Tech

We will continue to update this page as ANCS HOWL progresses and can offer more tips and troubleshooting to help students and families use technology. To access the HOWL site, use this friendly link TinyUrl.com/ANCShowl to type into your browser.

ANCS Accounts

Students all have an @atlncs.org and depending on their grade level this will be their primary way to interact with the school. Please note, students DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO EMAIL. Visiting https://mail.google.com to "sign in" from a person device will result in access denied. Simply use https://accounts.google.com to "sign in" and they will have all of their other google resources available.

How to connect to home Wi-Fi networks

ANCS Chromebooks have only recently been allowed to go home and connect to networks other than our school buildings, so once you get connected everything should be all good.

NOTE : DO NOT CONNECT to guest networks named "xfinitywifi" as these are slow guest networks and your computer may keep trying to connect to these even after you connect to your secure faster connection. You would have to go into the network settings and "forget" this network to stop getting this slow insecure connection.

If you can't connect, follow the below procedures:

Sign out of the student account (typically bottom right) or reboot the computer. You will know you are in the right place because you will see "Apps" in the bottom left corner of the screen next to "Shut Down", else you are still in a restricted session.
On the Sign-in screen, connect to the home Wi-Fi network, click on the bottom right, then on the name below the Wi-Fi icon. This will display a list of networks, click on the home network. Usually this will then allow you to enter your password. While it doesn't always work the first time, all chromebooks that still have the old "Administrator restricted" network policy in place have been able to connect. Some have had to try this as many as three times, so don't give up.
Wait a minute for the Chromebook to receive the new policy and then sign-in. If it didn't work, try again and wait a bit longer.
Once you sign-in go into network settings and make sure you choose this at the prefered network.
If you are still having problems, please reach out to ANCS Tech support directly technology@atlncs.org and we will be happy to help walk you through this process.

Physical Damage / Problems with Chromebooks

If your Chromebook has a problem where the screen is damaged or parts of the keyboard stop working, most likely you will need to bring your system to the school for repair. Please reach out to ANCS Tech support directly technology@atlncs.org

If your Charger is not working, you can bring the old one to Middle Campus (820 Essie Avenue 30316) and swap it for a new charger. Please put the student name and Teacher/Advisor taped to the old charger. In the meantime, if you have a sibling with a same type, you can share; 3rd - 4th have Lenovo models , 8th grade have Acer models, the rest are USB-C

If your Chromebook's camera is not working, try rebooting (see below), but it may be damaged and you will need to use a plugin USB webcam as an alternative. You could buy one for ~$15 that is a very basic replacement, get a pretty good one for ~$55, or try to use another USB camera you already have, or reach out to ANCS Tech support directly technology@atlncs.org to get one and arrange for pickup. Webcams are in short supply but if you need advice, please contact us directly, we have been trying to procure some over the summer.

Additionally, you can visit https://tinyurl.com/sysancs to run a system test on your speakers, microphone and camera. Please include the results if/when you reach out for assistance and your student's name, grade and chromebook number; like eb101, eh002 or mb407 or serial number.

Make sure you have the correct speakers/headphones and microphone turn on and unmuted from your system tray (see system audio picture). The Microphone Gain should NEVER be at 100%, halfway is the default and usually 60% - 70% gives a little extra boost without picking up all the extra background noise.

System Audio Settings

Slow Internet

Sometimes your home connection may be slow or even down. The quickest best way to check speed on your device is to visit https://fast.com and run a speed test. Generally speaking, getting a speed over 10Mbps should be fast enough to fully participate in video conferences and watch videos, if your speed is less than 1Mbps it will show your speed in Kbps, this is a really slow speed for modern cloud based computing.

A few things to try is moving your device to different locations in your house and closer to your Wi-Fi radio and check the speed again. Make note of what the speed is in different areas of your house and use a second device connected to Wi-Fi as a comparison. Also, if possible there is an option to plug a cable directly into your router to achieve a much faster and cleaner connection that is not limited by invisible radio interference.

A bit more advanced speed test is https://tinyurl.com/sysancs. We have some tips below for Advanced Troubleshooting.

Software Questions or Problems

Most issues can be solved with an email or phone call for support, please reach out to ANCS Tech support directly technology@atlncs.org and provide your best contact information and a good time to call. Also provide as many details as possible, as your issue may be already known and easily resolvable and we can update this page. You can also try a few simple tech 101 techniques :

Sign out of your account and then sign back into the account.
Turn it off and back on, hold down the power button for 7 seconds to turn the system off, wait 7 seconds, hold down the power button 7 seconds to turn the system back on.
Try rebooting a second time.

Frozen or Unresponsive Chromebook

Sometimes any tech just needs a good reboot, but it's not obvious how to do this to battery powered device. If a Chromebook is not responding, you can FORCE a reboot:

Press and hold the Esc key and refresh (4th button along the top) key and then press the power button for 7 seconds to turn off the Chromebook
Press the power button for 7 seconds to turn back on
It should boot up to a screen with an alert message, just ignore this
Press the power button for 7 seconds to turn back off
Press the power button for 7 seconds to turn back on and it should boot back to normal.
If you get a weird message, just reboot. If it asks for Enterprise Enrollment contact technology@atlncs.org with the info that your Chromebook needs a re-enrollment.

Pictures or Videos not showing up in Google Drive

Typically using your Chromebook to take pictures or make a video you will click download to save the file. It will default to save the file to your DOWNLOADS on the LOCAL storage space. Google Drive is not connected automatically (for students) to get these files, so deliberately upload them into Google Drive so you can submit/share them with your teachers.

Open Drive.Google.Com in a web browser
Click the "+ New" button and select "File Upload"
Find your file where you saved it, usually just under Downloads
Once the file uploads, you can find it in drive and organize it in your folders.

Tech Tune up

Once you are logged in, click on the bottom right and choose settings (the gear icon), you should see your remembered Networks, or search. Remove any that are NOT your home network.
Visit https://tinyurl.com/sysancs to run a system test on your speakers, microphone and camera. Please include the results if/when you reach out for assistance.
Make sure your system is up to date, visit chrome://settings and click about Chrome to get the update link

ADVANCED Network Testing - WebRTC testing

Getting a reliable network connection is key to having a stable online experience. In addition to the basic troubleshooting speed tests above, you can run additional tests. Please take a picture of the expanded test results with problems. Note, having a problem does not necessarily mean you don't have a good connection, particularly for Ipv6 and reflexive connectivity or a lower camera resolution like 640x480. The most important things are working microphone/camera and throughput.

Using the WebRTC will ask to use your camera and microphone and when you click start, run through the tests. Please let it run for the minute or so needed to complete.
When the test completes, click on the Data Throughput and Video Bandwidth to expand the results.
You can move your computer to a different location and run the tests again and record the results. Look for at least 500kbps for Data and average Video sending, also note picture loss and packets lost.

ADVANCED Network Testing - WebRTC Throughput testing

If you are encountering network lag you can run a test specifically for lag.

Using the WebRTC Throughput test, when you click start it will check your latency. Click on network latency to see the lag in your network in milliseconds. An average high lag over 50ms is not a deal breaker but once you start getting over 100ms your network will limit the functionality of video conferencing. Note the delay when the test finishes.

Running these tests during off-peak hours is not a good indication. We are all sharing the same bandwidth, running the test during a class break closest to the problem time will give us more accurate data.

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