IT Ideas

Now you can deploy addons domain wide (or by sub-OU) to your Google Apps users. Its very straight forward to do and the process is illustrated in the video below. The only thing to remember is that the publisher of the addon need to publish it to the Google Apps Marketplace for you to be able to deploy it as described in the video.

Fairly recently Quarantine Manager was introduced to Google Apps. This is a tool that works alongside SPAM filtering, objectionable content and content compliance rules you may have setup. Essentially the Quarantine Manager holds messages that fall into the categories you have defined for administrators to view before approving or rejecting the messages. We have used this to block all SPAM messages going to students. This is a brief look at how to set it up.   Please note, it is very important to have authenticated email setup - this prevents things like group notifications every ending up in SPAM. Step 1 - define some Quarantine Names Head to email settings. You will find 'Manage Quarantines' below 'Authenticated email' near the bottom: Click on 'ADD' - top left Give the quarantine a name and description of what it is going to do. Decide if you just want to drop the message or send a rejection email. See example below: This in itself does nothing...

There a number of questions surrounding the management of ChromeOS devices in schools that crop up on a fairly frequent basis. So I thought I'd answer a few of the most common ones here that are not that obvious unless you are in the know. To do the following, you must have device management licences. Some of these tricks can be achieved using other means through third party add ons - but this is all done with just device management. Prevent non domain users logging on In the admin console go to 'Device Management', 'Chrome', 'Device Settings' Use the above policy to restrict who can sign-in to your devices. Wildcards are allowed as in the example above. This does not stop users signing into a non-domain account once signed into the device. Prevent users from signing into private accounts or adding accounts once signed in. In the admin console go to 'Device Management', 'Chrome', 'User Settings' Use this policy t...

I've been playing around with Chromixium  over the past few days. This is Ubuntu 14.04 modded to look and feel a lot like ChromeOS. It is possible to install actual ChromeOS on your own hardware - but its a tricky business and I've had limited success. Chromixium, being built on Ubuntu has excellent hardware support right out of the box and is relatively easy to install - taking only 10 minutes or so to be up and running. It might be an effective way of reprovisioning some old laptops... While it looks a lot like ChromeOS - its still Ubuntu at its core. So some of the advantages of ChromeOS are not there - but on the other hand you can install local linux apps. You can easily install it as a virtual machine using VirtualBox or create a live USB boot stick if you want to give it a whirl. Brief look at it below: And just for fun, I've booted a 9 year old Windows laptop with the USB live stick. Works really well and runs fast. Just a shame about the battery life...

I've been trying out ChromeOS 42 on my Pixel. This is the latest dev channel release and it bring in some interesting Material Design touches - especially to the file manager. This will be a couple of months away from the stable channel - but something to look forward to. If you don't want to risk the dev channel yourself - this is what it looks like:

I've been meaning to document how we setup our own public display system for sometime and have finally got round to it. We have 5 large displays in public areas around the school that display information. These are independent and can display different info on each screen. So what do you need? Obviously - some displays - big TV's or monitors - either will do. If TV's - remember to turn off any power management features! You can get 42" models for <£300 now. Mounts to fit them to a wall - typically around £20-30 mark. Mini PC - anything will do - something that can run Windows. If you have WiFi you don't need cabling - but otherwise a network point near the mounting location. Suitably located power socket. You need to setup is a system where the PC will boot up, auto logon and then be able to be controlled remotely by someone elsewhere in the school who puts stuff onto the displays. So this is how to do it: Step one - build the PC Install Windows an...

I've just enabled Google Play for Education on our domain. To do this you need to have either ChromeOS or Android management licences (or both). This will then give your teachers a really simple way to first out Android Apps, Chrome Apps and Books to individual students or groups. So this is a brief look at what it looks like: