Re: [school-discuss] Feedback from the Georgia Educational Technology Conference and a thought

[aaron <aaron@xxxxxx>]

On Sunday 19 November 2006 16:03, Shane Coyle wrote:
> On Sunday 19 November 2006 15:51, Daniel Howard wrote:
> > Open Source Folk,
> >
> > This past week, I gave a talk at the Georgia ETC on Open Source software
> > for schools, and highlighted the Brandon story in particular.
[snip]

I was extremely excited by the response we got at the show as well. Most of 
the GaETC attendees we talked to at our Local Net [LTSP] Solutions booth were 
not only familiar with the Linux and FOSS potentials, but it seems about half 
of them have already deployed Linux at some level of their infrastructure.  
It was abundantly clear that the operational technical people -- the folks in 
the educational computing trenches -- GET IT. They understand that Linux can 
eliminate countless broken windows problems and free them from all the 
proprietary system nightmares that arise from license liability, support 
dumping, forced migration and viral file formats. These people aren't just 
ready to get on board with GNU Linux / OSS solutions, their anxious.

Building outward from Brandon's example (with thanks to some well executed 
"political engineering" by Daniel and friends) we now have 3 of 7 scheduled 
pilot schools in Atlanta installed with enterprise scale LTSP systems, about 
800 thin clients across 11 application and file servers in about 100 
classrooms. The response from teachers and students alike has been 
overwhelmingly positive. Clearly, if those anxious IT services people can 
just manage to convert few broken windows boxes into an LTSP lab at their 
schools then the superior technologies will quickly gain acceptance among the 
people who need it most.  

> > Based on some of the questions I got from school IT and CIO folk, I'd
> > like to pose the following question for our group: Can we put together a
> > complete Open Source solution for schools?  We could use both a
> > classroom server model, as well as an enterprise model (fewer, more
> > powerful serves in the MDF/IDF and Gigabit links to classrooms), but I
> > want to include whatever servers and software would be required for all
> > other school functions, including administrative, grading (OpenAdmin),
> > email, web portal/wiki, client support/tracking (Nagios?), etc.
> > Consider the question this way: If a brand new school/district came to
> > us and asked for a complete, turnkey Open Source solution (assuming we
> > got them a Linux consultant to integrate everything), what would we
> > recommend?

Hardware and Software requirements for LTSP installation in both the Classroom 
and Enterprise server models are pretty well understood at this point. Since 
the student environment is fairly evolved and complete, Linux thin client 
classrooms are an effective entry point for introducing educators to GNU OSS 
advantages.

Here in Atlanta we've already learned a great deal from both the success at 
Brandon and the subsequent work LNS has been doing in the enterprise 
installations.  Given the broad diversity of school environments we've found 
in terms of facilities, staffing and infrastructures, any "turn key" LTSP 
models, if such are even possible, will need to be highly scalable and 
flexible. I think that the support and administrative structures you propose 
will soon start to fall into place as a natural outgrowth of expanding 
installations within the OSS community model. 

> > On a satisfactory note, William just discovered that the SmartBoard
> > interactive whiteboards from Smart Technologies have a Linux version of
> > their software...the revolution continues.

> Outstanding, I am especially interested in the smartboard linux software
> since my local district just picked up a few of those and certainly wouldn't 
> want to hear Linux doesn't support them.

I spoke to the Smart Board reps at the GaETC show and can confirm that they 
have current Linux software versions available for their white board and TV 
overlay product lines.  Both the Prometheus and Computrac technical reps were 
promising Linux software support in first quarter '07.

Supporting the most basic functions of interactive white boards is a simple 
matter of reading mouse commands. At the show I also learned of an 
interactive board company here in Georgia (though name eludes me at the 
moment) that advertises their product protocols as open architecture, so I'm 
hoping to look into what's involved in providing Linux softare for their 
product line. Some of the "highlighting" overlays and multi-remote student 
polling features of the high end white board products are trickier, but not a 
daunting project from the Open programming view. Maybe as simple as adapting 
and coordinating Tux Paint to draw onto automatic screen snapshots? ;-)

peace
aaron

> -- 
> Shane Coyle
> www.edu-nix.org
> ---
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