Setting up network for the classroom

[BigJakeA]

Hey everyone,

I am a teacher at a continuation high school. We recently started a new class called digital music. It is basically a class where kids create songs using GarageBand. I been looking to get more things for the class through grants and other things (considering budget is not tight, but non-existent). We are using a cart of 12 MacBooks that run Leopard. I was wondering what would be the best way for me as a teacher to monitor these computers. I have two different classes of 12 kids. So the computer gets used by more than one student. I was thinking of creating separate log in's so students can't mess with each others work. I also want to turn off certain applications so they can not be fooling around on the internet while they should be working in class. I know I can do a lot of this with parental controls and I know how to make new accounts, but I was thinking of setting up a network where no matter what computer they get from the cart they could login into their stuff. So I am asking one the greatest Mac communities what they think I should do.

I took over the class from another teacher last year that knew her music, but not so much her computers. At least the school districts tech people set up a standard login and password on each computer, so their accounts are not administrator accounts.

Any advice ideas or help is appreciated. I am all ready looking to get new headphones, a few keyboard (musical keyboards), and maybe a good USB microphone. I also want to contact apple and see if there is any way that we can update GarageBand with out updating all of iLife (Price wise that is). Thanks guys.

 

[Consultant]

setting up a network where no matter what computer they get from the cart they could login into their stuff

That's something that the OSX server can do, but the computers should be on wired connection if the files are large.

 

[Les Kern]

Don't get too fancy here (I do this stuff for a living and have been burned in the past!)... the numbers you have don't call for a huge overhead to get this done. Right offhand there are two ways to accomplish what you need to do.
1. Make one login, a generic one, and use parental controls or simply set them up as limited users. Buy inexpensive USB drives to save their work to. 4GB drives are about 8-10 bucks if you look hard enough. But that takes dough, so...
2. Two local accounts per laptop (then assigned to specific students every period) may be the best way, you are correct. Their work is protected and they will enjoy a better speed result working off the local hard drive. However, I would enable the root user so you can log in and kill something that needs killing.

As for logging into their own stuff, set up the server with shares for them, either by Open Directory or whatever method is used there, and train them to enter the GO menu and add the IP or domain name if your tech has that. They'd mount the server and go to their own share. Get fancy and have the tech dept. set up a drop box for you... takes 1 minute to do that.

You have a lot of potential to do some cool stuff! Good luck.