Chilwell School using NetSupport School

Matt Lucas, Information Systems Manager

My view of NetSupport School

NetSupport School is a great piece of software for teachers and administrators alike. It’s an essential tool in all of our computer rooms. It’s great for managing the classroom during lessons, but for the Network Admin Team, it’s used regularly to log in to a room of computers and run batch files to update and install software. It’s a great time saver – taking away the need to run round logging into each computer in turn.

What the teachers think…

NetSupport School is really useful in ensuring students are listening at key times in a lesson and thus it greatly aids learning during lessons. It can also be used as a great assessment tool for doing quizzes or randomly picking students. In terms of a behaviour tool, the ability to control or lock screens is a great asset.

I have used NetSupport School for over 10 years in my teaching career and it became an essential tool in my classroom routine. The features it offers that I found most useful go beyond blocking students from accessing the internet, or blocking selected websites. I use it to communicate with students and send messages to them on how to improve their work; make announcements to the whole class; or display the lesson I am doing on selected computers. The feature of sharing/ exhibiting a selected screen is very useful, as I can show good examples of students’ work to the whole class which promotes collaboration.

NetSupport School is very useful for behaviour management as well, as I can limit students’ access to unwanted websites and only allow the websites they need for their work. I can also blank their screens if I need their immediate attention.