Teacher working with a lab of macs for the first time

[Pengyou]

I have 24 macs in my computer lab. They presently have no protection - password -whatsoever. I want to create a generic user account - doesn't need a password - that only allows a user to use the apps installed on the computer and does not allow them to customize the computer. I also want to create a separate account for each student and give them selected access to changing settings. I would like to have the computers update at 9 pm, after the last evening class is over and would like them to automatically turn off at 10:30 pm.

How can I do these things? Links and websites are welcome answers to this issue. Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[lclev]

I am not finding any links but I can give you some ideas. I am a former vocational high school teacher who had a computer lab in my classroom. I now work as and IT and media coordinator.

It sounds like you don't have a server setup. It would be helpful to know if you do have a server. Setting up student accounts is different on a network with a server versus no server and accounts on individual computers. If you could provide more information that would help me with what I would suggest.

Other questions -

Are you going to filter internet content and if so, what will you use - Parental Controls or something else?
Will a student be using one machine or have access to any of the computers? With individual accounts I would suggest assigning them to one machine.
Are you looking for an app that will cost $$$ and lock down the computer or do you plan to use user account limits?
Will they store docs on the computer or on a share drive - or use google for classrooms - which is free to schools?
The computers will need an apple id so they can update. From what I have read you will need to call apple and get them to walk you through what to do because you are a school and have more than 10 devices.

As for updating - after you get the apple id issue settled, thankfully apple does not have constant updates going on like Microsoft/Windows does. I know of no way to schedule it but it can be made minimally painless.
You can schedule at time to wake up the iMacs and a time to sleep them through system preferences ->energy saver.

Since you don't say specifically what you will be doing in the lab I can only guess. Student accounts can be setup with parental controls then in security & privacy set it so only apps from the app store is checked for installing. It would require an administrator password to install anything. And of course you would have the only admin account and password!

I can't think of anything else. More information may spark more ideas.

Lisa

 

[Pengyou]

There is no server. I am using Word, Excel, Photoshop, etc I am hoping to use the apps and utilities on the computer already to lock them down. Is there any way to make a file - similar to a config.sys with all of the settings that I want for font, etc and then copy it to each computer?

t

I am not finding any links but I can give you some ideas. I am a former vocational high school teacher who had a computer lab in my classroom. I now work as and IT and media coordinator.

It sounds like you don't have a server setup. It would be helpful to know if you do have a server. Setting up student accounts is different on a network with a server versus no server and accounts on individual computers. If you could provide more information that would help me with what I would suggest.

Other questions -

Are you going to filter internet content and if so, what will you use - Parental Controls or something else?
Will a student be using one machine or have access to any of the computers? With individual accounts I would suggest assigning them to one machine.
Are you looking for an app that will cost $$$ and lock down the computer or do you plan to use user account limits?
Will they store docs on the computer or on a share drive - or use google for classrooms - which is free to schools?
The computers will need an apple id so they can update. From what I have read you will need to call apple and get them to walk you through what to do because you are a school and have more than 10 devices.

As for updating - after you get the apple id issue settled, thankfully apple does not have constant updates going on like Microsoft/Windows does. I know of no way to schedule it but it can be made minimally painless.
You can schedule at time to wake up the iMacs and a time to sleep them through system preferences ->energy saver.

Since you don't say specifically what you will be doing in the lab I can only guess. Student accounts can be setup with parental controls then in security & privacy set it so only apps from the app store is checked for installing. It would require an administrator password to install anything. And of course you would have the only admin account and password!

I can't think of anything else. More information may spark more ideas.

Lisa

 

[lclev]

I get the feeling you come from a Windows background and now have a lab full of iMacs. Am I right? If so there is a learning curve. Macs do not have config.sys files. But one thing they do have is a wonderful backup system and you can move an install of OS X from one machine to the other with no issues.

Time Machine is on each one of your iMacs. It creates incremental backups that allow you to go back in time to restore an app or a document. It does require an external drive to back up to. I use a 2TB Airport Time Capsule that backs up wirelessly our three macs at work.

One app I would recommend it getting a cloning app. I use Carbon Copy Cloner but SuperDuper! is also a good choice. All you need is an external drive and the program will create a bootable clone and if it is left attached to one of the iMacs it will continuously update the clone. This would also allow you to create the settings you want on one machine and clone it to the others.

Anyway - have you checked out parental controls yet? They may do what you need to lock things down. If you setup your student account as a standard account with Parental Controls

Lisa

Edit: I checked out Parental Controls. It does a really nice job of really locking all kinds of things down. It also does basic website restricting and with some tweaking, it might be adequate. One thing it does do is create a log of where they went on the web.

 

[Pengyou]

Yes, I have worked with PC's and pc labs for 30 years - scary to realize it has been that long. I have used macs over the years but have not had to manage so many of them. I will check out the parental controls and the other things you have suggested. Maybe what I will do is create 7 different user accounts on each computer - one for each period. In each account I can set up the parental controls. The first goal I have is simply ACCOUNTABILITY, to find out who is messing with what.

 

[lclev]

I hear you! I taught for 30 years. First computers we had were Radio Shack TRS-80's. That was followed by IBM-PC's with DOS 1.5. We had a few of Apple II's in our elementary and one that held all the district data - on floppy disks! I had various versions of Windows on my classroom computers the last 19 of those years. Now they have chromebooks and mobile laptop labs. But I am retired from teaching now. I switched to IT and creating media content.

I did set up an account on my Macbook Air with parental controls - just to see what it did. The one thing I liked was that the parental controls track the sites visited by date and time. If it were me, I would assign each student to one computer in the lab for the period they are in there. I like the 7 user accounts idea. That way you have who is at that computer at what time and a log of what they were into. I would be sure to set security and privacy to only allow apps from the app store. It will require an apple id to install them - which they will not have - because even if they have their own it won't match the one on the iMac, so no installing of stuff.

One other suggestion - I would suggest sticking with Safari and not adding any other browsers. For example, I have had issues with kid signing into their Chrome account and that gives them all the stuff they have setup at home. Works on both a Windows or Mac and they can by-pass filters using the google app icons.

Let me know what you discover and I will also post anything I run into.

Lisa