Chrome OS

Key features when connecting to students from a teacher’s Chrome device:

Manage

• Ask students to register at the start of each lesson – the teacher can request standard and custom information from each student at the start of a lesson.
• Set objectives and expected outcomes for the current lesson – if provided by the teacher, once connected, students are presented with details of the current lesson along with the objectives and expected learning outcomes.
• Lock/unlock students’ Mice and Keyboards – by default, a graphic will appear on the student workstation, informing them that their mouse and keyboard is locked. 
• Flexible range of connection methods to Chrome student devices plus SIS integration (ClassLink OneRoster and Google Classroom).

Instruct and Demonstrate

• Open a chat session that all or selected students can join, enter their comments and share with the rest of the class.
• Send an attention-grabbing message or instruction to all / selected students. The message will be displayed in a dialog on the student screens and will remain until the user closes the dialog or the specified time limit expires.
• Request Help facility – students can send a request for help to the teacher. When a student raises a help request an alert will be raised on the teachers screen, provided it currently has that student connected. Any outstanding help requests will be visible to the teacher with a badge indicating the number of outstanding help requests on the toolbar. This will show until that help request has been cleared.

Monitor

• Monitor the entire class or individual students via crystal clear thumbnails of each connected students’ screen, providing a quick and easy method for monitoring student activity in a single view. An icon is displayed on each student thumbnail indicating which website the student is currently visiting.
• Student thumbnails can be resized to suit personal preferences. This is particularly useful when connected to large numbers of student machines.
• By mousing over a thumbnail, zoom into the screen of that selected student Chromebook.
• Gain an instant overview of current internet activity via Details View. To ensure teachers retain full visibility of their students’ internet use, it is recommended that they ‘disallow’ Incognito Mode in the Chrome OS User Settings via Google Apps for Education.
• Newly added Show/Hide option enables teachers to minimise the information pane displayed at the bottom of the Tutor Window.
• Use approved websites only – activate the “Approved Websites List”. The student will only be able to view websites that are in the approved list. All other websites are blocked. When the student accesses the internet, they are forced to choose an approved website rather than being able to surf at will.
• Block unauthorised websites – activate the “Restricted Websites” List. The student will not be able to view websites that are in the restricted list but will be able to view all other websites.
• Block all internet access.
• Launch a website on students’ Chromebooks.
• Option to quickly add the currently viewed website to the Approved or Restricted Websites list.

Assess

• Send an instant survey or request for feedback to all/selected students to help gauge if the students have understood the content covered during the lesson. The teacher sends a question together with a selection of pre-defined responses, and when the students respond, the results are displayed in real time in percentages and as a bar chart. The surveys can be saved and re-used again.

Technical benefits

• Block FTP access.
• Optimised performance for Chromebooks running on battery mode.
• Extra security with password-protected ‘Options’ setting on student Chromebooks.
• Students’ machines are always accessible – even after periods of inactivity.