Every year at this time I get a little anxious about all the work that needs to get done at the start of school. Often during the summer, the CESU Tech Support Team is doing major system upgrades and this year is no exception.
We are rolling out about 110 HP netbook computers to incoming Freshman at Mount Mansfield Union HS. This is year two of our netbook project at MMU where we hope to one day put a computer in the hands of every student in the school to help them embrace 21st Century skills that they will need when they graduate from high school. This year we are implementing the Suse Linux desktop on the netbooks for the operating system instead of Windows which we used in the past. We hope that the adjustment will not be too dramtic for the students and staff. Our teachers are working hard to plan curriculum with these tools that use plenty of open source software such as Open Office and online resources such as Google Apps, EDU2.0, and many other online resources that are great learning tools.
Many of our schools are implementing netbook mobile labs that will be used in the classroom with wireless technologies. We are trying to get more computers available to students to use in all of our schools. We are fortunate to have support for this from our school boards, community members, and administrators of the schools.
Many of our schools are implementing a new webpage system called SchoolFusion. This is a system that is user friendly for teachers, students and eventually parents who will have login accounts to update and use the website. Most schools are still working on getting things updated but take a look at Camel's Hump Middle School's page to get an idea of what it will be like.
We are upgrading our Zenworks software from version 7 to version 10 in almost all the schools in the district. This is the software that we use to image computers, manage workstations remotely, roll out software applications, implement network printing and lots of other things that go on behind the scenes that most people aren't even aware of.
We have also begun the work of virtualizing our servers. This is when you have one physical server that is segmented and has several "virtual" servers installed on it. There are many good reasons to do this.
Here is a good explanation of why.
All of our schools try to have a 5 year cycle out plan of desktop computers so many of the schools have replaced some and we are setting them up to use with our software and systems. Many of our teachers have school laptops that allow them to be mobile in the building while still using them with our wireless systems so that they can do grades, create lesson plans, and other schoolwork. Each summer we collect all these machines ad reinstall the operating system on them with our imaging systems to keep them in good working order and keep viruses and spyware at a minumum.
All this, and endless questions, password changes, new employees and students to setup and other things keep me busy and loving my job. I hope that you all had a chance to recharge over the summer and are ready to learn and be open to new experiences as we enter the 2010-2011 school year.
If you have questions please stop by the computer lab at MMU and see me or email me.
My hope is blog here weekly so come back soon and see what cool tech stuff we are up to @ CESU Helpdesk.
Peace, Ms. Campbell
