What's the best remote desktop solution for teachers?

Not gonna lie, the “best” remote desktop for teachers depends a TON on whether you wanna just access your OWN computer, or actually keep tabs on students in real time—these are two almost totally different needs, despite all the “remote desktop” lingo.

I see @mikeappsreviewer and @cazadordeestrellas already covered Zoom, Chrome RD, and gave a good intro to HelpWire (props for mentioning the unattended access—nothing like getting locked out of a lab PC when you just want that one darn worksheet). If your situation is basically “AWOL from my classroom but need to use that specific PC to, say, run old-school grading programs or grab files,” then HelpWire is honestly as simple as it gets. Set it up once, and then forget about IT nightmares. Chrome Remote Desktop is ‘okay’ but I’ve had weird glitches and lag (plus, say goodbye to your sense of security if the password’s weak). Still, neither of those really solves student supervision unless you make every kid install them and, like, let you drive their mouse—students will mutiny, trust me.

Now, here’s where I’m gonna slightly disagree: GoGuardian and Hapara are great if you’re in Chromebook land (hard pass for Windows/Mac, though—support is patchy and setup is hair-pulling at the best of times). NetSupport School is like the god mode for classroom monitoring, but you need district-level buy-in and it gets heavy on both your workload and your IT’s blood pressure.

For us plebs without 1:1 IT support, something like ClassroomScreen can at least keep everyone looking at the same page, but there’s almost zero “control” built in—it’s display only. If you really want top-down monitoring (blocking sites, locking screens, seeing thumbnails, sending messages), LanSchool Air is the move if your administration spring for it. FWIW, I tried a “bring-your-own-monitoring” stack: HelpWire for direct remote support with the oddball student, + Zoom for actual class, + a discipline system (Classcraft mostly for fun points). Not flawless, but better than nothing.

TL;DR: For just manually supporting students or hopping on your home machine, HelpWire kills it—super clean, secure, doesn’t break the bank (and if you’re only dealing with your own machines, skip paying extra for edtech bloatware). For actual keeping-kids-on-task management, you gotta sell IT and admin on NetSupport, LanSchool, or GoGuardian. The open/free options are all kinda cobbled together. Anyone pretending Chrome Remote Desktop will keep 20 kids off Roblox is, sorry, dreaming.

Maybe someone’s cracked the code with an open-source tool, but I haven’t seen it in the wild. Guess we’ll be baby-sitting one screen at a time for a minute longer…