Students using personal Chromebooks to access Google Classroom

[rednight]

Hi there,

 

Please forgive my lack of Chromebook knowledge! Lots of our students have Windows laptops at home with Chrome browser and we are able to advise them to create a new Chrome profile to use for their school GSuite account. This works fine as they just switch profile and can access Google Classroom,etc with no problem.

 

Some of the students have Chromebooks at home and have come across a problem where they login to Google Classroom but cannot see the classes they have been assigned to. I think this might be because their Chromebooks are defaulting back to their personal user account rather than their school one (can see by the icon in the top right of the browser). Also, once they do get to see their Google Classrooms, if they try and access some of the resources, the new tabs open up and go back to their personal user account. There doesn't seem to be the same option of switching over to a separate profile like there is when using Chrome browser on a Windows laptop.

 

Some of them have Family Link enabled and we have asked them to follow the Google Support info of adding the school account as a secondary account, but we still have the some problems - especially if the Google Classroom contain links to YouTube videos (which don't play and I think this might be due to restrictions setup with the Family Link).

 

From what I can see, there seems to be two different ways of adding an account to the Chromebook - one as a secondary account and the other is to create a completely new "person" to login with. Which is the better option?

 

Also, if we were to advise them to create a whole new person - would their Family Link settings no longer apply? I think some parents might not be happy about this!

I'm not sure of the best way forward, so that they can access their Google Classrooms/assignments/resources but still keep the Family Link settings in place that their parents have set.

 

Any advice would be much appreciated!

 

Thanks

[dmj]

The students should loginto the chromebook (rather than the browser) using the school gsuite account. Doing this will automatically create a new profile.

[rednight]

The students should loginto the chromebook (rather than the browser) using the school gsuite account. Doing this will automatically create a new profile.

 

OK, I will suggest that they do this. They have had trouble accessing Google Classroom all week, so hopefully this will sort it out!

 

Thanks!

[TMBS]

The students should loginto the chromebook (rather than the browser) using the school gsuite account. Doing this will automatically create a new profile.

Are students able to do this on a school managed Chromebook? Thanks

[rednight]

The students should loginto the chromebook (rather than the browser) using the school gsuite account. Doing this will automatically create a new profile.

 

Great! This has worked for one of the students, however another one is unable to login to the Chromebook as a new person and their parent does not want them to be logged in without the Family Link restrictions in place! Now I'm not sure what the way forward is??!

[dmj]

Great! This has worked for one of the students, however another one is unable to login to the Chromebook as a new person and their parent does not want them to be logged in without the Family Link restrictions in place! Now I'm not sure what the way forward is??!

 

It's been a while since I've done this, but they way I've solved this in the past is to tunnel the users traffic via the school internet filter when they login to their Gsuite account on a home connection. I used Fortigate but I know smoothwall also works, and there are a number of other filter solutions for chromebooks available commercially.

 

or you could use family link - but you would be managing it not the parent.

 

https://support.google.com/families/answer/7680868?hl=en

 

"Important: For school accounts and school-issued Chromebooks, G Suite for Education administrators determine which Google services their users can access while signed into a G Suite for Education account. This may include some features or services that your child was previously unable to access using the Family Link supervised account. Learn how to add a school account as a secondary account."

 

 

 

 

Are students able to do this on a school managed Chromebook? Thanks

 

yes, you can set it to delete the profile on logout if you are using them as shared devices.

[psydii]

Great! This has worked for one of the students, however another one is unable to login to the Chromebook as a new person and their parent does not want them to be logged in without the Family Link restrictions in place! Now I'm not sure what the way forward is??!

 

This probably isn't particularly helpful. We have a Chromebook use FamilyLink. Child#1 is signed in with his personal account. He is also able to sign into Classroom and other GSuite apps using his LGfL managed account. Seems to work 'just fine'.