During my
time in the M.S. Ed Tech program, I have heard many of my classmates that
currently work as teachers commenting that technology is often thrown at them
with minimum support or training. Some of these individuals have even
commented that they have been put in charge of maintaining a lab environment but
given no resources or tools to ease administration. In order to prepare
the systems in this lab for use, these individuals had to work on each and
every system, often on their own time, to have all the systems look and operate
the same. This effort required numerous hours after their day of teaching
was done. When I heard these stories, I
thought these individuals could benefit greatly by getting a little exposure to
a tool that could help them quickly customize a desktop.
Group
Policy Objects (GPO) date as far back as Windows 2000 and have been greatly
improved over the years. Today, GPO’s are
Microsoft’s preferred method of customizing desktops connected to an Active
Directory domain. An administrator can quickly
put together a policy to do such things as display a common set of desktop
icons, set the screen lock intervals, install software or prevent users from
using certain devices (CD-ROM, USB drives, etc.).
To see how
easy it is to block a user from being able to use any type of removable media
(CD-ROM, USB drive, etc.), please take a look at this short video:
For additional
information on Group Policy Objects, please view Microsoft’s Group Policy for Beginners document.
I believe
that by learning to use Group Policy Objects, individuals faced with having to
support a number of systems can quickly put rules into place that will
customize these systems as desired and ease their burden of support.
Resources:
Group Policy
for Beginners. (n.d.). Retrieved February 6, 2015, from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh147307(v=WS.10).aspx
Step-by-Step Guide to Understanding the Group Policy Feature Set. (n.d.). Retrieved February 6, 2015, from https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb742376.aspx
