[Lanschool 77 With Crack
Edelira Longinotti
It is well documented that K-12 school district budgets are tight, and it has become even more difficult in recent years to keep up with the costs for all the emerging technologies and tools needed to support successful 1:1 learning programs.
Like many school districts, Waterbury Public Schools did not have the funding in place to meet the distance and hybrid learning equipment demands brought on by district-wide school closures in the spring of 2020. Not only did the district not have 1:1 devices for its 19,000 students, but several of its 30 schools had a very limited number of computers to go around, as few as two per building in some cases
To help meet these growing needs on their limited budget, Waterbury allocated funding toward the purchase of Lenovo Chromebooks. The district knew that not only would Chromebooks be easy to manage, but every Lenovo Chromebook they bought gave them access to a free, one-year LanSchool Air license. As they secured funding to roll out more devices throughout the year, they continued to choose Lenovo devices, taking full advantage of the bundle offering.
One of the primary reasons Waterbury chose to invest in Lenovo Chromebooks was the ease of management. Chromebooks enable IT teams to set and enforce 100+ policies and settings by user or group, including Wi-Fi and proxy settings, installation of apps and extensions, limiting access to authorized users, and more.
Nick said many teachers are also enjoying the Limit Web functionality that enables teachers to limit access to certain websites to keep kids from getting distracted, particularly during breakout groups or independent assignments.
Whether we are virtual, hybrid, or in-person, LanSchool allows us to be prepared for all situations. With LanSchool, we can enable our teachers to be as effective as you can be remotely, which is invaluable.
I'll be focusing on new developments with Office 365, Windows, Moodle and server \ networking technologies. I'm a great believer in sharing best practice and contributing to the wider technical community so hope you'll find something of interest...
NMSD has traditionally operated as a mixed-device school system, using a combination of shared devices, computer labs, and 1:1 devices across its three campuses supporting 180 students. When the school decided to adopt a new classroom management software several years ago, LanSchool stood out as the option best suited for a mixed-device environment.
NMSD teachers appreciated LanSchool for its Web Limiting feature, which helped them reduce the distractions and risks that come with digital learning. As more classes began to incorporate online lessons, the IT team noted a growing desire for a classroom management software that would also support learning on devices as they moved between classes and off campus.
Students are issued an Intel Classmate netbook/convertible tablet running Windows 7 Pro/32, 4gb ram. GP is configured on all systems for remote filtering and remote internal server access. We currently have 1600 units deployed.
In our troubleshooting, we were able to determine that if the student system hasn't ever connected to the portal (and portal was empty in GP setup.) Lanschool works properly. Once it connects to the portal and configures it no longer does, unless the GP vNIC is disabled. We've had a developer for LanSchool involved doing debugging and what he's seen is that the initial connection is made to the connection server, but drops immediately after that. If it helps, the traffic is on port 8080, and is not HTTP traffic. I see the traffic from students at home, and the traffic is let through, but that's all I've seen in the logs. All the sessions are 1.3K.
I don't know if an update would help resolve this, but we're not in a position to try anything newer with GP as 1) I don't know if the upgrade will automatically install on the deployed units as the students don't have admin rights. 2) if it goes bad, or creates any other issues, I'm going to have people very upset with me!
The safer way of executing this would be choosing the Client Upgrade option to Prompt where the users would be prompted before upgrade (and requesting them not to before hand) and then
Interesting that all of the sessions are of same size. The fact that the web-site is using a port 8080 might be causing some issues here. You can do packet capture on the PC's and see if you are getting any Resets are not. Also try visiting some proxy web-sites that are using port 8080 and if you have problem with them if so then we can narrow the issue to the port. If possible you can contact call support for advanced troubleshooting assistance.
What do you use to allow your teachers to monitor the computers in their classrooms? The list mentioned LanSchool. But I wanted to see if Casper schools are utilizing Casper Remote in some way? If not it would be nice if Casper would add something for management on the Mac side - like Focus - but with more features like Lan School.
University here, but we have a couple of classrooms setup with Apple Remote Desktop on the instructor station but configured with limits so that the instructor account only has limited abilities to view the computers in that classroom. Essentially it is setup so they can open ARD, but not actually force any changes or push commands. You can do the same multi screen view that it looks like Lan School shows on their website.
The issue we have with ARD is the record in ARD doesn't always sync up with the correct IP of the device. But since all of our devices have the same admin user credentials it allows that teacher to see whatever device has that IP since the record hasn't updated to reflect it. Scanning each time helps but isn't 100%.
We've setup ARD and LanSchool for testing. Unfortunately, ARD is too much for our faculty (And isn't logged) and LanSchool has been a bit of an under performer. I haven't installed LanSchool server yet for testing (passing control from class to class has always been an issue in our testing). There is, however, a feature request here on good ol' JAMFnation =1171 that's worth voting up. I'd much rather see this solution.
Not a semester goes by when we don't have a request from one of our Faculty asking for the ability to monitor their students' screens while in the classroom. And, every time, we have to explain (once again, sigh) that this is trying to solve a classroom management problem with a technological solution. We tell them that it signifies a lack of trust between the teacher and the student and that there are better ways to monitor what a student is doing.
They worry about cheating, of course, but any teacher who's been teaching for more than a few years can tell you that cheating reveals itself in many more obvious ways than what might be seen by a teacher during a screen-monitoring session. There are abundant classroom management techniques that are better than screen monitoring. Walk the room. Arrange the desks differently. Disallow the use of computers during certain test-taking. Make students turn off WiFi while they are taking a test (and then you can easily use ARD to see if a machine is responding on a subnet).
Student very very much dislike the Orwellian idea of Big Brother watching what they do, and for good reason. This kind of power dynamic breeds mistrust and abuse by the person with the power. Witness the infamous Lower Merion case where an Administrator (note; not a tech staff person!) was able to use the power of LanRev (now Absolute Manage) to egregiously invade the privacy of a student (yes, a bit of a , but still a student) in their 1:1 laptop program.
Many places use this distrust of students as a rationale for locking down the computers in a 1:1 to the point where they are barely useable, or they are used for only a small percent of their actual potential. I've been arguing for many years that it doesn't have to be that way. One of the most important factors in the success of a 1:1 program is the underlying culture of the school where it's being implemented. I've seen well-funded 1:1 programs fail in places where the particular culture or leadership was not a good fit. I've seen underfunded 1:1 programs excel in places where the leadership fosters a culture of honesty, respect, and digital responsibility.
I personally don't believe that a 1:1 program that relies on technical solutions like screen-monitoring will be as successful as a program that encourages higher expectations for its students. Respect and dignity goes a long way (if your school's culture allows it). Good luck.
We just implemented a piece of software that we pushed to all the student laptops in our 1:1 program called Dyknow Monitor. It was a standard package with a simple script ran post-install to configure it.
It's very nice how it works, you can do an import from a student information system to build your classes so teachers classes are already set up in their system. This way the teacher for say English, only sees students in their English at that period. If that makes sense.
We use ARD for remote support and we have a few teachers/building tech folks that use it for lab management. We have one school that uses LanSchool with a fairly large population (around 1,500 devices) and have problems maintaining connections. LanSchool does have a free version available that is just viewing.
I also want to second @damienbarrett's classroom management comment above. Walk around the room or just simply tell them to turn it off/put the device down. We didn't try to put remote paper monitors in when kids were passing notes back and forth in class. If we're trying to prepare students in a digital age there are going to be distractions, constantly. If I didn't learn time management and discipline, then I would just watch cat videos all day online. Ok, just one more cat video before I call it a day.
I had the same issues with ARD and the computer name and IP address causing issues. I switched all of my groups to Smart Lists in ARD and it has worked great since. The only time I have an issue is when I am reimaging and the machine looses it's name and drops from the ARD Smart List until it restarts and then it automatically shows back up.
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