On Mon, 2004-07-26 at 11:24, Nick Rout wrote: > refer Lyttelton West School where I believe such a system is rolled out > already. [snip] > I think there is probably more to it in terms of money than you think. > for 30 terminals you are probably looking at a $12-15000 investment. > Based on: > > 30 terminals @ $200 = $6,000 > server - dual or quad amd 64 or xeon, possibly 2-4G RAM, raid scsi disks, > GB ethernet to switch probably looking a few thousand bucks here > plus infrastructure, cabling, 100/1000 switch (1000 connection to server, > 100 to terminals) > > Not trying to pee on your barbeque at all, but a 30 terminal ltsp lab > cannot be done on a shoestring, particularly if you are trying to > impress people with its speed and reliability. We should perhaps: > > 1. take a look at lyttelton west and see if its worth showing off, and > look at their budget too. To me the bigger issue is the teaching resources. Teachers need lesson plans, guides on how to integrate with the curriculum, handouts, their own training, forums to share ideas and other resources...
As Lyttelton West has already gone down this path maybe they have already done a lot of this work. If not, it would be good to see the resources that have been put together (using public money) for Microsoft products and convert them to being based on open source products. Even though I currently don't have a lot of time I would be keen to help with this - particularly where Open Office could be used. A related issue is the initiative of the NZCS see: http://www.nzcs.org.nz/SITE_Default/branches/news/Digital_Strategy_04/DIGISTRAT_ICDL.asp http://www.nzcs.org.nz/SITE_Default/branches/news/Digital_Strategy_04/DigiStrat_educ.asp On receiving an e-mail on this topic I replied with suggesting that NZCS should be advocating open source software for this initiative. Cheers, Ian
