The more we learn, the more we realize what we don’t know. I’ve talked to two districts this week that use a product called iTALC. The name is derived from “Intelligent Teaching and Learning with Computers”. In a nutshell, it’s a free product that provides many of the features found in products like SynchronEyes or Vision.
With iTALC, you can view users’ desktops and take snapshots of screens. You can remotely control the desktop, lock the workstation and use wake-on-LAN to remotely power off/on a group of workstations.
Online descriptions tout this as an instructional tool but, in addition, it appears to be a pretty handy tool to curb misbehavior and keep users focused on the task at hand.
At a minimum, I think it’s an easy way to demonstrate to teachers and lab managers the type of powerful tools that are available to effectively manage a group of computers. I can’t say that I’m surprised that there is an open-source tool to perform these tasks, but I am surprised that I hadn’t heard of this product until now.
We are using this in our district as a cost effective alternative to Syncroneyes. While it isn’t perfect…we have had some success with the tool and our end users don’t mind the occasional reboot of the admin station for a free tool.