[ale] Atlanta school converted to Linux by PTA

[Dow Hurst]

With vmware player available for free and wine being so far along, it 
might be good to
consider a testing program for educational packages that don't have any 
equal
equivalent in native Linux format.  Xen might be worth looking into for some
testing as well.  It is an issue that will probably come up at some point.
Dow


Daniel Howard wrote:
>Atlanta Linux Folk,
>
>Sorry to take so long to reply to this, my inbox has been rather busy of 
>late.  Yes, it was I and William Fragakis, two parents and now Atlanta 
>Linux enthusiasts, who were tired of constantly running around fixing 
>Windoz 95/98 problems, that with our principal, mounted initially an 
>insurrection, and now promoted to revolution, at Morris Brandon 
>Elementary School in Buckhead.  Current status is that our school has 
>tripled the number of working PCs in each class with zero viruses and 
>spyware issues, miniscule maintenance requirements, and yes, Atlanta 
>Public Schools is looking at our school as a proof of concept project 
>and believe it or not, is seriously considering whether deployment on a 
>district-wide basis makes sense.  But we had to fight a long battle to 
>get there.
>
>There are many issues that are sensitive, and should be discussed 
>offline.  The key however, is to have the support of the principal, PTA, 
>and teachers at your school, and be squeaky clean in implementation. 
>For example, we hardcoded the MAC addresses of every client to its 
>server via the dhcpd.conf file, and turned off dynamic DHCP so that if 
>someone crossed the wires to the server, it would not hand out IP 
>addresses to the teacher's PCs.
>
>The most important element that allowed us to recommend the K12LTSP 
>software was the fact that teachers were only using the PCs for web 
>browsing, office applications, and finally that the Accelerated 
>Reader/Math package we had been paying for was now available in a 
>web-delivered version.  That meant that if we switched to Linux, we 
>could still do all the critical apps we had been doing in Windoz.  We 
>started with the computer lab, purchasing and installing 25 diskless, 
>fanless thin clients (to show where the future of thin client computing 
>was going), and then converted the former computer lab Dell PCs into 
>servers and began installing them in the higher grades, moving down in 
>grade level as we went.  I sought the donation of PCs from local 
>businesses and got over 100 that we converted to thin clients; we now 
>have about 250 fully functional PCs in our school with a student to PC 
>ratio of less than 3:1.  Teachers are now scheduling PC activities daily 
>for students, since in a 6 hour day, each student can get up to 2 hours 
>of individual time on the PC.  While test results are not in yet, one 
>1st grade class recently got the top national score in the First-In-Math 
>web site, and in another, some students doubled their scores one week 
>after we upped the number of PCs in their class.  I also recommended the 
>installation of a cable modem to augment our local bandwidth, as the 
>district feed was delivering dialup speeds regularly; Linux + higher 
>speed Internet connection gave blazing results.  We used an old PC 
>running Squidgard/DansGuardian for web content filtering and site 
>blocking.  Later, we converted the entire 5th grade to a single server 
>to show the scalability of K12LTSP for reducing the number of PCs to 
>manage.
>
>Months after we initially offered to meet with district IT personnel, a 
>meeting was finally arranged whereby we briefed them on the system and 
>the result was a proposal, then counter-proposal, and finally a recent 
>IT hire at Atlanta Public Schools who came to talk to us about it who 
>'got it.'  She immediately asked that we meet regularly with her team so 
>they could observe the system in operation, evaluate the issues/risks, 
>and make recommendations to her on proceeding with other schools.  We're 
>now working on a major briefing to district personnel based on the joint 
>evaluation efforts of our parent volunteers and district IT personnel 
>and the benefits/lessons learned of our project.
>
>My personal hope is that if they do decide to move to Linux, I will have 
>personally touched the lives of every child in Atlanta.  Linux empowers 
>us...and I didn't really know that much about it when we started.
>
>So, in summary:
>1.  Get the solid support of the PTA, principal, and teachers first
>2.  It's easier to ask forgiveness than ask permission, but make it 
>squeaky clean
>3.  A cable modem or DSL small business connection costs only $100 a 
>month and combined with Linux makes web browsing blazingly faster.  But 
>make sure it's filtered!
>4.  Be prepared to address the usual onslaught of anti-Linux rhetoric
>
>For more info, contact me personally.  If anyone outside of Atlanta 
>Public School would like to see our system in action, contact me; since 
>we're officially part of the system now, we'd have to go through them to 
>help other APS schools.  It's truly amazing to see what happens when 
>kids have frequent access to working PCs and the teachers can use them 
>without fear of failure in their instruction.
>
>Some fun anecdotes:
>
>"We're never going back to the old way for our computers!"  Last year's 
>PTA president.
>
>"I'll take as many PCs as you can give me, now that I see that they work 
>so well!"  A teacher.
>
>"What's this new K12LTSP software we have to get trained on?  I just saw 
>an email about training for it."  "You've been using it for the last 
>hour to read your email on the web."  "Oh, I guess I don't need too much 
>training."  Another teacher.
>
>"You mean that's the same old computer that hasn't worked for the last 
>several years, and now it works great?  What is this stuff?"  Another 
>teacher.
>
>"You know what I love about the new Linux software?  The educational 
>application software is the same on every PC, and I don't have to find 
>the CD rom disk, figure out on which PC it's installed, unjam the CD rom 
>drive that the kids have jammed, and figure out which disk in the 
>package runs the software and which disk has the bonus features."  My 
>daughter's teacher.
>
>"You guys rock!"  Many teachers.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Daniel Howard
>dhhoward at comcast.net
>404.264.9123
>
>
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