Between expiring Chromebooks and laptops being dropped, there’s never a dull moment for Jordan Genee, technology director at the International School of Brooklyn in New York.
Genee recently spoke to IT Brew about the pressures and tricks of managing over 500 devices: a mix of iPads, Windows computers, MacBooks used by faculty and staff, and student Chromebooks used inside and outside the classroom.
At his small campus—which educates three-year-olds through eighth graders—almost everybody is connected. Elementary students can only use their laptops on campus, while the roughly 100 middle-school students are allowed to take their devices home.
For these students, the school generally uses the Google product suite and purchases Chromebooks with educational licenses. Once a new Chromebook arrives, Genee said he uses the G Suite administrative panel to enroll it in the domain workspace that the school owns. The device is added to the list of all the other Chromebooks registered to the school, and Genee can then apply the fleet’s standard settings and policies.
The school uses software called GoGuardian to provide on-network filtering as required by law. If students take their devices home, a GoGuardian Chromebook extension continues to filter content opened in new tabs.
When upgrading or replacing parts of the fleet, Genee said durability is top of mind. A robust hardware warranty is a must, because student-assigned computers are subject to constant wear and tear. They get dropped a lot, he quipped.
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Keeping laptops up to date is another key priority, particularly when managing Chromebooks that have software expiration dates. During the early days of the pandemic, Genee said schools were buying up any laptop they could get their hands on to enable remote learning, even if those devices were nearing or past their support dates. Now, administrators have the chance to be more strategic and forward-looking with device purchases, he said.
“You plan to refresh your hardware after so many years,” he said. “We are mindful when purchasing Chromebooks of when that expiration will be.”
If devices fall into disrepair, teachers and students can lose access to secure testing portals. Genee explained that it’s important to pay attention to a testing provider’s minimum software requirements. While he’s run into problems with testing on an older iPad, he said a little advance planning is typically enough to avoid any issues.
“We go through all the devices and make sure we have enough up-to-date ones to utilize that secure testing software,” he said.