[school-discuss] Idea for mobile computer teacher/specialist in enterprise Linux thin client schools

[Daniel Howard <dhhoward@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm talking to several Atlanta schools now that are expecting the new 
enterprise thin client system that William and I recommended within the 
coming months, and one thing that keeps coming up is what happens to the 
computer lab teacher when there are so many PCs (at least 2:1) in each 
classroom.  Plus, many of these schools are bursting at the seams with 
enrollment growth, so the computer lab is a likely target for a regular 
classroom anyway.  This is what happened at Brandon, e.g.

One thought I had was the following: suppose the computer teacher went 
mobile and had on her cart a server that she could use to go into a 
classroom, quickly connect the thin clients in the room to her server, 
and voila, she's in command and can run any apps she has on her server, 
including TeacherTool, etc.  Wireless connection from mobile server to 
Internet would likely be best to prevent the mobile server from handing 
out IP addresses to other school computers if miswired, and that's one 
less wire to mess with too.  At the end of the session, she reconnects 
the classroom clients to the main school server (single wire from room 
switch to data port, e.g.), and the kids reboot and they're back where 
they started.

Any thoughts from the group, pro/con?  Assume all rooms have the same 
thin client platform, so a single config with dhcp could be used.

Best,
Daniel

--
Daniel Howard
President and CEO
Georgia Open Source Education Foundation