This week I took part in Education on Air, Google’s annual series of presentations looking at the use of technology in the classroom. I talked about how and why we decided to switch from a fleet of 700 Windows desktops to Chromebooks and Google Apps.
In the video I cover the decision making process we went though, and why we abandoned a system that had been working perfectly well for more than a decade and turned to cloud based alternatives instead. I also talk about the things that worked, things that didn’t, and challenges we found along the way. I’ll also share how we went about finding the money to give every student in our school a “free” Chromebook from current school budget — no leasing required.
If you’re looking to use Google Apps and Chromebooks in any capacity check out the video above!
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Hi Karl do you have a link to the Government guide lines on data protection with Google Apps?
Hi Andrew,
This is the information I was referring to.
Thanks
Karl
Do your students take the chromebooks home?
Yes, our students take the Chromebooks home.
How do you deal with Controlled Assessments if students are using chromebooks? Currently in AD we have separate accounts for the students to use that are disabled when not required. With Google accounts students could log on wherever and whenever they wanted to. Or do you still use desktops and AD accounts for controlled assessment work?
Hi Fiaz,
We use the Chromebooks for some things. You can now block and control access to sites from the Google Apps admin console. There are also products like Securly which you can use to block sites and see what students are accessing.
You can also control who can logon and on which devices from the Google Apps admin console, so this is an option. If I have time I’ll put together some instructions.
Hope this helps.
Karl