I sell computers on the side and a customer approached me about providing 5 PCs for a free after-school homework club. Since I lack experience in system administration, I'm looking for advice on the best way to set these up. Given the limited budget and the absence of Ethernet access in the building, I have to rely on WiFi.
My idea is to create two local accounts on each PC: an 'ADMIN' account for the club's owner and a 'STUDENT' account with restrictions. I'm considering not having passwords for the STUDENT accounts to avoid confusion among the kids and to simplify management when new students join.
The students will mainly use Google Classroom, so I'm wondering if there's a browser that automatically clears all cache and user data each time it's closed? I'm also concerned about file management—if students save their work to USB drives instead of the local PCs, that should be fine.
I'm looking for the simplest and cheapest way to set this up without the need for a permanent IT support. Any better suggestions? Thanks!
2 Answers
If these kids are using Google Classroom, you should encourage the school to set up an IT infrastructure to manage these accounts, even if it's limited. They probably have some existing systems that could help more effectively than individual setups.
You might want to set up the student account in a way that it resets itself. Make the desired changes to the student profile (like setting the homepage and wallpaper), log in as the admin, and rename the ntuser.dat file to ntuser.man in the student profile folder. This way, every time a student logs in, they get the exact setup you made but without any of their past information remaining. I haven’t tried this on Windows 11, but it worked for earlier versions!
That sounds great! But if a student saves a file like an English essay to the downloads folder, will it get deleted when they log off?
Yes, it will be deleted. The account resets each time, so make sure they're saving important work to their USB drives.
Just to clarify, this center isn’t in direct connection with any school.