Chrome Os and its Serious Product Failure

Paperclip_fix

In the last couple of weeks I’ve had to erase the stateful partition on several occasions, upgrade to the Beta Channel and even upgrade to the Dev channel (which, by the way, happens to be very unstable). In addition, I’ve had to block automatic updates, which is the same as saying go to manual override. It’s a mercy that I haven’t had to reverse the polarities or change the Dilithium Crystals. No, I’m not re-enacting an episode 1960s’ Star Trek, rather I’ve been trying to get my Chromebooks to work.

 

I know that in my last post about Chromebooks I wrote that I intended to delve into the depths of the Google Apps Management Console, however the next day they stopped working.

 

You see Chromebooks update themselves automatically, as many things do these days, but unfortunately, version 15 didn’t work. Version 14 had worked fine, swimmingly even. You might possibly say dreamily. The students, even after two sessions had started to: Love. Their. Chromebooks. But version 15 let us down. A crucial part of the Chromebook experience had stopped working – the sign in screen. So I upgraded to the Beta channel – version 16 and that did work. Then to the Dev (Development) channel but that didn’t work either.

 

It was something to do with the proxy setup in my school and authority. You see, Birmingham runs a system where a local ‘Squid’ server, based at the school, links to a central parent server somewhere in the depths of a shady building in the city centre. With this setup the local server caches the internet sites that students visit. This means that the first student that visits a website will bring the content both onto their computer and onto the Squid where much of the content is cached. Any students that follow up will then have a much faster experience because most of the content can be delivered to them down the metres of cable on a 100Mb connection, rather than down miles of fibre on a 10Mb connection. The central parent server has the job of filtering out unwanted websites, which it generally does a very good job of doing.

 

Something to do with that setup didn’t work in Chrome Os 15 – it just didn’t hold any of the proxy information or network information, so any new user wanting to use the Chromebook couldn’t do so. The Chromebooks were dead in the water. As the guy at Google told me – it looks like a serious product failure.

 

However the marvellous thing about Google is that their product support is absolutely brilliant. If you ever want an experience of being spoken to politely and humbly by people who really know what they’re talking about – go talk to Google product support. Within a couple of days some flash drives containing version 14 of Chrome Os were winging their way towards me from Dublin. The instructions, which included the use of the paperclip shown in the photograph, demanded that I block the update server: it would be a nightmare if I fixed the Chromebooks by downgrading them to version 14, only for them to re-update themselves to version 15. The technical guys in Birmingham were equally quick at sorting this – responding to the request to block the update server within a day and also providing me with some insightful tips on how proxy servers work (which in fact helped me right the paragraph above).

 

It amuses me somewhat that, after all that technical stuff about proxy servers, it should be a paperclip that I would need to sort the problem out. I’ve all but had the Chromebooks inside out over the last couple of weeks and it has finally been a paperclip (and version 14 of Chrome Os on a flash drive) that has fixed them.

 

Onwards and upwards then – I’ll have a full set of working Chromebooks by tomorrow and I’ll look forward to version of 18 of Chrome Os with considerable anticipation.

Is this the beginning of the end for the proxy server?

Chrome_os_panel

Proxy servers have been great for schools. The ability to apply policies, filters and firewalls to a range of academic establishments has helped keep millions of students protected from less than savoury websites. In Birmingham, UK, Europe’s largest education authority, nearly all the 420+ schools use the same proxy, meaning that the costs of maintaining it are much lower than they would be should each school have to manage their own one.

 

Essentially a proxy server is an extra computer that sits between your network and the rest of the world, although if you want a more technical article, see the wikipedia article.

In short, proxy servers do a good thing and they save money.

 

As an ICT co-ordinator, I have seen the proxy server as a necessary evil.

 

It does more good that it doesn’t.

 

I need the proxy – but it does often cause me problems.

 

For example, to make the school Kindles work, I have to take them home to set them up (where I have a direct internet connection). This is a bit frustrating.

 

In addition, some websites are rightly filtered by the proxy for all the schools in Birmingham, but on occasion it would be useful to open them up. Facebook is a good example of this – not only do I manage a school Facebook page that I can update from school via email but cannot see in school unless I borrow a child’s mobile phone, but I would also like to offer parent workshops about safe Facebook use. The people who manage the Birmingham proxy server (Link2ICT) are very responsive and offered to unlock Facebook and similar social media sites for a specific computer at a specific time – but this does require extra organisation and time – it would be handy if I could control this myself.

 

A further problem is a clash with external providers. Increasingly schools such as ours are forging stronger links with external software providers. 2Simple are an excellent example – they provide software that is just perfect for the primary child – uncomplicated, powerful and fun to use. However their support solution involves a tool called Logmein, where they can access a computer remotely from their offices whilst speaking to me on the phone. Now in the past I have been literally shouted at by a colleague from Link2ICT for daring to experiment with Logmein as it jeopardises the integrity of the whole Birmingham network, apparently. This is a bit of a conflict – do I turn to the software company for support, or do I only rely on the services of our local people?

 

And when schools are increasingly asked to be accountable and autonomous at a school level, not a local authority level, is there a balance to be struck between the systems that work at a local authority level (like Proxy servers) and between commercial software providers?

 

Managing my own proxy would be completely out of the question. Not only would I not have the time or the inclination to learn the skills, but I’m sure it’s far cheaper to share a proxy between a range of school like we currently do.

 

However, just in this last week, I have noticed something in our Google Apps domain that does some of the jobs that the proxy server does.

 

This week I have been experimenting with our Google Apps management console to set up our Chromebooks in different ways for the different user groups. For example I can set up the teachers so that the school calendar and their email open at startup. Or I can setup the year 6 students so that they get straight to a Google spreadsheet we have been working on for our Switched on ICT scheme of work. Or I can setup the Year 3 students so they get straight to Purple Mash, that they have been trialling this term. I’ve noticed too that I can control the Chrome extensions and web apps from the chrome store – I can make Angry Birds appear as an icon in the corner of the desktop. Or I can ban it so it never appears.

 

What I am most excited about is the URL blacklist / whitelist section (pictured above). I can blacklist everything, and then whitelist all the websites I want the children to access. I can use this to have complete control over the Chromebooks and change their accessibility according to the needs of the students and the curriculum. The question I need to answer now is how much work is this – managing a blacklist / whitelist filter? Is it the kind of thing I can do for my school or do I need to share the responsibility with other schools? And if I can find those other schools to work with, do I still need a proxy server – does it offer some functionality other than a web filter that I am ignorant of?

 

Lots of questions, I know. Hopefully answers will come in future posts as I begin to look at how the Management console affects learning.

Product support: the efficient, gentle arrogance of Google

It’s no secret that I’m a complete Google fanboy. You know how some people are so keen on Apple products they almost froth at the mouth. Well I’m a bit like that with Google. Given that, you may find it surprising that I’ve used the word ‘arrogance’, which for many people has negative connotations.

 

One of the things that has made buying Chromebooks from Google so pleasant is the amount of positive interactions from Google people during the process. When I first contacted them in about June there were no plans to extend Google Chromebooks for Enterprise into the education market in Europe. But during the summer break someone from Google Europe emailed to say that Google had formed a Chromebooks for Education in Europe and we were “good to go” (that’s a shameful use of US expression).

 

Since then the interactions have been many and positive, helping us through the purchasing agreement, which was of a type we hadn’t seen before at our Primary School and making sure the Chromebooks were delivered in good time.

 

Shortly after arrival I received a phone call from a friendly chap calling all the way from Mountain View. He’d got into work really early to speak to me mid-afternoon, given the 8 hour time difference. This was our deployment advisor, Hubert, who would guide us through the steps to successfully deploy our Chromebooks. And guide us he did. 2 Chromebooks didn’t work at all at first and it was looking like I would have to go through the faff of having to put them in boxes and send them back to Dublin. However Hubert saved the day. His precise advice worked perfectly and the 2 Chromebooks were resurrected – they now work perfectly with our wifi system.

 

When all was sorted, he rang me one more time as a kind of debrief of the whole process and we went through my deployment experience. It concluded with a conversation in which I managed to express some of the things I’d like to see on the Chromebooks or in Google Apps – like a child-friendly version of Google+ for example.

 

In the email that followed he went on to say that I had “been one of his better customers.”

 

Now I know my school is only a tiny primary school and Google is a huge multinational company with thousands of employees, but it struck me as remarkable that any company would say this to their customers. I asked one or two friends who run businesses and they agreed that saying such a thing might make them lose business. It would be a bit like me saying to a parent: “You’re one of our better families.” I suppose there’s a certain sensibility – maybe even a ‘Britishness’ – that might be offended by this. It could produce comments such as: “fancy rating us as a customer… how arrogant!” But of course for me (the Google fanboy) I just felt like a seventeen year old who’d just been told he was really good looking, despite his spots and gangly legs. I walked around the school just that little bit taller for a couple of days. If it is an arrogance, it’s a gentle one, because I didn’t mind it one bit.

 

And since then the support has been equally as good. I’m currently experiencing a glitch with our Google Apps Chrome Os Management Console (I’ll be blogging about what happens with this in a few days time). I emailed at the start of the day and already two people have contacted me from Google until I’ve got the email from just the right expert, who will be giving me a call next week.

 

So in short, it’s early days, but the product support has been brilliant – efficient, quick, precise and ever-so-gently arrogant.

Chromebooks to the rescue!

This Monday my plans were put on hold when as Key Stage Co-ordinator I was directed by the Deputy Headteacher to cover the Year 6 teacher who was poorly. In addition the ICT subject leader proposed a further challenge – the half term’s unit from the Switched On ICT scheme of work was as yet untouched and needed to be started. Fortunately I am both ICT leader and deputy headteacher – so it’s all my fault really.

 

It’s difficult to get a day of lessons ready with half an hour’s notice, but the Chromebooks helped me in all sorts of ways on the day. The students had only had one previous session with them, in which they had mainly been testing them for me and seeing if there’s anything decent in the Chrome Webstore. The students were keen to use them again, but I feared they would just want them to play. “Can I play Angry Birds, Sir?” would be the question I was most anticipating. Now while I’ve seen Angry Birds work in a classroom context, today was not the day for it. You see, I was behind on teaching year 6 the ‘We Are Fundraisers’ unit in the Switched on ICT scheme from Rising Stars that I quoted above. In fact I hadn’t touched on it at all. The unit covers data handling and real life money problems (amongst other things) and I was keen to work with year 6 on developing their skills at using spreadsheets and calendars. The Christmas Market was three weeks away (it takes place on the 2nd December) – and this was the event that the children would actually be carrying out their business ideas in.

 

So how did the Chromebooks help?

 

Direct Teaching

 

I moved the chairs and tables into rows (yes I know – unusual for primary schools) and had all the children facing the board. Each child had a Chromebook in front of them and was logged into a sample Google Spreadsheet I had created for them. In this I taught them how to add, multiply, divide and take away cells; find a total using the sum function and make predictions of how much profit they make if all their plans came to fruition. Each child then copied my sample spreadsheet to experiment themselves with their own business idea.

 

Group work

 

The ‘communcations officer’ in each team was given a Chromebook. Each group then discussed their ideas with each other of how they might money at the Christmas Market. When an idea was sufficiently well formed, the communications officer would input it into a shared Google Doc that was also projected onto the interactive whiteboard. Each group could then see what other groups were coming up with and as a class we could make sure that no business would be duplicating each other – you can have too many lucky dips.

 

Independent work

 

Once each business had a rough idea to work on, each individual worked on the tasks associated with their roles. For example, treasurer, advertising, coms officer. Managers would be using Chromebooks to investigate prices and put together costings of prizes or materials they needed. Treasurers would be putting together a projected profit plan, considering how much money they might make. Communications officers would be putting together a list of questions they might need to ask other adults in the school. Advertisers used Google Drawings and Aviary to create adverts for their business. In many of these tasks the quick start up of the Chromebooks, their long battery life and the stability of their systems proved invaluable at keeping the groups productive.

 

Whole class presentation

 

At the end of the day, each group presented their plans to myself and the teaching assistant in an almost ‘Dragon’s Den’ atmosphere, with the rest of the class listening in to the interaction. In this we talked about the realism of their plans, suggested new ideas or alterations and then decided whether to approve their business plan. Again the Chromebooks were useful – keeping the Google spreadsheet open was useful to look at how the numbers changed if, say only 30 people came to their stall instead of the hoped for 200. It also helped me, with my ICT hat on, spot whether students had really got the learning about using formulas within the spreadsheets and write down those who might need further work in that area. Of the 6 groups, 4 businesses were approved. The other two went away with ideas of how to improve their plan and return at a later date.

 

Given that this was the second time the children had used Chromebooks, I was delighted at how useful and glitch-free they had been. Some students had previously moaned that they couldn’t get used to the trackpad (which is more akin to the way an Apple works than the PC laptops they are used to), but none complained in this second session. The Chromebooks blend really well with other activities – in one group the treasurer was working on her spreadsheet while right next to her two other children were painting and advertising poster – I love it when technology is so seamless it’s just there – just another way of doing things – like picking up a pencil or using a number-line. It’s seems like Chromebooks are already becoming that way in Year 6. And what’s even better is not one child played Angry Birds, or even asked the question.
Chromebook1
Chromebook2
Chromebook3

What went wrong with the Chromebooks in Year 3?

Chromebook

It was perhaps a mistake to let year 3 use the Chromebooks before I had fully tested them and passed on a list of ‘Dos and Don’ts’ to my colleagues. However, the ICT suite was otherwise occupied, the Chromebooks were available and the Year 3 teacher has a proven track record at being highly successful at teaching ICT.

 

It was with a small degree of apprehension then,  that as I walked into the classroom towards the end of the lesson, the teacher was almost turning the metaphorical tearing her hair out into literal follicle damage. Essentially a third of the children had failed to log on, and it appeared to be the Chromebooks fault.

 

The trouble with Chromebooks is that they only connect to the internet. This means there are 4 barriers to young children using Chromebooks in schools
  • They must connect successfully to the school’s wifi;
  • They must connect through the school / district proxy server;
  • The children must remember (and be able to type) their username;
  • The children must remember their password.
Of course when you’ve got 30 seven-year old children in front of you, each of them making some kind of demand on your time, all you can see is children who can use the Chromebooks and those who can’t.

 

It’s my job, as ICT leader, to make sure the barriers above are minimised. I’ve tried to introduce usernames and password that balance security with ease of use. I’ve enrolled and setup each Chromebook so that it works properly with both our wifi and proxy server. Or at least, I thought I had. So what went wrong on this afternoon?

 

Firstly there were 4 children who didn’t have logins at all – two of these were new to the school and two were children who had slipped under the radar in the previous year. A further child had changed her password and forgotten what she had changed it too. 4 more children had problems typing their usernames. Now I had introduced the Google Apps domain 2 terms earlier and the classes containing younger children had used it far less than older children – these children were a lot less experienced at logging on to the Google Apps. I should point out that Chromebooks use the children’s Google Apps logins to work. In addition because of less usage, the teacher last year had not noticed the two children who didn’t have logins – maybe they had presumed it a glitch in the system and so the problem had not been recognised.

 

Another child was a mystery – she was properly setup and seemed to by typing in everything properly, but her Chromebook just didn’t login. I restarted the computer for here and tried again. This time it worked. It seems that for the odd Chromebook, when 30 are all trying to connect to the system at the same time, one or two don’t quite get through – they need a second chance. This was also a problem with the laptops that we had previously used in classes – they too would on occasions not connect properly to the wifi and would need to be restarted. Somebody at Google told me it was about being stuck in a ‘portal subnet’ – but this just sounds like I’m on an episode of Star Trek, and not wanting to go to manual override, reverse the polarities or indeed change the dilithium crystals, my solution is just to restart and hope. It worked this time.

 

You see, the good thing about Chromebooks is that they only connect to the internet. And they connect using Chrome. They restart superfast – it takes less than 2 seconds to shut them down and only 8 seconds to start them up again. This meant that in the remaining twenty minutes of the lesson I was able to call each child over to me, identify their problems, sort their problems out restart their Chromebooks and still give them a go.

 

Next time all of the Year 3 children will be able to use the Chromebooks.

 

What lessons have I learned in terms of deploying Chromebooks?
  1. Make sure all the students have working Logins to the Google Apps domain.
  2. Make sure that the students are familiar with logging on to the Google Apps domain.
  3. Be prepared to restart the odd chromebook just because it doesn’t pick up the wifi network on the first go.
So maybe it wasn’t a mistake after all – I owe a big dept of gratitude to the Year 3 teacher for being prepared to experiment with the new technology – she certainly will have made the experience of everyone else in the school more successful.

Chromebooks hit year 6

chromebook review.mp4
Watch on Posterous

 

The Chromebooks, having been enrolled over for the past couple of days, were given to Year 6 today.
Their purpose was simple – test them, see what they can do, review them.
Would the children be able to access their favourite internet sites? Would the children be able to access some of our purchased services, such as Espresso and Education City?
The children accessed a shared Google Spreadsheet while they were doing this testing, filling in the cells to inform me of what they were finding (that’s in the video above).
Here are some of the results from the spreadsheet:
1. Positives of the Chromebooks
Wordle: chromebook postives

2. Negatives of the Chromebooks

Wordle: Chromebook negatives

3. Some children went on to find that all of our purchased services – Espresso, Education City and Mathletics do work.
Fantastic.
Next week Year 3 will be testing the Chromebooks on Purple Mash and Year 6 will be using them to plan a fundraising event through the shared use of a Google Spreadsheet. Can’t wait.

Chromebooks really only take 8 seconds to start up

In my school, we had a laptop trolley about 3 years ago.

 

16 laptops that could be charged up overnight then trundled into a room for action.

 

We haven’t really used it for about 18 months.

 

The thing is that by the time each laptop has started up, connected to the wireless network and been logged on, you’ve wasted 5 minutes of the lesson.

 

That may not seem like a long time, but it is enough to lose a roomful of 8 year olds, especially when the learning is supposed to be about something entirely different than ICT – the technology is supposed to be supporting the learning. (Think about it another way – if you waste 5 minutes every school day waiting for laptops to boot up, that would add up to 3 school days over the course of the year – too much time wasted.)

 

In addition the battery life of those laptops was only 3 hours. That meant they could only be used in the mornings, or, if needed in the afternoons, partially charged during lunchtime, only to die part way through the afternoon.

 

I could go on about other barriers such as syncing the files over the wireless system to our Windows network and how that didn’t seem to work consistently on each laptop, but I won’t.

 

Suffice it to say, they were more trouble than they were worth – they got in the way.

 

Now we’ve got Chromebooks. These are built in such a way that I’m hoping they won’t present the same barriers I’ve listed above. I hope they really well support the learning.

 

The first feature that I think will help is the start up time.

 

8 seconds they claim. And I timed it today. They were right.

School Development Planning on Google Spreadsheets

sdp plan.mp4
Watch on Posterous
So, I’ve shared the excellence of Google Docs with my colleagues.

 

And I’ve collaborated in lessons with the children I teach.

 

But today came the big test – could I share Google Docs with my fellow senior leaders?

 

The day started normally, with big sheets of paper, post-its and lost of discussion as we tried to hone our school development ideas into a coherent document. But then came the test – would they get collaborating altogether on the same document? And would they mind that it was a spreadsheet?

 

The answer was yes. The video shows some of the first few minutes (speeded up) of us working together on the same spreadsheet. It’s worked. So far. Hooray!
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