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Best IT Solution For a Brand-New School?
Iain writes "I'm a teacher at a British 'City Academy' (ages 11-19) that is going to move into a new building next year. Management is deciding now on the IT that the students will use in the new building, as everything will be built from scratch. Currently, the school has one ICT suite per department, each containing about 25-30 PCs. My issue with this model is that it means these suites are only rarely used for a bit of googling or typing up assignments, not as interactive teaching tools. The head likes the idea of moving to a thin client solution, with the same one room per department plan, as he see the cost benefits. However, I have seen tablet PCs used to great effect, with every single classroom having 20-30 units which the students use as 'electronic workbooks,' for want of a better phrase. This allows every lesson to fully utilize IT (multimedia resources, Internet access, instant handout and retrieval of learning resources, etc.) and all work to be stored centrally. My question is: In your opinion, what is the best way for a school to use IT (traditional computer lab, OLPCs, etc.) and what hardware is out there to best serve that purpose? Fat clients for IT/Media lessons and thin client for the rest? Thin client tablets? Giving each student a laptop to take home? Although, obviously, cost is an issue, we have a significant budget, so it should not be the only consideration."
The old lab model is dead. Take your 20-30 computers, make them laptops, and available for any classroom use the teachers need. If demands becomes such that you can't meet demand, then you buy more. Add wireless throughout the place, and you should be set.
I'm UK taxpayer. This question highlights what I think is an endemic problem with the UK teaching system, and frankly the whole of the civil service:
This sort of thing shouldn't even be up for debate.
Developing this sort of infrastructure on a school-by-school basis is incredibly stupid. There should have been a central government review of the options prior to the latest run of school building, and a proper IT spending policy should have been worked out then. Having the decision made by the headteacher and a couple of staff (only one or two of whom are likely to be remotely qualified to understand all the options) means one school ends up with a much better or worse IT system than another. That is plain wrong. It's not fair on the kids.
To answer the question, for the love of God find out how the other schools near you have faired with their systems and copy the best one. Do not do go it alone (or alone with lots of Slashdotters).
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I don't have as much faith in a computer for every student, in every class.
If it's anything like my college courses in the states, a lot of time might need to be devoted to keeping students on task, instead of checking social networking sites during class. Maybe things are different in Britain, though.
In my High School we had a rolling cart with 30 laptops inside it, a central charging supply, a printer and a wireless network. This was maybe the best idea our IT department ever had because when the computers were necessary they could come to the classroom where they were needed without the logistics of moving a couple of dozen teenagers. When they're not needed, they can be put in buffer or sent to where they are. The downtime you'd normally see of computers in class is not wasted and the budget is more effectively applied to all of the classrooms. It sounds like my school was a lot smaller than the one you're serving at, so maybe a lot more carts are needed than just the one, of course.
We used to use our textbooks as makeshift sleds... I'd recommend NOT giving every student a laptop to take home!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Lowest on going cost over all. And one admin to rule them all.
Tell me why throwing computers at the students will educate them "better" than having a professor standing at the front of the room moving a magnet along a glowing glass tube filled with argon showing them how the magnetic field "collapses" the light into a ribbon, with the students first entranced and then eagerly scribbling notes. And then in the next class having the students find the flaw in a mathematical proof covering two blackboards which "proves" that 2+2=5.
Stop thinking about computers & start thinking of the students.
If you are putting in a new school-wide network then wifi is probably a good idea. Just remember that every kid/teacher with a wifi-capable cell phone will try to use it too.
If the school is being wired from scratch then put a couple of Cat6s into every classroom. These can always be reticulated withion a classroom with switches or wifi.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Stay away from laptops and tablets! The students will only get distracted. Pencil and paper work much better for most subjects. Also, probably an even bigger issue is the teachers are going to have to focus a lot of their time on working out bugs and learning IT stuff, when they should be focusing on TEACHING. Until Apple makes an idiot proof Epod, stay away from this please. My first year of college, half of the students played Diablo 2 every class. These students didn't make it to their second year.
I think there is a future for this type of class, but not yet. The benefits would be automatic marking of multiple choice tests and math tests where you don't have to show your work. But there's just too many problems right now. Broken laptops, students looking at porn during classes, and instant messaging. Who's going to have the time to deal with all these distractions?
read some interesting stuff at mightyinteresting.com
My advice is, do not go with thin clients. If budget is an issue go with Asus Eee boxes or a Shuttle SSF PC. They can come down in price to a level comparable with a thin client. Yet they are poweful enough for school purposes.IF necessary they can act as thin clients anyways.
Some departments yes, will need more powerful computers. The students who will do any work on autocad, photoshop, video editing will need more juice. If you are going with Windows, I doubt you can still license XP. But you can look into Windows FLP (for legacy PCs). If you go this way, one interesting thing you can do is put a Linux box in every class (or every compsci class) with several different distros that students can play around with ( ubuntu desktop, slackware, CentOS server). I am not sure about handing out tablets. Do the students really need mobility. Having a few laptops and tablets(only 10 or 20) that can be borrowed when needed is good,i.e. students working on programming a small robot; but expecting everyone, students, staff and school-board, to take advantage of the opportunity if every student has a tablet is unrealistic.
I'm all for computers, having started programming back in '77 when a highcool math teacher took the private initiative to take some of us to an after school adult education class to learn programming, then building my own NASCOM-1 Z-80 kit in '78, and so on... I've been a professional programmer for over 25 years, and practically live on the computer at home doing hobbyist programming... So, I couldn't be a stronger advocate for the use and fun of using computers...
That all said, I'd have to go with the traditional computer lab model, preferably not just as a resource for homework research etc, but as a place for schedules hands-on computer lessons as part of the curriculum whether it be programming or even general computer use. I don't really see a useful place for computers in the classroom as part of other lessons, as it seems it would only be a distraction. The "enriched interactive multimedia experience" story-line may sound good at some level, but all it's really going to mean is that time that could have been spent covering and explaining core lesson material is instead spent faffing around with computers, watching videos, dealign with computer probolems etc.
If you want to have some cross-over between computer/programming classes and other lessons, then why not just encourage use of the internet as a research tool for homework assignments, maybe accept (or occasionally require) printed assignments as well as hand writen ones. This sort of approach would give the kids a useful introduction to preactical use of computers, an exposure to programming, but not do so at the expense of turning the core curruculum into am extended multimedia click-fest, and taking attention away from the teacher.
If you do take the opposite approach and bring computers into the classroom, then consider the scale of effort requires to develop computer based courses that are the equal of the textbook based material you currently teach. This sounds more like a mult-year national level effort, rather than something that a few teachers are going to be able to hack together in your own school.
I'd also echo what another poster wrote - don't go it alone! Reseach how other schools are using computers and what actually WORKS. Which schools have seen grades increase rather than decrease as a result of use of computers, and how does that correlate to the way they are using them?
I agree this should be a matter of national or regional standards and not a school-to-school decision; but as you're stuck with the situation, I have to recommend a netbook. The interface issue is significant and tablets would be really cool, but with cunning programming that can be overcome for many lesson needs.
The thing about netbooks is that they're cheap, dirt cheap - in bulk, $250 US buys a reasonable screen and 1GB of RAM these days. Schools are constantly shying away from spending on *people*, so they spend on expensive hardware and software instead in the belief that these will minimize maintenance and support costs, which, generally, they don't.
Instead, save tens of thousands on netbooks, and spend it on programming, support, and server-side lesson setup that make them a snap to use for reading E-books, accessing lessons, doing quizzes, the "Top 5" uses.
At $250 each, most of your distribution problems (everybody just gets one), repair and loss problems (toss out and replace) simply go away and let you get to work.
Without it, you are wasting your money. Unless you can train your staff to integrate technology into their curriculum on a daily basis it simply won't be used. You will have the hardest time convincing the more 'experienced' members of your staff to use technology effectively -instead of just as an 'electronic babysitter'- and to get them to breakaway from their old methods of lesson delivery. Using technology to teach requires a lot more preparation then just running off a few dozen problems on the copy machine for the day's lessons. There will be those that will resist; how will you deal with them?
Sig this!
The problem with technology in school isn't the tech, but how it is shoehorned into the existing teaching atmosphere. Cramming technology in the traditional monolithic classroom doesn't gain very much. Since every child learns differently, the most effective method is one teacher/mentor per child. That doesn't fit into any public school budget, but effective use of technology can mimic that effect. Online courses, built on an open system like Moodle, can leverage your teachers time. The example of student centric teaching from "Disrupting Class" by Christensen,Johnson and Horn is a good read. While a large number of desktop/laptops is desirable, the real key to success is turning your teachers into coach/mentors that give one on one help while capturing their repetitive activities like lecturing, quiz giving, and administration and automating them. The infrastructure and the way you teach is far more important that what they use as a desktop interface.
I think a lot of this is snakeoil. If it isn't immediately clear what advantage the computer will bring to the lesson, don't use the computer. There are cases when it is clear that the computer brings a lot of positives, but it isn't all cases by a longshot.
Computers can eat up class time with distractions and technical problems. And digital work lacks tangibility. Students respond better to paper homework with actual scores than to digital assignments with scores appearing on some webpage.
I know that these problems may be solvable in the future, but they aren't solved now.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
No matter what setup you choose, don't forget the most important ingredient: Training. Lots of it. Ongoing. Study after study has shown that technology only gets truly integrated into the classroom if both teachers and administrators get ongoing, regular professional development around both using it and working it into the curriculum. Not just one session before the start of the school year - at least a couple of years' worth of regular sessions to help them figure out how to use it in the lessons they're teaching. Without that, whatever you get will just go to waste.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
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A relatively new option that should be looked at is providing each student with their own USB drive, at a cost of 10USD to 100USD each, depending on whether flash or spinning, and size. Load these with a standard image of portable FOSS software (assuming you are using Windows, look at the Portable Apps web site. There will be room enough for a full suite of portable applications plus storage for all text a student might author in the course of year. Plus, with the larger drives, enough room for libraries of whatever. Be worth the while to check what's now available through the Open CourseWare initiatives of MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and a host of other institutions. Some of it may be appropriate to the students in question, and you can't beat the price or accessibility.
A key to this approach is loading a portable image of Firefox that is preconfigured with the bookmarks and other features the school wants the students to have access to.
This showed a great deal of promise in an adult ed "Preparation For The WorkPlace" environment I was associated with until last July. The software was well received by students, especially Firefox with its bookmarks. They got very comfortable using it. These were on 1 GB thumb drives, which was more than adequate in size.
The portable OpenOffice.org component was not well received by those teachers who were already very defensive about their minimalist skill level with Microsoft Office, but that kind of resistance (of teachers being required to learn new software) is a separate issue that has to be faced no matter how software in the schools is updated.
Well if you get competent admins to secure your network, instead of letting teaching staff do it, then you can safely leave the laptops at students' desks, and they'll be unable to access anything but their authorised work.
You can sled on a linux laptop without needing to even going outside
Make sure you have a reason for the teachers to want computers in the classroom. If all they will do in the classroom is google up information or type up reports, you're wasting money. Your teachers need to know how to effectively integrate computers into the classroom for it to be truly worth-while.
Computers are wonderful tools, but for most subjects students learn at that point in their lives (middle/high school in the US), computers aren't necessary.
Think about the primary subjects - Math, Science, and Literature/Writing - where do you see the benefits in using computers? Obviously for English classes, having access to computers to type papers is handy, but it's hardly necessary. Computers can be used in math to help illustrate concepts, but you don't want the students using computers to do their work, otherwise they won't know how to do it without them. And much of science is math - again, not something you want students using computers for.
Get the cheapest equipment possible. After all, you've got to ensure a good profit for the sponsor.
I suggest each child gets a piece of slate about 10 in by 8 in and a piece of chalk. That would a nice portable laptop display with a simple user interface.
Can't you just feel the Victorian Values creeping in!
I do IT for a medical practice. What we ended up with was a central server running Fedora and LTS, with thin clients in each of the exam rooms and in the doctor's office.
This had all the benefits of getting the records available in each room without having to go through individual updates. There are still fat clients/full workstations in the office, but those are primarily for the other work--office manager, accounting, etc.
since each grade level is different (different lessons, different requirements), I would suggest having a server either for each classroom, grade level, or department. For example, your math classes would need different software (and access) than your English class. You could even set up your foreign-language classes to have the locale set to the language they teach--the kids would have to learn French, Spanish, Russian, etc to use the computers...and the casual contact with that language would reinforce the lessons.
True, you would lose some of the benefits of "one admin to rule them all," but the software and changes would be compartmentalized--and the Computer instructors could even have more free reign to fix (or damage) their systems as they see fit.
Never confuse movement with action. --Hemingway
Many years ago I did this at two schools. I set up a FreeBSD cluster with GEOM. I then had all the PC's boot a tiny FreeBSD image using PXE that had them all kickstart BlackBox in X (XFree86 at the time). You can't beat that in price, and I used a remote desktop utility in the ports tree to let them run specific applications of a Windows 2000 in VMware Workstation 2.
Today I would set up the same but have Windows run in Xen on the FreeBSD box, as VMware is horribly out of date.
I'm a senior in a private high school where every student has a tablet PC. Save for a few particularly tech-savvy teachers, it's quite lackluster compared to how the plan looks on paper.
First of all, you're looking at high upfront costs. A Lenovo X60 tablet, the model we use, runs between $1,500 and $2,000, and if you include the $300 yearly "technology fee" my school tacks on (presumably to pay the tech department's salaries), that's a pretty steep cost no matter who's paying it.
Which brings us to the maintenance side of things. Teenagers break cars, cell phones, and other crap all the time - why should they not be expected to drop (or in some cases, throw - yes I've witnessed it) their tablets to the floor? Maintenance costs are very likely to go through the roof, and I promise you that over the course of the first two years, you're going to see maintenance costs eclipse the upfront cost.
Moreover, you'll probably need a porn filter to keep them from looking up boobs, MySpace or YouTube. That requires servers, and you're probably looking at close to 50-100 requests per second at peak times. Meaning your transparent proxy will require some serious big iron to handle everything. Make sure your bandwidth is at least 20Mbit/sec, and be ready to block LimeWire, Bittorrent, and other bandwidth-sucking and potentially illegal traffic that your transparent HTTP proxy won't catch.
Lastly, if students have their own tablets and a virus goes rampant throughout your LAN (again, I have witnessed this) reformatting every laptop will be not only a pain in the ass, but also traumatic for students that don't know how to/don't feel like making backups. XP Tablet is also very unstable in my experience, so also think about whether you want to go the Linux route which of course will require manual configuration and extra training.
As for staff, my school has about 170 students in grades 7-12, and our tech department includes a director of technology (ana management), a repair technician, and a network admin. So you're looking at maybe 1 technician per 150 students plus one network admin per ~300 to help with auditing, server maintenance, and security.
All this, and how often does my school use these tablets? Maybe once a week they're a mandatory part of my classes. Most students (myself included) still do most notes on pen and paper and all of my teachers except for one give out all assignments on paper. To be honest, our tablets are probably used more for gaming (think, 2D Flash games) and who-can-find the-first-working-proxy-to-browse-Facebook contests.
Oh yeah. If any of your students know how to use SSH, and you allow unfiltered connections on ANY TCP port, your filtering will be down the tubes in seconds. Yes, I bypassed the porn filter 5 minutes before school started the first day two years in a row, and a few other students did too.
Just a few things to keep in mind if you do a tablet program. Sorry for any typos or inconsistency, I'm on an iPod touch and my thumbs cannot keep up with my brain.
I am working with Asus EEE PCs in a Milton Keynes school -I am at the Open University and we are part of the Personal Inquiry project. Happy to chat offline if you'd like to hear about our experiences.
Main issues: variable levels of student computer literacy, support and management of laptops, making sure the devices transparently connect to the school network, other school computers on shared drives and home networks, ethical issues (schools and homes having different policies on what students can access), students using laptops as tool to play with instead of working (i.e. using the games/distraction software and functionalities).
I went to a high school where they gave a take-home laptop to every student. Other than some decent tech training we got from finding ways to get around all the blocks the IT department had set up to keep us from installing games and such, I'm still not sure what educational value they had. Honestly they were more of a distraction than anything; we once had so many people online playing Counterstrike (in class) that we slowed the network to the point that the principal actually got on the PA and politely asked everyone to stop killing the network.
And don't think that you would be able to stop the students from installing games/watching movies/getting to Facebook. It was like a constant battle at my school between the students and the IT department; they would constantly be trying to find ways to lock us out and we'd constantly be finding ways to counter. Granted, this was a magnet school focused solely on IT so we had a school full of nerds who knew what they were doing, but I'm sure that even at a normal school the nerds would pass their secrets along.
I live in Kuwait and during my time in college, instructors have tried various "electronic" solutions like a smart board or a basic power point presentation, avoiding being interactive with students on a blackboard.
In all cases, it was always a bad idea. The smart board had problems (virus infcetions, IP conflicts, windows crashes, ...etc.) and power point presentations were dull -- myself and many others were almost asleep and drooling (and I was sitting in the first row!).
The instructor's solution to the power point presentation pandemic? Back to the blackboard and everyone woke up.
I'm in for well-maintained labs, and would stir away from giving each student a laptop/tablet. The students would abuse those machines much more than they'd benefit from them.
Teachers are there to interact with students, but by giving each student a machine, the attention would be diverted to these boxes and teachers would start pushing content into students' boxes...
Mod points are a dangerous tool. Abuse them wisely.
Take that large IT budget and use it to raise the pay level of the teachers. Take a smaller chunk of it to buy a clue hammer to beat into the heads of the parents that teachers are not there to raise their children but to educate them.
85% of the teachers at the High School I went to are on food stamps yet they still teach. They teach because they have a passion for it and I feel I received an excellent education. My parents taught me how to behave in a civilized world which made me more open to learning.
Computers are not going to change education. That starts in the home when parents actually give a shit about their children and discipline them properly.
I ran into my third grade teacher the other day while working on a phone system at a church. He remembered me and laughed about some of the stuff I pulled back then. He's 87. When he retired from teaching he started driving the school bus. When he couldn't drive the bus anymore he worked in the kitchen. When his arthritis wouldn't let him do that he became the receptionist for the church and school.
We don't need computers, we need parents who teach their children to respect their teachers.
Here's a scenario for you, that will cater to your needs:
Buy the most power machine money can buy - up to about £3000 in terms of CPU power, lots of RAM, and every storage slot filled with high capacity storage - stick with SATA if available, otherwise SAS disks will do.
Then, go to Viglen, and buy their crappy little £79 PCs that go on the back of the monitor with a VESA mount. They're shockingly underpowered - 400MHz, but they make fantastic thin clients.
You can run about 100 think clients on such a system, and it'll work really nicely.
However, it being a school - there's no chance it'll take off, and you'll be stuck with the same rubbish everyone else is.
As an IT professional, I actually am against computers in schools. Typing is all well and good, but kids these days already know Google and Word, anything they actually need for modern business is pretty much self-taught or taught at their first place of employment.
Computers are the bane of the modern UK school system.
Laptop Carts are the way to go. They are small, efficient, mobile, and more than enough for any task needed in school.
I'd say 1-2 carts with a classroom's worth of laptops, a wireless router/AP, and wireless printer (or regular printer plugged into a wireless router/ap that can act as a print server). Brand would be whoever can offer the best support contract, Dell, HP, etc. Stay away from OLPC or EEE's while I love Open Source they are too crippled and you can always install Linux (or live CDs) on a regular laptop if the desire is there.
Then if there would be the room/money available have one lab with desktops for any/all other needs. The other item would be USB thumbdrives for each student (they can be reasonably small like 1GB) and lock out the ability to save to anything but the thumbdrives. A projector may be useful for the cart too.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
If the school is teaching IT at all the best solution is a heterogeneous environment. Any servers for production should be free/open source to save on licensing costs, and servers in the IT classes should be a mix of Linux, Windows, Solaris, and OS X to give the students maximum hands-on experience.
Clients for production should be F/OSS whenever possible, again, to save on both up-front and recurring costs, and clients for instruction that MSDN and similar licensing doesn't apply (kiosks, biology classes, etc.) should be F/OSS if at all possible. Test wine and Crossover for compatibility with any academic applications you need to run, and try to get Codeweavers to assist in the event that the applications won't run. It's possible they can make Crossover run any Windows academic apps you need to run.
Don't blindly choose F/OSS either. It's not a religion. Pick the best and most cost-effective solution (taking TCO into account, not just up-front costs) and disregard "But Linux comes without a warranty" because Microsoft expressly disclaims all warranties in their EULA. If you need support, there is a vast support base for Linux, which is possibly larger than Windows' support base taking a multitude of messageboards and Linux vendors who will step up to the plate to support nearly any Linux distribution.
Whatever you do, don't pick a single OS, or even just a single distribution especially in your computer science classes. It's good to expose your students to all of the major distros, to Macs, and to Windows, but I would really push OpenOffice (and its variants) for normal use, such as homework assignments and so forth.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Use laptop carts that teachers can reserve on days when they need them. These can be moved around the school quickly, plugged into a wall outlet for charging, and students can use them to access their own school account. Moreover, it reduces the waste of having computers when they might be a distraction in class and avoids the problems of home-issue laptops.
They can't handle flash or video well. You'll need massive bandwidth. Besides, netbooks are cheaper. $350 US or so. So get a netbook per child, load them with open office, install remote viewing software so the teacher can check what each child is doing, and then provide lots and lots of teacher training. The real trick is to make laptop classes optional, and only for teachers who have shown a willingness to use them. Giving them to everyone is a waste. Sharing them with a laptop cart stops teachers from dedicating the time and effort to making laptops work.
Or you can have a computer lab with a dedicated computer teacher. A talented teacher can teach the kids to use computers and interact with the other teachers to extend lessons into the lab.
Using computers in schools seems to me a waste of money unless these are in an special room for documentation and research, this I believe is called library.
I've worked in several educational environments in the UK, and for the last 2 years or so have always gone the thin client route. There are now a number of such devices available, each using just 2W of power, no moving parts, with standard interfaces to keyboard, mouse, and display, and excellent support for local USB and so on. But rather than buy-in to a proprietory solution for application management (e.g. Presentation Server and its like) I'd recommend "full fat" windows (and/or Linux) OS installs, running on a virtualized server. VMWare and Xen are your choices on the back-end. Xen representing the better value for money/price-performance.
Although we worked on the design ourselves, implementation was done by a professional services firm, 360is based locally.
AG
First, hire me. It'll be the best thing you'd ever do. I'm a little pricey, but worth it.
Then we'll make a proper evaluation of your proposed facility. Well take input from the staff. We'll find out what vendors are available and what requirements there will be to maintain it.
Once that is complete, we'll draw up several proposals for how what the staff and administration want could be accomplished.
We won't make an "Ask Slashdot" for a shot in the dark of how it should work. That's all any of us can provide right now.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I only hope that content is given equal attention to gadgets and tech but somehow I think it won't be.
Every new workforce generation (say every 10-15 years) seems to be getting less creative and less able to solve real problems. Style over substance and logistics over content - I just see it getting worse.
A workforce of mindless automitons who regard their ability to follow a process as a skillset are only one step away.
Beyond IT uses for the computers, I recommend the following rather than their computer simulations:
For the average student a PC is generally a distraction. English, Maths, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, French are all subjects where 99% of the time a student should not be using a PC. However, the teacher will very often make great use of it. Plus for the price of one computer lab you can fit out 10 classrooms with an interactive white board. At my school currently I'd say it's the only piece of hardware that really makes a diffference day to day.
NOTE!
Do not make teachers log in, a teacher logging in is a teacher and their class full of bored teenagers waiting five minutes for your non-existant personal settings to load. Give the teachers a memory stick that gets backed up every night. Ban students from using these computers.
One laptop per student is the single best approach. There is little point in 'computer rooms' since about 1994. Considering how laptops are coming down in price. When you look at bulk deals of basic laptops the cost per child is now acceptable. But even if it is the most expensive solution it is absolutely worth every penny.
...erm... I do agree with the statement made above. Paying teachers something close to fairly would be a first priority. If there isn't the money for that, then there are other problems with education in todays western world.
These kids will be shoved out into the workforce at some point, and even today, let alone ten years from now almost all jobs involve using a computer for at least a significant portion of their role. The way they learn and work should somewhat resemble how they will learn and work for the rest of their life.
But
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
The price of slate these days?
Oh for smileys on /.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
N.B. Slashdot has a lot of open source fanatics. So be aware of a certain bias. While you should definitely expose them to open source it is not where the culture is or is going to be in the near future.
Live DVD versions of Ubuntu are great for this. They just boot off a DVD and they can play with it.
You should also expose them to a Mac in limited amounts but again that's not where the culture is.
Windows is unfortunately where the digital world is and will remain for some years so they need Windows skills above all others. Even when windows (hopefully) disappears the majority of people will have to make the same paradigm shift as your students.
As with anything educational you have to provide kids quantifiable short term gains. Have them build a web page from scratch with a web authoring tool. Have them write a small program and understand what a program is. Have them edit a bit map (GIMP is ok for this if you can't get photoshop cheap from Adobe)
If you don't empower them in what they want to express then they will forget everything the day after the exam.
with hardware and software suppliers! If they do, you will end up with expensive Windows systems, and inferior commercial software with "good" prices.
Major hardware and software vendors already have established deals for educational institutions. Linux distributions like Ubuntu are (by most accounts) superior to Windows, and cost nothing.
My recommendation would be to use Linux and other open-source software. Open Office does most of what Microsoft Office does. There is graphics software, video-editing software, and software of every variety you could want, all open-source and little to no cost.
But if they start to "negotiate" with commercial vendors, they will end up with commercial products at substantial cost, and questionable worth (comparatively speaking).
First, get a solid list of requirements for the new infrastructure, from the teaching staff.
You do NOT buy and install infrastructure and then start making it fit - that's just the wrong approach. The most important factor in adding IT to a school is not technical - it depends on the teachers and what they need in order to teach better. I can't tell much about that as i'm not a teacher, but all the school IT projects that have more or less failed to far have failed because nobody ever defined what they needed.
Nevertheless, there is still a lot to be said about the technical side in a school.
The environment in a school is technically difficult:
* Most of the software is crap
Most of the software meant to be used in schools for learning etc. was designed by complete morons that have absolutely no idea what they were doing. They might require local administrator rights, not work well with DPI scaling, not work in a TS environment, not work in a multiuser environment, write settings to win.ini or other archaic places.
Vendors often do not support "fixing" their software, for example by adjusting permissions on their folder in program files, making support a nightmare.
* Even less morale than normal employees / less administrative procedures available
Usually in a company, employees have to sign a usage policy and get fired when they don't adhere to it. Of course, there are exceptions. The smaller a company is, the more you can trust employees to try doing the right thing (they might still fuck up, but at least they're not doing it maliciously).
In a school, this is usually not the case. You have extremely malicious users that will try EVERYTHING to get by by the restrictions, and there is usually NO administrative recourse available - no matter how much they break, they won't be kicked from school. So they only option you have is
* Everything must be enforced at the technology level
Fully untrusted user environments are hard to maintain - you mostly have a flexdesk in policy at school, so kids won't just break their own machine, someone else might need to use that machine too.
Thus it is necessary to enforce everything:
- No direct internet access, proxy only
- Use user authentication with proxies
- Use 802.1x for all untrusted network ports (i.E. all in a room where kids might have access to)
- Restrict users ability to execute arbitrary programs - USB sticks, internet downloads. On Windows, use software restriction policies to achieve this
- Use advanced management technologies like Intel's vPro together with case tamper detection to ensure that local manipulations won't be very successfull
- Use full disk encryption in order to prevent tampering with computers when they're offline or opened
- Ensure appropriate audit logging
- Ensure that noone has administrative access to their computer
- Ensure that it is impossible for even savy students to gain access to your network - 802.1x and FDE can help you with that
- Ensure full accountability by using multi-component authentication, for example fingerprint + password or smartcard + password
- Ensure that account switching or sharing is impossible
Please note that these things are notoriously difficult to achieve, mostly because of problem #1, that most school software sucks.
Linux would work excellently, because all you'd need to do is use GNOME, make icons for OpenOffice and name it something like WORD so students don't get confused. And, once you get the drivers and configuration right, you can use something like AutoYaST to make setup easy. Oh, and if you choose to uninstall the "Games" pattern, students are basically left to do work.
Use LDAP and an Authentication system e.g. Kerberos to have a roaming home directory, that way a student can move from computer to computer retaining settings and documents.
For classes that would require the use of software like AutoCAD, the use of an independent machine or XEN on a linux machine. The only problem might be making it easy for teachers and students to use.
As far as stopping people from seeking out porn, the most cost effective method would be openDNS. openDNS would allow you to setup custom filters, use pre-built blacklists, but not have to place the load on your system network.
We had interactive teaching tools when I was in school. They were called teachers. We also had these things called books, too, which didn't react to anything, and the pictures didn't animate, but they revealed whole new worlds to me nonetheless.
I'm old. :-(
This is really good news to see that many schools now see the value in improved IT solutions for education. I have seen an exciting new product at the 2009 CES show which may be the also simplify and reduce the cost of implementing high technology into academia. Based on the form factor, it doesnâ(TM)t waste precious space. It can be used anywhere there is a need for computers and information, such as labs, hallways, libraries, kitchen's ect. I have already emailed them for more information regarding support for Linux and was told that the product tested well with Ubuntu 8.04. This product is called the Smart-Leaf and can be found at http://www.smart-leaf.com/
However you can't play Quakelive or twitter on a slateboard or piece of paper.
Electronic workbooks or tablets for everyone is a great idea as long as they're not also general purpose computers. I wish Alphasmart Danas were marketed better or sold cheaper when they were released. Until handwriting recognition becomes truely viable (and cheap), they're the next best thing to a paper notebook.
--- Do you believe in the day?
Whatever you do, make sure that your teachers understand HOW to use the computers. I'm an adult returning to college and it astounds me how many instructors don't even know how to click to the next slide of their presentation.
Also, using the computers to improve communication between parents, students, and teachers is important, too. From a central place to check grades, to a quick way to make sure everyone is talking, it can really help during a time when you don't get as much face time with the parents as teachers used to.
I love getting email every day from my 10 year old. He has fine motor skill problems, so he types emails instead of writing in his agenda, and we communicate a lot during our emails. It is in addition to parental communication, not a substitute.
I'm gonna start by saying I'm finishing my final year of 18 straight years of school of various kinds (k-5th year of college), done through the time period where computers went from not being in classrooms except under special circumstances to being in every classroom (and with iPhones etc, being in almost every pocket/backpack). I also have parents who've been teaching longer than I've been alive (University and Elementary level).
So, good ideas that have already been brought up:
"Elmo's" - camera/projector system - super useful. We actually had a non-electronic version of this at one point in elementary school that used powerful lights and well place mirrors and lenses, and it was incredibly useful then, too. Bonus, if it's science, you can get a camera that will pop off it's holding arm and can be attached to a microscope.
Laptop carts - seriously. One of the biggest complaints my mom has teaching K-3 graders is that if she has enough computers for everyone, there's not enough room to sit, but if she has less than that, she spends as much time figuring out who can use them for as she does teaching. The carts allow teachers who need everyone on a computer at once to do so, but don't blow the budget/hog valuable space. Also, you can keep refreshing these and sell the old ones at like a fundraiser auction every other year or so to make sure they've always got something useful without going broke.
Have a purpose - don't just buy computers to have them. See every waste of money ever for examples why.
Constant training - staff, students, whoever. Have workshops at the beginning of the year with a basic intro to the labs and a few pieces of software that might interest that class (a math class could be introduced to Mathematica, a biology class could be introduced to illustrator for when they have to make a presentation on some research, etc.). And have basic, in-house written info packets of like 2-5 pages for each and every piece of software that answer the questions that every student asks everytime they come in to use something.
Stuff I haven't seen (I should set the filter lower...or not).
A computer lab - even with the laptop carts, you need a computer lab. This way kids working on projects, papers, group projects, etc have a place to go that has everything they need in one place (making it right next door to the LIBRARY would be a GOOD THING, as well...). Include in this computer lab: 10-30 machines (depends on school size, maybe more) with most basic tools (OO/Word, internet, photoshop/gimp, illustrator for making posters, flash, etc, and make sure they have to log into their own accounts with central storage..some places still don't get this), a couple of scanners, a couple of digital cameras, a couple of digital video cameras, a *good* color printer, a pair of fast (duplex) b&w printers (/copier?), *a heavy duty hole punch*, *a heavy duty stapler*, ~5 machines that are super decked out with video editing (just make them macs, it'll make your life easier here, I promise...my university has 1 account that you can log into from Solaris, Linux, Mac, and Windows, just do it now at the start so you won't screw yourself over in the future) and maybe even like maya or autocad or something (you mention the school goes to 19 year olds, they might wanna do some cool projects).
Podium - these are big at my university in lecture and seminar halls. It goes along with the elmo. A digital projector (the art history department had slide projectors integrated into the system, as well), a good computer with internet conected to it, a hookup for laptops, some speakers in the ceiling so the whole room can hear, light/window shade controls, maybe a vcr/dvd player or something, all in one thing that a teach can pop out when needed, but is otherwise just a podium for them to put books on when not.
I do theatre now, and I haven't seen a computer in one of my classrooms for 3 years, excepting a class on video game design I did which was in a computer lab. I know it's
Ann Arbor Public Schools (Michigan, USA) opened a new High School (grades 9-12, ages 15-19) this past September. Because it's intended to be the 3rd full high school and because of redistricting issues and whatever, it's currently only populated by the 9th graders.
See http://skyline.a2schools.org/
Ann Arbor Public Schools has long been an Apple friendly system, but they'll use PCs when needed.
My experience as a parent here has been that Ann Arbor schools uses a mix of computer labs and computers in the classroom.
But let's say we've set up all the students with Linux, LXDE (or Xfce, or E17, or Etoile, or ROX, or something else light), Firefox, and OpenOffice.org... How many students could you run on what kind of server?
I remember the rule of thumb was about 128MB of RAM for each user... but it's been a long while. And when a program is loaded for one user, is it re-loaded for all of them? Couldn't you load stuff once and then have it work with different sessions at once? Is that even possible?
I've been thinking about a thin client set up for home actually. And since we're kind of talking about thin clients among other things, I wanted to know what some of you with thin client set ups have to say about them...
Even though you feel like your budget is significant, you still need to make your budget the biggest consideration, because chances are, a year from now you won't be able to afford paper for the printers.
I'm not saying that's the case with you, but a lot of school start the same way: buying smart boards, 10 computer labs, expensive televisions in the classroom, and end up the same way: not being able to afford the basics.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
good teachers >> good computers
computers are not a substitute for good teachers. computers will not make bad teachers into good teachers. spend as little as is truly needed on the computers and use the rest to employ some good teachers.
TIAEAE!
Interactive whiteboards are vastly superior to blackboards for teachers that learn to use them. Teachers are there to teach, not do Powerpoint. Unfortunately, parents who think they are successful (aka managers) often think that a knowledge of PP is a sign of success. A netbook forces you to produce educational material that is not over-complicated. It also costs less. All staff should keep all their work in progress and records on the big server. Use an OS (hint hint) which doesn't involve taking weeks to log on to a domain. Use a plain SMTP server. Outlook is overkill for anything that goes on in schools.
You will need additional kit to run Photoshop and so on, and you need to budget accordingly. The music department will have special needs. But, as someone who spent 7 years teaching before going back into industry, with a child who is in a senior teaching role in a large London school, I can tell you one thing. IT should be unobtrusive. The best advice I ever got on the subject was from my second technical director, who said "IT should be like plumbing. It should be there when you want it and rarely go wrong. Nobody cares how the sewage plant works except sewage engineers, and that's how it should be".
There is absolutely nothing a teacher ever needs to do routinely that exceeds what can be done with free software, except possibly accounting.
Final observation: printers. For schools use, it's my current view that HP is more expensive than needed, Samsungs are not quite beefy enough but they are getting there fast, Lexmark is too idiosyncratic. Oki and Xerox are your friends and have reasonably priced heavy duty A3 machines.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
VMware and cheap laptops
The head likes the idea of moving to a thin client solution, with the same one room per department plan, as he see the cost benefits. However, I have seen tablet PCs used to great effect, with every single classroom having 20-30 units which the students use as 'electronic workbooks,' for want of a better phrase.
So, you've identified that the head's criteria is: "What is cost effective?"
Assuming three rooms per department, 10 departments in the school...
His solution: 20-30 machines x ~£250 per department (£6,250 per department, £62,500 for the whole school).
Your solution: 30 machines x 3 rooms x ~£1,000 per department (£90,000 per department, £900,000 for the whole school).
His criteria is cost efficiency.
Your solution is to spend more per department than he would for the entire school, on machines that kids pick up and drop vs. his more firmly mounted options that therefore need far more regular replacement.
I think I see where you're going to lose this one.
It's absolutely true, better resources will ensure the students do better. Assigning them one teacher per student would have even more amazing results... but also the same kind of exponential cost increase. So would assigning every child an after school tutor to help with their homework. But, as none of it is cost efficient, within the limited budgets, the head isn't going to agree to any of them... just as he's not going to agree to your wonderful, lavish, but equally unrealistic solution.
I'm an I.T. expert, not an educational expert. I can't tell you if if computers in a classroom are better than computers, in a lab, or if computers will help the teachers teach better or if they will help the students learn better. These questions are best answered by the educators.
I can, however, offer my expertise on three fronts:
1) You don't know what will fit your needs in 10 years, so it is best to design a flexible infrastructure. Who knows what cabling you will need, what WiFI spacing should be, etc. Things that will help long into the future are a hanging ceiling in the hallway (so that you can run better cabling later), conduit from above the ceiling to at least two wall plates in *every* room, and closets with electricity every 70 meters. The closets can be used for storage or janitorial, but I.T. will need about a cubic meter for a wall-mounted cabinet with electronics.
2) Investing in thin clients (as the story suggests) also means investing in permanent (and potentially on-site) IT support staff. Thin clients don't eliminate support needs, they centralize and specialize it. They offer the advantage of a single system to maintain, but at the expense of a single failure (hardware or grey-matter) causing wide-spread impact that will impact immediate academic needs.
3) Hire someone who has many years of experience installing networking systems, alarm systems, telephones, etc. in an academic environment to review any solution the architect designs.
that will never get done. even with a huge budget
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
I think you should have a look at this chaps blog http://www.theopensourcerer.com/ and the Open Learning Centre that he links to http://www.theopenlearningcentre.com/. They may well have some good ideas for you.
Use LTSP. Depending on the amount of clients, one or more servers and then many clients.
- LTSP clients are cheap, and they don't need client side maintenance except for hardware failures.
- Startup time for the computers is very small. With normal computers it can take 15 minutes to start up the computers, with LTSP it is a minute or less. This is important, because it is taken away from the school time.
- LTSP clients don't have hard drives, so they dont' break so easily.
- LTSP clients need less electricity, so you will save in electricity bills.
- You will be practically virus free
- Students can use any computer in any class (if you have them in several classes) and always get their own desktop.
- New clients are cheap and easy to add to the netnwork (unless you add so many that you need to add servers also, but that is not very hard either)
- Teachers can control the clients and easily e.g. disable them when they should not be used.
- Maintenance is cheap as pretty much only the server needs maintenance.
- Software licenses are free with Linux, OpenOffice.org etc.
- It has been used in schools before and total savings in costs have been 70% compared to Windows desktop computers. (Note this is only one study and it contains the expenses from transforming a Windows environment into Linux environment)
IMO it makes sense to use a terminal services environment. Whether it be MS based (damn licensing) or a solution like the NX Server for Linux (damn licensing). In conjunction with an AD of some sort whether it MS or Linux. Of course allow some type of external access so the kids can login to their accounts from home and they don't need fancy computers to be able to access their data. Hire a good admin or IT firm that knows their AD policies and security. buy a bunch of thin clients or use old computers. One good server could easily host 20-30 clients. Be sure the server has redundant everything and you use a backup company or some type of offsite solution and you should be fine.. at the end of it, I'd expect to pay anywhere from $20k-$50k depending on what equipment and software you buy.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
You know, this is one of those areas where I wish educational systems would take a more scientific approach to these types of problems. It's pretty much the same way here in the U.S.
There seems to be little 'method' to the ways we try to figure out the 'best' ways to integrate IT into education.
It seems to me that in situations like this, schools could benefit from systematically applying the scientific method - Observations, Hypothesis, Prediction, Experiment, Analysis. (Repeat as necessary.)
Start building a *theory* of education and IT, and then make your school IT decisions and budgets based upon the body of theory thus developed.
So, this means that you gather lots of ideas from all sorts of people (everyone from Education Ph.Ds, down to teachers and IT staff at the schools, even to interested members of the public who have ideas) about how IT could be better implemented in education, and start using a small number of schools as experimental test beds (and other schools as 'control data' for the experiments).
These experiments should be, first, submitted to and approved by some national 'school board', or at least something like a group of professors at a University education department, who are tasked with tracking and eventually reporting on the results. From the results, this 'school board', or university task force, or whoever is responsible, can start creating recommendations and best practices.
I manage the network for fairly large district in New York. One thing is for certain nothing works for everyone. Some teachers are really good at taking advantage of wireless carts, wether they are tablets or laptops. Others like the order of bringing the entire class to a formal computer lab. Some teachers are old fashioned and prefer to not have anything computer related used in the classroom. One on one programs seem really great until you check what the students actually do on them. Elmos are really cool if the student work has to be printed. Most teachers want it in a digital format so it is kind of a waste to give one to everyone. Laptop carts are fine but avoid the AP on the cart approach. you need to worry about people plugging in power and ethernet cables. Students by that point have already turned on the laptops and have received error messages when trying to login. Spend the money to put a proper controller based wireless solution in. Again the bottom line is, find out how the teachers teach first. Then figure out how technology can benefit their method of teaching. Don't try to force your preferred method or they will not use it, and you will have wasted a lot of taxpayer funds.
Sun Rays are a nice, lightweight solution perfect for an in classroom workstation. They do have great performance and I've seen them do some pretty heavy loads. (http://www.sun.com/software/index.jsp?cat=Desktop&subcat=Sun%20Ray%20Clients&tab=3) For more intense applications, maybe a lab with windows PCs would be good. That way you can expose students to both Linux and Windows, as well as applications such as Photoshop, etc...
I assume you don't want to roll your own, so I suggest you get in touch with the BCS (British Computer Society) in London. One session I have seen was about a company that has in principle created a LTSP based project as a packaged solution which scales easily, is simple to maintain and doesn't cost a ridiculously wasteful amount of licensing fees.
I'm not advocating LTSP as an anything-but-MS solution, there are simply too many advantages to ignore: cheap clients and software (with a stable interface as nobody is trying to sell you a new version), a sort of "desktop anywhere" approach which also allows access at home (kids ill or on trips can still have access), and as the roll out only requires unconfigured PCs you can kit a whole new classroom out in 30 minutes, including getting rid of the boxes. What's more, the openness of it all means you can get other parties to write bits for it that you may need.
Worth examining IMHO. Even if you don't actually plan to USE the solution you will be able to use the fact that you're looking at it to cut the Microsoft charges to a sensible level..
Insert
I would start with wiring the building and then if you have a need to establish a lab, then you simply add local switches as necessary. I realise that there is a move to wireless networks, but they don't achieve the necessary speeds for certain applications, and prevents you from easily making your network secure. While this may not matter to students, for the administration this may be an issue. Once you have your physical infrastructure in place, then depending on usage requirements, you add severs and PCs according to needs. I tend to try to try to establish a network where Linux, MacOS X and Windows can all share resources, since that way there is no need to deal with multi-platform support as an after thought.
The other thing is to ensure that a competent systems administrator is in place ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Your taxpaying pounds support BECTA ( http://becta.org.uk/ ). Slogan: "Becta is the government agency leading the national drive to ensure the effective and innovative use of technology throughout learning."
Why on earth are you asking us when you have resources like these available!
I would suggest relatively inexpensive Linux ebook readers or ASUS EEE style Linux netbooks along with some Linux thin clients connected to Linux and BSD servers and finally some fully equipped PCs running Linux, BSD and possibly Open Solaris.
With Linux and BSD your licensing costs will be 0 GBP so you will save a bundle. Your IT support costs will also be greatly reduced since you will not have to deal with viruses, spyware, worms, evil patches, DRM, constant reboots or nightly system rebuilds.
Ubuntu and Fedora with openoffice.org or koffice will cover virtually all your needs while maintaining compatibility with closed formats.
The KDEedu suite is pretty nice, especially for younger kids. There are many free and open source packages for Chemistry, Math, electronics, programming, astronomy, human language tools and a variety of other subjects which would be included, again at 0 cost.
Good luck.
I had to read this twice to make sure I was reading it right -- a suite per department, which only gets used occasionally? Why not have say 1-3 computer labs, shared between the whole school, and thus used far more efficiently?
As to implementation -- if you're happy for your IT skills course to teach IT skills (as opposed to microsoft office skills), then sunrays are lovely, and run gnome / openoffice / firefox / etc just fine, the only problem being if anyone has ties to windows-only software.
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
What if you gave each student a netbook and didn't have any computer labs or desktops. Perhaps the teachers could have more powerful laptops. Suppliment the laptops with a school-wide WiFi connection with web filtering on the network instead of the computers.
From experience, stay away from table PCs. Here is why:
* Handwriting recognition does not work (except for the single engineer that trained it, may be)
* The pen usage on the screen is sloooow and crap, because you can only click, not right click, not shift click, not ctrl click, etc. Also no CTRL commands to enter like Ctrl+B, Ctrl+S, or Tab or Alt+Tab, etc. Tablet PC's are for single app usage only (may be filling out a form, like medical chart) and then they are inefficient. Tablet usage prohibits learning efficient computer use, a rather practical skill to have. It also prevents people from actually learning typing, which again is an important skill to learn.
* There is no ergonomic way to use a tablet PC. They are too heavy still to hold in your hand or on your arm and displays are hard to read form a sitting angle you lay them on the desk. So you either strain your shoulder (and you hardly have space in a typical class room with a desk in front of you) or you crouch over it and strain your whole back and neck. Or you do strain your eyes to work against the glare and suboptimal viewing angle.
* It locks you into exactly one OS (MS Windows for tablets), because Apple does not support it (despite that their 90's Newton was a trend setter and better at the recognition than the current MS Windows for Tablets) nor does Linux currently. Not to mention that thin client is also out the window as well.
In conclusion you spend extra dollars for teaching your students an un-ergonomic machine, and prevent them from learning the vital skills necessary to efficiently use computers.
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
This is the wrong way to ask the question. The type of computers to buy should be decided by the application, which is mostly decided by software. Thin clients? Stupid idea, unless you are teaching using Facebook and surfing porn. Here's an idea, plan a curriculum and the needs will become apparent. For instance, buy some sturdy computers with attached keyboards for a few typing labs. Buy some great work stations with big monitors for teaching Photoshop of Gimp in Art (if Photoshop won't give the program for free use Gimp. Don't use government money to sell proprietary programs.) Buy general purpose machines for a library lab for poorer students to do homework. Get some Linux boxes for a programming lab and teach computer programming. Buy some microcontrollers like the Basic Stamp for an electronics class. Some laptops on carts for classes that don't necessarily need computers every day, but like math have a segment on programming to approximate integration. If you just buy one type of computer, you really don't teach computer usage very well.
I'm not going to offer advice about the technology because I've got no experience in an educational setting - other than to plead for a more imaginative approach than just loading Windows + Office bloatware onto bog-standard PCs. If you've got to invest, at least free up the cash you would have spent on licenses by using the freely-available open source options.
As for the curriculum side of things, you could do a lot worse than taking a look at what David Smith (www.preoccupations.org) does at St Paul's School in London. Even allowing for the fact that he's working in the private sector where resources are less of an issue, the curriculum he's come up with is light years ahead of anything my kids have been subjected to.
It sounds like you've got a golden opportunity to do something different for a change - so here's a chance to break free from the usual "teach 'em to mailmerge" approach, surely?
If it's anything like my college courses in the states, a lot of time might need to be devoted to keeping students on task, instead of checking social networking sites during class.
If it's anything like any school I've ever seen, getting the kids to pay attention is a problem, period. If a teacher can't keep students' attention, taking away their computers won't help. Nothing will, really. Which is why bad teachers have been complaining about inattentive students since Cuneiform days.
Developing this sort of infrastructure on a school-by-school basis is incredibly stupid.
Actually, it's called free market thinking.
Even in industry big, centralized IT departments are bureaucratic nightmares that drive the people who have to depend on them insane, not to mention the people unfortunate enough to work in them. They quickly develop into monopolistic organizations that charge their customers anything between 5 to 500 times the market rate for simple items and basic support. Much of that money is then wasted on piles and piles of paperwork. Effective support is replaced by the ritual invocation of regulations. Those of us who routinely deal with Corporate IT departments are familiar with the experience.
And now you want to create a government-run central IT department? You must be joking. Have you noticed the fate of the typical large IT project run on behalf of the government -- also know as a billion pound disaster?
It is much, much better to decentralize and let the schools do their own thing. Yes, they will waste some money; but at least they won't waste hundreds of millions at once on some doomed megaproject. Instead, innovative projects can be started up locally with minimal fuss and bureaucracy, and then they can be adopted by other schools. Some will fail, but others will succeed. And headteachers will (if the unions allow it) actually be able to reward good IT people and sack unsatisfactory ones, which makes for a much healthier relationship and a better IT department.
Decentralize, decentralize, decentralize. Centralizing IT support is a sin you should not commit unless you have a very good excuse indeed. Putting it in the hands of government is a sin that cannot possibly be forgiven.
the best solution is to have maybe 4-10 depending on number of students in a class, computers in each room, and having wifi throughout. I believe strongly that everycomputer shouldnt be the same, and that to save costs and not suckel your students on the teets of microsoft, the vast majority should be FOSS. Students should be allowed to bring in their own devices and hook up, and get the majority of the internet through it, most operating systems can work with a samba-based network, and kerebos etc can be logged into from any operating systems.'
Although you dont really need that form of centralized storrrage as much these days, you could just give everyone a flash drive.
Computers should be quick to flash and have little security, the network should have solid security instead.
labs are dead, and thin clients and labs do not go together unless you can distribute the load over all servers in the building it will be a slllllow disaster whenever a class uses a thin-based lab.
Save yourself money and skip the microsoft thing, there really is no reason to do it anymore. Linux is very secure, and students have no roblem with it, the only people that might need microsoft are teachers or administrators that dont know anything else, but dont make your tax[ayers and students suffer for that.
Because his life is not long enough to read his way through all the New Labour management-speak and do his job.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I've worked for 5 years in the academic IT environment (http://www.csn.edu). I've set up LANDesk Management Suite for our 2000+ computerized classroom and lab environment, as well as use Symnantec Ghost Solution for managing these classrooms. As far as tablets go, they sound better than they are. As an I.T. Professional, managing tablets for imaging is a very painful process as compared to OEM PC's (Dell recommended). PC's are easier to manage, easier to secure, and easier to repair if something goes wrong. Considering you are teaching children and not adults, count on a lot of broken computers. :) Good luck!
Disclaimer: I am an employee of CIPAFilter. That being said, mod me down if you like, however I feel it is relevant in this scenario so I will attempt to "plug" my wares. Everyone who runs IT for a school district knows that current content filtering systems are seriously lacking. They're entirely dependent upon a website's url/ip being in a giant list of "bad" sites to know whether or not to filter it, simply not an effective way to go about it. CIPAFilter has taken a very different and much more effective approach. The CIPAFilter does not care where a webpage came from, it doesn't even look at the source, it looks at the CONTENT of the webpage, and determines whether or not to filter it based on what it sees. For this reason (and this is another sore point for tech coordinators) the CIPAFilter is not rendered useless by the anonymous proxies that seem to come out by the hundreds every day which students use to access myspace, facebook, etc. CIPAFilter's pornography filter still functions even through a proxy. CIPAFilter has also entirely automated the anonymous proxy detection process, there is no other system that can even come close to our effectiveness against proxies. CIPAFilter has also incorporated everything else a school district needs into one hardware unit (1-U rackmount box). Stateful firewall with full nat support, static routing, a router with full support for advanced protocols, antispam, antivirus, email archiving, full internet usage reporting with the ability to get a complete report on individual users including what they searched the internet for, etc. If this is something any of you admins want to learn more about, I promise we do not use pressure tactics at CIPAFilter, we don't have to. Once we get the information out there, people generally come to us on their own. If you want to learn a little bit more about it I can be reached at 1-800-243-3729 ext. 252, my name is Joe. Or, you can get whitepapers on our technology at www.cipafilter.com Don't be too harsh with your downmodding, as I said, in this instance what I have to say is relevant (I hate spammers as much as anyone but everyone using a CIPAFilter genuinely loves it).
The title is a quote from Clifford Stoll, astronomer, computer expert and high school teacher who argues that you don't learn with computers but with books and great teachers. I tend to agree with him. Computers are mere tools, great tools that are fun to tinker with. But outfitting entire classrooms with computers will not enable the student to learn more or better. Thinking that computers are an integral way of how we learn in the future is as wrong as believing television changes the way we learn.
Stoll even suggests that in most cases computers are only entertainment devices and if you think about it is true more often than you might realize or want to admit. Students should definitely learn to use computers but they can not replace good teachers so in my opinion computers should be treated as tools like a hand calculator or an oscilloscope you bring in for physics experiments. So laptop carts seem to make the most sense. A very interesting talk by Clifford Stoll where he explains this opinion can be found here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-666540182028461233
they are just a distraction and add nothing of value that a pen and paper can't do for 1/10000000 the price.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
One of the most important things you can do is to get your cabling right now. Put in more than you need currently. Keep the cabling runs accessible.
You know that classroom that isn't currently designated as a 'computer room' - it's now 5 years later with a different school head and they want it to be one.
Even if you don't run 20-30 cables per room (that would be very expensive, I know) make sure there are at least 5. If your school has money, which it seems to do (atm at least), then at least do that now. There will be possibility of a phone, PA/Fire Alarm system (now coming to you over VoIP), teacher's laptop, teacher's permanent desktop, interactive whiteboard, projector, network printer and any other of an array of goodies that could be fitted in to that room.
People tend to focus on the visible stuff in a room ie the computers. It is essential that you keep in mind that all of those computers require infrastructure to keep them operational. And keep reminding the people with the purse strings of that. It should become second nature to all of you every time you want a room with computers in it to then think to yourselves "OK, now how about the cabling - how much network cable will we need and where is it going to run to. How much power is this room going to need?"
And that brings me to another point. A classroom isn't like an office building. Electricians tend to plan things out as if it is an office. They can overlook the fact that in a classroom environment *all* of those computers could be booting up at once. Is that going to trip a circuit breaker? Remind them that it is a school, not an office where people roll in one after the other and boot things and do things a few at a time. Also if you are putting in heat/cooling stick it on a different circuit - assume that everything will be running all at once at full capacity even if only for 15 minutes at a time. Also keep thing in mind for future proofing the place - even if wiring it all now will be prohibitively expensive make sure that they leave enough leeway and access to allow for more future expansion.
I shouldn't have to point out now that similar principles should be applied to the networking and server side of things in the back end? All of those cables will need to plug in to something somewhere along the way. Right now it is safe to have a 100mbit connection to each computer (unless they are video editing and saving Gbs of data to the network) - but for the love of god please ensure that your core network is gigabit and redundant. A few classrooms of students all streaming video is going to bring the entire network to a grinding halt if it isn't.
This will be a little long but I hope it helps. First a little background just so someone might listen to me. I have been working at an independent (private non-religious) K-12 all girls school for 9 years as a network admin. 11 years ago the school began a 1-1 laptop program for 7-12 starting with teachers. All 7-12 students have had their own personal laptops for the last 8 years. 5 years ago we switched to the tablet platform and use it exclusively now. Our students own their own machines and purchase them on our recommendation. We do all repairs on site as an authorized repair shop. Some thoughts on issues brought up by others already.
Heterogeneous environment - Unless you want to punish your teachers specifically and possibly yourself this is insane. Asking the teachers to be able to do mild troubleshooting and technical instruction in class on one platform is hard on multiple it is damn near impossible. Also supporting even a broad range of hardware is hard let alone Win/Mac/FOSS.
Tablets - Will every student love the tablet features? No. Will a large percentage get a huge benefit in disciplines like math/science/art? Yes. Tablets cost more but it allows students and teachers to work whatever way they are most comfortable. Also a convertible tablet can do EVERYTHING a standard laptop can do so you aren't losing anything.
Weight - Try carrying around any model you consider strapped to your back or in your arms for 8 hours a day for a week and then remember that you are 11 and have to carry books and other supplies as well. Then go get a model that at most weighs 4 pounds and hopefully less.
Physical design - Most laptops are still designed for business / home which means they expect the lid to be opened and closed 4-6 times a day and to be carried for limited amount of time. In a classroom environment a laptop will be opened and closed 4-6 a class period and carried for potentially hours a day. The hinges often break due to this. Also corners and screen back strength matter for being a backpack squished between books and dropped from shoulder height onto tile / concrete floors.
Warranty - Make sure the laptops are covered under accidental breakage warranties, because they WILL be broken. Further investigate what that warranty covers and how often. If you break the screen more than once in 365 days or a calendar year is it covered? Is there a maximum warranty pay out on parts? What plastics are covered and who decides when they are replaceable? What is turnaround time on repairs?
Loaners - If you expect the laptops to be a part of education you can't tell the student to deal without one for days or weeks while it is being repaired. You will need a loaner pool to lend out so the student can continue to operate.
Training - This is simply too important to overstate. You need to help your faculty have as much of a leg up as possible. The students will catch up and surpass them it is almost guaranteed. If you are lucky the students will help each other and the teacher when needed.
Wireless - Make sure you get an enterprise class solution that supports load balancing and adding of AP to support density. Most infrastructures aren't designed for the density of schools. Imagine worst case scenario of every classroom filed and online at once, how many is and how close together are they.
Proxy server - You will NEVER have enough bandwidth period. However in a classroom environment often 20 students are going to the same website at once, why download it more than once. Also you can use it to block distractions such as IM, facebook, youtube as well as things like porn. You may think this is censorship and it is at some level, but sometimes teenagers need a little guidance in time management. Also you don't want an 11 year old at porn site on accident. This will also help cut down on malicious software entering school if you block the right sites.
Anti-Virus - Yes all the Mac/FOSS people can tell me this isn't needed on their platform
Hoyty
Avoid over-centralizing things. While it's great when it's all working, it would be a shame for all education to come to a screeching halt while someone fills out forms (in triplicate) to order the forms needed to find out which form must be submitted to gain budgetary approval to replace the fuse in the central server's power supply.
That's not to say that thin clients can't be used, just that the centralization should be at the classroom level (or small groups of classrooms). Preferably, those servers should regularly exchange data with their nearest peer such that you have failover capability (no need for anything automated, a simple manual failover procedure will be much more cost effective and good enough).
Keep in mind that if proprietary software is used, the cost of compliance tracking will easily exceed the cost of the licenses themselves.
As far as giving students a laptop to take home, that strongly depends on the area. In the wrong area, that's like painting a huge target on the kid's backs. If there's real value in the students having a PC at home, a program to provide a desktop at home linked to the school servers will result in a lot less equipment loss. Keep in mind too, that the more this costs parents in money, time, and trouble, the louder they are going to demand evidence that it's actually useful. Even if it's usefulness is readily apparent, that may be an unneeded headache.
In part, that means that unless you're prepared to either provide a pre-loaded home machine without regard to financial situation or provide security escorts for each child going to and from school with a valuable laptop, you'll need to make sure that any required software will run on nearly anything.
You don't mention it being a proxy server to limit redundant downloading, is it? If it isn't why not? One of my biggest problems was total bandwidth, a proxy server solves that quite well in a school environment due to serving the same content to 20 students internally rather than direct from site.
Hoyty
As a head teacher who is involved in the planning for an academy to be opened in 2011-12, I can't help but think that you're fishing for flames. There is no way the funding for your academy would have been released without a coherent plan for ICT deployment - and also in case you haven't noticed the government are pushing rather strongly for Fully Managed ICT services across several schools. But somehow I think you did notice.
I know I'm a late post to this, but being that it's hard to manage a lot of machines in an office building, let alone a school (where the students *will* tinker), thin client seems the way to go. I'd prioritize ease-of-installation. Whether that's a PXE boot, or a virtual image that's regularly rewritten onto the machines, it'll save an enormous management and teaching headache.
yes, we proxy all traffic through the device itself and have full traffic shaping capability and QoS support
I neglected to mention, you can of course throttle traffic based on protocol, IP, subnet. We also have Layer 7 packet inspection and all the things one would expect in a device of this type, along with filtering/downloading permissions based on user group if you like (fully integrate with AD, Edirectory, MAC authentication) so if you want teachers to be able to access youtube for whatever reason (random example) but not students, easily doable based on group membership or CIPAFilter can authenticate against it's own database. It all depends on how you want to implement it. (proxy server, firewall, transparent bridge, etc) we can support any configuration and the vast majority of the time, save the district some money and save admins time and effort.
A few suggestions:
If you visit other schools talk to a range of people. The network manager/IT technician may have a very different perspective from the teachers or senior managers (particularly if they were ultimately responsible the success/debacle! opinions may vary)
Sustainability, lifespan and finances.
Your school must look the life span of the different computer hardware. Experience in my school would suggest that a staff laptop will last about 3 years. Much less if you let students use them. Desktops appear to last about 5-8 years. I am aware the city academies have some incredible budgets that other schools like my own can only dream of, but can you afford to replace that kit every 5 years on average? Iâ(TM)ve heard examples of academies spending huge sums on IT then not being able to replace and sustain this amount of kit.
Maintenance
Both laptops and desktops will require repairs. Generally laptops require much more than desktops. Damage and hardware failure probably resulting in some inadvertent rough handling is a much bigger problem with the laptops. The only real problem weâ(TM)ve had with desktops is the mice and thatâ(TM)s mostly solved now that we are using usb laser mice. Pupils used to beak the old ps/2 port type mice by bashing them around when the fill up with dust. Get some decent laser mice that work on most surfaces or pupils will still bash them around. I would also recommend looking at the build quality of the cases and TFT screen (hard glass covers maybe advisable.) Unfortunately pupils do not appear to treat the IT kit in a considerate fashion. Physical durability is a little more important compared to say an office environment.
Laptops
We had laptops for staff about two and a half years ago and they are starting to fall apart now. Most staff I know have had significant repairs done to these machines at least once a year( broken keyboards, HDs, VGA ports etc) I know the IT technicians find them a real pain keeping them working. It sounds very good as a headline that all staff are equipped with laptops and projectors to teach with, but the reality is rather different. I would recommend desktops (as Iâ(TM)m sure the IT technicians would) in the majority of situations. We also had a case of about 20 laptops to move from class to class. All broken or lost after 18 months. This turned out to be a disaster. Laptops got broken, power bricks went missing, laptops went missing. No one had the time to monitor the collection and return. Again this might sound like a good idea but in practice unless you are going to pay someone to move and monitor these for every lesson it will be a disaster. Trust me. Also unless the kids buy their own laptops they will find a way to break them.
Wireless
I know the technicians hate this too. The first wireless systems we had just didnâ(TM)t work to any usable degree. The current one is mostly usable but not perfect on a large school site, dead spots, poor connection etc. A lot of money and time was wasted on this that wouldnâ(TM)t have been necessary with desktops. Virtually every room was already networked.
Heterogeneous network
I agree with the post about using a variety of computer systems. The requirements will vary enormously from subject to subject. English or history may require little more than word processing and internet access. These subjects may be suitable candidates for thin clients if you really think that it is appropriate for the subject area (I also agree with the comments that some subjects probably shouldnâ(TM)t be using IT at all, the benefits being highly dubious especially when cost is considered into the equation). Subjects like Technology use some very demanding software like solidworks 3D CAD, Illustrator and photoshop that require decent spec machines to run effectively. Our music dept use macs for music production. In these subjects the application of IT has a massive impact on the quality of work and shows pupils relevant industrial skills.
Power requiremen
It sounds like you are pretty comfortable with technology, but are the rest of the teachers? Do they all want computers as "interactive teaching tools"?
Generally, the larger your IT deployment, the more technical support you will need. Time spent fidgeting with computer glitches will be time lost teaching and learning. Then again, maybe your budget is big enough to have IT staff help prepare every lesson, etc..
The major reason computer technology deployments for K-12 education (in the US at least..)and failed to deliver on it's promises while becoming a black hole of spending in the 90s and early 2000's, is that the approach was similar to the one you describe here.
Back then, we gave teachers and administrators the latest, greatest technology and expected them to figure out how to use it in order to make instruction better. Some teachers did just that, but they were few and far between. These early adopters created pockets of technology and inconsistency/inequality of instruction across the school landscape. In the worst cases, the technology sat gathering dust in the classroom closet.
Several years ago I participated in a large-scale Gates Foundation grant to study various models of instruction and gather measurable data about those models. ( Before you jump up-and-down about Micro$oft dealing Windows to our kids, you should know that of the 9 million in grant funding, only 10% could be spent on technology... the majority had to be used to study the instructional outcomes of the various school models.)
As the result of that study we found a number of proven technologies and techniques that helped to enhance the learning experience.
1) Before you buy a single piece of Tek, you need an instructional technology plan that will show how the equipment and software that you choose will create the instructional outcomes you want. Results MUST be measurable so that you can share them with the public (partial to justify the expense...) and instructional staff so that you can build and refine your techniques. The plan should be at least 3 years in depth and be flexible enough to absorb changes in administration and instructional staff. If you do not do this first, all the tek in the world wont help you educate kids.
2) Develop a support plan and a refresh cycle. This is the IT side of the house. You plan should include long term training both for new staff and a constant refreshers for existing staff. You want admin computing (see #3 below ) to be a no-brainier so you can concentrate your resources on the instructional side of the house.
3) Deploy a standardized technology to instructors and administrators in order to cover the rote administrative tasks like grading, email, communication, Internet research, and word processing. Thin client works very well for this. It's robust and consistent.
4) No Classroom Computers in Grades K-3: Children at these ages need to focus on interpersonal and cognitive skills. Computer Technology at this level has been shown in many studies to decrease the learning process.
5) Deploy Smartboards, LCD Projectors, a Presentation PC with an attached "Elmo", and classroom sound amplification system (such as the "FrontRow" product). Of all this equipment, the piece that will make the most difference is the amplification system. This technology has been proven time and time again to increase student learning/comprehension and at the same time, reduce teacher absenteeism.
6) Consider learning labs and mobile devices such as tablets and laptop carts, if they fit into your instructional technology and support plans and maximize your available resources.
And just some tips from my own years of experience in edTek:
-Break the low voltage data infrastructure wiring out from the general contractor who is building your new school. Generals don't understand the big-picture of data. Be sure that the IT staff is involved in the deployment and design of your plant.
-Don't skimp on power outlets and data jacks!
-Laptop carts can be very heavy when fully loaded. If you use them, go with more small ones with fewer laptops.
-If you engage a consultant(s) to oversee your tek deployment, be sure they have lots of experience with school technology. Business folks often don't understand the differences that exist between the private sector and education.
Don't fret over the Windows/Mac/Linux issue for instruction. If your teachers are edu
A new school went up in my area. They installed a projector mounted to the ceiling of every classroom, with wiring run through the wall to the teacher's computer, with additional hookups for elmos, DVD players, etc. That's a pretty nifty solution.
At my school, there's a limited number of projector carts available, and an even smaller number of carts with their own computer or an elmo included. If a teacher planned a lesson around certain tools and suddenly the cart they need isn't available, they are out of luck. Some teachers end up purchasing their own equipment because they can't reliably get a hold of the school's. You should see some of the hack jobs that are done just to get a projector running - video cables suspended across pathways to a projector pointing at an angle to a wall, stuff like that.
Computers have their place but if you are not teaching computing you don't need computers. Even if you are teaching computing theory you don't need computers.
What you need are good teachers, pens, pencils, paper and a whiteboard.
I have not found thin clients to be a great deal when compared to a full desktop (when you can get normal desktops and not the souped-up ones needed to run Vista). If you have a source of used computers (that are too weak to run a full desktop environment) those can work fine as thin clients.
So... I would either put an Ubuntu install on each desktop... firefox, add on flash+java, openoffice, other apps as needed. I don't know what all people use in schools but as far as I know web browser + word processor are the bulk of it. Add educational software to taste. Really any P4 (and some P3s) with 256MB of RAM is plenty for this. Since you're buying new machines they will exceed this fine.
Or, if you wish thin clients, or wish more centralization, use LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project).. you get a few more muscular central servers and basically do run thin clients. This would reduce administration I think. It takes care of mapping printers, allowing local USB memory sticks/floppies/etc. (or turning them off if you *don't* want them to be used), and so on.
Don't go nuts though -- if some art class INSISTS on Photoshop, or you have like CAD classes or whatever, go ahead and give *them* Windows+Photoshop or Autocad... you'll be saving so much money and admin time not buying and babysitting Windows+Office+etc for everyone else
you'll have plenty of time to accomodate a few requests.
Layout? That's up to you. I would think 1 computer per desk is overkill personally, but it depends on how you plan to use them. Talk to your teachers! Some classes, it may not make sense to have a bunch of computers, you'd install them and the teacher would never even turn them on... while for others it could be made integral. I took a physics class where we used computers heavily (even 15 years ago), whereas shop class I would not use a computer at all.
Warning: I current work as a Linux engineer for a major thin clients manufacture
Personally I think thin clients are the best way to go. When I was in school all teachers ever did in computer labs were a bit of web surfing and type up some word docs. Modern thin clients have web browsers built in with Firefox, Java and Flash. Which means pretty much any web site will work without the need of a server. For word processing and any other application you can just setup a server with RDP(free with Windows Server 2008) VNC(also free) or Citrix. Thinclients are cheap and durable which is what any school needs. If you want to put a few more apps on it you could go for a "chubby client" which is like a thin client but with more space for you to be what ever applications you want on it while remaining cheap.
My fault for using terms interchangbly that shouldn't be. When I said Proxy I should have said caching. I was actually curious if your device does caching to shrink internet bandwidth for redundant hits based?
Hoyty
Thin-client while appropriate for some environments (e.g. the medical example listed above) is a poor choice for the classroom. Kids are accessing streaming video, flash animation, etc. all of which are a poor match for a thin client architecture.
The best approach is multi-station PC sharing (see Userful). this is Linux based, but allows you to have 10 monitors and keyboards per box. They have hundreds of thousands of seats installed in schools. You get the full performance of a PC, however with 1/10th the environmental impact. you also get all the advantages of thin client: lower upgrade costs, less electricity cost and (most importantly) centralized control through a web-portal.
Just a metaphor for how those countries are relatively small compared to the US...come on.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Here is a link to information on the Bradford BSF deployment if you can't visit the school in person.
I just can't believe my eyes when I see how many "if you are not teaching computing you don't need computers" replies are in this thread.
Go on people, welcome to the XXIst century!
Pretty much any subject can be tought more efficently with a computer, computers have the fundamental advantage that can be more engaging and interactive. As anybody with a minimal understanding of how learning works will tell you: feedback is essential in good learning, computers are the feedback tool of best resort.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
send me an email and i'll just send you the whitepapers. don't worry, I'm in the business of stopping spam not creating it. my email is jhill@cipafilter.com
"Weight - Try carrying around any model you consider strapped to your back or in your arms for 8 hours a day for a week and then remember that you are 11 and have to carry books and other supplies as well. Then go get a model that at most weighs 4 pounds and hopefully less."
I've been wondering how E-ink* and E-books will change this?
*Especially the models that allow one to annotate the book.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
In your current model of having a computer lab, the students can log in while in the school. What about using a virtual desktop environment (each student has his/her own virtual machine)? Allow access to the virtual machines from over the local lan and internet to allow students to complete their assignments wherever they happen to be. If the students have their own netbooks, then allow them to use a wireless infrastructure. This is a nice solution as it creates a modular environment. If there is a problem, just blow away the VM - and copy a new one into place. This could be done with commercial software like VMware VDI, or open source solutions.
I work for a school district in the US and the bang for your money is Active Whiteboards and software such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activstudio. It was incredible how this technology really enabled better teaching and interactions with the kids. The next thing is mobile labs of laptops. However, these do require a good wireless support network. ski
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Have you checked out Skolelinux?
http://www.skolelinux.org/en/
http://www.skolelinux.org/en/node/9
It is a Debian based Linux distribution specifically made for schools/educational use. A thin client solution and OpenOffice.org are included, and you "can kickstart a whole network of computers within an hour".
Working in a school myself and having been down this path I can tell you there is no perfect solution, just making the best of what is available. I do think large companies such as Microsoft, Citrix and VMware are on the verge though in supplying a product which will be a good fit.
If you talk thin client, typically you will look at Citrix, Blade PCs or VMware VDI. Only one currently supports software required by schools which are heavy in multimedia - Blade PCs. But these are 1.5-2x more expensive than a full blown stand alone PC (despite what their sales people say). If budget isn't an issue as you say they are a good solution.
I went the path of Microsoft's App-V (formerly Softgrid) after reviewing ThinApp and other similar products. One of the main reasons for us was cost, Microsoft is very friendly to schools in this area. Couple this with roaming profiles (for students only) and SteadyState and you should find a stable network. Of course there are other filters and lock downs but that is up to you how far you go here.
The greatest challenge in my mind is how do we as school IT administrators allow a classroom to be both a classroom or computer pool depending on scheduling requirements. Poles get in the way, as well as cords on the floors. Notebooks are easily dropped and a previous poster pointed out the limitations of notebooks in general. Recessed monitors in desks could has OH&S issues even though I have seen some Universities do this. If Blade PCs were cheaper I would go the thin client notebook and have them in lockable cabinents on the classoom wall, without hard drives they could last all day.
Despite some comments on PCs not belonging in schools, I cannot see this change or reverse ever. In fact in 5 years I would suggest IT in schools will be the absolute backbone in all aspects from administration, communication, assignment submission, resources from home and so on. A product which attempts this through one interface is Scholaris.
Good luck.
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Step 1 Decide on how you would like to teach. Look at moodle etc.
Step 2 Design infrastructure around this model.
For example a fast network can support a large number of diskless machines with good CPUs and graphics card that network boot which will allow you to support a number of different images depending upon the lesson being taught. The advantages with this system is that maintance is centralised and simplified with a single deployable hardware item. The local CPU and GPU allow graphics and intensive applications to be run locally without a performance hit. I have seen labs that have deployed this model which work superbly. The only negative is that Windows application don't typically run well using this approach so ensure that there is an RDP client allowing access to a central terminal server for those activities which require windows.
I think the Physics department at my university has done a good job of applying this principle. They used an online homework platform for most of the assignments for the General Physics classes I had to take as part of my engineering program. Now the thing about homework is, you don't really learn much from problems which you solved wrong, and then only learned you solved them wrong when they are marked incorrect by your teacher (which is the 'traditional' method). Usually, in such a traditional method, the teacher will hopefully spend some time in class going over problems students got wrong, so they could at least see the correct way to solve the problem, but it's still not as good a learning experience as when you figure out how to do it yourself.
With this online homework platform, students got up to 5 chances to get the solution correct. That is, if you solved the problem, inputted your answer in the website, and your answer was not correct, it would notify you the answer was not correct (but would not tell you what the right answer is), and give you a chance to try again. I personally found this to be an excellent teaching tool - simply knowing that my answer was not right gave me the chance to go back and look at the problem, and try to figure out where my mistake was. Almost all of the time, I could figure out my mistake, and correct it within 1 or 2 tries - something I never had the opportunity to do in classes I took earlier in my academic career. I truly believe that having those additional chances to correct my own mistakes helped me to learn the material better.
This is one example of something that is not easy to do without computers, but quite easy to do with computers.
Im at a public school in the US that got a grant for each student to have a laptop. So now the district has about 8,000 students with macbooks. As a student, I can say that certain things about OSX annoy the heck out of me, but in general, they are great computers, and I know the IT staff is much smaller that it should be (but they manage, because they dont have to deal with a lot of the problems other computers have.)
I would suggest netbooks or some other cheaper laptop for each student, or 30-40 of them on a locking cart so they can be used in the various classrooms. Try and use linux, but realistically, it might be easier to just use open source apps on top of windows or OSX. Licensing costs for 3rd party apps are insanely high (ms office for instance).
If you want to talk to me/get the contact information of people at my school district, feel free to email me. paul.bartell@gmail.com
Instead of investing in "educational technology", invest the money you save and give it directly to the kids -- it will do them far more good.
I worked in a school a coupe of years ago briefly.
IT admins get paid extremely badly at schools, and the reason for this is that, 95% of them run RM networks.
RM (Research Machines) provide a complete solution. However, this is costly and you end up paying extortionate amounts of money for an easily manageable network, thats insecure, expensive, and unreliable.
This basically means that you can employ low skilled IT staff, and pay them peanuts.
school IT managers as they are shouldn't be allowed to design or implement a network.
it should be decided by groups of professionals.
real hardware should be used.
the notion of thin clients is a joke, they arnt practical. The amount of software that is used on these systems makes it impossible for them to run linux/mac and definitely thin clients.
Macs should be used for arts, design and photography. they arnt suited to everything else yet. but nearly.
My solution would be for a government body to decide all of this. Pick certain hardware vendors for schools to use, design new schools systems,software, and general management.
But i would suggest, HP workstations and servers. exchange server, AD, proxy, ris/ghost server and a filtering system.
Cisco routers, hp switches.
Get professionals to configure it.
if Soulskill is like any other of the school admins i have met, then this school is doomed.
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I was a substitute teacher in a 2nd grade (7-8 year old students) class in the "Silicon Valley" and an administrator walks in and asks, "Does anyone know who was using the computers to look at pornography yesterday after school?" Apparently, the student in question printed out one of his finds. This student, needless to say, was not very bright.
Computers are a distraction from teaching subject area content, and unless you painstakingly white-list approved sites, and monitor those sites, students will find porn.
Assuming that you have a relatively reasonable budget (more than recycled computers, less than brand new everywhere), I would suggest the following:
- Software: Mandriva 2008.1, updated to the hilt (2009 is okay, it's but buggier than an ant-colony), and upgrade to Samba 4 when it comes out. Run Wine for the Windows apps you can't do without. A9CAD and Cadsoft's EAGLE are very good. ProgeSOFT has another good CAD package.
- Use OpenOffice 3.x and AbiWord 2.6.5 for your office suites. 3.x does everything, and Abiword is fast and nimble.
- Bespoke your hardware to one type of everything. Select low-power parts (95W TDP), but heatsink for higher power parts (140W TDP). DO NOT under any circumstances buy HP DL380G3's or G0's as primary servers unless you have 1% ripple on your mains. If you must buy a 'non-bespoke' server, get something like the Tyan Tank series that uses industry standard parts.
- Bother your electrician about getting good, clean, solid and dependable power off of the mains. I have lost 7 DL380s, 6 UPS's, and more harddrives than I can count due to dirty power. If you can get a seperate filtered power grid installed, do it. Stable Power leads to happy electronics.
- Everywhere you'd like to see 1 Cat5e ethernet connector in the wall, run two Cat6's. Put at least 1 fiber drop in each room as you can use it for multi-channel video/voice and data simulataneously with the correct hardware. I've seen student built multi-mode fiber nets carrying an aggregate of 1 Tb/sec bidirectionally.
- Use patch panels and switches instead of just stuffing jacks into hubs.
- Label every single network cable and port in ENGLISH. Being able to know where a cable goes without having to look it up in a translation table is a good thing.
- Set your network up so that machines that don't need to know something don't.
- Set your software up so that machines that don't need something don't have it.
- Develop a 'bog-standard brain-dead' installation image that can be deployed to rebuild a machine that has gone 'funny' or 'off' in minutes. Burn it to a DVD, and update it regularly.
- Install and regularly update an antivirus package (CLAM or similar) on every machine. Do a complete nework scan every night and review those logs.
- Machines that don't need the internet don't need it.
There's a few other things, but I am already pushing the limit of reasonable length postings.
I work in an Aussie school, and we've just recently wrangled with the idea of how to best outfit our students with PC's. It's funny, no matter what way we looked at the problem, just about every affordable idea we came up with was really only a workaround way of sharing the machines. For technology to be fully integrated into the curriculum and highly available at the point of learning, there's only one solution. Give every student a laptop. It's expensive, and we can't afford to do it, so I imagine you may not be able to either, but it really needs to be said that it is the best solution.
I remember when we handed laptops to all of our teaching staff, we had theories that it was the best way of giving them access, but nothing like the actual reality. After the deployment the increase in the use of technology (actively encouraged by the schools policy makers) was incredible. I don't think that it would be any different with students. Don't listen to any of the nay-sayers who will tell you they'll be too distracting in class, or the kids will lose them or break them, these are all things that can be worked around.
That's if you can afford it. If not, beware of those who want to cut corners. Schools are notoriously underfunded and there's a temptation to penny-pinch, but the students will suffer as a result. Thin clients for example, suffer badly from not coping with a lot of video/sound/CAD software, and while you can get away with them in certain areas, teachers favour a homogeneous environment throughout.
Anyway, I can bang on about this forever. I guess I'm trying to say that nothing good can come from cutting corners. It's a big responsiblity you've got there, and I hope it works out for you.
L8r.
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
Hi, first, do not make any calculation based on buying machines, but on maintaining them. It maybe easy for you to get a budget for 100 laptops. But if these laptops are carried around by the kids, are to be used with current software, to be replaced every two years (max. life-span I would give to a mobile device under such conditions), you will need at least three additional stadd for doing just that. And how easy is it to get the budget for hiring staff? You do not want to have teachers, who should care about the kids, use their time in doing it administration and servicing, right? I think my proposal would be a real thin client. A perfect solution may be something like Sun's Ray, as there is NO (zero) software installed on the client. This means that replacing a broken terminal requires you to plug-in one, that's it. Can be done by everyone who is able to change a light-bulb. Sun has huge reductions for educational institutions by the way. Attach this to a relieable server with some failover and such. Spend 2/3 of your it-budget in this, including its maintainance. Best is to get it with a service contract for the expected life-span. Do not even think about building this on your own or saving some dollars here, again, you do not want your teachers spend theit time on computers later. While the work-hour of someone servicing a centralized server is usually higher then the salary of a guy offering you to take care of laptops for some dollars, there will be only one server to maintain. Every software installation will be done only once. You will not have kids with laptop bags waiting in queues to get their software updated. You can scale it up as needed (at least if you take a machine that is designed for this and not some PC in a server box). Add memory, CPU and such to the server when you need it, install the latest software, make backups - but NEVER have the it service and the kids in the same room ;-)
The only reason for laptops is if kids really have to use it at home. But again, such a machine will be dead after two years, and replacement parts and servicing costs are high, so this will eat up your it and your human ressources budget.
I'd recommend a blackboard as well as pencil and paper. Why? You ever wonder why people can't add or even understand fractions when they graduate from high school? It's because they've never really had to learn it. Similarly with algebra, English or any other number of topics. Why learn it when a program will do it for you.
Seriously, do yourself a favour and only get a (or a couple of) computer lab(s) for use for writing essays (ones with*out* spelling/grammar checkers), etc. Because, otherwise, your just feeding into the laziness of today's students allowing them to learn and understand as little as possible.
In other words, make them do some real work instead of continuing to destroy the education system with that "self-esteem" nonsense. Computers can fit in that. But, it has to be very *very* carefully.
One thing I would suggest is to try to have a robust infrastructure. By that I mean don't depend on the integrity of the software on the PCs or require a specific OS. Locking down a PC works for a while or when you get fired if you break it, but that ain't gonna happen.
The way I would arrange things is to make every PC boot off the network, download a small OS that can image the first partition of the disk from one of a collection of images also stored on the local disk. These images would be checksummed (sha) against images on a central file server.
This way you don't care much if somebody trashes the PCs or needs special versions of Windows/Linux/BSD/LTSP/BYOOS as a reimage will normally take 30 seconds to a minute. Train the teachers how to do this.
You'll probably still want to password the BIOS, but that's a lot easier and less intrusive than trying to lock down Windows without breaking somebodies must have application. You may also want to have a multicast or p2p method of updating the on-disk caches for when you do a big OS upgrade (maybe for monday mornings too).
What you're doing is to try and make sure that anything the little ... darlings ... do doesn't impact you; but you don't need to go past the point where everybody sees them for the shits they are! (okay, okay, some of them are! Better now?)
My wife worked in the IT dept of a large UK school with (1600+) pupils until recently. Their biggest problem is getting good staff who know their way around systems.
The money available to hire good staff is pitiful and you won't be swamped with good IT people wanting to earn 10-15000 quid.
In addition, students try and break things as much as possible. Use cheap commodity kit and be prepared to switch it out at a moments notice.
Also be prepared for the 50% of teachers who can't (or won't) get used to technology.
Enlist the local councils IT dept for firewalls, virus checkers, p0rn filters etc.
Setup a policy to stop ALL use of USBs and reading from external devices. If you don't you will have a multitude of viruses and trojans on day one.
Remember what's important: That the students learn. Every thing you do should prompt you to ask this one simple question:
How does this benefit the students learning?
Computers are great, but there is nothing that a computer alone can do to teach a child. It requires people to do the hard work of actually setting up the computers to be used as tools in the teaching of Math, Science, Reading, History, Music, Art... all the things that are completely doable without a computer.
Where computers can be the most beneficial is with composition, collaboration, and as a tool of learning. Remembering this, you should be able to find the best way to help your students.
--Pathway
The way computer science is taught in British schools is a disgrace, In fact they don't teach it at all they teach something called ICT which basically makes kids learn how to use an office suite (probably puts them off computers for anything other than gaming for life). As the computers are not being used to teach anything worthwhile they will probably just serve as a distraction. Donâ(TM)t buy computers, use the money to take the kids on an interesting field trip instead.
For the situation described by the person asking this question I feel that a combination of a wired and wireless network would be the best solution. As for the type of computer to use in the classroom I recommend convertible laptops/tablet. I would also caution allowing students to take them with them to classes/home. It would be easier and much safer to have the convertible laptops/tablets locked to the desk with a security cable. That way it would reduce the chance of damage. Also I would recommend giving each student a flash drive that has the students files/schoolwork. You could also try using a program like mojopack which allows for individualized OS's and settings,etc. Obviously each school is different and ever school has different needs.
http://www.laptop.org/en/
this is what I saw that worked and didn't work.
1. Basic thin clients in the library overseen by the librarian in kiosks. Make sure the library is open for student use for completing papers (and printing those papers in the library) and doing research. All wired. The librarian has to enforce order, but should not be responsible for ver much tech support other than refilling the paper tray and rebooting.
2. A program to provide each teacher with a school supported laptop. Teachers with a decent laptop and support for that laptop can provide better education. Additionally, as the controllers of each classroom activity, the teacher is going to set the adoption level of technology in the education. If a teacher hates technology or is unfamiliar with it, they aren't going to use those labs or will use them poorly. Don't forget to at least put decent laserjet printers in teacher prep areas or departmental offices so they can print their work for students.
3. Laptop carts with wireless access point and printing. They make nice big carts with single plugs to the wall that provide power for all the chargers, lockable doors, etc. These can be checked out as a shared resource. Teachers who want to integrate laptops into the classroom can do so, and those who do not are not wasting money. Additionally, there are some pretty cool probes and measurement type USB devices that a science teacher could use with a laptop in a classroom that could not be used in a lab.
4. Consider turning those un-necessary departmental computer labs into mini-media classrooms. Configure them so that a teacher can bring in their laptop and connect it to a digital projector and sound system. This will let a teacher learn to produce multimedia presentations and allow them to use powerpoint in an experimental fashion. Additionally, a classroom of students can create powerpoint presentations in the classroom and use the media classroom to present to the teacher and other students.
5. When you're dragging ethernet around, drag extra cables. and leave them unterminated in coils in the ceiling. Have them punched down and labeled on the other end. This will allow you to add additional ethernet somewhere else in the room later to support a dedicated printer, wireless access point, classroom computer, etc. Cable is cheap compared to the cost of dragging cables.
If your budget is really that big:
6. Put a projector in every room for teacher presentations/use with the laptop cart for student presentations. Additionally add multicast support to your network and multicast news channels etc into classrooms. Then your classes can watch historic news live and you have a video over IP infrastructure that can be expanded to other creative uses.
7. IP Phones for telephones in each classroom over the ethernet. In day to day use a teacher can be reached in his/her classroom and warnings can be broadcast over the paging system for safety. In an educational setting an IP conference phone could be setup and live conference calls could be arranged with experts in the fields being taught. Students could have the opportunity to ask someone with great knowledge in some topic their questions. Engaging.
8. If all of the classrooms have projects, add smart whiteboards to the mini-media classrooms. Even among technically inclined teachers, not all of them are going to take advantage of smart whiteboards quite yet.
An additional point--you should push the adoption of open source/free software for use when possible. Standardizing on OpenOffice means that the thin clients are using the same software as the laptops for students and teachers and that students at home can use the same software for free. This is fair for everyone. Some children may have a computer at home but cannot afford Office.
Additionally, a technical staff (probably library based) that is used for education and technical aid to teachers is very useful. This person should be available to help teachers prepare technologically adv
"Rolling it out across the country" is a solution only in the minds of people with Asperger's syndrome
There is no one way which is best.
This is a solution that covers all bases without going over the top. I'd have loved this in school and allows teachers to make *good* use of computers without forcing them to have them there the whole time and play nanny to those not interested in learning.
The concept of a roll-in trolley always reminds me of the TV trolleys. Useful and only there if the teacher wants it!
Silly rabbit
More efficent means you can steal them in bulk rather than one at a time.
Who says school doesn't prepare the kids for the world of business?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
...we have mostly notebooks, arranged in carts. And they are used when teachers expect someone to google something. Students abuse the notebooks, pull keyboard keys off, sit on them breaking screens.
Staff expect you to just fix it, no matter how many computers have the problem. They want the latest programs, get idea about running CAD software from them,and get mad when you tell them thats not going to happen.
Managing wireless is a pain. 20+ notebooks on a single access point? Its slow, and they don't care why. They just know its slow. So you must not be doing your job. You can try cleaver methods of getting around it, but in the end, its gonna be slow unless you run a cable for each computer. But then, why not build a lab?
Someone before mentioned it. but it bears repeating. Batteries. Sure they last a decent time NOW. But in 3 years time when a desktop is still booting in 60seconds, and can run all day, you're gonna be fielding requests to replace batteries. And they are not cheap.
I can't speak for the thinclients side. Closest thing we have is a server that runs office 2007, so that we can use all our CAL licenses to save the school some money on software.
You don't develop curriculum. Teachers do. Well, in the States they do. And since many of them are older 'tenured' staffers, they find it offensive if you attempt to make them feel stupid teaching them things they don't care to know anything about.
Although in the UK, I'm not certain if those same realities exist.
If I myself got to start from scratch. I'd get a couple rooms, build a couple labs. Then have each room with a 'teacher' notebook, projector, and a a few mobile "Whiteboards".
"...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive...it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it..."
Umm, many schools employ this system with no problem. My wife is an elementary teacher in a very economically depressed area and not only do they not disappear, they even have a system where the older laptops from past years can be signed out like library books. Occasionally one gets broken or spilled on but they have already been written off at that point.
The nice thing is that they get moved to one classroom, and the teacher hands them out and collects them. No real room for error unless the teacher is useless.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
I haven't read the entire thread.. but, I haven't seen it suggested yet: Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
.then it doesn't have to be an expensive laptop. I don't really think that mobility and education are tied so tightly. You could also issue inexpensive thin clients for home use, as well. There are portable thin clients available.. but, I would evaluate whether that is really necessary.
With VDI, you would use thin clients inside the school (for faculty, students, conference rooms, etc). You could also allow connection to the VDI desktops from outside the building with SSL. I think it is typical for most students to have a PC...so, what they need is access to the school work and the applications they have installed on their desktop at school. They don't necessarily need a new piece of hardware at home to connect.
Of course, if you did decide to provide them withe a machine for home..
The VDI infrastructure itself will eliminate a lot of hassle with managing desktops. Also, virtualization should be part of your key IT strategy and this will play in nicely with your infrastructure direction.
There are VDI solutions available from a lot of vendors but, the two biggies are Citrix and VMware.
What's the point in teaching them Linux?
The point of the parent wasn't to "teach linux" but to teach whatever subject the teacher is teaching (geography, maths, etc.) using free software to project the presentations, because the legal implications of using unlicensed proprietary software in a class room are financially dangerous.
When they get out into the real world they will find out that most companies actually use Windows and MS Office. {...} Teach them what they need to know to get jobs.
Well, that's the number 1 troll response that people get when they propose teaching with anything else but an exact replicate than what is currently in the workplace.
This is demonstrably bad for a couple of reason :
We're talking about a school. Not some preparatory training course for adults who will be in the workplace within 6 months. But teaching given to 11-19 y.o., who won't be in the workplace before 5-15 years. That's a pretty long time in the computer world.
5 years is what separates several major revisions of softwares.
And in 15 years, the landscape can change beyond recognition. 15 years ago Microsoft wasn't even such a big player in the office field.
So in short, chances are very high that the software with which you teach kids today, and what they will encounter 5 to 15 years from now in the marketplace will share little in common.
Therefor it matters little *what* software you teach them to use.
See how skills under MS-Office 2003 map well with the new MS-Office 2007, and try to imagine how they could even remotely help some future MSO 2012 or MSO 2022 (if microsoft is still around by then and office suite are still used the same way).
The only useful skill that can be taught today to the future is to be at ease with computers in general, and general knowledge about office softwares, etc...
this could be done with any software at hand, and there are some good reasons to pick Linux and OOo.
Mainly financial and legal ones :
- the licensing will be cheaper for the school as OSS is free, whereas MSDNAA requires a tax based on school population.
- also it will be easier and legal for the students to obtain free copies to use at home.
(for example MSDNAA doesn't offer home license for MSO for students, only for teachers, whereas OSS is available for downloading for free).
Currently, if a students wants to use the same software at home, either she/he has to shell out over a hundred buck (cheaper than the normal version, but still not an easy amount of money) or she/he has to p2p-download it from some shady website, putting the family at legal risk and the computer at security risk.
Also other minor reasons :
- teaching diversity : showing that there's more than only Microsoft might help spring more diversity in the corporate world.
Current adults have grown up with a very diverse computing world in their childhood years with lots of different compagnies producing home microcomputers (Apple, Atari, Amiga, etc...) and an incredible lot of varied software solution.
Whereas, current children and youngs have grown up in a world where there has been few thing on computers beside Windows and other microsoft branded software. Showing an inherently diverse world like Linux and OSS might help.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
A thin client solution would allow students to access their workspaces from any computer (e.g. Sun's Global Secure Desktop) without the risks associated with laptops out of school. A thin client system would be much easier to administer, more secure, reduce the number of software licenses required and could greatly reduce the power consumption of the IT facilities.
In Australia, as part of an election promise, the Federal Government is spending $4.3 billion AU (~$3 billion US) to give every student in years 9 to 12 their own laptop.
There has been no thought (and no budget) given to training teachers, or to how the netbooks will actually integrate with classes.
The netbooks will be configured to always use the Dept of Education's centralised proxy servers for a "clean feed", even when the netbook is on the students home network. Performance is guaranteed to suck.
The tender process has been fully corrupted. The winners were selected before the tender even began. This probably happens with most government tenders in Australia although I only know about this particular case personally.
The result of this deployment surely has to be a totally predictable failure.
He introduces the concept of Mind Tools as ...
"... computer-based tools and learning environments that have been adapted or developed to function as intellectual partners with the learner in order to engage and facilitate critical thinking and higher-order learning." (p. 9) These tools include:
In designing the programs, the software chosen should represent knowledge in powerful ways, generalize to different content and subject areas, facilitate critical thinking among students, support simple and powerful ways of thinking, and be easy-to-learn so that the focus in on what is to be learned, not the software.
Once this has been done, the choice of hardware will be much clearer.
For some ideas of how such programs can be run in practice, see the Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology website (http://www.ikit.org, University of Toronto) where there are some papers and video clips of students working with knowledge building software.
Reference:
Jonassen (1996). Computers in the Classroom. Mind tools for critical thinking. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
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I love the thin client model. I've used NCD with Sun Servers, SunRays, Citrix and Windows TS. You can't beat the price, simplicity, energy savings or maintenance schedule. The only problem I ran into was streaming video. They don't (or until recently didn't) stream video well.
Now that Youtube is one of the dominant search engines you kind of have to expect your brand new school to want streaming video. If not now, then certainly long before it is time to replace your thin clients.
I know that's not a solution but it is something to consider.
I'm a big fan of Macs in schools... I can't tell you how much easier it is/was to manage an all Mac network VS an all Windows environment.
With the Macs it was practically a part time job... When the PC workstations that replaced them were installed it was a far greater task.
As far as I have seen the Mac stuff "just works" as they say. With base iMacs in the labs, base MacBooks for the teachers and perhaps for a student or two (plus a number in the library to be "checked out") your workstation needs will be more then met.
If you have the budget for it an xserve on the backend with Apple Remote Desktop the job of managing everything across campus becomes incredibly easy.
I've always been a fan of HP laserjet printers. Avoid color wherever you can because that vastly increases the price of toner.
An interesting alternative to Color laserjets are the Xerox Phaser printers which use wax instead of ink... The quality is really good... perhaps not as good as the best color laser/inkjets but close... and at a huge cost savings.
Retrospect has always treated me fairly well.
Some students need to have a laptop for one reason or another. Provide support for those who have legitimate reasons via an IEP.
Also, if you get a fairly basic server you could provide virtual machines running Linux to the IT kids so they can explore the more complicated stuff... This coupled with a flexible IT course structure will resolve a lot of possible issues as far as students causing trouble... Invite them to be a part of the network team and they will help greatly... This provides job skills which they can use later on in life.
Can you get higher up in your pulpit? I can't see you well enough.
Same
If you are looking to just replace typewriters and overhead projectors in the classroom that is one thing if you want computers to be used to add to educational experience that is a very different goal.
The question comes down to WHY do you need computers in the classroom. Identify your purpose, then your priorities and then an appropriate solution will present itself or at least you will have a much more precise question about which solutions are appropriate.
The most important factor is what is the pedagogical basis for use of computers in the classroom. To effectively implement IT in and educational environment you need a thought out concrete pedagogical justification and a detailed workflow diagramming how your IT infrastructure will operate to satisfy your pedagogy.
I have seen instances where computers provided opportunities that traditional resources did not provide. I have seen faculty use computer based technology to do real time distance learning, adding enrichment material available outside of class time, areas of abstract visualization particularly in math and science, collaborative writing and editing to name a few valuable uses. I have also seen a lot of expensive solutions that were essentially ignored by the students and were utterly ineffective.
In each case a specific purpose was identified, a curriculum was developed to include specific technologies and the role of the computer and the technology was identified in advanced and the tools were selected to match those specific needs and there was complete buy in to the tools by the instructors.
Even though you are not looking at specific applications and are looking at building an infrastructure that can support a broad array of educational implementations, you still need to identify which types of tools are going to be primarily used in your school and build around them to develop an effective solution.
To use computer based technology effectively in the classroom requires faculty educated in how to pedagogically incorporate IT into the curriculum and a administration willing to be purposeful in choices and implementation. Otherwise it tends to be a nightmare of wasted resources and frustration.
Look to the back end, Invest in the things that will last 10 years not 3. Student owned devices is future.
Build a network that can support and allow access to learning resources on MANY platforms. Aim to provide access for student owned laptops, teacher laptops, ipod like devices with wifi access. build it on open standards or platforms that provide API's to access to data held within them (MIS for example that allows your door entry systems to read/write to the database).
Front end concentrate on providing prsentation, callobrative tools, Thin clients and ICT resource areas that are not behind closed doors. Dont abandon the Desktops or Laptops but only provide these where there is no room or more power is required for example Media labs in the case of desktops.
We have been applying to models to extend the reach of our IT budgets at the two main educational centers I maintain.
1.) We've deployed laptop carts to allow the computer lab to come to the classroom. Allowing teachers to more easily integrate computers into their curriculum by easing scheduling.
2.) We've deployed PC sharing/splitting solutions. We standardized on NComputing X300 which includes some video acceleration technology. This allows 1 high end PC to become 4 or 8 virtual PCs. The system is very compatible with all of the software we threw at it. This allows us to deploy clusters in classrooms that need a dedicated bank of computers for specific needs and significantly reduce the quantity/cost of computers to do so.
While we've looked at virtual thin client solutions from Citrix to VMWare Virtual Desktop, the cost per unit and management involved was significantly higher than the Ncomputing X300. They were also not as robust for video.
Unless all you want to do is run OpenOffice and basic Internet they have significant limitations.
I hope this helps. Until Thin Client machines are $99 and can handle video/audio support better. I'd stick with the solutions mentioned above.
I am a third year university student in the U.S. and in my experience, if given the opportunity to distract themselves from the topic at hand, students will do it. I know this because I do it in my classes right now. If your goal is to better the education of the students of your school, giving them all a laptop is probably not the answer. They don't need computers for every second of every day. Additionally, it is incredibly likely that they have a computer at home. Thus, general purpose computer labs should serve your needs quite well. That said, I think you should take a hard look at an Edubuntu (edubuntu.org) thin client setup for your general purpose lab(s). My old high school recently switched from labs full of iMacs to a labs with Edubuntu thin clients and seem to be very satisfied with the results. The first problem I mentioned, students diverting from the intended use of technology, is solved by having an "instructor" interface that has live remote desktop of all the desktops in the classroom, including the ability to remote control any given desktop. On the instructing side of things, the same software that provides the former "enforcement" functionality also allows the instructor to switch all of the clients to "demo" mode wherein all of the student desktops mirror the instructor's desktop for instructional purposes or for the instructor to allow the entire class to view one of the client desktops on a projector or large screen for presentation purposes. For more detailed information on all of those features, check out http://italc.sourceforge.net/home.php.
Obviously for content creation tasks, thin clients are less than desirable. My school has a lab of dedicated Macs for this purpose. This seems a good compromise since Macs are the industry standard for content creation.
For additional information about the setup used in the specific example I described, visit winonacotter.org, and under the offices heading, select technology. The specific hardware used can be found under the "Computer Labs" sidebar heading.
If you are going with PC or Mac or hybrid platform, I highly suggest using DeepFreeze. Essentially, whatever changes are made to the system will get completely wiped out on a reboot. It makes managing a large group of lab machines so much easier. Especially when dealing with a bunch of kids who want nothing more than to cause as much trouble as they can. As far as the platform of choice, being a Mac person, I recommend going with a dual boot iMac environment running BootPicker. It gives the user an option to choosing XP/Vista or OS X when they start the machine. You can still use DeepFreeze and you can manage the deployment using Deploy Studio. There's a bunch of good information over at www.bombich.com.
Data Rocket Jon Phillips
Where were you 15 years ago? That would be 1994. While Microsoft was not as big back then, they were plenty big in the office market... DOS, Windows 3.11, and Windows NT were everywhere you turned. Mac's were popular as well. What were the big office apps... Microsoft Word and Excel. Even on the MAC! Sure, there were alternatives but that's what you heard and saw everywhere you went. In '95 I was working for an ISP who would send out floppies with either mac or windows (3.11) TCP/IP software for your dialup access. 9 out of 10 floppies went to windows users. Today, ISPs blindly assume you run windows completely ignoring the fact there are non-windows systems in the world. Rarely do I see office environments that don't use the Microsoft Office suite.
Apple's been around for 25 years, yet we still live in a Windows/PC world. Will that still be true in 15 years? I don't know, but I think it would be a safe bet.
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I love computers, want to write my own operating system, etc etc etc. I also prefer standard brakes, no traction control or electronic stability control, and manual transmission. I shave with a double-edge razor, but want to move to a straight razor.
Cartridge razors with 5 blades have a fundamental design issue that irritates the skin a lot more and causes ingrown hairs in sensitive areas (i.e. neck); automatic transmission takes control and power away and wastes fuel. They're shiny, they're new, they make things "easier" for people who don't want to take the minimal time to learn, but I seriously don't think they're the best way to do things.
Apply this same thinking to computers and technology in the classroom. It's a great idea to have computers in the classroom, and to use them as teaching tools-- and that's all. They are tools. Any iteration of any technology (computers, CCTV, cars, razor blades, whatever) is either a gimmick or a useful tool; it is not the end-all complete solution to any problem, and you should never treat it as such.
Students shouldn't do absolutely everything on a computer; they should do computer things on a computer. E-mail for communications, Word processors for writing. For research, they should use the Internet for Google and Wikipedia, along with physical books in the library; for arts, they should learn to draw and use musical instruments as well as make vector and multi-layer raster art with Illustrator and Gimp, and pull off audio editing and electronic music sequencing in a tracker or other digital audio workstation software after they've recorded their real instrument.
Fusing new age technology with old age magic and nature was the way of the Chozo; amusingly, a completely fictional enlightened race from a video game actually knew wtf it was doing. Understand that the "old way" remains valid, and blends and coexists with the "new way." Also understand that in many cases the "new way" may just be a shiny, hackish gimmick that makes things "easier" by requiring less thought and skill, but limits the outcome (self-rising quick-rise all-purpose flour for bread, instead of bread flour and an aged sourdough starter?).
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You know computers will be a distraction. So will be notebooks that allow the student to draw doodles when he should put atention. What's more we should have the students standing infront of the teacher paying atention.
The problem is that this solutions distract the teacher from what they should do. Notebooks do this as well: teachers focus on just giving out notes and hoping the student will read those till something makes sense instead of trying to make the student understand.
So computers show you this awesome animation of how it works, give me 5 minutes and I'll show you a flash animation of a ball falling upwards.
Ironically I think that the best use for computers is tied to writing nicer documents for homework, and math and science. The use in math and science though, is limited to programming, I learned programming by reading my math book's demoes, having to write the code generally forces you to understand the problema in the general, conceptual manner that school should make you understand.
My reccomendation:
Make it standard, have the computer Labs, have a computer/thin terminal on each classroom for the teacher to use if the want. Allow optional programs to add nicer things, such as the ability to take list from their palm or cellphone, smartboards and so forth, but only if the teacher needs it. The classroom just needs the cables in place for this and you don't have to get much technology. Finally allow the use of laptops by students and put some wifi in there, you will have to take care of how you put the wifi (limit conections to 80kBps or something). Leave a lab open for kids to use the computers if they wish, that way you don't give a big advantage to those kids that can get a lap over those who don't. Being able to use the lap on the classroom is optional.
Again I stress a lot that the teacher must choose to get a technological tool in their classroom. Otherwise you are giving a screwdriver to a person that only knows how to hammer stuff; the teacher WILL use the tools they are give even if the are deterimental and prevent them from doing their job (making the student learn). Put space in the classroom, so teacher needs a projector, then install it, don't put it in the classroom like the HAVE to make a 500 slide ppt per class. If the teacher wants a smart-board? Just plug it in. Teacher needs more control than a thin-client? Replace it with a full PC, make him/her understand what it means.
I haven't seen Multi-Headed systems proposed yet so....
I run IT for a 400 student Nursery through 12th Grade school in Bolivia. There are 2 Labs. A Preschool / Elementary lab with Windows boxes for playing educational games and a Middle & High School Lab with multi-headed linux boxes for OpenOffice, HTML programming etc.
In the Elementary Lab, kids love the educational games and learn English which is a second language for most of them. They love coming to computer classes. Networked games like Ages of Empires are particularly popular. Some other favorites are Putt Putt, Freddie Fish, Carmen Sandiego and Clifford.
The Middle/High School lab has always been a problem - mainly finding interesting things for the kids to do. Computers is not so popular. There is only so much Openoffice and Gimp you can do. What next? Programming? 3D Graphics? We still haven't found a solution....
A few years ago I looked at thin clients but dismissed them because of the poor graphics performance and poor overall performance. The machines were laggy and games were crap.
We went with multi-head machines. 3 keyboards, mice and monitors on each machine. Performance is indistinguishable from a single head machine. Games run fine - even 3D games if you use 3D accelerated PCI graphics cards - we use Nvidia GeForce MX 440's.
Maintenance is VERY low. I have 39 stations but only 13 PC's to maintain. Students and teachers log in on any station and get their own environment. Home directories are mounted over NFS (performance is fine) and we use NIS for authentication.
One problem has been the inability to run Windows games (most of the best educational software is on Windows) on Linux. Wine doesn't hack it. I've been looking at Virtualbox and I think we have a solution (although no 3D acceleration - yet!). With dual-core machines, each virtual machine gets allocated a core and most of the games run with acceptable performance. When quad-core CPU's are cheaper, I can see a workable solution where 3 kids can be running 3 CPU intensive VM's at the same time with good performance.
Good luck!
The problem with hi-tech solutions in schools is how they are used.
First, this is coming from a tech guy. I have a technical degree and have have been using Linux since '96. You can't call me a Luddite, but I have to question whether introducing tech for techs sake instead of concentrating on the three R's is what kids need, and if it is, are our schools the place to teach tech?
Is the objective to TEACH or to be cool? I have been observing what my kids do in school. They attend schools that can afford whatever tech solutions they want, but is "the best" what we want? Is it a crutch? Does it just help lazy teachers?
Does technology replace teaching? When a student has bad handwriting, the teacher can request a free laptop for that student's use. The student never improves his handwriting and the teacher can read the student's work.
I see students in middle school and high school authoring a power point presentation each week, and maybe three essays each semester. Will they ever learn to write essays or reports, or are these dead arts?
They wanted me to sign a permission slip to make it my responsibility for the safety of a video Ipod (about three years ago) that my son would bring home so he could watch classroom instruction that the teacher did not want to bother to show them during school time. My son lost the $5 pedometer he we had responsibility for the year before. Should I entrust him with a $400+ (at the time) video Ipod? Since I did not give him permission to bring home the Ipod, he had to stay after school to watch the material.
Why can't these teachers show the material during class time? They tell me that there are copyright issues with putting it on the Internet, and I guess they have never heard of password access. They tell me that the Ipod solution will only work with the expensive Ipod, not with software we can install on our home home computer (some kids may not have home computers) or the $29.95 mp3 player my kids have.
The school decided to teach "blogging". Why you need to teach middle school kids to blog is beyond me. They assigned them usernames consisting of their first name, last initial, and the period they were in a specific classroom. This information was available to anyone on the Internet. I informed them that knowing that username Joannahr203-7, was Joannah R and she was in room 203 during 7th period could be a security risk for poor Joannah! The principal told me he was sure that the blogs were not available to anyone outside the school (they were) and that IT people would make sure it was safe for the children (it isn't). My son realized this was a security risk on his own and ignored the teacher and chose a safe pseudonym.
Perhaps safe "HEX" is best taught at home.
The 2-phase ( or 3-phase ) system involving a prototyping phase, a phase in which ALL diversity is tried by the ones present, is better:
but I've never heard of an "institution" doing it.
Which is why closed ecologies ( managed economies ) always die, taking all 'round down with 'em.
There bloody ought to be a rule like:
IF you choose some solution different from the ones already done
{ list of each solution tried, and the results of it, openly available,
deliberately started with an orthogonal set of solutions }
then you must justify your choice sufficiently before committing it,
and are accountable for whatever choice you commit with our ( community ) resources.
This *hopefully* would make diversity of solution possible enough to benefit education, while trimming/limiting the idiocy.
Trusting centralized bureaucracy, however, to get it RIGHT, is worse.
Much worse.
( comical, actually, now nearly everyone insists that those in authority
Just Won't Get It,
but when put in the position themselves, they insist that
The Problem(tm) is that
Others Won't Obey...
depressing...
maybe intelligence is eradicated by our Education? )
Where were you 15 years ago? That would be 1994.
I was a kid, typing his text under WordPerfect running in Win3.1 - just a couple of years after having worked on Multimate under DOS.
What were the big office apps... Microsoft Word and Excel. Even on the MAC!
At that time WordPerfect had had a long and brilliant career in legal agencies, US public & government agencies, and - at least here in Europe - in international organisation agencies (that's how my dad managed to snatch a copy for us from his workplace).
If, in 1994, you were to base your choice of office suite taught in school solely on what was in the workplace, WordPerfect could be seen as a pretty much valid choice.
I'm sure professional publishing on the Mac was used to other set of tools too. I just wasn't Mac-aware enough back then to pay enough attention and remember now what was the publisher's tools of choice.
Will that still be true in 15 years? I don't know, but I think it would be a safe bet.
15 years ago, if you drool-drilled drone-like usage of Word 6.0 on Windows for Workgroup 3.11, would that bear any resemblance to the Word 2007 + Vista stack that is propably appearing in the corporate world ?
Not much than any other office stack back then.
From that perspective, current Word 2007 + Vista are probably similarly different from what will be around in 15 years (think of it as MS Word 2033 and MS Singularity 5 running on a Minority-Report-Gorilla-Arm interface, if you wish) (although with the tendencies of some european legislation - OSS could be absolutely required in the civil service).
And thus it makes no sense to hammer a specific version of software to current youngs.
They better need to learn using a word processor in a general and portable way (whatever the underlying software) instead of memorizing key combination and very specific idiosyncrasies of some set software version that will be long gone by then.
That could be achieved with whatever office suite the school sees fit : MSO, iWork, OOo, KOffice, WordPerfect X3, ... that was the point of my post.
And OOo is a perfectly valid option for financial and legal reasons.
The current status of the workplace is not a valid argument when speaking about teaching in schools.
Kids and youngs needs to learn to use *a* computer, not *the* specific monopoly product du jour.
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In our school, every classroom have a computer and a projector. Along with a Dvd and VHS player. That is often used by the teachers to add more information about the course. I think it's a great think to be able to have one computer per classroom for the teachers.
Teacher training, and working with the school's IT technicians as well, are a central part of the project. It's important that eventually the teachers and IT technicians will be able to set up and run the machines and the software themselves so there is a sense of local ownership rather than us being an outside intervention with limited time span. In the early trials we have been on hand to support the teachers in the classrooms; we expect a gradual transition period and have planned for this.
Generally the teachers we are working with are very comfortable with the laptops and the software, they use computers in a lot of their lessons already (they all have laptops and interactive whiteboards in their classrooms and regularly take their students to IT suites to work on projects). We've built our software tool using open source software and the user front end is web based, so very familiar as an interface to the students and teachers.
As a school IT staffer, we all live under budgets. Building from scratch concentrate on all the classrooms. Every room needs a sound system, projector and document camera if budget allows. If there is a larger amount of money then perhaps those smartboards everyone wants (though ours seem to go rather unused by the people who wanted them) Finally lots of network ports. Classrooms need enough network for each student to plug in a laptop or computer into copper or have PC's along the edges of the room, wireless no matter how good cannot handle 30 kids hitting something at the same time. While laptops seem cool, we still use PC's because of cost, laptops cost at least a third more than desktop pc's and last a couple years less. We have used several machines with 20 inch monitors so the students can work in a group which works quite well. However student computer use is coriculum driven and needs more teacher input.