Mobile IT Education?

SickKiwi asks: "A client, a local polytechnic, has recently asked me to come up with plans for a mobile IT bus to bring technology to rural areas. I would love to find out what other people in the field have come up with in the way of workstation layout, OS choices and Internet connectivity. There doesn't appear to be a huge amount of material available but as the technology gets smaller, mobile classrooms become more and more practical." What vehicles would work best for this kind of application? A converted bus? A mobile home? An 18-wheeler with a heavily customized trailer? What kind of hardware would you put in it?

Comments

OS Choices?

[FortKnox]

OS Choices

Well, if that isn't a loaded question... :-P
Of course 99% of the community will say Linux, but I'll be the guy modded down that says go with Win2K. Don't do anything too hairy with the Win2K boxes (to get it so you don't need to worry about crashes), but MS makes good GUI's. Its easier to understand point-and-click with people that don't know how to use a mouse, than command line execution in a shell window.

Sure, you can spend mucho time getting SuSE (or GNOME) to have nothing but point and click, but I ask one question:
What do you have more of (or, more freedom of)?:
Time to setup the systems, or
Money to buy the systems?

What they do in the sticks!

[AntiPasto]

Out here in rural ohio, the local tech school has a mobile lab of like 10 machines. They also have overhead projector I believe. Basically it's just an old mobile home stripped out, and they bill it out onsite at like $170 an hour.

Works for them!

I've done this

[marshall72]

When I was in the Marine Corps, we gutted an old mainframe trailer (approx 40' semi trailer), and built areas for workstations. Primary use was for data processing related to scoring and timing the Marine Corps Marathon, but we also used it at Ft. AP Hill to teach Computer Merit Badge to the Boy Scouts. Forgeting the OS and workstation/server configurations, you need to make sure that you have AC (as well as heat). We used satellite for internet access at AP Hill, but we'd use ISDN or DSL at the race site in DC (more reliable then the satellite). Oh, and remember you'd also need a generator. If you want more specifics email me @ marshall dot lewis at starband dot net. I can also get you in touch with the guy that took it over after I got out of the corps, I know he did a lot or work with it.

Re:Depends on budget of course.

[SickKiwi]

The budget isn't huge - in the order of about $20K US, the bus they're looking at is a full size Isuzu bus. The terrain could be pretty rough in parts (we're talking South Otago in New Zealand here). There's some pictures here http://www.catlins-nz.com/. If the budget will allow I'd really like to use LCD flat screens as I figure they'll last longer with no tubes etc and offer a much smaller footprint. I'm strongly tempted to have some sort of thin client setup for ease of maintenance. Win2k Term services is an option *shudder* I know, but unfortunately Windows/Word/Excel etc is what most of them will be running at home. Although the area is very rural, a lot of farmers and rural workers in the area have PC's. The idea is to teach the basics, and also more specialist classes on demand. A lot of these people just don't have time to enroll in courses in urban areas, but there is a general degree of excitement about the mobile classroom. Hope this helps ... Paul

Did something like this (roaming cafe)

[signe]

I did something similar when I was at Washingtonpost.com. They wanted to simplify their show setups, so we came up with the idea for a "roaming cybercafe". It was very much a prototype, but I the tech was sound.

Our vehicle was a stretch Lincoln Navigator. It won't work for what you want, but it was good for us. It was a Navigator SUV, cut and stretched 10 feet. Each side had a 10 foot "gull wing" door at the top which swung up on actuators. Underneath each door was a actuator-mounted table with 3 systems on it. In the back of the thing was the generator, and there were 2 seats up front (driver and passenger) with the bulk of the backend gear mounted in a small rack between and just behind the seats. If I did it again with more money, I would have used flat panels because they are lighter and wouldn't have needed the motorized tables.

First, the internet connection. We used a 2-way satellite dish mounted on the top of the vehicle. The dish we purchased was specifically designed for ease-of-use mobile mounts. It had its own compass and GPS unit, and a motorized turntable. Inside the vehicle, we had the equipment for it mounted. All the driver had to do was select the deploy options from the menu on the device, and it would deploy the dish, track it to the correct rough position, then use the satellite signal to finetune the positioning. A unit like this was very important for making setup go smoothly.

Second, our "backend" servers. Since we were using satellite, we decided to set up a proxy server on the vehicle to try and make the satellite lags a little better. This worked very well for us, since all of the people surfing were supposed to be on the same website. But I think it would be a good idea regardless. You can also run a local website on this box (maybe a portal-type page for your homepage). And this is a good place for a DHCP server.

Third, the workstations themselves. We used NT Workstation installs, for at least marginal security. Used policies to lock down the systems a little bit and make sure that people couldn't cause too much damage. It helped us that we only had 6 computers, and usually 3 or 4 people on staff to watch them.

The miscellaneous is all fairly important as well. We used a 12kw gasoline generator which was mounted in the back of the vehicle and drew off the same tank as the engine (which was expanded). I think we had it set up so that we could get 8 hours of 75% load. We also had a connection so that we could connect to a power source at the setup site. This required a decent power management system, but it worked just fine. We did have problems with the exhaust from the generator (because it was so close to the workstations) and ended up having to do some custom work to vent it out the top of the vehicle. But surprisingly enough, the sound wasn't that bad when it was running.

We also had a sound system installed, so that we could do presentations/classes. Just microphone hookups in the front, a rack-mount DJ quality CD player, small amp, and a few speakers around the thing. I think it's not a bad idea for any application, because there's always going to be a use, even if it's just background noise.

All told, I designed the system so that it could be setup by any marketing droid that took it out. Flip a few switches to power gear up, deploy the satellite, power up the workstations, and that's it. And for the few times I saw it in operation before I moved out of the area, it worked nicely. There were a few bugs, but like I said, it was a prototype.

Things I would have done differently this time? First, flat panels. They take up less space. This may or may not work for you, depending on the vehicle you use and how many workstations you want to get in there (and your budget). Second, for your application I might also set up a wireless network. It wouldn't cost that much to add, and while your customers probably don't have laptops with wireless NICs, it would give you a little flexibility for use, as well as letting you roam around with a troubleshooting laptop, if need be.

Hope that helps a little. If you have any questions about what we did, post a followup to this.

-Todd

Re:Did something like this (roaming cafe)

[guttentag]

I wasn't involved in setting this up, but as a member of the editorial staff, I got talked into accompanying the navigator at an event to show people the highlights of washingtonpost.com (heck, I still have the "Washingtonpost.com on Wheels" (WOW) sweatshirt).

WOW was really cool, but a few things stick out in my mind:

• Sunlight - Outdoors we could only use one side (3 of the vehicle's 6 computers) at a time because the glare from the bright sunlight made the screens on one side unviewable. I suppose a tent-like enclosure could have been rigged to prevent this, but that would have taken away from the vehicle's "cool" factor ("Look Mommy, there are computers in that car!").
• Lack of Interest - While a live, roving exposition of our Web site seemed like a great idea to me, in practice most people didn't seem very interested. Those who walked over and were interested in more than just the cool vehicle didn't have a very long attention span. Some of them commented they would like to check the site out at home, but at the event they didn't have the patience to stand around using a computer. I guess people are just used to sitting down to use computers... I noticed that the Newseum in Rosslyn had chairs in front of its Online Journalism exhibit.

  Several people actually came over and told us they thought the flashy vehicle's presence was a shameless promotion for the venerable Washington Post. One of them even promised to send a complaint to Katharine Graham, but I think he may have missed his medication that morning. :o) We laughed at him after he was out of earshot.

• Pencils - The free washingtonpost.com pencils we had were definitely more popular than the computers on the vehicle. In retrospect, I'm not sure if they helped lure people in or just distracted people from our main attraction.
• Mice - IIRC, WOW used trackballs instead of mice. I thought this was a really nice usability touch. To use mice, we would have had to provide large, awkward surfaces for "mousing."

You can see a picture of WOW here, but I can't find any of its related promotional materials on washingtonpost.com today. At any rate, I thought the vehicle was an engineering marvel. Good work, Todd! :o)

Fire for the prehistoric man?

[doorbot.com]

a mobile IT bus to bring technology to rural areas

Is this like introducing fire to early humans? Or is it like selling freezers to Eskimos? Are those living in rural areas really going to benefit from this?

I think we can all agree that broadband connections in many urban areas are either severely lacking or extremely expensive... so why would they be any cheaper in rural areas? Sure, there could be a community effort to bring broadband to all, but I'm guessing this bus is not going to be visiting those communities anyways. Local telcos are forced to sell rural telephone lines below cost (offset by higher prices in urban areas); however, broadband does not fall under this regulation.

So one day, suddenly the mobile-tech bus drives up and stops next to Billy Bob's house. Billy Bob doesn't know anything about computers and probably is not going to understand the possibilities of them. But if Billy Bob has children, they may be very much interested in the mobile-tech bus and the goodies inside. But how does the mobile-tech bus really do anything for the rural inhabitants? It's like parading around in a Ferrari and saying, "Gee, isn't this cool? You could have this, but you can't afford it... sorry."

So now you've managed to generate some interest in computers and broadband in rural areas, but they still won't be able to make use of it.

I'd like to offer you a solution to the problem, but I cannot. I would recommend that you build your mobile-tech bus while at the same time working with local ISPs or government to promote broadband, etc so hopefully when the bus shows up, you're not trying to sell freezers to Eskimos -- instead, you have a plan for dispersing the technology to those who you're hoping will benefit from it.

What are you trying to teach? What size classes?

[billstewart]

What you need depends a lot on what you're trying to do and what your audience will be. Are you trying to show people how to use popular PC user interfaces? Word processing? Spreadsheets? Web browsing? Accounting? Finding stuff on the Internet? Assembling PCs hardware? Data collection from rainfall/soil-moisture/temperature telemetry widgets? Bidding on futures markets? CAD/CAM programs for building or machinery? At least in the US, farmers are often heavily involved with computers, because farms are businesses, with accounting to run, and because selling farm commodities is a complex processes, especially if you're trying to risk-manage on the futures markets, plus some of them use high-tech field machinery, and everybody uses weather forecasts.

Some of your decisions will be pretty obvious - basic flat-screens have come down in price enough that you're far better off using them than CRTs, because you're trading off the cost of the equipment vs. the cost of a bigger bus and more electricity. But if you're trying to show things to a larger group of people, you'll have to find something that fits your budget but still works, though that may be "display the same slides on N screens at once." And of course you'll want a couple of CD-R-burners for giving away software, as well as stacks of blank CDs and floppies.

Will you be showing off how to build hardware? Letting people know what the basic guts of a PC are like is valuable, so you'll probably want some basic PCs, card tables, and screwdrivers for people to play with, and spare parts to make up for the ones you'll lose or break. But if you're also doing telemetry, you'll need whatever flavors of hardware that uses, whether it's simple RS-232 stuff like X-10 or fancier data bus things, and you'll need a few sample things to telemeter.