dhicks

In ChromeOS / Google Workspace terms, you need to set the device up as a kiosk device. You'll need a Google Workspace domain set up, join the device to the domain, then place the device in an OU that sets it up as a kiosk device. We use devices like this for our lower school (turn device on, it loads up a basic menu page) and display screens (you can set kiosk applications to start full-screen if you want). Works well and is nice and easy to manage if you have Google Workspace set up (and it does cost a £30-ish one-off license per managed device). Otherwise, I've found the Raspbian varient of Debian pretty easy to set up as a kiosk device - you can have it just laod a web browser instead of a standard desktop.

£1,800 a year for hosting, backing up and possibly managing Active Directory doesn't sound bad, you might be comparing somewhat different things. Backblaze's £72 a year per TB is for raw storage space - depending on how many previous versions you want to hold you might need 2 or 3 TB of storage space to keep backups for 1 TB of live data.

I use ChromeOS Flex (on a 2015-model iMac) at school, which handles most of everything I need to do on a daily basis - I have remote desktop for the occasional bit of Windows server administration, but we only have a few local Windows servers now and I'm finding I spend less and less time doign anything on Windows. At the shared workspace where I have a desk I have a Raspberry Pi 5 set up with standard Raspian OS as a desktop machine, which works quite nicely - maybe a bit under-powered compared with some devices, but quite usable. I find I tend to stick to using the Raspian version of Debian when setting up any other desktop machines, and I tend to stick with Debian when setting up servers.

We use Backblaze, £6 per TB per month. We probably have around 4TB of actual active data (accross a few local servers and Googel Drive), plus extra for keeping previous versions going back a few months, so maybe around 7TB per month = maybe £50-ish per month = around £600 per year. We have an on-site Synology NAS that is backing up Google Drive, that is then synced to a Backblaze backup.

We put Logitech K400 wireless keyboards with built-in trackpads in halls and meeting rooms, and for any classroom teacher that asks for one - very few have. Laptop users are welcome to a wired mouse if they want one.

We use a (free) Apache Guacamole server behind a Cloudflare tunnel (free for less than 50 users), which allows for authentication via users 2FA-protected Google / Microsoft accounts. We have ours pointing at a dedicated remote desktop server, but you could point individual users at specific devices if needed. I collected the setup needed into a Github project - it probably needs a bit of tinkering with / updating: https://github.com/dhicks6345789/remote-gateway

We use Veeam to back up our local server VMs to local backup storage (you could use part of your Synology device for that), then we have those Veeam backups synced to Backblaze. We use Veeam to do that, but you could have the Synology device handle the sync-to-remote bit if you wanted. 2TB would cost around £10 a month, although with a few synthetic backups to give you more restore points it would probably be a bit more, I'd guess still under £30 a month. We also use one of the apps on the Synology device to backup our whole Google Drive, I think it scans for changes around every half hour.

Same here - I'm posting from an early 2015 iMac running ChromeOS, works nicely - nice screen, camera and internal mic work. For some reason I don't think we managed to get the built-in wireless working - I haven't tried with a USB adaptor, we have a wired connection so didn't bother. I also use it with headphones, I can't remember if the internal speaker works or not.

Synology: we have our Synology box sync backups to Backblaze - it syncs our local backups (from Veeam, which backs up our (few) local server VMs) and also backs up Google Drive (all shared and user drives). Other similar services are available (generally Amazon S3 compatible), around £5 per TB per month, and you can generally choose a UK-based storage location. Er... repositories, maybe?

If you haven't tried them already, ICT Direct @ICTDirect_Dave (one of the forum sponsors) do good prices on nearly-new servers, Dell included, complete with proper warrenties.

Hmm: I wonder if one of the various Chrome automation / testing solutions would work? This is more of a quick guess / random thought than anything more useful.

We have ChromeOS Flex installed on a number of devices around the school (desktops, laptops, all-in-ones, Macs), it seems to work very nicely in most cases. We did have one specific model of NUC that updated to a specific version of ChromeOS and stopped working, so it's worth testing your model of device does actually work before you go to much further with any planning. If you want to use your ChromeOS Flex device as a kisok device then you'll need to have it managed by your Google Workspace, so bear in mind you'll need a £30-ish-a-time ChromeOS management license.

Separate local admin account, with different credentials, for each server. Access for a user is via our web-based remote gateway behind a Cloudflare tunnel, authenticated with our 2FA-protected Google accounts. We don't have a Windows domain, so each of our Windows servers needs a local admin account anyway - we now only have a few local servers, the larger stuff (email, files) are now cloud based.

Or dedicated ChromeOS desktop all-ine-one devices. We can, of course, buy a Windows (or Mac) all-in-one and reformat it with ChromeOS Flex, but there don't seem to be any cheaper Chomebases around at the moment. There are some snazzy devices for dedicated display screens and so on, but nothing that I can find by way of desktop machines. We can, of course, buy a cheap (£200) NUC-alike PC and mount that under or behind a monitor (£100), but that makes for several power plugs and cables, plus possibly a webcam, and we prefer nice neat all-in-ones for classroom setups as there's less to be tinkered with.

Exactly - and I think it highlights that the users (teachers, in this case, probably other staff and pupils as well) aren't hearing quite the same question we think we're asking them. I'm not quite sure what the average teacher pictures in their head when someone says "Windows machine", but it seems quite likely they're thinking "nice new machine, with familiar login screen and background" more than "nice affordable, easy-to-manage device", which is maybe what we tend to think we're asking what they want.

Staff seem to be increasing unaware that there's a difference between different operating systems (which is a good thing - staff shouldn't need to be concerned with the technical aspects of how computing services are delivered). We switched out one of the (very) old iMacs from our Art room when the hardware started to fail, swapping it for a (not much newer) Chromebase. The Art department complained they wanted the Mac back as they were more familiar with how it worked - despite it having been running ChromeOS Flex since we installed it up there! The only difference between the two machines was the colour and shape of the device, plus the big Apple logo on the back of the Mac.

Ah, we maybe need to point our users at that, I'll investigate a bit further - thanks.

We use the same phishing simulation system, which we find generally works well. However, if users forward an email to our Trello-based helpdesk, Trello tries to follow any links it sees in emails to get a page title / favicon, etc, which triggers the you-followed-a-dodgy-link process. We now have a few reports of the same thing happening when people use the "report phishing" button in GMail, although we need to double-check that is actually what is happening. I would prefer users to report any suspicious-looking emails they see to us rather than not, so I'm reluctant to tell them not to forward suspected phishing emails to the helpdesk. It does also make me think the best way to actually get someone to click on a real phishing email these days would be to make it look like a report from a phishing email test - "You clicked on one of our phishing test emails, please click this dodgy link to do some training, or this equally dodgy link if you think this is in error"...

Some additional pluses: - You seem to be able to get a device with all the features that you'd want for a school device (good enough processor, RAM and local storage, good battery life, full-flip design, stylus support, front-and--rear cameras, general robustness / ease of repair) at a better price than the equivalent Windows device. There's probably not a huge difference per device, but it does add up if you're buying hundreds at a time. - Management license fee is a £30-ish one-off fee, which you can factor in as part of the purchase price, which makes for a more easily-managed budget. Overall licensing costs for Google Workspace and Office 365 are probably getting close to each other, although our Google licensing costs are still less per year than Microsoft. - ChromeOS / Google Workspace has good built-in support for management of kiosk devices - great for displays, or any single-use device you want. - Filtering, with a client-side filtering application added to Google Workspace accounts, is nice and easy. If a pupil uses a Chromebook at home (and they are cheap enough to buy, or even cheaper if you re-use an old laptop with ChromeOS Flex) and logs on with their school account they get all the plugins and add-ons the school might have licensed, including any filtering. This makes for a nice, easy way to give parents a school-filtered device for home. Of course, as soon as they log off their school account and log on with a standard Google account they can get past any filtering, so some supervision would still be needed. One problem which I can think of: no-one seems to do ChromeOS devices with nice built-in cameras. Our Reception classrooms still use iPads for taking photos as they found the Chromebook cameras weren't really that good.

If the budget is available, I would probably take the opportunity to put in trunking around the room with power sockets (ones with built-in USB power), and ideally floor-mounted power sockets in the middle of the room for an island desk setup. Wired network cables probably aren't needed (unless you plan to use a lot of PoE powered devices for some reason), and non-fixed desking would be more flexible. Science-lab-style desks might be an idea, although (just from recent experience) if you get the ones with the extra-snazzy extra-hard desk surface (resists scratches and dings just great) you'll need to buy diamond-tipped tile drill bits if you want to drill in to them to mount cable trays or similar.

+1 for this option. If you're okay to fit devices yourself (and Ubiquiti access points are simple enough to fit, just a couple of screws and a twist-on mount) you can replace devices one at a time as you get the chance.

I asked a very similar question pretty much this time last year: /forums/hardware/237658-ict-room-refurbishment-equipment.html For room layout, we have benches aroundthe edge of the room to accomodate the class, which means the teacher can see what all the children are doing easily from the middle of the room. That gives us a bit of space in the middle of the room where we have a centre table, and of course you wind up with at least two corners of somewhat unused space, where you can potentially park some interesting / useful kit. We currently have a 3D printer in one of those spaces, it's been sat there unused for 10 years(!). You could also maybe try a laser cutter. We have power sockets around the room with built-in USB ports, so there's less clutter when powering various equipment. If possible, put some power sockets under the middle island table if you can, it makes for less fuss and trailing cables. USB (music) keyboards turn out the be very affordable (£30-ish), which is a fun bit of kit you can have the children use. Something I've intended to try at some point is a wall-mounted Raspberry Pi, accesible via remote desktop - physical computing in the sense of a bit of kit you can see and interact with, but mounted and powered so there's not too much clutter for a classes-worth of them.

Managed kiosk ChromeOS devices (£200 small NUC-alike PC) running a simple Google Slideshow (or my own slideshow script in a couple of particular cases). Google actually seem to be pushing ChromeOS as a digital signage solution, and as we have an existing Google Workspace domain it makes it nice and easy to manage.

I don't know the answer, but that's useful to know to check when next setting up new machines.

Does "locally" mean on each individual workstation, or a local-to-your-building server that you control? Probably not quite what you're looking for, but my Web Console project does allow you to edit and run code: https://github.com/dhicks6345789/web-console It's cross-platform (binary should install on both Windows and Linux, or MacOS if you want), presents a web-based interface (on localhost:8090), and uses the Ace text editor component, which does nice syntax-highlighting for most known languages / text file formats, including Python.