It's scary to think that it's November already! For our team, that means the Christmas rush is little more than 6 weeks away. 6 weeks to order (and get delivered) all new equipment ready for rolling out in January, ready for the new school year in February.
Since my last post, there have been some positives as far as the budget is concerned. Apple decided to drop the price of MacBook Pros by about $400 each...meaning we can fit all our purchases into the nominal capital budget. At a meeting with Apple reps on Thursday, we have also found out that Apple is offering a 4th year of warranty...looks like they're starting to take notice of what their customers are saying (finally)!!
Plans are underway for the wireless network upgrade (sort of!). Just waiting on final quotes from the electricians (who are installing the Cat-6 outlets for new WAPs) and from HP (who are doing the implementation). I still need to check the calendar to find out when students finish for the year, so I can plan the de-commissioning of the current WAPs, and get the cablers in. Hopefully all cabling can be completed before Christmas, so we can get into the wireless implementation first week back in January.
Sometime before the wireless network upgrade, I need to extract the digit and get MAC address authentication (with dynamic VLAN assignment) working on our network switches. Hmmm...might need to install Windows Server 2003 on a "spare" box during this week.
Migration to Google Mail / Apps is progressing...albeit slowly. Currently testing whether we can use our existing authentication directory (Open Directory) to provision our Google Apps domain. Hope to test this in the next day or two...if all goes well, a migration to Google Apps may be only a week or two away.
Print cost recovery system testing is going well. We're currently testing in one of our labs...so far, so good. Some minor issues, but hopefully Stan (my technician who's doing the testing) will get those resolved.
Upgrade to the Learning Management System hasn't really progressed. Studywiz people are not particularly quick at responding to questions...maybe purchasing "upgraded" levels of support will fix this!? I hope so, because we can't increase our reliance on the product if the current levels of "support" continue!
At different times over the last couple of years, we have spoken about digital video delivery for staff and students. A very popular product among schools is ClickView, which we had seriously considered implementing. However, the lack of support became a serious issue before the project even got off the ground. Since then, we have had brief investigations of QuickTime Streaming server, and using our own PVRs to record free-to-air TV. However, the lack of Mac compatibility with the PVRs made the job too difficult.
However, we have discovered a new Topfield "Masterpiece" PVR, which gives us the Macintosh connectivity we've been craving. So, using a Mac, we can download recordings from the PVR, do basic editing (cut the ads out!), and then export the recording to a QuickTime Streaming server. An added bonus is that the PVR will accept composite inputs, meaning we can also record from Austar, VHS or DVD (subject to copyright restrictions, of course!). A further added bonus, is that using the QuickTime server, we can "catalog" the videos in the Library system, complete with URL. Therefore, anybody searching a topic on the library catalog can simply click a web link to view the video.
Seems a bit strange that we keep making more work for ourselves...I suppose that's what happens when you're continually trying to improve the quality of service! :)
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
2010 Budget
2010 budget submissions are now complete. As I thought, it has become unaffordable for the College to continue on the 3-year replacement cycle for student computers. With the chances of getting an increased IT capital budget at zero, our only option was to keep student computers for a 4th year. However, I did manage to convince the powers-that-be that in order to revert to a 4-year life cycle, we would need to:
a) keep 5% of spare desktops (7 in total for 2010) in case computers break down
b) replace batteries in 3-year old student laptops
c) keep 10% spare student laptops in case of breakdowns
Even with the keeping of student computers for a 4th year, we are still about $50,000 over the nominal budget figure indicated by the Business Manager. So we have to hope that:
a) Apple give us a good discount on about 80 staff laptops
b) We can get more money out of the College, or
c) We have to cut some things from the budget
I have to compile a "shopping list" to send to Apple, in the hope of meeting option (a). Options (b) and (c) are largely in the hands of the Business Manager.
There are a couple of other projects that we are investigating / beginning to implement:
1) Print Cost Recovery.
Our current system sees students print to a laser printer in each computer lab (unrestricted), while all student desktops can print to our Colour Laser - which requires IT staff to enter an admin password on the client computer. Whilst technically, this system has served us pretty well, there is a lot of wasted paper in the b/w lasers in each lab, and typing the password for the Colour Laser can take quite a bit of time, especially during periods of heavy use.
To change all this, we're looking at installing PaperCut. This means that we should be able to give students access to all printers (including the Colour Laser), but "charge" them a cost per page. We would give students an allowance for printing each year...once they've used up their credit, they can purchase more from the Accounts Office. In theory, this should make students somewhat accountable for their printing, and enable us to recover some of the costs of student printing. Time will tell...
2) Move to Google Mail (and Apps)
Ever since we upgraded our Email server to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Server (a change that was forced on us by the purchase of new hardware) our server has been unreliable. Almost every day of late, we have to restart the mail server because of currupted accounts or "zombie" server processes. We looked at other solutions (such as Kerio Mail), but at about $32,000 they were a bit out of our reach.
Then, thanks to St Brendan-Shaw College (Devonport), we discovered that Google offer free email and apps to Education customers. After a bit of testing, I have recommended that this is the way we should provide email to staff and students. Now I just have to come up with an implementation plan - and time is running out before the end of the year! An added bonus is that the current email server can be re-deployed as a PaperCut print server...win/win!
3) Upgraded Learning Management System
Currently, our LMS (Studywiz) will support up to 800 client connections. Thanks to the DER, we can expect more than 1100 computers on campus in the next couple of years. Therefore, we plan to use some of our "on cost" funding to purchase additional servers for Studywiz, to the point where we will have separate Web, Application and Database servers (all 3 roles are performed by one box currently).
Doing this should also give us some additional advantages...currently, our Head of eLearning wants the Studywiz server to directly connect to our Student Records database to get updated data on students, teachers and subjects. Not a good idea, in my opinion, for a server accessible to the entire Internet to have access to our Student Records database. Under our new Studywiz architecture though, I should be able to host the Studywiz database server inside the network, from where it can (securely) connect to our Student Records database. Fingers crossed that this is how it pans out.
Of course, to cope with Google Apps usage, and to enable students to access Studywiz from home, we will need to improve our Internet connection speed. Getting pricing out of Telstra is like pulling teeth, so I don't think we'll be looking at anything faster than our current ADSL2 connection (10Mbit/1Mbit)...the pricing will be waaaaaay out of our league. Instead, we'll possibly be looking at aggregating several ADSL2 links to deliver higher bandwidth, at a fraction of the cost. A further advantage of this scenario is that if we use different ISPs for our aggregated links, an outage of 1 ISP will not kill our connection entirely. This plan is still in its very early stages...so watch this space.
a) keep 5% of spare desktops (7 in total for 2010) in case computers break down
b) replace batteries in 3-year old student laptops
c) keep 10% spare student laptops in case of breakdowns
Even with the keeping of student computers for a 4th year, we are still about $50,000 over the nominal budget figure indicated by the Business Manager. So we have to hope that:
a) Apple give us a good discount on about 80 staff laptops
b) We can get more money out of the College, or
c) We have to cut some things from the budget
I have to compile a "shopping list" to send to Apple, in the hope of meeting option (a). Options (b) and (c) are largely in the hands of the Business Manager.
There are a couple of other projects that we are investigating / beginning to implement:
1) Print Cost Recovery.
Our current system sees students print to a laser printer in each computer lab (unrestricted), while all student desktops can print to our Colour Laser - which requires IT staff to enter an admin password on the client computer. Whilst technically, this system has served us pretty well, there is a lot of wasted paper in the b/w lasers in each lab, and typing the password for the Colour Laser can take quite a bit of time, especially during periods of heavy use.
To change all this, we're looking at installing PaperCut. This means that we should be able to give students access to all printers (including the Colour Laser), but "charge" them a cost per page. We would give students an allowance for printing each year...once they've used up their credit, they can purchase more from the Accounts Office. In theory, this should make students somewhat accountable for their printing, and enable us to recover some of the costs of student printing. Time will tell...
2) Move to Google Mail (and Apps)
Ever since we upgraded our Email server to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) Server (a change that was forced on us by the purchase of new hardware) our server has been unreliable. Almost every day of late, we have to restart the mail server because of currupted accounts or "zombie" server processes. We looked at other solutions (such as Kerio Mail), but at about $32,000 they were a bit out of our reach.
Then, thanks to St Brendan-Shaw College (Devonport), we discovered that Google offer free email and apps to Education customers. After a bit of testing, I have recommended that this is the way we should provide email to staff and students. Now I just have to come up with an implementation plan - and time is running out before the end of the year! An added bonus is that the current email server can be re-deployed as a PaperCut print server...win/win!
3) Upgraded Learning Management System
Currently, our LMS (Studywiz) will support up to 800 client connections. Thanks to the DER, we can expect more than 1100 computers on campus in the next couple of years. Therefore, we plan to use some of our "on cost" funding to purchase additional servers for Studywiz, to the point where we will have separate Web, Application and Database servers (all 3 roles are performed by one box currently).
Doing this should also give us some additional advantages...currently, our Head of eLearning wants the Studywiz server to directly connect to our Student Records database to get updated data on students, teachers and subjects. Not a good idea, in my opinion, for a server accessible to the entire Internet to have access to our Student Records database. Under our new Studywiz architecture though, I should be able to host the Studywiz database server inside the network, from where it can (securely) connect to our Student Records database. Fingers crossed that this is how it pans out.
Of course, to cope with Google Apps usage, and to enable students to access Studywiz from home, we will need to improve our Internet connection speed. Getting pricing out of Telstra is like pulling teeth, so I don't think we'll be looking at anything faster than our current ADSL2 connection (10Mbit/1Mbit)...the pricing will be waaaaaay out of our league. Instead, we'll possibly be looking at aggregating several ADSL2 links to deliver higher bandwidth, at a fraction of the cost. A further advantage of this scenario is that if we use different ISPs for our aggregated links, an outage of 1 ISP will not kill our connection entirely. This plan is still in its very early stages...so watch this space.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Friday, October 2, 2009
A change of direction...who would have thought!?
Quite a bit has changed since my last post, but I shouldn't be surprised, since I was responsible for most of it! It turns out that our "planned" direction of giving students laptops was financially flawed, even though Mr Rudd and his mates are throwing truckloads of cash at us (the Digital Education Revolution). I tried explaining the following scenario to the ICT Oversight Committee, but don't know if all members fully got it...perhaps my delivery was flawed. I hope that writing it down here will make more sense:
Our current enrollment projections tell us that we will have 935 students in years 9-12 (in 2013). Under DER funding, the Govt will fund 70% of the cost of computers for these students (at $1000 per unit)...a total of approximately $163K per year (based on a 4 year life cycle - which I HATE btw, but that's a topic for another post!!)
However, our plan was to provide laptops for year 9s, which they would then keep until the end of year 12 (4 years). Of our 935 students, 265 of them would be in year 9 each year, meaning the purchase of 265 computers every year. Even at $1000 per unit, this means a shortfall of 102,000 each year ($265K for laptops, $163K funded by DER). But, when one considers the machines we are purchasing are more expensive than $1000, it becomes more expensive: 265 computers @ $1199 = $317K in approximate numbers. After the Government's contribution, we are left with a shortfall of $154K every year. Given a nominal IT budget of $300K every year (for maintaining everything else: desktops, staff laptops, servers, networking, printers, etc) this is a big chunk of money to find every year!
So, armed with this information (or something very much like it) I managed to convince the Oversight Committee that their 1:1 dream was not sustainable financially. Instead, we have settled on a plan to provide more "laptop cabinets" to achieve our targeted 1:1 student to computer ratio.
Our first DER progress report has now been completed, and an Implementation Plan based on this scenario has been submitted to DEEWR. Now we have some "on cost" money to be spent...for us, this means:
1) Complete wireless network rollout for the entire College
2) Purchase additional servers for our Studywiz Learning Management System
3) Purchase about 30 - 40 data projectors for classrooms
4) Purchasing software for our extra laptops
Interesting to note that even though we're adding 162 more computers (with the 178 we rolled out in March), we have no plans for additional IT support staff - we think we can cope just fine with the staff we have. Only additional help will be a "lacky" to carry laptops back to the IT Centre for re-imaging during the holidays. If we had gone with the "give laptops to kids" rollout model, I wonder how many extra staff would have been required?
So, now I have an IT Budget submission to get done by next Wednesday. Thanks to the Govt's 4-year life cycle, looks like we have to ditch our current 3-year turnaround plan - particularly for student machines. Hopefully I can convince the powers-that-be to give us an upgraded maintenance budget to cope with the computers that will now be out of warranty.
Well, best get back to it before the boss finds out that I'm working on the weekend!!
Our current enrollment projections tell us that we will have 935 students in years 9-12 (in 2013). Under DER funding, the Govt will fund 70% of the cost of computers for these students (at $1000 per unit)...a total of approximately $163K per year (based on a 4 year life cycle - which I HATE btw, but that's a topic for another post!!)
However, our plan was to provide laptops for year 9s, which they would then keep until the end of year 12 (4 years). Of our 935 students, 265 of them would be in year 9 each year, meaning the purchase of 265 computers every year. Even at $1000 per unit, this means a shortfall of 102,000 each year ($265K for laptops, $163K funded by DER). But, when one considers the machines we are purchasing are more expensive than $1000, it becomes more expensive: 265 computers @ $1199 = $317K in approximate numbers. After the Government's contribution, we are left with a shortfall of $154K every year. Given a nominal IT budget of $300K every year (for maintaining everything else: desktops, staff laptops, servers, networking, printers, etc) this is a big chunk of money to find every year!
So, armed with this information (or something very much like it) I managed to convince the Oversight Committee that their 1:1 dream was not sustainable financially. Instead, we have settled on a plan to provide more "laptop cabinets" to achieve our targeted 1:1 student to computer ratio.
Our first DER progress report has now been completed, and an Implementation Plan based on this scenario has been submitted to DEEWR. Now we have some "on cost" money to be spent...for us, this means:
1) Complete wireless network rollout for the entire College
2) Purchase additional servers for our Studywiz Learning Management System
3) Purchase about 30 - 40 data projectors for classrooms
4) Purchasing software for our extra laptops
Interesting to note that even though we're adding 162 more computers (with the 178 we rolled out in March), we have no plans for additional IT support staff - we think we can cope just fine with the staff we have. Only additional help will be a "lacky" to carry laptops back to the IT Centre for re-imaging during the holidays. If we had gone with the "give laptops to kids" rollout model, I wonder how many extra staff would have been required?
So, now I have an IT Budget submission to get done by next Wednesday. Thanks to the Govt's 4-year life cycle, looks like we have to ditch our current 3-year turnaround plan - particularly for student machines. Hopefully I can convince the powers-that-be to give us an upgraded maintenance budget to cope with the computers that will now be out of warranty.
Well, best get back to it before the boss finds out that I'm working on the weekend!!
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