Classroom Screen & Application Sharing/Controling

[mrforgetful]

That AB Tutor Control looks really good and is pretty cheap, going to be putting it on some rooms for the 30 day trial after the easter holidays.

 

How much is that Impero?

[Lee_K_81]

Mentioned our experience with impero in another post. Not typing it out again, I'm lazy

 

http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=7474

 

How much is that Impero?

[/Quote]

 

Here is a link to their pricing structure:

http://www.imperosoftware.com/pricing.jpg

source: http://www.imperosoftware.com/pricing.jpg

 

So... if you had 300 machines it would cost: 300*£6 = £1800

+ £200 for the server, and however many consoles you wanted.

 

Not used Netsupport so i cant comment on their functionality, but for us their costs were far too expensive. We're VERY satisfied with impero so far.

[mrforgetful]

So about 4K. More than twice AB Tutor Control, but about what we paid for the crap that is Sanako.

[Lee_K_81]

So about 4K. More than twice AB Tutor Control, but about what we paid for the crap that is Sanako.

 

Depends on the amount of PC's and consoles. We have 5 consoles and that is fine for us (200 clients atm). One in LRC; 1 in server room, and 3 for ICT teachers. Will probably have to buy a few more soon though.

 

From what i've read on the AB website, impero offers a few more functions, like key word filtering, on any window / document, that warn you if a pupil has typed someting they shouldnt; and being able to block any window or application. If you are serious about getting a system, trial a few. Compare functionality and cost and do whats best for your school. You are the only one who can make the decision really.

[mrforgetful]

I'm not really too bothered about the blocking of keywords in every program, email's filtered.

 

AB has the ability to block programs.

 

The main things teachers want to do is view screens, block all websites except a couple, lock computers etc.

[Lee_K_81]

Maybe AB would be best for you. The word filter worked for us as we managed to trace back some posters that were appearing round school that had a pic of a teacher and unflattering comments. I actually found it quite amusing but the teacher wasnt impressed.

[MkII]

8 times ABTutor you mean

[mrforgetful]

Well no it depends how much I'd need.

 

I worked out that for 500 clients, one server and 20 control stations for the other was just under 4k.

 

20 control clients for AB Tutor would be just under 2k.

 

It'd be a massive improvement over what we have now, it's a lot smoother.

 

The only problems I can envisage are the hassle of installing each room with a different password on the install, I'm guessing an mst for each room's OU in AD is the way forward for that. (straying a bit off topic sorry)

[Lee_K_81]

8 times ABTutor you mean

and still 50% less than "others" lol.

[Disease]

I bought LanSchool for here, it's fantastic, allows the teachers to control the class and me to watch over all classes.

 

http://www.lanschool.com/

[MkII]

Well no it depends how much I'd need.

 

I worked out that for 500 clients, one server and 20 control stations for the other was just under 4k.

 

20 control clients for AB Tutor would be just under 2k.

 

It'd be a massive improvement over what we have now, it's a lot smoother.

 

The only problems I can envisage are the hassle of installing each room with a different password on the install, I'm guessing an mst for each room's OU in AD is the way forward for that. (straying a bit off topic sorry)

 

Ah sorry.

 

We role out to OUs - easy to set a separate password to each.

[mrforgetful]

Ah sorry.

 

We role out to OUs - easy to set a separate password to each.

 

So that method is easy then? Don't suppose you can point to a tutorial anywhere on how to make it set the passwords?

[MkII]

abtcsetup.msi /quiet PASSWORD=

 

or you can apply a password to a group of PCs you create at once via the GUI

[Gimbow]

Here in VA we are using Netop. The version of the program we have been using is very buggy and their customer supports sucks. Their response is always "Update to the new version". A few of the problems we have with it are... Teachers complain constantly about clients not showing up or completely dropping off the teacher app at completly random times. A reinstall of the client is the only fix. It is slow and clunky when you get more then 30 computers going and has a tendency to lock up when you try to do things too quickly... Even with a fast computer.

 

A few of the pros, It has just about every feature you would ever need, It has an intutiave interface and it has a pretty easy learning curve for end users.

 

We use it in about 30-40 labs consisting of 30 computers each. I believe we paid in the area of $4000-$15000 per site for it so it is defiantly not cheap.. Hope this helps..

[mrforgetful]

4000-15000? That's apretty wide area of estimation lol.

[Channel]

Dear Mr. Forgetful

 

I represent SANAKO and as we believe in giving our customers 110% customer service and I am disappointed to hear that you feel that you have not received this and that you may have some outstanding issues.

 

I would like to take this opportunity to try and resolve what ever issues you may have with SANAKO and hopefully turn the negative back into a positive.

 

Could you be so kind and pass me your details so that I can contact you to discuss this further.

 

We do apologise for any inconvenience that may have been caused and welcome the opportunity to resolve this.

 

Regards

Channel

[Gimbow]

4000-15000? That's pretty wide area of estimation lol.

 

It all depends on how many labs we have per school. For a high School, we have 15-20 labs so the price for that site would be in the area of $15000. For a one to two lab school, the price is substantially cheaper. I am unsure of the exact price as I am not involved in the purchasing..

[mrforgetful]

How large is a lab?

[Andie]

Just a word of warning from past experience:

 

We used something installed on our Viglen Classlink network called Remote Learning. I think this is just a bundle of a third party product. We used this product for a few years to demonstrate application software from the teacher's machine to all of the pupils' machines (only a small classroom of 11 PCs in total). There were a few problems with this graphics-wise on the pupils' machines - Powerpoint slides would appear with diagonal bars of colour rather than the actual background, bizarrely Encarta icons for sound, video, etc all became one type of icon so that they all appeared to be video links, Lego Robolab colour scheme changed completely and didn't change back when the demo session was ended. Viglen were very puzzled and didn't believe me at first. I ended up asking a techie from our LEA to test the same setup at another Viglen school in our area, and then Viglen sent out an engineer who witnessed the fault at first hand. We were then told they would work on it. But in the following 12 months we were never notified of a fix, and we have since gone our separate ways.

 

In the grand scheme of things, this may be a trivial problem, and it may hopefully have been fixed by the third party supplier or it may have been a fault with the Viglen setup. But if you are buying this sort of software to use for demonstration purposes in particular, it may be worth checking out how complex Powerpoint slides look on the pupil machines before committing yourself. It makes for an interesting lesson when the teacher is merrily talking about what he thinks the pupils can see, and they are all muttering "what????!!".