Creating our own monitoring system for Chromebooks / chrome os??

[Zezima]

Hello,

 

Since the end of last year, we are a school with a lot of chromebooks. One thing all teachers are requesting is some software which will monitor the screens of kids using chromebooks (much like RM tutor does).

 

I've looked around and found NetSupport, Teacher Dashboard and one other which i lost the link of...

 

Taking a look at them all they are all very expensive and they are compiled with lots of extra features we dont need. All we need is to see what is on their screen.... none of these extra features to let you lock the device, send messages etc...

 

I understand this is a VERY open ended question, but does anyone know what sort of route id go down in making a package like NetSupport or Teacher dashboard? Something which send all the screens of the chromebooks over to the teacher...

 

From what i know alreay, im pretty sure im going to need to make a Web App for the teacher, and most likely some sort of extension for students. he only thing im sure of is that i imagnie the extension would take periodic screenshots and send it to the teacher.

 

Only reason im asking is because im not sitting down and figuring out the details of this little adventure until friday, so hopefully maybe someone on here is a bit googly and have a few pointers..

 

Thanks

[Arthur]

I don't think unattended remote access is currently possible in Chrome OS. Someone has to be in front of the device to type a code in before you can connect to it...

 

https://plus.google.com/+FrancoisBeaufort/posts/NZKyCp3wmMz

 

[zackyhacky]

RM tutor 6.1 v3 is now able to monitor Chromebooks using a chrome extension, called Rm Student. We've just started rolling it out at our secondary school.

 

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rm-student/igapjjgkogojaeobgjjffefpkmaiglof?hl=en

 

As for the added features, once you've made a program that can connect and watch the student screen 24/7, like these applications are able to do, blocking screens etc. is a very small extra step, so it doesn't make sense for any of these companies to create such an extensive piece of software and just leave it at that, especially when there's so many competitors.

 

Good luck finding something budgetary!

Edited March 2, 2020 by zackyhacky

[Ogdos]

Have a look at Senso.Cloud. They support Chromebooks and you can pick just the parts you need.

[paulkerton]

Have a look at Senso.Cloud. They support Chromebooks and you can pick just the parts you need.

 

Last time I looked at Senso.Cloud, it would continually nag the user to accept the screen being shared until they did so. Is that still the case?

[dhicks]

does anyone know what sort of route id go down in making a package like NetSupport or Teacher dashboard? Something which send all the screens of the chromebooks over to the teacher...

 

You'd need something client-side on the Chromebooks to do screen capture, then you'd need to to (securely, obviously) route that data somewhere for a web-based interface to pick up. I'd start by looking at VNC and figuring out how to get some kind of VNC client running on ChromeOS - as people have pointed out, you'll probably have to deal with an authorise-this-app process somewhere along the way.

 

For a web-based interface, both (the confusingly named) NoVNC and Apache Guacamole can provide HTML5-based VNC viewers that work in a browser. I'm not sure what the performance of a classes worth (30?) all in one browser window would be.

[Ogdos]

Last time I looked at Senso.Cloud, it would continually nag the user to accept the screen being shared until they did so. Is that still the case?

 

I’m afraid I don’t know that as we don’t have Chromebooks. They’ve been very accommodating if we’ve asked for anything though, so might be worth a quick email to them.

[owen-senso]

Last time I looked at Senso.Cloud, it would continually nag the user to accept the screen being shared until they did so. Is that still the case?

 

Senso has 3 ways of viewing the screen

 

1. Request permission to view the whole screen

2. Lock the Screen until Approval to the Whole Screen

3. View the Active Tab (Requires no approval)

 

Options 1 and 2 are unavoidable due to a Google Policy which doesn't allow us (or any other company for that matter) to view the entire Chromebook without asking for Permission first. However, we can get round that by using Option 3.

 

In my personal experience, unless you're utilizing the Android element to Chromebooks, option 3 is usually suitable for what you need anyway!

[mavhc]

Option 2 seems fine, reminds they pupils they're being monitored and to use their secreted mobile phones for accessing dodgy stuff like normal people

[junz]

Another option to consider is Hapara Dashboard, Has a lot of features that other providers do not have such as closing tabs, Setting up sessions to only allow students to go onto specific websites,