Historically, the IT Suite was a destination; a specific room where students went to use computers. Now that there’s tech in every classroom (beyond an overhead projector, anyway), modern pedagogy requires edtech that’s both omnipresent and invisible.
In a connected classroom, the hurdle has always been the friction between devices. A teacher might plan a lesson on a Chromebook at home, only to face a desktop PC connected to an interactive whiteboard in the classroom: Different login credentials, a different operating system and a completely different user experience.
The unnecessary downtime this creates is exactly when students start to disengage while the teacher struggles with cables and slow logins.
For Asset Education, an award-winning MAT of fifteen primary schools in our home county of Suffolk, their past investment in expensive interactive displays had become sluggish and incompatible with modern workflows.
Instead of a rip-and-replace strategy, we helped them upgrade-and-integrate.
What is a Chrome OPS module and how does it work?
In simple terms, Chrome OPS is a computing unit that slots directly into the side of an existing interactive display. So, rather than discarding functional (if outdated) screens, Asset Education could simply upgrade them with Chrome OPS, transforming the screens into massive Chromebooks.
“It gives the screens a new lease of life.” – Joshua Capon, IT Manager, Asset Education
This matters enormously for school IT managers. It means:
- Prior capital investment isn’t written off.
- The sustainability case is easier to make.
- The rollout conversation shifts from “how much will this cost?” to “how quickly can we do this?”
How does Chrome OPS simplify school device management?
The deeper benefit (and one that IT admins tend to appreciate most) is what unified management actually feels like in practice. Before Chrome OPS, Asset Education was managing Windows desktops alongside Chromebooks and iPads: three device families, three policy frameworks, three sets of support headaches.
Chrome OPS runs ChromeOS, so interactive displays that have been converted using the ViewSonic Chrome OPS module are enrolled into the same Google Admin Console as existing Chromebooks. This allows IT teams to apply the same policies, app deployments and content filters across all devices from the same dashboard.
“The Chrome OPS box helps us keep children safe in education.” – Joshua Capon, IT Manager, Asset Education
How long does it take to deploy Chrome OPS in a school?
With Chrome Education Upgrade pre-applied by Getech before delivery, deployment is essentially zero-touch. The only thing the IT team had to do was plug the module in and connect to the internet – the rest takes care of itself.
No imaging, no manual configuration and no engineer on-site for days at a time. Zero-Touch Enrollment (ZTE) fundamentally changes the deployment process, giving IT admins time back to focus on the next task and supporting teachers to teach with tech, not in spite of it.
What impact does Chrome OPS have on SEN?
With ChromeOS now running on the classroom display, teachers who plan their lessons on a Chromebook at home arrive to find a screen that behaves exactly the same way. No more context-switching or cable hunting. No more lost minutes while student attention drifts.
For SEN staff in particular, the consistency has been transformative. The ability to adjust text sizes, background colours and accessibility tools on the main board (all built into ChromeOS for free) mirrors what students already see on their own devices, without any technical overhead.
Is Chrome OPS right for your school?
Asset Education’s story is a useful reminder that innovation in schools doesn’t always mean buying the newest, most expensive hardware. Sometimes it means finding the right connector: the piece that makes everything already in place start working together properly.
Chrome OPS is well-suited to any school already using Chromebooks that wants to unify their device management and user experience – particularly where existing interactive screens are functional but in need of a performance upgrade.
As a ViewSonic Platinum Partner and the UK and Ireland’s number one Google for Education Premier Partner, we’re uniquely placed to helps schools identify and implement exactly that kind of strategy.
