Netbooks

[coop1984]

Hi there, weve just purchashed a large number of netbooks and i am faced with some problems with I hope someone may be able to advise.

 

The pupils are to be allowed to take them home to do homework on (word processing etc.)

Cached credentials works fine - the problem i am faced with now is we used re-directed menus here and obviously that wont work at home.

 

The other problem is that if a student does work at home how can i make it possible for them to then transfer it to their work area on logon? Historically we dont allow users access to the C drive on their logons.

 

Any advice or any other tips would be greatly appreciated

[markberry]

Do you use redirected My Documents? You could set them to cache so available offline. It should then resync upon logging in to the network.

 

We use this for staff laptops. The only downside might be having multiple users using this method.

 

Alternatively create a local username and give them a USB stick to transfer work.

[jamin100]

 

Alternatively create a local username and give them a USB stick to transfer work.

 

or create a data partition and set a script to sync their home directory to it

[tommej]

Sorry to de-rail this a little, but doesn't students taking laptops home raise massive issues about internet access etc? IE. you can't monitor what the kids might be looking at.

 

I'm only asking because i've always been told by pastoral staff to ensure internet access is completely disabled for the kids if they're taking any school equipment home (very rarely).

[gshaw]

Funny enough I'm just setting some up at the moment for our community teaching... think I'm going for...

 

A new GPO for the netbooks using generally the same policies with a few tweaks...

 

- Start Menu stored on the C: drive and redirected to that path

- local copy of the network mandatory roaming profile set on the user in AD

- extra partition for data

- script in Startup folder or similar to set anything that usually gets done by logon scripts

 

As an extra protection you could use SteadyState to prevent tampering etc.

[Guest TheLibrarian]

Sorry to de-rail this a little, but doesn't students taking laptops home raise massive issues about internet access etc? IE. you can't monitor what the kids might be looking at.

 

Walsall GfL supplies a stand alone version of Netsweeper that ensures the broswing filtering is compliant with the WGfL settings.

 

Add to that Policy Central (with the correct configuration).

 

The laptops / netbooks would be monitored.

[tommej]

Walsall GfL supplies a stand alone version of Netsweeper that ensures the broswing filtering is compliant with the WGfL settings.

 

Add to that Policy Central (with the correct configuration).

 

The laptops / netbooks would be monitored.

 

I didn't know such a thing existed, cheers!

[coop1984]

Ive just installed steadystate and I think this is the way ill go. Ill create a local account, create a new partition (keeping it nice and small to prevent them saving loads of rubbish on there), and hide everything else using steady state so the only option they have is to save on the data partition.

 

As for internet access we are not going to allow this and it will simply be used for Office homework etc.

[Guest TheLibrarian]

You could use SteadyState to white list a few educational sites etc.