THOUGHTS ON EDTECH & SCHOOL OPERATIONS
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KB5079473 Effectively Kills Internet Access for Teams, Edge, OneDrive, and Copilot on Windows 11
Microsoft’s March Patch Tuesday update for Windows 11 has introduced a bug that makes affected devices believe they have no internet connection, even when they’re clearly online. The result is...
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Microsoft Publisher End of Life: A School Guide
Microsoft Publisher has been the forgotten application in the Office suite for as long as I can remember. It hasn’t had a meaningful feature update in years. Most people in...
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SalamanderSoft: Keeping Your MIS and Cloud Platforms in Sync
If you work in school IT, you probably spend more time than you’d like creating user accounts. A new pupil joins mid-term, and someone has to set up their Active...
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ExamWritePad: Why a Purpose-Built Exam Word Processor Is Worth Paying For
If you’ve ever had to set up Microsoft Word for exam access arrangements, you know the drill. Disable spell check. Disable grammar check. Turn off autocorrect. Turn off predictive text....
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KCSIE 2026: AI Finally Gets the Safeguarding Attention It Deserves
I’ve had “KCSIE and AI: what the next update should say” on my list of things to write about for months. The current guidance mentions online safety in broad terms,...
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The Safest Way to Use AI With School Data: Don't Show It the Data
I’ve spent the past year trying to get AI to do useful things with school data. Attendance patterns, behaviour trends, attainment gaps, the kind of analysis that school leaders need...
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MacBook Neo's 8GB RAM: Does It Actually Matter for Schools?
When Apple announced the MacBook Neo at £599 (£499 for education), the spec that drew the most criticism was the RAM. 8GB, soldered, no upgrade option. In 2026, that number...
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MacBook Neo: A Surface Advocate's Take on Apple's £599 School Laptop
I’ve been a Surface advocate in schools for years. I’ve recommended Surface Go devices to dozens of schools, helped deploy them in classrooms, and genuinely believed Microsoft had cracked the...