office with a cup of coffee was what we do with our daily job. Seriously, I don't know why I'm taking this job. So not worth it.
However, hundreds of naked iPads are sitting out there, and we have to do something with them. My supervisor was asking me to choose the solid cases for the iPad. We don't care about the outlook or multifunction, just solid, shatter-resistant. From your guys' suggestions in the previous post, I got Maxcase, Gumdrop, and iPearl (most likely won't purchase their cases again). Any other suggestions?
https://preview.redd.it/zm94zkuvoq961.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fd5a4c94dd908357f4edabf1f23cd2eceb12a78b
https://redd.it/krs0ir
@r_k12sysadmin
Restrict Student Chromebook to Google sites only
Greetings all,
I've been tasked with trying to find a way to restrict a student Chromebook to only allow it to visit first-party Google sites (Drive, Classroom, Gmail, Meet, etc.) and NOTHING else.
This student has been visiting very inappropriate sites (from home) and despite us informing the school admins and parents that they should be looking at parental controls and better supervision at home, they believe that this is something that IT can press the magic button for.
Forgive me as I am a bit new to Google Administration and have no formal training. I know that we can blacklist URLs, but is there a way to set a Chromebook (or OU for that matter) to only allow for traffic to reach whitelisted sites and nothing else? This is not an issue on-site of course but to prevent the naughty stuff at home.
We do not have any third party MDM on our Chromebooks like GoGuardian, we only manage them from the Admin Console.
Thanks in advance for any help. Normally I would do a lot more research before asking here, I am just under the gun for a quick solution. Cheers!
https://redd.it/krsyit
@r_k12sysadmin
Apple Classroom Bluetooth Bypass
Our students are one to one with MacBooks, and we have started using Apple Classroom for teachers to mange those. It works great - the feature set is exactly what we need, and our classes are auto provisioned from our MDM (which pulls from our SIS). However, the (cunning and deceptive) children have figured out that simply flipping bluetooth off prevents classroom from working.
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On iOS, you can prevent bluetooth changes with configuration profile, but this does not exist for MacOS. Has anyone come up with a scripted way to force bluetooth to stay on?
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Thanks!
https://redd.it/krqief
@r_k12sysadmin
Livestreaming sports?
With spectators being off-limits we're being asked to live stream most of our sports now. Is there a low cost solution you've used that you like? Should I just get a bunch of Mevos? Do GoPro's live stream seamlessly? Should I just get some of them and tripods and put it on the coaches to get someone to film?
We already have some high-end solutions with HUDL and NFHS but we don't want to add more servers/mounted cameras for what we assume is a short term problem.
https://redd.it/krorj6
@r_k12sysadmin
Clever sync with PowerSchool 20.11
We're a PS SIS (cloud) customer who also use Clever as our badging/SSO system for Chromebooks. PS completed an update (20.11) that broke/breaks the sync with Clever; we've followed the instructions on addressing, granted appropriate access per their KB doc, and still no dice.
Figured I'd post here and see if any of my peers ran into this issue. The PS update is pretty new (our sync broke just before Christmas in the US) and so far, no progress. We're a free user of Clever so while I can't complain, I also don't have a ton of support from their end.
https://redd.it/kr5a60
@r_k12sysadmin
Setting Different Startup Pages for SubOU's in Chrome
I have a Students OU in chrome admin tool which has three sites that they use everyday to open on browser start-up. However, I have some child OU's of Students who I'd like to have the freedom to set their own startup pages. However, I cannot seem to change the policy for the child OU. Does that make sense? Can anyone steer me in the right direction? Thanks!
https://redd.it/krc42f
@r_k12sysadmin
