Classroom Management Suggestion: LAN School

[Duke5A]

I've worked in a couple different districts now and have had exposure to a half dozen or so classroom management suites. With every one I had to maintain there was always a nagging flaw whether it be the client didn't run as a service, no deployable MSI, no means of centralized management, etc... I recently came across yet another one recommended to me off of a listserv by the name of LAN School. After trying out the demo we purchased a site license for our high school, and two lab licenses for our middle school. In a nutshell:

 

• The teacher and student installers are self contained MSI files
  
• The installers work flawlessly being deployed through AD
  
• The student client runs as a service
  
• It's fully managed by means of provided GPO templates
  
• Has an optional central server that can be used instead of teachers connecting directly to students (haven't tried yet)
  

 

LanSchool | Classroom Management, Monitoring, and Corporate Training Software

 

I hope this helps someone out there; it sure made my life easier.

[FN-GM]

Im another fan of LanSchool, one annoying thing it blocks the Task Manager by default.

[TheMinister]

It also doesn't allow 'substitute teachers' and is prone to crashing if viewing more than about 30 'students'

[FN-GM]

It also doesn't allow 'substitute teachers'

@TheMinister I dont know what you mean, can you expand on that please?

[TheMinister]

Say one teacher is away. You don't have the option of allowing another teacher to view that away teachers 'Class Lists'. Therefore the away teachers classes aren't monitored.

[FN-GM]

Say one teacher is away. You don't have the option of allowing another teacher to view that away teachers 'Class Lists'. Therefore the away teachers classes aren't monitored.

 

We dont use class lists. We just have each room on each channel.

[deano]

We dont use class lists. We just have each room on each channel.

 

Same thing here for me! All rooms and trolleys on different channels. ICT staff are given the access to switch channels so they can monitor classes with substitute teachers. They have no problem connecting and monitoring 60+ workstations.

 

Few things to note are:

Turn off key logger in setup as its a security risk

Ensure staff are aware that first staff member logged on will control LAN school. If they switch user, the second user will not be able to run LAN school because it is already running. Make sure they log off

Issues with connecting to multiple workstations may be down to your switch config not allowing.multi casting

[Duke5A]

Does anyone run the central server piece? I've got a lab where the teacher machine sits on a different subnet than the students (wireless). I don't believe direct connections between the student and teacher machines will work since student discovery uses broadcast.

[FN-GM]

Does anyone run the central server piece? I've got a lab where the teacher machine sits on a different subnet than the students (wireless). I don't believe direct connections between the student and teacher machines will work since student discovery uses broadcast.

 

We have a few subnet and machines can talk to each other. You can use Multi-cast instead of broadcase.

[Duke5A]

Just an update... I got the LAN School Connection Server up and running without too much hassle. It requires an x64 OS so it went up on a 2008 R2 apps server. There isn't anything in the way of configuration for it, but it does serve a locally hosted HTTP site for checking connection statistics. Pointing clients to it had to be done by hand as the ADM templates provided by Stoneware don't have provisions for that kind of configuration. All in all, it works and clients don't seem to have any issue with traversing subnets.

@FN-GM I did look into using multi-cast, but on our wireless network (fully managed Cisco setup) broadcast and multicast traffic are disabled. Wireless moves in mysterious ways around here and I didn't want to anger it.

[bwilkerson]

Just an update... I got the LAN School Connection Server up and running without too much hassle. It requires an x64 OS so it went up on a 2008 R2 apps server. There isn't anything in the way of configuration for it, but it does serve a locally hosted HTTP site for checking connection statistics. Pointing clients to it had to be done by hand as the ADM templates provided by Stoneware don't have provisions for that kind of configuration. All in all, it works and clients don't seem to have any issue with traversing subnets.

@FN-GM I did look into using multi-cast, but on our wireless network (fully managed Cisco setup) broadcast and multicast traffic are disabled. Wireless moves in mysterious ways around here and I didn't want to anger it.

 

After you set up the connection server on server 2008 what do you do to manage it all? The instructions are not very clear.

 

I have installed LCS.msi on my server 2008 and created a group in active directory called Lanschool Teachers but I do not know where to go from there. Do I just install the teacher and student msi's everywhere with the connection server settings? How do I manage the channels and all that. Is there a managment dashboard? I am so confused.