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Built-in software ‘death dates’ are sending thousands of schools’ Chromebooks to the recycling bin
(www.mercurynews.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Technology
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It's not a sensible path for a school with budget constraints (which is most schools). They would need to come up with a new MDM solution because they can't manage their computers with Google anymore. So their IT costs would increase dramatically, probably more money than they would save by keeping the old hardware alive. The simplest path forward is to just buy new Chromebooks.
I haven't (will never) had the experience of owning chromebook as a student, what does the MDM will do here? Cheating prevention?
It grants the IT department authority over the devices. Restricting unauthorized changes like adding new accounts, adding new software, removing existing software, allows for tracking of the devices and sometimes remote wiping in case the device is stolen or lost and valuable data is on the device, among other things.
Less to do with cheating and more to do with control over the device since it’s the school’s property. Preventing cheating is an afterthought of MDM (mobile device management).
I wonder what it would look like without these measures?
Back in My Day™, we had minimal MDM on the school computers.
Yes, the kids that wanted to fuck around (look at porn, download music, play games) fucked around, but they would have the old-fashioned way, anyway. The most common thing was just changing the desktop photo to a Lamborghini, or something. Anyway, we turned out…. Well… not necessarily ok, but I don’t fault the computers for lack thereof where applicable.
Admittedly, these weren’t personal laptops but just ones in the library or computer labs, but still.
Mobile Device Management, aka the administering of software to a fleet of devices.
Same thing it does for any instution that loans out hardware, e.g. employers:
monitoring
remote lockdown / wipe
remote management of installed software
etc.