Pupil premium laptops installation and servicing. How do you do it?

[Jaan]

How do you guys manage pupil premium laptops?

 

Specifically, initial setups that include standalone MS office installs and "servicing" if a software issue rears its head.

 

I'm more concerned about the data that could be on this laptop once it's left the premises. Not doubt it's been used by all their parent\guardians\friends (i'm assuming of course). If i nuke it because it has a virus etc, should i be responsible for backing it's data up first?

 

My mind set is, "here's your (sealed) laptop (from PC Planet) and a download only version of office, and a download version of antivirus version X, have fun"......

 

If there are any hardware issues, should it come back to us or pc planet? should we be correcting software issues created by the user..... or should they have to take it too a 3rd party repairer?

 

I suppose what i'm asking is; are we (the schools tech team (ME) ) responsible for the installation and maintenance of off site, off domain unrestricted use laptops from pupil premium?

 

Just curious.

 

Cheers

[Meldrew]

Sounds a bit like the issue we had with 6th form bursary laptops. We decided to build them on the domain and set them up with offline files to sync their documents back to the server. They were told to bring the laptop in to school at least once a week to automatically update AV, etc and sync documents, but the responsibility was on the student to ensure they had their work backed up in case of failure of the laptop. If there's an issue with the laptop we would level it and re-image.

 

Meldrew

[ataylor]

Any laptops we use go out as a standalone laptop, if they want to use it in school, or at home, they use our RDP Gateway.

 

I point them in the direction of how to install office (free with office 365) and set up basic connections for remote desktop.

 

Some students get to keep the laptops, some come back to the school when they are done with them. The student and the parent/carer has to sign a waiver before the student takes the laptop home.

 

Issues created by the user are flakey, we have not had many problems so far. If I take it, I will generally reformat it making the user aware of loss of data. If the laptop is still in warranty I will deal with the repair but this is yet to happen so I would have to query whether the money will come out of PP if it is an out of warranty repair or at a cost to the user.

[noelmm]

We set ours up as standalone devices. Before giving them to the students we install Office, adobe reader and all the normal software applications they will need (licensing allowing) and we then ask their parents to sign a form to say they are responsible for the laptop and any data on it. If the laptop is then brought back into us with a software problem we simply wipe it and start again, if there is hardware problem we will send it back to the manufacturer under warranty and if the warranty has expired we will look into how much the repair will be and try get this done from the students pupil premium funding where possible.

[Jaan]

My plan is to set them up totally standalone. However i'm not sure if these laptops qualify as school owned devices and as such can use our office ees agreement. (kms activation would be another issue here). Microsoft office is normally provided as a key only and a download is required. However..... you need a MS account to do that.

 

I can't create a new MS account for the end user and accept the license on their behalf...... and i certainly don't want their username and password for any existing personal accounts!

[noelmm]

We were advised that the laptops did qualify as school owned as the school purchased the laptops and they were still owned by us however this problem has now disappeared as we use office 365 and the students can download a copy to use on the laptop themselves.

[clockend25]

We issue them to the students as their own. I'll do the initial setup and will of course support them in their use of our wifi or accessing Office 365, but it's made clear we don't support the device as we would one of our own.