BYOD Planning

[forkies]

Hi all,

 

Hoping everyone is enjoying the sunshine and slightly warmer weather!

 

I have been asked to do a massive planning project for BYOD for our school. The headteacher wants to spend a year planning, ensuring we know everything that has gone wrong for other schools and how they got around it so we have a smooth start.

 

Can any school that has gone down the BYOD route please let me know:

What issues you experienced?

How you dealt with these issues?

What did you implement/upgrade as part of your BYOD implementation?

What technical and hardware changes you made to your network?

What would you do differently if you were to redo it?

What did you do about students without laptops/tablets and pupil premium students?

Insurance and support, did you get parents to cover it or do you provide IT hardware and software support? If you do what insurance cover do you have to cover damage you may cause?

How does your school deal with misbehavior in class, as it is the students device and we would have it on segregated VLAN we couldn't use impero or similar?

What policy do you have in place for BYOD, could you share it? Do you cover in your they at their own risk connecting to the network (potential virus spreading between student devices)?

Am I missing something????

 

To give a bit of background we have around 900 students and are expanding to support around 1200. We have 6 IT rooms with 32 computers in each which we plan to reduce to around 3-4 (1 specialist media room, 2 IT rooms and a bookable room).

Cisco Meraki Wireless (MR18), which we are looking at getting surveyed and enhanced for higher density.

We have 1GB fibre backbone which we are looking at upgrading to 10GB and upgrading the core switches.

Smoothwall filtering which we are checking licensing, we already have a guest network for Sixth Formers which we plan to expand.

RemoteApps for students to access school applications remotely and on guest network, planning to upgrade this to support higher number of users.

We use radius authentication for the guest network for students so they are filtered, we plan to keep this and get them to sign in every morning.

GoogleApps for student email and allowing them access to drive etc.

100mb internet which we are in process of upgrading to 300mb.

 

This is in very early stages and I am going also looking at visiting a few schools that run BYOD to see it in action and chat with network managers, if you are in the RBWM area (Maidenhead/Windsor/Ascot) and wouldn't mind me visiting please let me know!

 

Thanks for all your help.

Tom

[RichardHarvey]

I am in the same boat! Any information would be very helpful!

 

Main difference, is my school is a Primary school in Milton Keynes. Currently has 2 sites, around 800 students. Will be 1260 students when full in about 3 years. . .

[zag]

What issues you experienced?

None really, other than the day to day admin of recording which student has which device

 

How you dealt with these issues?

I wrote a php/mysql asset script for them to submit their device info to us automatically via a web form. Saved a lot of time talking to the students being put on the captive portal for the first time

 

What did you implement/upgrade as part of your BYOD implementation?

Upgraded our Aruba wireless to latest firmware, mac address filtering on main network and BYOD. Enabled captive portal feature.

 

What technical and hardware changes you made to your network?

Added a new IP range for the devices on our wireless controller to use a vlan in the controller.

 

What would you do differently if you were to redo it?

Start with older years first

 

What did you do about students without laptops/tablets and pupil premium students?

Nothing, its a service for people to use voluntarily. No student HAS to have BYOD. Its just a service we provide if they want it. Saying that i'm sure the school would help if asked by a parent.

 

Insurance and support, did you get parents to cover it or do you provide IT hardware and software support? If you do what insurance cover do you have to cover damage you may cause?

No, no parent involvement. The students can bring in a device, they are responsible for it.

 

How does your school deal with misbehavior in class, as it is the students device and we would have it on segregated VLAN we couldn't use impero or similar?

Students are on a transparent proxy so things are blocked that are distracting and logged, its a lot more restricted than our normal proxy. Standard lesson management applies just like having mobile phones in classrooms (its not allowed unless the teacher says it is).

 

What policy do you have in place for BYOD, could you share it? Do you cover in your they at their own risk connecting to the network (potential virus spreading between student devices)?

We have a page of policy in our standard ICT policy. Its just the basic rules. Students are asked to read it again on BYOD signup and told the rules verbally. BYOD access can be taken away at any time if rules broken.

 

Am I missing something????

Its a lot easier than you think on the management side. Try not to think about restrictions as they are personal devices. We are not in control of them and should NOT be. If they are on a vlan then it shouldn't really matter with the correct security in place. They can't access any servers or even workstations here, its just a internet connection really.

 

We don't allow students to use mobile devices such as phones or handheld game devices, we did a survey and 95% of students already had internet capability on those though 3/4G. Only laptops and tablets allowed. Most students have ipads or macbooks these days from looking at our list. Lucky them! Our uptake on the service is around 40% at the moment but its only been running a few years. Its vastly more popular in the 6th form as they use them for independent study in their free periods.

 

Another thing to think about is make your VLE, or student ICT services online in the cloud. This makes it much easier for them to access from anywhere.

Edited May 24, 2016 by zag

[theeggmaster]

What issues you experienced?

No real issues. Staff were concerned about pupils misusing the devices in class.

 

How you dealt with these issues?

As a school we adopted a policy that devices could be used in class, but only with staff permission. Staff found that if devices were used in lessons then they weren't under the desk being used. We also have in our policy that the use of 3G/4G etc is prohibited so that pupils use our WiFi. This is so we could help with tracing misuse or bullying, whereas using 3G/4G we couldn't help them.

 

What did you implement/upgrade as part of your BYOD implementation?

I set up a completely separate network on a 192.168 range. This had DHCP from the wireless controller and Smoothwall for the filtering. Students accept a local certificate onto their devices, which allows them to authenticate via 802.11x to AD. This then allows us to track their browsing in Smoothwall against their AD credentials.

 

What technical and hardware changes you made to your network?

I put our BYOD network on a completely separate network so that our internal network is protected. We're a GAfE school so 95% of our work is on Google Apps. Anything else that is required is accessed over RemoteApp.

 

What would you do differently if you were to redo it?

I'm just about to redo it as we're moving into a new school with a new wireless system (Aerohive). I'd prefer more control over DHCP as it's currently handed out via our Trapeze wireless controller and there is no opportunity to do anything. I'm looking to run it on a Win2012R2 DHCP server instead. Currently all filtering is down to student level for anyone connecting to the BYOD network, so I'd also prefer to split the filtering out to student, staff and visitor level.

 

What did you do about students without laptops/tablets and pupil premium students?

We don't require that you have a device to learn at our school. If it's available and your teacher lets you use it, then you can use it. If the lesson requires IT, then I believe it's down to the school to provide this. We use Chromebooks where we can, and we also run a parental contribution scheme to purchase Chromebooks. We have used some pupil premium money to buy a few additional Chromebooks which are then assigned to relevant Pupil Premium pupils. These are on loan and come back into school when the child leaves.

 

Insurance and support, did you get parents to cover it or do you provide IT hardware and software support? If you do what insurance cover do you have to cover damage you may cause?

Parental contribution Chromebooks have theft and warranty for 3 years (they only pay for 2, so get an extra year for free). We have in our BYOD policy that the school does not require pupils to bring mobile devices into school, so the school is not liable for any theft/loss/damage etc. It's worded better in our BYOD policy.

 

How does your school deal with misbehavior in class, as it is the students device and we would have it on segregated VLAN we couldn't use impero or similar?

Use in class is at the teacher's discretion. Any misuse is therefore handled in the same way as any classroom disruption. We don't have any control or management of pupil devices.

 

What policy do you have in place for BYOD, could you share it? Do you cover in your they at their own risk connecting to the network (potential virus spreading between student devices)?

Our policy is here, and it does cover accessing the Internet at their own risk, as well as installing apps or updates (we don't require that any apps are used. We always try and use apps that are browser-based only to avoid this issue).

[CyberNerd]

What issues you experienced?

 

Everything from lip balm in power ports to machines lost in Tesco. You name it.

 

How you dealt with these issues?

Record them and deal as you go.

 

What did you implement/upgrade as part of your BYOD implementation?

Chromebooks to all year groups is the scheme. if parents don't want to be part of the school scheme they can bring in another device as long as it can run a chrome browser.

 

What technical and hardware changes you made to your network?

RDP/Citrix servers for legacy apps. 300Mb/s broadband. 802.11ac AP's. 10GB's backbone. VLAN for every year group based upon 802.1x authentication. Nothing on internal networks.

 

What would you do differently if you were to redo it?

We really overspecced the number of AP's and broadband required. I'd also make sure windows machines as BYOD were not acceptable. We have way more problems on windows machines that students buy and bring in than anything else - driver problems, virus problems, certificate issues etc. They make up about 3% of the devices 50% of the problems and most of the bandwidth with updates.

 

What did you do about students without laptops/tablets and pupil premium students?

PP - we offer them a huge subsidy to buy Chromebooks. >95% uptake. We have a very small pool of machines that students can borrow.

 

Insurance and support, did you get parents to cover it or do you provide IT hardware and software support? If you do what insurance cover do you have to cover damage you may cause?

As part of the (voluntary) scheme, we added a cost in to cover insurance. This is used to fix the broken machines but all the work is done in house except for warranty repairs. As 95% is Chromebooks the support is minimal for software - the kids often re-image the machines themselves.

 

How does your school deal with misbehavior in class, as it is the students device and we would have it on segregated VLAN we couldn't use impero or similar?

Blame the behaviour, not the technology is the mantra

 

What policy do you have in place for BYOD, could you share it? Do you cover in your they at their own risk connecting to the network (potential virus spreading between student devices)?

AUP

 

Am I missing something????

 

1) Make sure everything you want runs in a browser.

2) see 1

3) Give the students ownership and they will look after the devices better

[Lonix]

I will go through quickly now for you but - IT IS NOT SIMPLE AND THINGS CAN REALLY GO WRONG.

 

May find this useful, although only covers the majority of recent issues and certainly doesn't cover previous schemes we did which were more internally ran. It was a full time two man job before though instead of being 1 and a half man job.

 

https://itsupportns.blogspot.co.uk/p/byod-schemes.html

 

More than welcome to PM me any other questions - again I will go through your post and reply.

[Lonix]

Took about 10 minutes for you J

What issues you experienced?

 

To be honest a huge list and below covers only some:

 

• Heavy damages – Cut down due to placing “excess fee”
  
• Repair delays – Not much we can do other than moan at companies
  
• Lack of IT support staff (doing it internally became a full time 2 man job) – Employed another techie but due to budget cuts we didn’t replace.
  
• No support from teachers/other support staff (simple things like trouble shooting) – I moaned, grumbled and went mad over this. Schools that seem to work have teachers/slt dealing with Parents and education of kids. IT Support doing the problem fixing.
  
• Lack of IT lessons (kids didn’t have a clue) – Pushed for this hard but when a Deputy Head doesn’t listen what can you do.
  
• Everything through us (mentioned before)
  
• Unhappy Parents (from costs, to device choices) – Have cheap devices but then complain due to slow, doesn’t last, easy to break, poor screen size.
  
• Insurance issues – Liquadation, not in place, not fast enough, denied claims – School covered a lot of devices through us, high costs involved.
  
• Warranty problems – A mile of hoops to jump through like insurance. Diagnostics and in the end, such a nightmare for Parents I told my team to deal with these.
  
• Wireless issues – New Wireless system, not perfect but much better.
  
• Some websites not working on some devices (screen sizes, flash, java, interactive sections) – even after companies insisted it was our end – turns out it was all theirs and they lied about being BYOD compatible…. Things have improved and small devices not solvable without new ones.
  
• Delays in devices – Went mad at company, happened a lot through the years with different suppliers.
  
• Late starters – Keep a spare stock that may waste money or wait for custom built devices?...
  
• Devices being returned – Parents not wanting them any more, moving Schools etc.
  
• Too many device choices (don’t have any choice) – The more choices, the more inconsistencies you have with teachers and students.
  
• Forgotten to bring in – Should be treated like School Uniform
  
• Not charging every day – likewise for above.
  
• Malware – we created a secondary account for the students to use which had user access and left the administrator local account active that they could use. On Windows 7 Malware was a major problem. Tablets not so major (but still existed), Windows 8 is much better but again still existed.
  
• We resorted to Office 365 but requires Students to be more aware of their accounts
  

How you dealt with these issues?

 

• Went externally to cut down man power requirements – didn’t work, we did everything still minus repairs (we chased/arranged everything)
  

 

What did you implement/upgrade as part of your BYOD implementation?

Wireless, additional cabinets, loan netbooks for those who refuse to sign up or have device away for repair. We maintain these and loan out logging who has what number.

 

What technical and hardware changes you made to your network?

Wireless

 

What would you do differently if you were to redo it?

 

• Lessons on them before they have the device
  
• Proper collection and signature by parent
  
• Teacher in charge of the scheme (or me) and what that person says goes.
  
• No device choice
  
• Expensive device with nice spec and screen size – even though it’s higher cost
  
• If done internally – employ a full time technician to do all repairs and support staff occasionally in lessons to see day to day issues.
  
• We imaged and prepared all the netbooks/tablets to make it just turn on and wor, shortcuts, favourites, home pages, power settings setup, you name it – we did it. To make it easier and we still had a nightmare.
  

 

What did you do about students without laptops/tablets and pupil premium students?

 

• Loans for those who refused to sign up, not to take home and collect first thing in the morning only – return at end of the day.
  
• School purchased FSM/PP and even those who have twins/money issues – costing the School a lot of money every year £15,000 to £25,000 depending on device type.
  

 

Insurance and support, did you get parents to cover it or do you provide IT hardware and software support? If you do what insurance cover do you have to cover damage you may cause?

 

• School arranged (either covered or externally covered)
  
• High costs – claims a pain
  
• Doesn’t cover every damage e.g. damaged charging ports as result of wear and tear.
  

 

How does your school deal with misbehavior in class, as it is the students device and we would have it on segregated VLAN we couldn't use impero or similar?

What policy do you have in place for BYOD, could you share it? Do you cover in your they at their own risk connecting to the network (potential virus spreading between student devices)?

 

 

• We have another SSID which is open to visitors too (still need a simple password)
  
• To access the internet they have their School account which is filtered as standard LEA.
  
• We have plenty of Policies in place for internal and external usage of the devices (at home it’s their responsibility etc)
  
• Behaviour is a hard one because again, teachers just want the kids to sit down and be ready – some kids were purposely damaging their devices which is why we put an excess fee – this really cut down the damages.
  
• We have had about 1-2 virus in the years, malware is a major issue no matter what device (Android, Apple and Windows) because kids will click on anything.
  

 

Am I missing something????

 

We scrapped it – became a nightmare

You need a TEAM of people, set down who does what, who is responsible for

 

• complaining parents
  
• Providing information to them
  
• Consistency from all staff e.g. parent evenings, interviews, one to ones, meet the tutors etc etc – all staff knowing the info
  
• Who chases insurance, suppliers, warranty companies and who packages it all (LOG LOG AND ALWAYS LOG when they get collected, received and what’s in the box)
  
• Who repairs devices
  
• Who sits with teachers reminding them what is expected of them
  
• Who leads it
  
• Who deals with day to day problems from account resetting, not knowing how to use word
  
• Email to print? – Printing facility? We use email to print – they really do just email certain document types to printers. PaperCut
  
• Install multiple browsers – some support firefox, IE and Chrome – it’s another issue.
  
• Flash/Java – not everysite has replaced it and can cause issues depending on device.
  
• Get staff to test devices with students
  
• Introduce a year at a time maybe to see how it goes
  

 

It seriously became a nightmare, if we do it internally it became simply too much to manage. When we still kept all the IT stuff, reducing them didn’t work because the specialised software which is the majority anyway couldn’t be installed on the Netbooks/Tablets. Not if we wanted to buy more licenses or better spec equipment.

 

As a result of doing the scheme for… shall we say many years (we was one of the first schools in the county to do it)

 

It’s going, bringing back IT suites which cost in a single year that the scheme was costing in 2-3 years and will give a lot less of a headache. Teachers don’t have the time to spend 15 minutes every lesson making sure everyone is working and ready. Too many unknowns unless we begun to really lock down the netbooks.

[zag]

BYOD to me is letting people bring in their own devices to use with an simple internet connection.

 

I think some of the implementations above are supplying devices which is hugely more work.

 

Its definitely something you should think about in the planning phase.

[CyberNerd]

BYOD to me is letting people bring in their own devices to use with an simple internet connection.

 

I think some of the implementations above are supplying devices which is hugely more work.

 

Its definitely something you should think about in the planning phase.

 

Supplying devices which the students own (selling them) is still BYOD. I would argue that is LESS work.

 

I think we were able to overcome many of the problems that @Lonix had with: clearer leadership from SLT, better infrastructure Investment before the programme, NOT outsourcing repairs or insurance, not using windows.

[Paid_Peanuts]

Surely @Lonix you were doing more than just provide a BYOD wireless internet connection by the sounds of it.

By utilising GAFE and/or O365 all they need is an internet connection - filtered appropriately?

 

Using the services of a BYOD scheme from someone like BT Business or Stone Computers they do all the payment chasing and are the 1st line technical support to do with damage/warranty/insurance claims or assistance.

Sounds like you were trying to do too much in house. We don't have a team of people to do all the various stake holder roles you laid out above but using Stone/BT we hope they will take care of most of it. Leaving our finance team to intervene when the default rate (quoted at less than 1%) doesn't pay after BT/Stone have chased up and leave us in the technical department to assist with any connection issues.

Issues aside from connecting will be referred to any third party IT support company/individual outside of school. We are also looking at having a "Genius Style" IT counter inside school manned by the techie kids who want CV experience.

[Lonix]

Surely @Lonix you were doing more than just provide a BYOD wireless internet connection by the sounds of it.

By utilising GAFE and/or O365 all they need is an internet connection - filtered appropriately?

 

Using the services of a BYOD scheme from someone like BT Business or Stone Computers they do all the payment chasing and are the 1st line technical support to do with damage/warranty/insurance claims or assistance.

Sounds like you were trying to do too much in house. We don't have a team of people to do all the various stake holder roles you laid out above but using Stone/BT we hope they will take care of most of it. Leaving our finance team to intervene when the default rate (quoted at less than 1%) doesn't pay after BT/Stone have chased up and leave us in the technical department to assist with any connection issues.

Issues aside from connecting will be referred to any third party IT support company/individual outside of school. We are also looking at having a "Genius Style" IT counter inside school manned by the techie kids who want CV experience.

 

The first few years yes, all in house. I wasn't working here during the first major periods but I joined when this was all still running. Unfortunately a prime example of teachers doing what they want regardless of any advice, it wasn't planned and was effectively a nightmare.

 

So - yes we reverted to externally provided schemes (we've had more than one). Now my blog was set around for all this (I've removed company names) and I would like to point out:

1. No it isn't completely run by them

2. You will still need to pack devices, log etc (we had devices lost through shipment and the company didn't know what to do)

3. Warranty/Insurance process for Parents still isn't simple, asking parents to "diagnose" and "take photos" and be passed around multiple different contacts for different problems.

4. They are not always 1st line support, we are because again Parents have zero clue if its a technical issue ot not.

5. Liquidation of companies - impacted us - there was no service for months.. and months.

6. Insurance denials and warranty fight backs - companies fighting each other to say if its warranty or not (even after we checked). We've had a lot of insurance claim denials - which leaves the Student without the device which they need for their learning...

 

For more details on "Externally" provided schemes - please read my blog. The majority of it is based on these schemes and not the "100% in house" period. Although I could probably do another post just for that.. from an old report I did.

 

As mentioned and I already said this to our Head and Deputy Head, one of the many major factors why we had issues is because it all got shafted on to IT Support. Not a nice thing to say but its true.

 

Sorry yes - This isn't just a BYOD Scheme I am talking about it's something that becomes a part of their critical learning. Although we do allow Students to bring in their devices and use them. We actually had several years that relied on them for learning and not using IT Suites.

 

Each time some one mentions BYOD, in my experience they don't always mean a simple "BYOD" when you feel like it. Instead at times they may mean a critical device for learning.

Edited May 24, 2016 by Lonix

[forkies]

Thanks for all the info so far.

 

I think personally that the difference here (conversation trail above) is that if the school is providing devices, even if it is then purchased on a lease by the parents it is classed as a "1 to 1" scheme. Where as their own devices with no support from the school is "BYOD" which is what I am aiming for, so we do not get held up fixing, warranty or not, insured or not devices for personal use. This also removes the filtering at home issue.

 

Ideally I would just like to give WiFi access filtered site wide and basic access to our applications via remote apps. The issue is I think our headteacher wants more of a 1 to 1 scheme so that no matter what, if a teacher wants to do something online in a lesson all students should have a device with them. This will be the main issue for us I think. We do NOT have the money to do a lease scheme for 1 to 1.

 

Please keep posting for anyone else who has information though, it is very useful and interesting!

 

Thanks,

Tom

[CyberNerd]

I think personally that the difference here (conversation trail above) is that if the school is providing devices, even if it is then purchased on a lease by the parents it is classed as a "1 to 1" scheme. Where as their own devices with no support from the school is "BYOD" which is what I am aiming for, so we do not get held up fixing, warranty or not, insured or not devices for personal use. This also removes the filtering at home issue.

 

We have true BYOD system for 6th form. It was from this experience that we now have a 1:1 (user owned) scheme instead of extending (true) BYOD to the lower school. We do allow BYOD for students who don't wan't to opt into the 1:1 scheme. Many who initially brought in their own computer have now opted into the 1:1 scheme.

 

The issues we have with BYOD is the vast range of systems. Students are generally unable to look after their systems adequately. Staff and students will still expect you to resolve the most obscure problems with their computers. One bad/incompatible driver on one computer can screw up the connections in an entire class. They will invariably buy devices with consumer class network cards. This gives a bad experience for teachers and will lead the project to failure. Even after you have all your staff and students using webapps exclusively you'll see a variety of boot times, random incompatibilities (esp network related and things like antivirus solutions that don't like https inspection). It's not too bad for us in the sixth form as the students are a bit older; and most of the lower school get chromebooks now anyway.

 

My general rule with IT is that if it takes more than 5 minutes to fix then it is quicker to re-image it. This doesn't work with (true) BYOD unless you insist they are all using the same device (chromebooks in this example) in which case you're in a 1:1 scheme.

Edited May 24, 2016 by CyberNerd

[Lonix]

Thanks for all the info so far.

 

I think personally that the difference here (conversation trail above) is that if the school is providing devices, even if it is then purchased on a lease by the parents it is classed as a "1 to 1" scheme. Where as their own devices with no support from the school is "BYOD" which is what I am aiming for, so we do not get held up fixing, warranty or not, insured or not devices for personal use. This also removes the filtering at home issue.

 

Ideally I would just like to give WiFi access filtered site wide and basic access to our applications via remote apps. The issue is I think our headteacher wants more of a 1 to 1 scheme so that no matter what, if a teacher wants to do something online in a lesson all students should have a device with them. This will be the main issue for us I think. We do NOT have the money to do a lease scheme for 1 to 1.

 

Please keep posting for anyone else who has information though, it is very useful and interesting!

 

Thanks,

Tom

 

This was the initial discussion we had here/options below:

Parents provide their own device - With or without a set spec from the School

Parents arranged own insurance coverage and extended warranty (not so urgent on warranty)

Parents arranged all repairs

We just generally assisted in day to day

 

I believe there was careful considerations when the scheme started, I know we spoke about the above every year when I started. There was concern that if these became "essential" in any way, how would the School make sure that every class of 30 kids would have something and it was correct?

 

So the School chose to provide everything, it was supposed to be easy and simple.

 

This is the problem with Schools, if it's not essential but a nice to have for additional learning - this is probably the best way - Pure BYOD.

As mentioned though if it becomes essential, it becomes a very different fight. I think we are allowing a pure BYOD, so Students can continue to bring them in and use them but we make it clear that 1. No software installed by us, 2. No IT fixing, 3. Basic support only. That's been included in all our information that's been sent out for years - mainly because we didn't "100% force" parents to sign up. They could go alone but they wouldn't get anything done by the School.

 

It still caused issues though with Students attending lessons with wrong type of equipment, some parents expecting us to support it (even after being told, they still denied knowing etc).

 

Still if you are just BYOD then the only issues you may have to deal with:

Wireless issues

Filtering problems

Accessing internet

Requests for support/software (even if you make it clear it's not your job - you will still be asked)

Showing students how to use

Unhappy parents - what if student A pushes student B - cracked device - who pays for it? We've even had "EU Human Rights" shouted at us by one unhappy parent.

Content on device needing to be confiscated

Edited May 25, 2016 by Lonix