Al_NetSupport

Here you go sir - https://kb.netsupportsoftware.com/knowledge-base/install-the-netsupport-dna-agent-onto-a-pc-image/

Hi folks, You may have seen our post yesterday on the main page, but i just wanted to share that we have released a free digital strategy guide for schools. Its aim is to cover all stakeholders with some of the key considerations and questions to ask. Hopefully its a useful, free resource for all but wanted to make sure Edugeek members were aware and could take a look. Hope you like. >> https://www.netsupportsoftware.com/digital-strategy/ Al.

Monitoring staff devices is often a hot topic , often the driving force is what the SLT has approved with governors in terms of staff IT / acceptable use policies. I’d suggest the three main approaches I see in schools are : Staff devices all have comparable monitoring to student devices ( and many staff are this as protecting them as well), or, Profiles set for different staff groups, so perhaps SLT for example have thumbnails monitoring disabled and keyword filtering off, or, Monitoring/ filtering disabled on staff devices. I don’t think this is good practice though and does mean the school loses its ability to enforce some of its key policies. The most common option taken is to have filtering on all school devices but staff devices are profiled separately so internet restrictions etc are not enforced and when accessing systems like CPOMS / My Concern they do not trigger keyword alerts when then DSL or others are logging student concerns. I’d argue the policies ratified by governors tend to be the driver for the level of monitoring applied and GDPR added an extra need to tighten policies on staff as well as student devices in a broader sense. Al

Hi all. We’ve extended the ways to connect to students in the classroom with NetSupport School. Normally when you start a lesson you select your class by connecting to a list of devices, browsing for devices you want or joining a “room”, when schools are using chromebooks for example the easier way is to have NetSupport school talk directly to an SIS like GoogleClassroom, one-roster etc and provide the teacher with a list of students (and their IDs) for each upcoming class. So now you can start a lesson and connect to “lesson 1 - Monday - ICT “ and NetSupport will then connect by student ID to all students who are registered in that class. It just adds another way of making the start of lesson easy for teachers especially with students who bring their device into the classroom, or who use chromebooks. We keep trying to add extra ways of simplifying the product while also adding functionality. I did a video chat last week about NetSupport School and all the things you can now do with it at the bottom of this message. Hope that helps. Al

Hi all. We’ve extended the ways to connect to students in the classroom with NetSupport School. Normally when you start a lesson you select your class by connecting to a list of devices, browsing for devices you want or joining a “room”, when schools are using chromebooks for example the easier way is to have netsupport school talk directly to an SIS like GoogleClassroom, one-roster etc and provide the teacher with a list of students (and their IDs) for each upcoming class. So now you can start a lesson and connect to “lesson 1 - Monday - ICT “ and NetSupport will then connect by student ID to all students who are registered in that class. It just adds another way of making the start of lesson easy for teachers especially with students who bring their device into the classroom, or who use chromebooks. We keep trying to add extra ways of simplifying the product while also adding functionality. I did a video chat last week about NetSupport School and all the things you can now do with it here - Hope that helps. Al

Thanks for tagging me in so i could see this thread. There are a couple of strands here and I hope I can respond on both, but please anyone feel free to PM me if you would like me to call or arrange for one of our support team to. NetSupport DNA has always shipped with a free copy of SQL Express included and this has always had the pre-imposed storage limit that Microsoft includes with it, during install you are guided to either use the free version or point to your own instance of SQL. This isn't an unusual approach for a lot of products as its impossible to ship it with a permanent SQL licence ( that's unique to each user/school). @Primus happy to chat and i'm sorry you have been having issues ( I believe support have been attempting to make contact with you regarding your performance issue but clearly you aren't getting the feedback you need so i will speak to the team today.) but i don't agree we aren't upfront about this, it is something mentioned consistently, i will take your comment away and look to see if it can be included in other places as well to ensure nobody is unaware of SQL Lite storage limits. Storage limits are down to a number of variables and typically result from schools choosing to capture more Safeguarding content ( I.e capture screenshots or video for more low-level keyword terms) and or choosing to retain their data for a longer period of time. Some schools add a range of extra terms, including names of games etc, or just trigger keyword screen captures on every term and of course, this results in a huge increase in data ( video screen captures even more so) . This has to be balanced with a retention period or server capacity. I hope most will appreciate its impossible for us to control how much data each school chooses to store which is why we give the choice of using the free instance of SQL lite included with the download or pointing to a full SQL instance for unlimited storage. Most of you know me, and I do listen, if you think we are being unreasonable in some way or it's not clear enough, then please PM and tell me, and should anyone else feel support haven't responded quickly enough ( @Primus i hear you ), which I believe is a normally very rare event, you can always make me aware and i will chase straight away. Hope that helps Al. ( I'm at the Edugeek conference on the 30th so always up for a chat ) .

Big thanks to everyone who came along to the NetSupport stand again this year, great to see so many edugeekers out and about. We always share a highlight video from the stand - which is below and a few fun ones from each day for those who were unable to attend. Really pleased our NetSupport Radio at the show with Russell Prue won the Kids Choice award for the show, which was something really special. Anyway thanks again to everyone who came and said hi! Hope you enjoy, Al. and a few fun ones from the show

It feels an irreconcilable position. There are many who will be able recount lives saved by schools who have picked up on children at risk of suicide, self harm or online grooming (alongside the IWF), and those that feel the information might be used to wrongly involve an external agency. I believe the lives saved justify the use of these tools and many, many school leaders agree it’s an essential tool and one that could not be replaced by eyes and ears alone (unless we had twice as many staff). Schools use a wealth of tools to monitor activity , assess learning and keep children safe online, to do this without retaining data about the child is simply not possible - context is always the key to any judgement and it can’t be made without any history. As she mentions , I am meeting Jen from DefendDigitalMe in January to hopefully expand understanding on how our products actually work, but I’m a realist, we are unlikely to have much common ground other than we both want to keep children safe. As always, appreciate everyone’s support and comments. I know many have seen children really helped as a result of solutions like ours.

Thanks for all the support folks, really appreciated by all the team here. Have a lovely Christmas. !

Just be clear, the Telegraph has retracted the article and removed it from their website and will be publishing an apology, now we have shown it to be wholly inaccurate on most of the key points. Other copies of the article by other publishers are also being retracted. A good example regrettably of poorly informed journalists looking for a scoop. Al.

Just PMd you with password and reply. Al.

Thanks - just added some of our response into my post.

Hi all, We are aware of the article, it is shaped by an organisation Defenddigitalme and is full of inaccuracies, as you will know we are LAN based currently, we don't allow a teacher to remotely change the webcam settings on a child's PC and there is no webcam feed. The rest of it is full of "scare" stories - we don't have a feature to report content to the police and once installed at a school have no control whatsoever over the software. We have a fuller response but below is a quick outline of 2 inaccuracies (there are 6 inaccuracies identified in the article) but I can assure everyone we have no plans in any shape or form to be remotely watching any webcams within the product. “remotely enable webcams on devices to spy on pupils often without student or their parents ever knowing”. This statement is wholly incorrect. The software is locally installed and controlled by the school and only they can control its configuration. By default “out of the box” Webcam capture is disabled, as are video alerts. Webcams cannot be remotely controlled -all of the data is stored on the school network, not in the cloud or on servers managed by NetSupport. Before a child logs onto any school device, they must acknowledge the schools acceptable use policy, and a visual splash box identifies which features are active on each student PC (including the keyword filtering tools). Furthermore, the webcam does not record any video, ever. It can only capture a single photo of the student at the computer which has triggered a critical keyword, for example, suicide or self-harm. The product only currently runs on a LAN (Local Area Network), so this applies within the school, not at home. “Enabling teachers to remotely activate the webcam 24/7 regardless of location”. None of this is in any way possible. A student PC at home has no means of communicating with or from school devices. Teachers do not have the ability to interact with student devices at home, and as repeatedly stated, the product ONLY works on a local School / Trust network. Just for clarity, the feature is disabled by default by DSLs asked if we could add a feature that meant children using shared resources in a library, when searching for a serious term "Suicide" it could be used to capture a picture of the students from the webcam so they knew who they needed to intervene with and support. The school has compete control over the feature, not NetSupport. Hope that clarifies but happy to answer any questions. Al

As it's friday, and for many the beginning of half term, if you order today I'll throw in NetSupport Notify licences as part of the deal. Either way, have a good break ( if you get one) and recharge the batteries. Al.

Big thanks to those that have already inquired. If anyone else is still looking for a special offer price for the next few weeks please feel free to contact our sales team or PM me directly. Al.