Keith Shirley

I’ve been using a piece of software called ABTutor recently and I’ve found it very useful. From a teachers perspective it allows me to monitor the work that the students are doing without breaking their concentration. Standing behind someone while they are trying to work can make people feel nervous.

The software has numerous useful features:

• You can broadcast your screen to all the students PC’s. This often works better than a projector for working in fine detail or with engineering drawings
• As mentioned you can monitor the students PCs – either one at a time or in a grid
• You can send a file to all the PC’s (e.g. A worksheet to be followed) or even launch a web page for them (removing problems with typos)
• You can temporarily block the Internet (is that cheers I hear from teachers?) or even block the whole PC if needed.

More details on the software are available from http://www.abtutor.com 

I’ve shown it to a number of teachers at this stage – and so far we have not had to open the user manual once. I always find that a very positive sign in software that can do so much.

An important point for schools – the price is also good. A new version is about to be released which costs 135 Euro if you buy 10 or more licenses. The magic is that you only need the license for the controlling PC (i.e The Teacher). The client licenses forthe students are free.

For the network administrator – If the PC supports it you can use the software to startup the PC, login, run updates and then shut it down afterwards. From my own tests it has quartered the time needed for standard updates that need to be done directly on PCs.