Windows
With NetSupport School in a Windows environment, teachers have a myriad of tools at their disposal to deliver learning that engages and involves their students, while simultaneously ensuring their online safety and the smooth running of lessons.
Main Tutor
The desktop tutor application for Windows provides the full range of features to help teachers maximise lesson time, engage with students and boost learning outcomes.
Manage: One key strand of classroom management is exactly that: “managing” the students and their devices, to maximise time spent on teaching.
Instruct: Being able to actively engage and keep the whole class on track within an IT classroom can be challenging at the best of times.
Monitor: Being able to monitor student activity is the cornerstone of good classroom management software. Not only does it ensure students stay on task, but it is also a key foundation for an effective eSafety implementation.
Assess: The more regular the feedback, the better the learning outcomes and the learner is equipped with the knowledge of how to improve. From informal classroom discussions and peer assessment to an end-of-year external examination.
Security: With the level of desktop control and management available within the product, protecting its configuration and use is key to delivering the best possible standard of instruction, without the fear that the technology is open to abuse.
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Tutor App – Windows 10
Provided in addition to the desktop tutor application for Windows, the native Tutor App is designed for installation on Windows tablets and touch-enabled devices. Simplicity and ease of use are at the heart of the Tutor App and many of our core classroom features are provided within the new streamlined interface:
Tutor App – Windows 10
Manage
- Power Management – power on or off, log in/log out or reboot classroom computers.
- 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 or blank all/selected student screens to gain attention – by default, a graphic will appear at the student informing them that their device has been locked.
- Transfer documents and resources directly from local or cloud-based OneDrive files, to all or selected students.
- Direct integration with Microsoft School Data Sync (via Class Mode), enabling teachers to instantly access their online Student Information Systems (SIS) classrooms and student accounts at the start of a NetSupport-managed lesson.
- Multi-platform support – connect in any combination to Students using Windows, Chrome OS, Android, Apple Mac or iOS devices.
- Device Control – prevent data being copied to or from USB storage and CDR/DVD devices, plus Mute/Unmute Sound at students’ machines.
Instruct and Demonstrate
- Virtual whiteboard supported by a wealth of drawing tools for improved collaboration within the classroom.
- 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. Student Help Requests are now colour-coded to highlight priority: Work Complete, Need Help or Urgent Help required.
- 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.
- Option to toggle on or off the NetSupport School Student Toolbar.
- Copy key lesson content into and work with OneNote Class Notebooks using NetSupport’s digital Student Journal feature.
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/application the Student is currently using.
- Student thumbnails can be resized to suit personal preferences. This is particularly useful when connected to large numbers of Student devices.
- Zoom in and view individual students.
- Monitor and control internet use. Use approved websites only by activating the “Approved Websites List”. The student will only be able to view websites that are in the approved list, all other websites are blocked. Block unauthorised websites by activating 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. If a student is currently viewing a website included in the activated restriction list, they will be redirected to a message stating that the URL has been blocked by the Tutor. Alternatively, block all internet access.
- Monitor and control application use (desktop and store). Activate the “Approved Applications” list and the student will only be able to run applications that are in the approved list, all other applications are blocked. Activate the “Restricted Applications” list and the student will not be able to run applications that are in the restricted list but will be able to run all other applications. If a student is currently running an application included in your activated restriction list, an Application Blocked dialog will appear on their screen, stating the application that has been blocked by the Tutor. This will also appear if a student attempts to run any of the applications included on the restriction list. The teacher can also minimise or close open applications.
- Launch applications and websites on students’ screens.
- Toggle the NetSupport School Student Toolbar on or off on the fly.
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.
- Reinforce key learning points and instantly gauge student understanding during a lesson via the Question and Answer module. The teacher can verbally ask questions to the whole class, evaluate students’ answers and understanding, bounce questions around the classroom and develop peer assessment opportunities, as well as track rewards against both the individual and, where appropriate, teams.
Technical benefits
- Support for Microsoft Surface Dial; display a radial menu of NetSupport School features for quick and easy execution of common tasks.
- Import/export approved and restricted website lists.
- Specify a custom destination folder when transferring documents and resources to students’ machines.
- Execute NetSupport School features using Cortana voice commands.
Technician Console
A classroom management solution is not simply about providing the right tools for each teacher; equally important are tools to ensure all computers in the school can be managed and maintained, so they are always available for teaching. With this in mind, NetSupport School provides a unique “Tech Console” specifically for IT technicians and network managers.
The Tech Console provides a single view of all computers across the school, allowing technicians to review hardware and software inventory, monitor internet and application usage, apply ‘always on’ internet, application and printing policies and define security policies which all PCs across the school will be checked against to determine whether they are secure.
Using the Tech Console, you can:
- Monitor all computers across the school network in a single view.
- Monitor application and internet use on each student’s PC.
- Display all students and tutors by active class.
- Group all computers by classroom or physical location.
- Generate a full Hardware Inventory summary for a selected PC.
- Generate a full Software Inventory for each PC, including Hotfixes.
- Transfer files and folders to selected or all computers.
- Show real-time USB memory stick status on all students’ PCs.
- Edit the registry of a remote system.
Remote control
- Review individual NetSupport School client security settings remotely.
- Ability to search for students by name, device or room.
- Power on, power off, reboot and log in to classroom computers remotely.
- Launch a local command prompt window from the remote system on a technician’s PC.
- Launch a PowerShell window on a student or teader PCs.
- Execute applications on a student or teader PCs.
- Automatically connect to students/teachers using Room mode.
- Perform powerful 1:1 PC Remote Control on any selected computer, capture screenshots, annotate the screen and more.
- Provide direct technical assistance to any classroom teacher.
- Lock/unlock Clients’ keyboards and mice.
Chat and message 
- Conduct a Chat with one or multiple students or teachers.
- Broadcast messages to groups or all network users in seconds.
View policies and processes
- View and control services, processes and applications running on each PC.
- View/set Windows Update policy for students and teachers.
- View/set User Access Control policy for students and teachers.
- View Antivirus status for students and teachers.
- View/set Windows Firewall policy for students and teachers.
- View Spyware status for students and teachers.
- View/set Internet Explorer Phishing Filter for students and teachers.
- View/set Internet Explorer Protected Mode policy for students and teachers.
Set “always on” restrictions for extra security
The Tech Console allows you to create a set of policy restrictions that can be applied across the whole school. Once the policy is applied it will remain in force 24 hours a day. The policy restrictions can include internet and application usage, access to USB and CD/DVD drives, printing and webcams.
- Apply a school-wide set of internet and application restrictions that are ‘always on’. (Teachers can still apply local restrictions appropriate to a particular lesson).
- Set ‘always on’ USB restrictions.
- Set ‘always on’ CD/DVD restrictions.
- Set ‘always on’ printer restrictions.
