[plug] Schools [taken] out today?

[Gavin Rogers]

Quoting Mark Nold <markn at enspace.com>:

> I'm surprised though as from my (little) knowledge of WA Public Schools and
> IT they went through a process recently where they each had $x to go out and
> buy PC's _and_ software. They seemed to be individually responsible (as a
> school) for their own IT destiny. This sounded like a terrible waste as no
> shared support, no group purchasing, no commonality.

Indeed it was. Unfortunately, the department likes schools to 'do their own
thing' and the department provides guidelines, but hardly every mandates. This
is true in IT at least.

Just a bit of background. I work as the IT support person for Greenwood Senior
High school (government) - it's my fulltime job, I'm not a teacher... We have
220 Windows NT 4 /2000 workstations, file serving is done by Windows 2000
machines, Internet and dial-in handled by Linux. Microsoft or Linux, the school
hasn't spent a cent on operating systems for 3 years. 

I think I'm only one of a handful of fulltime non-teaching staff IT
administrators working in a school. In most schools, IT is handled part-time by
one teacher that volunteered his services, or by an external contracting
company. This is part of the 'why is there no Linux here' problem too - is a
teacher going to sit down and learn a new operating system (in his own time), or
is he more likely to go out and buy a server, and say, "Windows server looks
fairly easy - it looks like normal Windows" and go from there?

I dislike Microsoft's business practices, and I think Microsoft should be
_paying_ schools to use Microsoft software (or at least giving them free
licenses), since we are teaching generations of students how to use Microsoft
software. The hardest thing to ignore is the market dominance Microsoft
_already_ has. Students, staff, and parents are already used to using Microsoft
Office and microsoft operating systems. It will be one of the most difficult
things to convince people of - computer != Microsoft. I believe that Windows
isn't the main driving force behind Microsoft's dominance, it's *office*.

Students especially are so used to the Windows architecture that many of our
Macintosh PCs in the same lab are used last or ignored. I've heard at least once
when a class is entering a computer lab, the kids dive for the PCs, and the
machines that are left are the Macs even though they are just as 'good' as the
PCs in the room. "Ha ha, you got stuck with a Mac!".

Now, back to the issue of department-issued (or mandated) operating systems.
While I was writing this, (damn it, I can't keep up with Leon's emails!! :-) )
I read a post that said that the department has just rolled out NT servers in
schools and made mention of email never failing under Linux. It is only
half-true that the deparment has an NT4 server for every school to use.

The NT4 server from the department handles the admin side of the network
(accounting, timetabling etc) and runs a little email server called NPlex. it
isn't generally used by teaching staff or students. Why the department chose to
use NT4 instead of Linux (or even Novell) is something I'll never know. This
server _only_ handles admin staff email (Principal etc).  On the 'curriculum'
side of the network (my part) we've been happily using a PII-450 running Exim
and IMP under Debian for over 3 years and it has never missed a beat.

When we were originally looking for our email 'solution', (and before the
Microsoft licensing), we actually seriously considered using Microsoft Exchange
with Outlook web access. It looked very good. The problem is, it would have cost
us an utter fortune in licenses and the recommended configuration was for one
computer to handle the 'web' side and another to handle the 'email' side. Two
computers - dedicated servers for email! Pass. I convinced the boss that Linux
would be a better choice, and that same install is still running our web server,
email with web access (approx 2000 emails handled a day). Oh, and the same
computer is also our web server (4 million hits a year) and our proxy server
(30,000 requests a day)

Because of the lack of unification a few years ago, the department now wants to
correct the mistake by installing either a Windows or Sun (see
http://www.e2c.wa.edu.au) thin-client system to every school in the state to
centralise IT support. Too late! Not to mention the severe central
infrastructure required, Every school has now got their own IT systems now, and
thanks to the total lack of standards, it will be very difficult to 'devolve'
these systems into whatever the department thinks up next.

I'm a great fan of Linux in education, Windows still _does_ have it's place (but
without the heavy-handed MS licensing) and I think much of the NT 4 / 2000 file
and internet servers in schools and in the department can be easily replaced
with Linux systems. Linux works better in these situations and runs largely
trouble-free. The department appears to be quite convinced that the only
operating system that can do these things is Windows. 

On the other hand, Linux on the desktop in front of students... not yet.

Regards, 

-- 
Gavin Rogers,                 | Good judgment comes from bad experience,
Systems Administrator         | and a lot of that comes from
Greenwood Senior High School  | bad judgment.