This week, we're taking a look at how to use your Google Admin console to set homepages to open automatically for students.
Most of the time, Chromebooks will start with either a blank page or Google search when opened. While these are nice websites to have open, homepages can be much more useful with a little bit of extra setup.
The Possibilities
There are so many ways to use the startup page. Maybe you plan to show a school district’s homepage or an attendance roster in Google Docs? How about a light and fast Learning game to get students' brains firing on all cylinders?
Let’s see how you can have student Chromebooks automatically open a designated set of websites as students log in.
Because this setting is handled at the Organizational Unit (OU) level, the level of customization available depends on your OU structure.
- If each classroom has their own OU, then teachers can submit lists of everyday webpages, like a Google Doc for attendance or journaling, or even homework/pre-class assignments.
- If your school’s OUs are set up for different grade levels, then you could set different levels of online Learning sites that correspond to each OU.
The possibilities are endless!
Video Tip
Check out this video on setting web pages to automatically open for each student.
Before You Get Started
Before getting started, you’ll want to have two things ready:
- The exact URLs of each webpage you want to open on student Chromebooks as they log in.
- Administrator-level access to your school’s Google Admin console.
Also, before we dive in, there are two caveats to be aware of if you enable Chrome tabs to open on student login:
- The On Startup options on student Chromebooks will be disabled
- (found in the Advanced Settings section of chrome://settings).
- All Chrome tabs that were open during previous sessions will be closed
- , and the only tabs that will be open on student Chromebooks when they log in are those chosen by the admin. Because this can cause students with open research tabs to lose them, we recommend only setting tabs to automatically open on student OUs where this will not be an issue. (Thanks to David for pointing this out!)
Here’s How to Do It
Alright admins, let’s get started!
- First, go to admin.google.com, and log in using your administrator-level credentials.
- Next, Click on Device Management.
- From the Device Management screen, click on Chrome Management.
4. Now, click on User Settings.
5. From the Organizations list on the left of the screen, select which OU you want to have pages open automatically on. If you want the same web pages to open automatically for all of the students at your school, you can skip this step.
6. Scroll down to the Startup section. Under the “Pages to Load on Startup” heading, enter each URL into the “Pages to Load on Startup” field. Make sure to hit enter before entering each website though, as each website needs to be on its own line.
By the way—before you hit that Save button, there’s something to keep in mind: Google Admin console doesn’t limit how many websites you can set to open automatically. Because each open website in Chrome takes up more system resources, opening too many pages at once can really slow Chromebooks down. We recommend setting no more than five pages to open at once!
7. Finally, click Save at the bottom of the screen.
Nice Work!
And that’s it! After clicking the Save button, your settings will be saved to GAC, and the next time a student signs into their Chromebook in the selected OU, the designated websites will all be opened right away.
A Special Note About GoGuardian Teacher
Setting a series of websites to open automatically on student login also works wonderfully with GoGuardian Teacher. Teachers can easily verify that students have the correct pages open and are working diligently, and can use the Screens and Timelines view to see what the entire class is working on at a glance.
As soon as a student signs into their device, each of the web pages are opened. Using GoGuardian Teacher, the classroom teacher is able to see each student’s progress as they move through their assignment.
