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Reddit’s r_k12sysadmin Credits: @r_channels @reddit2telegram
K12 Tech Predictions for 2026?
https://k12techtalkpodcast.com/e/ribs-switches-predictions-k-12-tech-talk-year-end-recap/ and all major podcast platforms
Key topics include the mainstreaming of AI in K12, vendor security scrutiny (PowerSchool and Infinite Campus MFA), continued funding uncertainty, device cost, student data privacy, and looming screentime debates. Predictions? AI, screentime, vendor accountability, tighter budgeting, and more!!!
https://redd.it/1pqxah9
@r_k12sysadmin
CodeHS, Repl.it, and the like
How are you all addressing students creating/using these platforms to play games or host proxies when we cannot directly block them as they are used in instruction?
https://redd.it/1pquww4
@r_k12sysadmin
Whats the point of Clever?
We use FACTS/Renweb SIS and we have a vendor tied to simplfying attendance who wants us to adopt Clever to access SIS. From the academic/student computing piece, I don't get the point of it. It seems like it doesn't eliminate the need for managing a Google Admin console to still adjust settings and users. Google classroom is often offered for easy rostering. We don't have anyone under 2nd grade really logging in or utilizing tech. Everything I see on here is from 5 years ago. Everything ChatGPT gives me is from Clevers marketing. Can someone working in an independent K-8 shop explain whether it is really worthwhile for academic or other uses?
https://redd.it/1pqpvzo
@r_k12sysadmin
Intermittent Wi-Fi Disconnects – Request for Insight
We’ve been investigating an issue for the past couple of weeks and would appreciate any insight or guidance from the group.
**Environment:**
* Microsoft campus
* Ubiquiti UniFi switches and access points
* SonicWall firewall
* Mix of Lenovo and Microsoft Surface student devices
* Lenovo staff devices
We are receiving ongoing reports of both student and staff devices intermittently dropping from Wi-Fi throughout the day. At this point, we have not been able to identify a consistent pattern related to specific access points, switches, or device types.
To troubleshoot, we have:
* Updated infrastructure firmware and also reverted to known-good versions
* Reviewed firewall rules
* Verified domain controllers, DNS, and DHCP services
* Checked for co-channel interference and adjusted AP configurations accordingly
Despite these efforts, the issue persists and we’re struggling to identify the root cause.
Has anyone experienced a similar issue in a comparable environment? If so, we’d greatly appreciate hearing what ultimately resolved it.
Thank you in advance for any insight you’re willing to share.
https://redd.it/1pqoe8g
@r_k12sysadmin
Apple devices in a non-Apple District
We are a 100% Windows and ChromeOS district. We have gotten a few requests to purchase an iPad, but have no way or time to manage the device. What do you say in these situations? That we have to factor in the training and setup in the cost? Or do you just let the department use the device unmanaged, free rein.
https://redd.it/1pq30s1
@r_k12sysadmin
Cloudflare Project Cybersafe Schools - anyone have success signing up?
Has anyone had any success signing up for Cloudflare Project Cybersafe Schools? If so - does anyone have a contact I can reach out to about this program?
I submitted the form here a month ago and haven't heard a peep from them (although I have been now receiving all their marketing email). I've tried following up several times with no luck. Since it's the holidays maybe I'm just being impatient.
https://redd.it/1ppvfs4
@r_k12sysadmin
Digital Student Portfolios
I did a cursory search on here and noticed some discussion regarding digital student portfolios in the past but most of those threads are at least 3 years old. I'm curious to know, for those who have implemented this, what are you using? What have you tried? What worked well and what didn't?
Thanks in advance!
https://redd.it/1ppqk5j
@r_k12sysadmin
Chromebook policy suggestions
I am looking for recommendations of policies to change before I roll out the Chromebooks at our school. So far, I have disabled USB ports, blocked developer tools in Chrome, blocked dev mode in Chrome and blocked sensitive internal Chrome URL's. Thanks!
https://redd.it/1pp124u
@r_k12sysadmin
Skyward/Qmlativ performance issues
Anyone else impacted by the issues ISCorp is having with their Skyward SMS and Qmlativ hosting?
Despite going on for 5 days now, they have provided little information about what's happening and what they're actually doing to mitigate the issue. Wondering if anyone has gotten more information out of them about what the issue is.
https://redd.it/1poz89k
@r_k12sysadmin
retest.us down?
it seems that retest.us is down, does anyone know of another site for keyboard/webcam testing?
https://redd.it/1poxdgb
@r_k12sysadmin
Chromebook will restart in -XX,XXX seconds
We get this randomly on Chromebooks throughout the district and I'm not sure why. The only solution I've found is a powerwash. Any ideas as to the root cause?
https://preview.redd.it/1yyaohz4jm7g1.jpg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6f1099df8fb28ce60fd0d06b153d1e19266ef433
https://redd.it/1pocb8r
@r_k12sysadmin
YouTube "Movies & TV"
Has anyone successfully been able to block the YouTube Movie & TV? It's URL isn't the same format as a channel, which I suspect is because it's YT and not just a user.
https://redd.it/1po8h9o
@r_k12sysadmin
Asset management - Currently with AssetTiger
So we had AssetTiger when I got the job at the school 3 years ago so it was already in place. We would order labels each year and we would get the 2,500 asset subscription covered each year. I guess they are getting rid of this and its going to be $440/year. Is there anything out there that is better for the price or cheaper? We are a google school so if the asset management can be synced with Google that would be great. Just looking for suggestions on different products before I request demos from these companies and they bother me for the next year. Thanks!
https://redd.it/1po2i3p
@r_k12sysadmin
CTL Chromebooks?
Does anyone use CTL for their student chromebooks? I've used then a few times, but they're generally out-priced by the budget manufacturers like Lenovo, Dell, and HP. However, I have purchased from then a small number of times. I've been impressed with their customer-centric behavior. They claim to make it easy to get parts for repairs, but I haven't needed to do this yet. They also appear to have an accidental damage policy that is lower cost than I'm used to using. So now I'm considering them for my next purchase of student devices. Before I do that, I want to ask what experiences others have had with the hardware. Has it been reliable? Has repair service been an effective service? Have they been reasonable about what they accept for repairs under the accidental damage plan or do they interrogate you and then reject things?
Thanks in advance for anything you can tell me about your experiences with CTL chromebooks or their repair services!
https://redd.it/1po0i6f
@r_k12sysadmin
Google Apple Platform SSO Feature Request
Google now has a feature request open for Apple Platform SSO support: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/460743384
If you're interested in the feature, you can star the feature request and comment. If it gets enough visibility, Google may finally implement it. It would be huge for my school district as we're currently still AD binding all our Macs. Moving to a 3rd party tool like Xcreds or JAMF Connect never appealed to us. What do you think?
https://redd.it/1pnhpbv
@r_k12sysadmin
Printing blocked on Chromebooks after adding wildcard
I was instructed to block all URL's on our chromebooks however, that now caused the printing features inside of Chrome to stop functioning even though chrome://print and chrome://resources were added to the whitelist. Any ideas?
https://redd.it/1pqsw1i
@r_k12sysadmin
iReady Testing on iPads Locking the device
Has anyone been doing iReady testing on iPads recently? Last week we did some iReady testing and about 3-5% of our iPads at campuses completely locked up in the middle of testing. They Locked-up to the point where campus techs were claiming they wouldn't event take a reset with the power/volume buttons. The assessments were running fine until some random point in the test, and not the same question for each device.
It seems fairly random.
Interestingly enough, at least one Chromebook was affected with a similar lockup behavior last week as well.
For the iPads, They're all:
* 11th Gen iPads (a16)
* Running some flavor of iPadOS 18 (supported per iReady's documentation)
* In Logitech keyboard and mouse cases
* Have the same configuration profiles
Just wondering if anyone has experienced any similar behavior recently with this platform on mobile devices.
https://redd.it/1pqp1xa
@r_k12sysadmin
Anyone seeing a dramatic increase in Calendar phishing?
We've had to field 4 separate Calendar invite phishing events in the past month. We're locked down so the primary Calendar viewer can't see the invites but whom ever has share/edit access to that Calendar can see it and interact with it. Format has been a link to something plus a PDF file that also contains the link. So far, the primary domain's hosting these are: *[.]cruwaisho[.]sa[.]com they like to make multiple events spanning a week to a month. It's a spray campaign as well, sometimes though a BEC, that's usually a small subset of the district personal, around 30-60, %1.25 of the whole.
https://redd.it/1pqqxmo
@r_k12sysadmin
ChatGPT for Teachers
As much as I hate it, leadership has embraced ChatGPT for teachers. Has anyone else set this up and come across invite errors for your users?
https://redd.it/1pq3lm1
@r_k12sysadmin
Bypassing a Security ID to set up email forwarding
We use Google Mail. We want to forward the email for one of our staff members who recently resigned to one of our other staff members in the same department. As soon as I enter the forwarding email, I am prompted to confirm the account identity by eithe comparing the passkey to a passkey on a mobile device(iphone, ipad, etc.) or by connecting an external device that contains the security ID. Is there any way to either disable this option or bypass it so that I can complete the email forwarding process. Thanks!!!
https://redd.it/1ppxpnj
@r_k12sysadmin
Free/super cheap SCEP with Intune?
Does anyone have a recommendation for a free or super cheap way to implement SCEP with Intune? I have a working install on the community edition of SCEPMan with FreeRADIUS, but we're still incurring Azure charges with that. I'm curious if anyone has a self hosted/FOSS/dirt cheap for education alternative to SCEPMan?
https://redd.it/1pps6af
@r_k12sysadmin
Interactive Whiteboard Software
What are your teachers using for interactive whiteboard software? We have a few math teachers that still use the old interwrite workspace, but this is no longer supported and becoming a compatibility issue with newer versions of windows. What are other options people are using in their districts? Thanks!
https://redd.it/1pp0gl0
@r_k12sysadmin
Anyone know the gam time format?
When I do a "gam info cros" command, I get:
Date: y/m/d
ActiveTime: 5791243
Anyone know what that activeTime means? Is it time of day, or amount of time it was active? If time of day, how do I convert that into hours/mins?
Thank you.
Never mind. Looks like that's also the time duration the Chromebook was used, just in milliseconds for some reason.
https://redd.it/1pp1m1l
@r_k12sysadmin
Ubiquiti - Protect & Access
I've been seeing more districts using Ubiquiti for switches and APs, but I wanted to see how many of your are using them for ACS (door access) and IP cameras? If you are using them, could you share your footprint or device count? We currently have about 300 cameras and 330 doors across two high schools and a district office. We are considering Unifi because their pricing is significantly lower than the competition's, and their solutions have become pretty robust, covering about 90% of the competition's features as well. Am I a fool for considering them?
https://redd.it/1poymiv
@r_k12sysadmin
Looking for more seasoned advice on testing day delinma
I work for a Charter high school of about 400 students. Only tech. I started about 14 months ago.
When I started I had three to four weeks to prep for a testing day. Being new to edu, I did not know what PreSAT and PreACT being on the same day all envolved. All I know is that they told me how many devices I needed and I was 30 devices short. We ended up borrowing from a local school. The day went fine, but I didn't want a repeat. I hadthe school purchase 40 more devices.
It being my first time doing this I did not think about a few things. One being, that devices break at a certain rate at a highschool and the other being that class sizes are not always the same. So.. even though I hoped to avoid the situation, I was once again about 30 devices short and had to borrow devices from the other school.
Testing day came. I was told I needed 110 devices. Between me and the other school there was a little over 110 devices. Well.. 40 additional students needed devices and the day ended up a choactic mess that people are still talking about. (happened in Oct.)
I talked to the past tech of the school who admitted that that testing day was very tough. He agree tha having both PreSAT and PreACT on the same day was causing issues. I never ran into issues on any other testing day. Only this one testing day.
So I did the work on trying to change this to a two day test and thought I was doing a good job at it, until yesterday when the admin and staff turned against it due to calendar issues. I provided clear details on why I couldnt cover it and was left with vague answers of providing the devices, but im unsure if they know the cost of that.
So I am going to break things down. I want a fair assesment on my situation to make sure I am not missing obvious solutions.
First off the numbers given to me were wrong and also the testing admin (who is no longer at our school) failed to communicate to parents that they needed to bring in their year loaners.
about 115 sophmores and 63 juniors testing on that day.
28 sohpmores have year loaners and 25 juniors have year loaners.
Howver not every junior tested, so I don't know the exact number of day loaners for those juinors testing. So I am going to be generouse and say 53 year loaners..
That means I would have needed to provide 127 devices at best case scenerio. Also btw I was getting these numbers after the fact, becuase number of students testing was not provided to me. I trusted the testing lead at the time.
Problem is, I have 84 devices on a good day to hand out to students. That means best case scenerio I was 43 devices short.
I recieved pushback from buying 50-70 devices, but then they don't want the testing day to be two days. So now I am going to get a budget ready for how much I need to support this testing day.
The factors at play:
There is a rate of devices that break and are too expensive or old to replace each year. I am now going to need to figure out that number, which may be hard becuase I didn't foresee neeidng to.
Some students will forget their year loaners so we have to plan on some buffer.
I only have one charging cart. I was pushing for a 2nd one, but even if they let me expand my inventory by 50-80, I'd need 3-4 carts in total to charge these devices.
So what do I do? I guess I need to figure out how many devices I would need to buy to cover the testing if done on the same day again. I need to break down how much money it is going to cost us to cover this testing day.
Honestly, if the provide me the budget then fair , I'll do it. However, this is a $30-60k decision from my persective. For one testing day?
Am I thinking this through well? I am open to advice, becuase if they do provide me the budget then I want to make sure I do this right.
https://redd.it/1pov6mb
@r_k12sysadmin
AP Lockdown Browser Not Locked Down
We're battling students who are using the Windows 11 virtual desktops to bypass the lockdown portion of the lockdown browser. They start the exam (in this case practice) and then either create another desktop, or move to one already created, where they apply their search skills to find the answer to the question.
I'm really shocked that this is not detected by the Lockdown Browser. Any one else seeing this or able to offer any suggestions?
We use LanSchool to monitor students, but it's next to impossible to watch them all simultaneously. I thought LanSchool might be able to block everything but the Lockdown Browser, but I'm pretty sure it's just running Chrome, so at the very least that would have to be allowed.
https://redd.it/1poa40j
@r_k12sysadmin
Google Cloud Directory Sync update (5.0.41) to handle Archive licenses
GCDS was updated to 5.0.41 yesterday and in the release notes it says it handles the Archive license in one operation instead of multiple. I know some folks were looking to move off GCDS and onto other license sync tools to avoid having to sync twice when users are assigned an Archive license. From the changelog:
Added a new Enable license management for users in Archive and Unarchive rules box to the licenses configuration settings. When this box is checked, GCDS:
Performs license operations for archived and unarchived users during the same process, avoiding the need for a second sync.
Supports license removal for archived users.
Supports license assignment, removal, and update for unarchived users.
https://redd.it/1po26dz
@r_k12sysadmin
Any help with Youtube? requiring login for entire district
On Friday Youtube started asking our district to login to verify we aren't bots every time we need to load a video. If it was once, fine, but it's every video, and whats even worse is you can't play embedded videos now because you can't sign in because you can't do anything as it's just a black box and you can't click on anything to login.
I've tried Google Workspace Support, Youtube Premium Support, YouTubeTV Support, I posted on their u/TeamYouTube account on Twitter, I posted in the community help, I can't get anywhere. Google workspace tells me go through YouTubetv and they will get me YouTube. YoutubeTV just disconnects saying it's the wrong department. I even did the feedback on the YouTube page as they recommended, but it's been since friday and no word. I found a page that you can report an IP for the wrong country and tried that too but it says that it'll take a month or more to hear anything.
I have no way of getting through to anyone, no way of getting any support. It's our IP being blacklisted and I need it lifted. Changing IP's is not an option, and I really don't know where to turn.
Does anyone know a path I can go down that might get me any support? I know this isn't the right sub for this but I'm out of options and you guys are usually on top of my issues.
Any and I mean any guidance would be appreciated.
Read and did what I could on these:
This one says click help center, but it doesn't open, then I find it but the directions are not working.
https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/309935997/ips-from-my-isp-need-to-log-to-confirm-we-are-not-a-bots?hl=en
This one I can't even figure out where to report anything
https://transparencyreport.google.com
Here is my X post
https://x.com/TeamYouTube/status/2000643985023344961
Below is what 2 different support chats told me. The First is Google Workspace, the second is Youtube TV Support. Neither directions produced any support.
This is what Support tells me:
"Also, I highly suggest to contact the Youtube team so that they can check if your Youtube settings for this workspace account is properly configured. To contact the YouTube team, you may use this link: *https://support.google.com/youtubetv/gethelp* Under "I need help with my" select "YouTube TV" > Under "Tell us what we can help with:" let the customer explain their concern > Next > Click Other > Next Step > Next Step > Select best contact option. This is for YouTube TV Support but we'll use their platform to get YouTube Support. After the chat has been created, you may ask the support agent to transfer you to YouTube Support.
In this case, you need to submit a report for your IP address problem here: *https://support.google.com/websearch/workflow/9308722* You will receive an email update within the next 24 hours from the dedicated team since to set your proper expectations, the issues with IP address being blocked by the system is out of our scope of support here"
This was another Support Person:
"use this link: *https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6305537* Just wait for at least 20 seconds and a chat box for YouTube support will show up at the right-bottom part of the screen."
I'm also did everything in this video:
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3GL\_MPt8ng*
https://redd.it/1po1rqq
@r_k12sysadmin
Aristotle K12 (Current Linewize Customer)
Our Linewize subscription is up after the 25/26 school year. We don't have a need to move away from Linewize, but I just sat in on an Aristotle demo. The demo had too much information, and I am curious about others who have implemented Aristotle and were previous Linewize users. Or if you moved away from Aristotle to Linewize, what is your opinion?
Thanks, guys!
https://redd.it/1pnkj6d
@r_k12sysadmin
3D printer discussion.
Hey everyone, I looked and see past posts in terms of people inquiring what printer or software to use.
where I'm at is, how heavily do you guys control what is being purchased and how much you support and service these printers?
We have them at all of our buildings but tech was originally minimally involved but know we are wondering how involved we should get. Maybe decide which brand we like the best and want to be the most prepared to service ect.
https://redd.it/1pnhq5d
@r_k12sysadmin
