classroom management software

[eastlondon]

Can any 1 recommend classroom management software?

The head of ICT wants it to automatically reconnect a PC back to the group if the kids shut down said PC as at his last school the kids worked out if the restarted their PC the teacher had to restart the group.

 

He also wants it to keep all the PC from one Suite in a group & display a thumbnail of what they r doing, & the ability to send commands to the PCs e.g. Log off, close & shutdown.

 

We have seen Ranger but it cost too much & try to take over the network are their any other you can recommend.

Thanks

[Dos_Box]

NetSupport Manager. You also get NetSupport School for free bundled with this.

 

http://www.netsupportsoftware.com/nsm/netsupport_manager_overview.htm

 

Download the free trial, see how easy it is and go 'Oooooohh!'

[Geoff]

NetSupport can do this sort of thing. I don't use it personally but I believe Dos Box has.

[Dos_Box]

I forgot to add that there isn't a really cheap way of doing what you requested, and you have to pay a premium for that kind of functionallity.

[webman]

AB Tutor as mentioned here recently.

[plexer]

AB Tutor tries to reconnect as many times as you set the threshold in it.

 

Vision6 also reconnects them and adds them to the current mode.

 

Ben

[Espada]

We use NetSupport and it is great, it struggles on older machines e.g. less than 256MB RAM but otherwise very good. I personally use it as a teacher. It also has a testing module which is useful.

[standunstan]

how much are you thinking of spending, we use impero here and have found it to be a godsend.

 

You can arrange all your ict areas into groups with thumbnails, send messages, log kids off etc. the new version also allows you to broadcast your desktop to a class to show them how to do things as well as taking control of desktops.

 

i could go on and on but i find it a really useful management toll

[Espada]

how much are you thinking of spending, we use impero here and have found it to be a godsend.

 

You can arrange all your ict areas into groups with thumbnails, send messages, log kids off etc. the new version also allows you to broadcast your desktop to a class to show them how to do things as well as taking control of desktops.

 

i could go on and on but i find it a really useful management toll

 

NetSupport does all that to. It also supports not only the shutting down and logging off but also wake on LAN and in the newest version you can remotely log clients on.

[meastaugh1]

how much are you thinking of spending, we use impero here and have found it to be a godsend.

 

You can arrange all your ict areas into groups with thumbnails, send messages, log kids off etc. the new version also allows you to broadcast your desktop to a class to show them how to do things as well as taking control of desktops.

 

i could go on and on but i find it a really useful management toll

 

NetSupport does all that to. It also supports not only the shutting down and logging off but also wake on LAN and in the newest version you can remotely log clients on.

 

As does AB Tutor Control, but then they're all pretty standard features I'd expect from a remote control application. I guess it all comes down to your preferred interface, how much you're willing to spend and whether you envisage using some of the additional feaures (such as tests and lesson planners) offered in the more comprehensive (expensive) solutions.

[Ric_]

The tests, surveys and application/website blacklisting/whitelisting features in NetSupport School are very good. By purchasing NetSupport Manager you get all these lovely features for the teachers and the more administrator-orientated tools for yourself. These include software/hardware inventory, deployment tools and a more sensible interface.

 

When I last looked into buying one of these tools, I looked at NetSupport, NetOp and Impero - I ran trial versions of all of these. I went for NetSupport Manager for the added tools plus the licensing-method was more sensible. A simple price per PC and any machine could be a client or control machine - just install the components you required on that box.

[Teth]

Intresting thread. This is something I'm intrested in too due to the fact the school I'm in being 3 stories and a sprawling single story extension with PCs dotted everywhere I wanted to cut down my leg work

 

I am deviod of cash for this particular pet project tho so I've been looking for open source / free ware posibilities and found eaglevision 2.

 

http://www.calstatela.edu/its/techsupport/hardware/desktop/winsupport/eaglevision.htm

 

Its quite full featured with WOL, Remote shutdown, Remote login etc. Its based on VNC so it runs in many situations were windows itself has frozen up which I've found to be a boon so far. I want to make it a tool for teachers to monitor classrooms as well as me providing support and monitoring which is proving a little more difficult. I'm hopeful I'll get enough time in the next few weeks to start messing with its config files and see if I can get control of restircted views etc for each suite. At the moment the consol will list every machine in the school that is running Eaglevision.

 

If anyone has success with this or can find some documentation on it I'd love to hear from you we can compare notes. Also if anyone finds a better free one I'd like to know that too

[Dos_Box]

May I suggest you take a good look at MST-Softwares free LanView package?

 

http://www.mst-software.co.uk/software/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=69&Itemid=47

[Disease]

I have just bought LanSchool and its had a great reaction from teachers.

 

Even if the pupil shuts down the pc it restarts in exactly the same way as when it was switched off, so if the teacher had shut off the mouse keyboard and screen it would reboot in that state.

 

http://www.lanschool.com/

[Dos_Box]

Nice for teachers, but lacking in tools for network management I think.

[woody]

I think you need to ask what you really want the software to do. For instance, is it mainly for teachers, or for administration? If for techers, what do they want it to do? Share screens for demonstrations? Block screens to get class attention? Block websites or apps? Or do they want more feature rich content like lesson planning and interactive tests as has been mentioned in Netsupport School?

 

I tried Netsupport school, and the teachers found having to set up a lesson before you can start managing desktops was too time consuming. At the time it didn't automatically pick up logon names - you had to do a class- register where the kids typed in their names and such. Not so good if they pretend to be someone else.

 

Then we tried AB tutor control. Read this thread: http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=3718

 

AB Tutor will probably work out less than half the price of other big names like Netop and NetSupport because the licensing is based on how many PCs use the control software, not on how many clients you have running.

 

And it does most of the stuff that you will probably ever want in terms of classroom management although we have found it to be handy for administration purposes as well.

 

Why not try the 30 day no restriction demo? The others limit the number of clients you can try, but you can try ABtutor on as many clients as you like, unrestricted!

[Disease]

Nice for teachers, but lacking in tools for network management I think.

 

Aye, but thats all we bought it for.

[Dos_Box]

One problem that we have found with the kind of licence that AB Tutor has is quite restrictive compared to say NSM. Yes you have to licence each client, but all of the control installations are free, and to allow any staff an admin console without having to run off and buy new licences allows for a great deal of freedom in network admin.

Again, with NSM (I really am sold to this product) you get Net Support Tutor for FREE. So you get all of the network admin goodies (inventory, remote execution etc) and controls included with the price. As for the problems your staff faced, did they try saving their classroom configs for future use?

[woody]

Yes, we tried saving classroom configs, but that doesn't help if pupils decide to sit at a different workstation the next lesson. True, I wish tecahers made the pupils sit at the same PC all the time, but unfortunately, they don't. Our staff just like the facility of ABTutor picking up the names of users from AD. Then unless pupils have stolen someone elses account, The teacher can see who's sat where every lesson. Interestingly, AB let's us see when the same user is logged on several times. Then we can message them and log 'em off if need be.