Converting School from Windows to Chrome

[pentlandsl]

We are currently investigating the feasibility of moving the whole school from Windows devices to Chromebooks/Chromeflex. I have done quite a bit of research into this but out headmaster is now asking for feedback from any schools that have gone down this route. Both positive and negative.

 

Has anyone else gone down this route or are thinking/planning a similar change?

 

I would be grateful for any feedback you have that I can pass on to my headteacher.

 

Thank you in advance.

[PotNoodleTech]

Yes now that we have moved most systems into the cloud and already have 1:1 chromebooks, we could probably do this for most PCs now.

 

The only problem with chromeflex compared to say a chromebook, is you cant use play store apps which restricts functionality quite a bit. If everything you run is web based in chrome browser then your fine?

 

Would be interested to see if any other schools have done it.

[gszech]

Step 1: Move all services to the cloud.

Step 2: Start using Chromebooks.

Step 3: Worry that there is nothing to do as Chromebooks just work.

 

Step one requires a lot of planning, time and money if you would like to move 100% to the cloud.

Here is a short list of problematic services:

- Print Server migrated to PaperCut Hive or another cloud alternative.

- SIMS migrated to Arbor or Bromcom

- Paxton Net 2 migrated to Paxton 10 or other

- CCTV if it requires an app then it needs to run off a website.

- IT rooms - you need to convert IT teachers to use cloud based apps. We still don't know how to convince teachers to use cloud version of Adobe.

 

Start with yourself and daily drive Chromebook for a month. This will show you what you are missing.

Then migrate pupils devices and offer some staff Chromebook Plus devices.

[Chris_Cook]

We've been on this road for some time now.

 

You will need to audit what software is getting used and what alternatives there are.

 

For users of basic software, then this is great. But there are still some specialist systems that can be hard to replace. Management of devices is really easy and quick using google admin.

 

Having 1-to-1 chromebooks for students has really helpful for embedding web research and IT into every lesson, but with all of it you need to be realistic about problems and what's possible.

[DGardiner]

your biggest issue will be getting staff to play ball, the resources/guidance will not account for chromeos for the most part and they will come to you for 'install x app' or 'all my stuff is in smart notebook' and you/they will need to find suitable alternatives - at this point the teachers either play ball and find something or run straught up the ladder crying 'i cant do my lessons'

 

id personally get some of the staff on side, and get them a decent chromebook with all the bells and whistles, 360 screen/stylus/not 11" and get them to prove it works and with your support help them get the extensions/features they need

[tom_newton]

Lots of Smoothwall staff are now chromebook users - I might end up with my next machine being a cb.

[dhicks]

I would be grateful for any feedback you have that I can pass on to my headteacher.

 

You don't have to try and do an all-in-one go change over. There's a couple of options to have Windows authenticate against Google credentials, you can have users using Windows with Drive mounted using the Google Drive Client. We now tend to have Windows 11 desktop machines in classrooms authenticating against Google, running Office and Smart Noteboook locally but pretty much everything else being web-based. Staff who want a mobile device are given decent specification Chromebooks, and there's some Chromebases in the staffroom for general use.

[TwistedHelixis]

At one of my primary schools I found a teacher that used a Chromebook at home and really liked it. We then purchased a class set and gave them to her class. Within 3 months the class teacher next door requested Chromebooks for her class and off it rolled. Had 6 classrooms with 1-2-1 Chromebooks within 2 years

 

what really helped was the slow roll out speed, and the fact we now had a teacher who could help other teachers.

[XiJ]

I support that is on this journey with 14 primaries.

All pupils use Chromebook’s. No issue there.

 

Staff are still using windows laptops. Barriers here are presentation software (smart notebook etc). We have a meeting with clevertouch about using Lynx this week.

There are some niggles around MS office but those can be fairly easily overcome.

 

Office staff might be a little different. They may need office and some specific software. We’re considering options and that’s not a priority right now.

 

Printing - instead to move to paper it Hive. Although he we need a single windows machine on-site for printing / doors / CCTV then so be it.

 

I’d say we’re midway on the journey. All new curriculum software is web based and works with Chromebook. Internet is minimum 100mb leased line everywhere. MIS is arbour. Financial system is also web based.

 

It’s actually exciting. I’m looking forward to getting rid of the windows laptops !

[ThatBoringBloke]

Start with moving services to Google and the cloud. Leave Windows in play until users are used to using Gmail, Google Drive, etc.

Buy a set of chromebooks for students to use, they will already be familliar with signing into Google due to the above.

Buy more chromebooks.

Buy staff some chromebooks.

Have Windows devices that authenticate with GCPW

Move staff that have no need for Windows to ChromeOS (There will be some admin staff that will for whatever reason require Windows).

 

This is a long term process, we have been 'a google school' since 2013 and we are still not there yet. In fact currently we are keeping Staff on Windows devices in the classroom and Offices. Students predominently use Chromebooks.

[dhicks]

Office staff might be a little different. They may need office and some specific software.

 

We found a decent remote desktop setup helped - having users able to log in to a Windows remote desktop with their Google account to use their specalist software is nice and easy. We've found the remote desktop use gradually falls off, we're now down to maybe a dozen people using it on a regular basis, most of those for something very specific (timetabling, testing software, etc).

[TheHyperTechie]

I am thinking of doing this with our remaining windows devices (~42) to license them all I would be looking at about £1150 (one off payment).... We pay more than that currently every year to have them in Google's MDM.

 

It's just getting staff to agree!

[Michael]

One issue not yet mentioned, is you can't deploy bespoke fonts. So for example every Primary teaches cursive writing.

[paulkerton]

One issue not yet mentioned, is you can't deploy bespoke fonts. So for example every Primary teaches cursive writing.

 

https://fonts.googleblog.com/2022/08/the-handwriting-fonts-that-help.html

 

Because the Australians give away what Twinkl and other providers would quite like to charge for.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

It's just getting staff to agree!

Education: Where the tail wags the dog.

[PotNoodleTech]

It's just getting staff to agree!

 

They don't need to agree, they just need to be instructed by the head!

[Michael]

Because the Australians give away what Twinkl and other providers would quite like to charge for.

 

It is a shame the DfE in the UK don't recognise this either, regardless of platform used to teach.

[6Foot3]

Any update on this?

 

Currently looking down this path.

 

I work in five schools four of my Schools are Microsoft, intune.

 

The last School doesn't want to go down that route for whatever reason...

 

The Digital lead for the School is pushing the idea of Chromeflexing all Windows computers and getting Printix for Printing. 

 

They don't have Paxton or CCTV.

 

They do use Smart notebook but the digital lead is pushing Canva as a replacement.

 

The School does have good boradband with backup line.

 

Just feel like ditching this School and staying in the other four.

 

 

[pentlandsl]

alordcharlie, we decided to go ahead with this and I have 95% of the school (including SLT) converted to chromebooks (with the other 5% moving over after hectic September - all admin staff) and plan on switching off our windows server in the October half term.  We were also using smart notebook and have moved to using Smart Lumio instead. It opens the majority of Smart notebooks with just a few with embedded videos/audio in the wrong format causing an issue.

It took over 18 months of planning and relentlessly talking up the benefits to the staff to get Governor/headmaster approval but the case for the change was overwhelming.

In reality the changeover has been considerably smoother than I had anticipated and the buy in from the teachers was significantly enhanced when we purchased and provided them with touchscreen, 15" chromebooks (Lenovo flex 3 - £249 ex VAT at the time!).   They love the almost instant on nature of them and the touchscreen was a huge factor in convincing them we were going in the right direction.  We now have 35 teachers teaching with them. 

I mapped alternatives to all our software used in the school and found alternatives that were better/cheaper than what we had been using. 

Printix was ok but not particularly well featured for the MFPs and after testing with Printix we have replaced our onsite PapercutMF server with Directprint.io instead (brilliant print server by comparison!).

 

Administration of the chromebooks is so much easier for a non-techy person through the Google Admin panel and in a small school environment this should not be underestimated in terms of cutting external support costs.

We have a small Windows 11 PC (under £250) on the network to run our Paxton software and as a bridge for converting e.g. Publisher files. 

With proper planning, converting to Chrome is definitely a good decision.  If you want buy in then find a couple of receptive teachers, put them on Chrome and let the speed of the laptops compared to Windows laptops drive a bit of envy amongst the other teachers.  I purchased 2 of the 15" inch touchscreen chromebooks and gave them to 2 of the more receptive teachers and within a week I was being asked by other teachers when they could have one too!

As a school our upfront savings on not having to buy Windows PCs and a new server (ours was end of life) was over £30K in the current year with ongoing annual savings of over £8000.

Good luck and if I can help in any way with advice then please don't hesitate to pop another message on here.

 

[6Foot3]

I tested this afternoon, but I couldn't seem to get any touch interaction out of the Chromebook on the smartboard.

 

Plugged in with a USB B to A

[pentlandsl]

We have had no issues with touch working from chromebooks to our Smart IWBs.  We also use USB B to A cables.  Is it worth trying a different cable?

[6Foot3]

Started working somehow. I think the board needs calibrating, but it needs a Windows PC to do that

The problem with this school is that they have no money, so we have really old smartboards that need calibration.

 

What do you do about Two-step?

 

The only thing I can think of is Titan security keys for staff.

 

https://store.google.com/product/titan_security_key?hl=en-GB&selections=eyJwcm9kdWN0RmFtaWx5IjoiWkdWMmFXTmxYMlpoYldsc2VWOWZkR2wwWVc1ZmMyVmpkWEpwZEhsZmEyVjUiLCJoZXJvUHJvZHVjdHMiOltbIlgzUnBkR0Z1WDJ0bGVWOXJOVEYwIiwxLG51bGxdXX0%3D

[pentlandsl]

If it an old Smart IWB then you can calibrate them from the screen itself, without the laptop. Turn it on and select the source as OPS HDMI and then click on the Diagnositcs link - there is then an option to calibrate from there.

Hope that helps and glad it is working now.

One thing to bear in mind is that touch capability is effected if you have a really long USB cable.

[TheHyperTechie]

9 minutes ago, pentlandsl said:

If it an old Smart IWB then you can calibrate them from the screen itself, without the laptop. Turn it on and select the source as OPS HDMI and then click on the Diagnositcs link - there is then an option to calibrate from there.

Hope that helps and glad it is working now.

One thing to bear in mind is that touch capability is effected if you have a really long USB cable.

I have to do something similar sometimes, go into chrome://flags and enable the calibration setting. Restart, and then in display settings, you should have an option to calibrate the IWB. Touchscreen normally works after this!

Edited September 4, 2025 by HyperTech

[dhicks]

19 minutes ago, alordcharlie said:

What do you do about Two-step? The only thing I can think of is Titan security keys for staff.

 

Google Workspace can use a number of 2FA mechanisms, we've found physical USB keys (as you suggested) have worked well over the past couple of years or so. A previous post with some details:

 

 

That's the Feitian K9, now around £20 each. We also use the NFC-capable keys as tokens for the door entry system (Paxton) and for printer access (PaperCut), we find that having one key for those things (especially getting into the building of a morning) seems to help the staff think of the USB keys as like house/car keys, and we have very few problems with lost keys (and I don't think anyone has managed to break one yet).

 

We have nice, compact all-in-one PCs as classroom desktops, which tend to have the USB ports hidden around the side. We found we needed to buy a bunch of 30cm USB extension cables so people could easily plug the USB keys in.

 

We don't enforce 2FA for pupil accounts yet, although we do allow it, so if our older pupils wanted to add 2FA to their accounts they could.

[6Foot3]

I'm getting an issue with Chromeflex machines where it takes two minutes after bootup for the Ethernet to connect.

 

Wifi is turned off on the machine.