Launching Teams and 1:1

[enjay]

We currently use Teams and Classroom (and a few other things) and are standardising on Teams, also planning on introducing a 1:1 laptop scheme. Is there anyone who has done either/both and would be willing to have a quick chat with me and some of SLT?

 

Otherwise, sharing your thoughts and experiences on here would be most welcome.

 

Questions such as:

- how did you plan for it?

- what considerations did you have?

- how did you select your laptop supplier?

- what support do you provide for the laptops?

- can students install their own software onto the laptops, and if so, how? What about licensing, un-installing Impero/Netsupport?

- what went well/badly?

- with hindsight, what would you have done differently?

- what problems did the teachers experience in class?

 

Thanks!

[mavhc]

Students can't install software, most things are web based anyway, no real reason to allow it.

[enjay]

Students can't install software, most things are web based anyway, no real reason to allow it.

 

Home printers? Also, what about personal use? If students can't install Minecraft, etc. they'll need a personal laptop and a school laptop, so parents would be buying twice.

[mavhc]

Depends what the devices are, are you suggesting parents buy home laptops and then bring them in, or buy school laptops that they get to take home and keep when the child leaves?

 

Minecraft is in the MS Store, so can probably authorise that.

[enjay]

Depends what the devices are, are you suggesting parents buy home laptops and then bring them in, or buy school laptops that they get to take home and keep when the child leaves?

 

The latter. We don't want to be doing BYOD.

 

Minecraft is in the MS Store, so can probably authorise that.

 

True. Minecraft was just an example of something students might want to install, there will be plenty of other things which aren't in the MS Store.

[mavhc]

if they're school computers then you get to decide what's installed. Printers don't seem to need anything installed these days either.

 

Kids here play 100s of webassembly games, they're just as entertaining it seems.

[enjay]

if they're school computers then you get to decide what's installed. Printers don't seem to need anything installed these days either.

 

You're getting bogged down in the specific examples I'm mentioning. Basically, as the parents will be paying for the laptops, they're going to expect to be able to install whatever personal software they want on them, otherwise they'll have to buy two laptops (which seems pointless), so I'm interested in what policy other schools have landed on.

[mavhc]

Could dual boot them

[GeekyPete]

We set the laptops up with a local user account and a local admin account. They are not on the domain. We use Senso.com instead of Netsupport/impero. We have netsupport for the LAN but prefer Senso for off-premises. Some we set to auto log on to the user account, using sysinternals autologon.exe. It just makes it easier as the password is independent of the domain account. This confuses some people. It's mainly students. Staff need better data security so they still need to log on.

 

Senso is really easy. Great for live support and you can easily log out the local user to install software on the admin account. There's none of the server set up Netsupport as it's all web based, just a small client on the laptops.

We also route all internet back through the trust's filtering using Fortigate. Don't forget to change the BIOS Password and they are really quite secure.

 

EDIT: After typing that up I re-read that the parents are to buy the laptops. You said that you were thinking of introducing a 1:1 scheme. You introduce it you pay. That was not clear in the original post and it makes a massive difference. Their device, they own it, they say how it's used. Controlling a personally owned device is not the remit of any organisation (apple might disagree). Give them access to Office 365, Set up Groups or Teams for classes to share files. Think carefully about video calls on school systems, like teams. If you have an incident on school supplied teams it might look very bad. We don't let students have video calls for that reason. You can't really enforce good security inc virus, malware and updates. You may consider Senso still to offer support but get that documented and signed to accept that they allow you access to their property.

 

If the parents are buying the device how are you going to ensure equity? Disadvantaged students who can't afford one will get even more disadvantaged.

Edited April 28, 2021 by GeekyPete

[enjay]

If the parents are buying the device how are you going to ensure equity? Disadvantaged students who can't afford one will get even more disadvantaged.

 

That's actually one of the reasons for this approach rather than BYOD. This way everyone has the same laptop; most funded by their parents, some quietly funded by the school. Under BYOD, you'd get the Haves and the Have-Nots for who is bringing a Macbook Pro and who is bringing a Dynabook. We saw that all too clearly at my last school when we allowed phones in lessons, the number of iPhones suddenly increased.

[bobsmith]

Are you working in a particularly affluent area?

 

Will it be a requirement that every student has a privately funded school laptop?

 

I would have thought that the ownership would dictate the policy here. If it's the schools then the control rests with the school, but if i buy a laptop then it's mine and i can do precisely what i want with it.

 

A real world example from my experience - one of the most deprived london boroughs - during lockdown. We loaned about 400 laptops to students (out of 1400 students total) - those laptops were ours and we restricted them heavily. Impero was installed and they were monitored. The remaining kids had access to the internet via smart tvs, desktops, laptops etc which were family owned and we had nothing to do with them.

 

Any restrictions put in place were at our end (e.g. google classroom/workspace policies) but this only affected students when making use of our systems for education.

 

In terms of damages/attrition we have had issues with about 10 in 400 (still waiting for some to be returned!) so it's something to be aware of.

 

As a final side note - you mentioned standardising on Teams - my experience talking to IT managers is that Teams is far less friendly in a school setting that google classroom/meet. Any insight as to the decision to go the Microsoft route over Google in this instance?

[GeekyPete]

I don't envy you. There are some major pitfalls. Have you considered a leasing scheme? The school buys the laptops and leases them to the parents. The school owns the laptops so can insist on certain things, like virus protection. More affordable for all. You have a budget for Equity, which I think would be largely unaffected, Some might default on payment but more would probably be able to pay a lease. Downside would be the initial outlay for the school and there may be legal considerations regarding leasing 3rd party software.

[enjay]

In terms of affluence, approx 15% of students are PP, we provided laptops to 7% of students during first lockdown, and 12% during second lockdown when we were doing live lessons so multi-child households needed more tech - so, I think that makes us relatively affluent, doesn't it? The vast majority of students have tech/access to tech at home; anecdotally, a lot of that tech is laptops which belong to the student rather than a mobile phone, family computer or smart TV. So if many families are buying a laptop anyway (and many others who aren't could do so if needed), why not allow them to bring a laptop to school and thus have greater access to tech than we could afford to provide (plus avoid the hassle factor of laptop trolleys)?

 

As for the leasing scheme, we would technically own the laptops but since parents would be spending £15 per month on them, they might disagree on that!

[mavhc]

All depends on whether you can trust the kids to not run discord over tor all lesson or something

[enjay]

All depends on whether you can trust the kids to not run discord over tor all lesson or something

 

Mostly, yes. Also, can't InTune control what applications they launch during the school day? I'm not sure I could trust them not to uninstall NetSupport though, and for some staff, having NetSupport is an absolute red line for students having laptops in class (others don't even know we've got it on our desktops and existing laptops, of course, or just think it is for changing students' passwords)

[Rob_D]

: After typing that up I re-read that the parents are to buy the laptops. You said that you were thinking of introducing a 1:1 scheme. You introduce it you pay. That was not clear in the original post and it makes a massive difference. Their device, they own it, they say how it's used. Controlling a personally owned device is not the remit of any organisation (apple might disagree). Give them access to Office 365, Set up Groups or Teams for classes to share files. Think carefully about video calls on school systems, like teams. If you have an incident on school supplied teams it might look very bad. We don't let students have video calls for that reason. You can't really enforce good security inc virus, malware and updates. You may consider Senso still to offer support but get that documented and signed to accept that they allow you access to their property.

If the parents are buying the device how are you going to ensure equity? Disadvantaged students who can't afford one will get even more disadvantaged.

 

We're in the same boat as the OP (just looking into how this might work). And most (if not all) 1:1 schemes seem to work under a lease deal. The parents "buy" the device we've chosen through our 1:1 portal and pay something like £15-20 a month (or the school comps them using PP/additional funding). During the term of lease, the device is the property of the school, so we can manage and restrict all we want, then at the end of the lease (by which time they've paid off the balance of the device) ownership transfers to the parent/family. This appears to be the standard way of doing it right now.

[jmak]

From school and IT Support point of view, school owned and controlled is far easier. However I think your point about expecting parents to buy twice is particularly relevant at the minute. Obviously there will be a significant minority who were to affluent to have been given a laptop during lockdown, but not affluent enough for the families to have bought a device for every child. I'd still be quite confident that a significant proportion of kids have access to a laptop they could bring in.

 

If I was one of those parents I'd be a bit irritated about buying something to replicate what I've already spent cash on - and quite likely within the last year.

 

Maybe look at offering a lease scheme to fill the gap and ensuring that parents are aware of it as soon as they apply. It's not uncommon to start these schemes with new intake anyway.

 

Software will be complicated - I'd suggest making everything either web based, open source or licensed through school subscription (eg M365 office licences) will be required.

 

You'll need to provide a BYOD wi-fi network which will let you control what they can access on the web. Maybe you could set up some kind of register (based on a Teams chat?) that can only be accessed from the school network that they have to sign in to do that the teacher can easily identify that every child is logged into the school network and not the hotspot from their phone.

 

Quite a lot of anti virus suppliers offer schemes to allow installations for students with a site license for the school. It's be difficult to enforce, but if you make it a condition of connecting to the wi-fi that parents sign up to and it didn't cost them anything, most will comply.

[enjay]

From school and IT Support point of view, school owned and controlled is far easier.

 

Totally agree, however we don't have the £500K initial outlay and £60K per year to provide a device for every student.

 

 

If I was one of those parents I'd be a bit irritated about buying something to replicate what I've already spent cash on - and quite likely within the last year.

 

Maybe look at offering a lease scheme to fill the gap and ensuring that parents are aware of it as soon as they apply. It's not uncommon to start these schemes with new intake anyway.

 

That still has the us/them problem with some kids bringing in Macbooks and others bringing in something much cheaper. One option we're considering is to open the scheme up to all students even though they may not be expected to bring the laptop to school yet, that way parents can buy a suitable laptop which the child can use at home now and bring into school next year or the one after. You make a good point about families who have recently bought a laptop to support home learning though...

 

 

You'll need to provide a BYOD wi-fi network which will let you control what they can access on the web. Maybe you could set up some kind of register (based on a Teams chat?) that can only be accessed from the school network that they have to sign in to do that the teacher can easily identify that every child is logged into the school network and not the hotspot from their phone.

 

We've got the wifi sorted already, although will need a few more APs in some places to provide density of cover. Managing hotspots will be a challenge though, not sure what we'll do about that yet.

[MrTechelp]

There’s a free resource here which May help, it’s more about the philosophy around 1 to 1 devices but I know there are lots of IT resellers who support 1 to 1 programmes and training providers who can work with teams (physical not the software) across the school. The key to 1 to 1 is it’s not just a technical or procurement or training conversation. It’s all of them and much more. https://pulse.microsoft.com/uploads/prod/2021/03/one-one-devices-and-learning-_.pdf