Jumping into classroom management for the first time, recommendations?

[TRS-80]

Hi,

 

Our teachers are asking for classroom management software, primarily to view screens and block internet access. We used to be 1:1 iPads which meant they could easily see the screens or ask them to close the screens, but now with 1:1 Surfaces there's a screen in-between the student and the teacher so they need some help. I've been looking at a bunch of different ones and half seem to be stuck in the era where you had labs of desktops, they are tied to the idea of rooms and computers, not users and classes. So having solid sync from my SIS (CSV upload is fine) is a hard requirement. Single-sign on through Azure AD would be nice but not essential. We're on-campus (no covid here for 7 months) but remote support is a nice to have.. I don't mind if it's cloud or not, but if it's cloud it better not be routing all my traffic through Europe or the US (I'm in Australia).

 

The candidates I've found so far are Lanschool Classic (not the cloud one, that only has Google Classroom and Clever sync, neither of which we have), Dyknow (seems expensive), senso.cloud, Impero and Faronics Insight. Maybe Net-Ref, but their website is super basic. I looked at Veyon (stuck in room/computer model), AbTutor (same), NetSupport School, NetControl 2, SchoolVue which all didn't seem to do what I want, happy to be corrected though. What are you using and do you recommend it?

 

We have 1200 students in the senior school. TBH I'm looking for an alternative to Classwize by Family Zone, since I don't want to buy their web filter as well. So being able to show which websites a student is using would be nice but not essential (since our current web filter can do that too, it can also block individual students' internet but not a class at a time).

 

Thanks,

 

James

[Jcx500]

We use impero, i recommenced it works great for our uses Edited December 4, 2020 by Jcx500

[buzzard]

After a recent procurement exercise Senso.cloud won hands down for us, ticked all of the boxes on our specification and they where by far the best company to work with. We worked with Chris Spink at Senso, really decent guy and went out of his way for us!

[LanSchoolAdam]

I would recommend looking into LanSchool, and setting up a trial.

[the_quick]

Curently with Imper, had Lanschool before as they were very competitive priced. But impero matched Lanschool renewal and we find it is a better solution. Live view is much smoother on Impero.

[karldenton]

Hi

Don’t rule out NetSupport. They have both School and the new classroom.cloud that are both so easy to use to lock screens and block internet. Fully functioning trials too

Edited December 10, 2020 by elsiegee40

[DrCheese]

Hi -

 

We use Netsupport School. Works well & is easy to understand for the teachers. Keeps the students focused & is helping teachers to support students during the current situation from the front desk, rather than getting up close to the students & breaking social distancing.

[Sanchez]

We moved from impero to senso.cloud. Used with our PCs and Chromebooks it syncs with our Google Classrooms (or MS Teams) therefore teachers have access to the students that are in front of them and not tied to rooms (although that's an option too for more traditional computer labs) as it's cloud based it will monitor devices off-site if you want.

 

Support has been really good when the odd issue has occurred and development has improved the product greatly in the year that we've had it. What blew my mind was one time on a support chat they spotted a problem; came up with a solution; deployed a fix which was a new option on the console all In the space of about 10 minutes (for anyone interested it was the toggle switch that prevents some commands from being ran on servers)

[djm968]

senso.cloud - https://www.senso.cloud/

[dsmith8]

+1 for Senso Cloud we recently starting using these guys and their support is great and they are constantly developing new features.

[paulellam]

Used LanSchool for many years and had no issues, the licences are cheap and the product set expands with the times too. We still use the on site version which is superb and when I finally get some time I will roll out into the cloud version. Its worth trialing Lanschool in my view.

[jbox1964]

Our district invested in NetRef. Our teachers love it. Edited December 21, 2020 by jbox1964