AB Consulting: Leading classroom management software, AB Tutor Control, continues to grow in popularity

AB Consulting is celebrating an important business milestone – it’s been 10 years since they launched their leading classroom management software, AB Tutor Control. In the UK, almost one in four secondary schools now use AB Tutor Control.

AB Tutor Control is a classroom management and remote control software program that helps teachers to guide student computer activity, encouraging them to focus on their learning goals rather than the other temptations offered by the Internet or games.

The inception of AB Tutor came about as Andy Bray (now Technical Director of AB Consulting), was at the time a parent with young children, and he was asked to help out his children’s school by setting up and maintaining their network and ICT rooms. He was given the task of researching, purchasing and installing a pc remote control package to enable the teachers to monitor and control their pupils' machines and to safely demonstrate web pages and software on their screens.

A quick trawl of the Internet proved very disappointing as Andy found that the pc remote control and remote access software programs he found were expensive, well outside the budget available to the school and no doubt many other similar schools. Many of the programs were very technical, involving a very steep learning curve, and required IT skills that most schools just wouldn’t have available to them in house.

Determined that his children’s school should have the computer monitoring software it needed to be able to teach effectively in the computer classroom, Andy set about writing a simple, affordable and accessible alternative program himself. And in December 2000, the first version of AB Tutor Control was released. Some ten years later and the company has gone from strength to strength and now has thousands of customers, with AB Tutor being used in schools and colleges in the UK and around the world. The popularity of AB Tutor Control continues to grow and in the UK, almost one in four secondary schools are now using AB Tutor Control.

Andy Bray, Technical Director at AB Consulting said “We’re delighted to celebrate this significant anniversary for AB Tutor Control and to have been able to provide an effective and sensibly priced classroom management software product to so many schools in the UK and around the world. It is truly satisfying to have created something that makes a real difference to how students use computers in their learning and has gained an outstanding reputation for ease of use by teachers and administrators."

Notes to Editors:

1. AB Tutor Control offers key classroom management functions such as monitoring, logging, broadcasting, remote control, violation monitoring, log-off and lock-down. It also provides a powerful Policy Manager which allows administrators and teachers to control the applications and websites a student may access at any given time. Its automatic shutdown policies make sure that computers are always turned off when not needed, helping schools minimize their carbon footprint.

2. The current version of AB Tutor Control is version 6.6. A free 30-day trial download is available at www.abtutor.com/html/Download.html.

3. For more information visit www.abconsulting.com.

4. For all editorial enquiries and images, please contact Sarah Orchard at Orchard Marketing Associates on 07799 473006 or email sarah@orchardmarketingassociates.co.uk