My Story – Google for Education: The Launch
The leaves have fallen and the time has come; chromebooks!
After a month of logistics, dealing with failed fulfillments and students asking “when are we getting the chromebooks?” they were here.
Throughout the month that was, I asked myself what I could have done to expedite the process, however as I came to understand, as I have before, we plan and without knowing there are better things that await us.
For anyone out there going forth with a 1:1 deployment with respect to Google Chromebooks here are some things you might want to consider; of course this will all depend on your environment alongside contextual factors.
- Securly [great folks who provide a security overlay on the chromebook devices that act both in school and when students take them home. Its not about policing students but its about ensuring they are safe]
- Papercut [a great print management software that works alongside Google Cloud Print towards managing student quotas. Having IT support you in this regard will probably be necessary unless you are familiar with DNS/Firewalls and all that fancy stuff]
- Google Admin console [the back-end of it all can be accessed by those who either hasveadmin/super admin privileges. Best practices suggest you sit with school admin and consider your environment. You can enable and disable certain feature like incognito mode and also restrict devices to your domain; important as it lines up with Securly. Further, I suggest you send out a form to staff at your school about apps and extension they might need, this not only allows them to feel a part of the process but you can pre-install what they need on student devices as you deploy them and as they plan]
- Asset tagging and enrolment [after speaking to a few experts, we decided to enrol our devices using a standard domain login, which helped the process move along as I had student assistants. Further, I linked up the serial tags with a student list using Sheets and assigned them numbers, which eventually became stickers on the device. You can choose to enrol devices where students login to both the enterprise and general login screen; you just need to make sure they do so, otherwise you won’t be managing their device, there are pros and cons to both methods]
- Launch day [at our school we decided to make this an event. With the help of my THINKTech squad, who are student volunteers in the club I run, we used the gym as a place to deploy on one side of the gym while collecting their user agreement form at the same time. On the other half of the gym as they funnelled through, I spoke to them regarding the purpose and usefulness of their device. It was a lot of running around, but a lot of students found the process fun and seamless]
- THINKTech Squad [this is a school club I am running at the moment where I have students who want to become more proficient with Chromebooks. Because they will become leaders in this, I decided to make in similar to the GCT/GCE program where I will give students a quick run-down through the apps/features and they have to write an exam. Once they pass the exam/test with 80% and more we will move forward with having them create screen casts and monthly newsletters that support both staff and students.]
Overall its been a fun time but the work isn’t anywhere near done. As I document the next phase working with teachers, I’ll be focusing on both teacher education and student support. Being a teacher and teacher educator is a balancing act but with help from courses in my PhD program, it should be a thought provoking ride.
’till next time
Follow my educational journey on Twitter @bm_connect or if you have any questions feel free to ask…
Originally published at www.brightmindsconnect.com on October 6, 2014.
