What Software? Classroom management

[ste1988]

Hi,

 

What are you using?

 

And more importantly what are you paying?

 

I like impero with everything included, but id be happy with just someone to lock pc's for teachers in the suite.

 

Anyone using hp classroom, and if so what are the costs?

 

Thanks!

[Oaktech]

Impero, 150 workstations, 5 console licence. we pay a shade over a grand a year for it.

 

Having used RM tutor and various VNC clients Impero could be cheaper, but is still worth the money.

[mikeprice]

Use to use AB Tutor when I was teaching in secondary and it was brilliant - dunno about current costs but it used to be way cheaper

[Mark182]

We have Impero here. 350 workstations and 10 console. It's a lot of money but is really good. You can haggle the price down as well.

[SteveM555]

Impero again, 800 workstation limit and 30 console.

[GRitchie]

+1 Impero - 7 consoles, 205 workstations.

Slowly upping it over time.

 

Very costly, but very good.

[Norphy]

We use AB Tutor. We looked at Impero but for the amount of machines that we'd need it on, it was waaaaaaaaaaay too much money. The only thing we wanted it for was classroom management, the extra features that Impero has over AB Tutor are replicated elsewhere for us.

 

AB Tutor was £2.5k for a full site license.

[stevewill6]

Lanschool here. think it was £1200 for a site licence inc 2 years maintenance.

[Grey-gear]

Where I work has Impero but I have used something called netsupport for class room monitoring.

[round2it]

Lanschool here. think it was £1200 for a site licence inc 2 years maintenance.

 

If you tell lanschool you are migrating from a competetor you get it even cheaper. Your not locked in to support either

[stevewill6]

If you tell lanschool you are migrating from a competetor you get it even cheaper. Your not locked in to support either

 

Thats the deal we had

[sonofsanta]

Another for Lanschool here, because all we wanted was the classroom management - Impero and NetSupport were both too much product for us. LanSchool was much more competitively priced, no ongoing support if you don't want it as @round2it says, easy for us to install and configure (GPO!) and simple for teachers to use. You can lock screens, blacklist/whitelist applications and websites, view & control machines, send out surveys and questions... everything you need. Well worth trialling.

 

One teacher found a good use for the questions mechanism: he'd send out "do you need help?", and to anyone who answered yes, "do you want me to come over?", and that way he could saunter over and assist them without them having to be embarassed about raising their hand and asking for help in front of all their friends.

[strawberry]

AB tutor here. Love it.

 

Does help that I used to use ranger though, it opens your eyes to what AB can do.

[phsadmin]

We're also looking to evaluate and deploy trial at few sites for our district in the state. Few software I've played with are Lanschool, Impero, and Mythware CMS and all seem good with great features! My only concerns are;

1. Will it slow down our network? Each classroom has about 30-35 devices x's 60-80 classrooms per site

2. How reliable when operating over wireless APs? Teacher's device is tablet/2-in-1 and occasionally operating on wireless. Student devices connect via wireless

3. How bad of a delay/lag for remote operation, interaction, video sharing, and etc.?

 

Please share your feedback if you've experienced these issues and how you work around them. Thanks in advance.

[psydii]

I prefer teachers to have implicit control of their classes. Luckily we have a lead practitioner for Behaviour for Learning who also is cheerleader for embedding appropriate use of technology in learning.

 

[ARCHIVED CONTENT] Scenario 1: Starting a Lesson in an Orderly Way

 

That and the IT suites were designed to allow the teacher to see what everybody is doing by just looking through a 120 degree arc.

 

For classrooms, there is nothing that can do this for iPads, and for laptops - the teacher needs to become de-coupled from the front of their classroom. (if they are 'chalking and talking' devices should be 'closed' or face down. If they are not then they should be amongst the students, helping and monitoring)

 

Most techs and teachers disagree with this strategy to begin with. But once the B4L techniques begin to bed in, the rest flows quite naturally.