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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">We moved on. You know - food, heat,
mortgage, and stuff. For my part, I've left the IT industry and
the fact that having more people make more money was far, far more
important than delivering high-quality cost-effective computing
solutions that actually had educational traction was just one
reason why. <br>
<br>
On 7/1/13 10:09 PM, Dustin Strickland wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAHWNiXzf4b7akBJrmNBh=dfMJHkuSjDxybzcHDDWeqNx8F-47g@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Well, why not try a different area? You might be
surprised at the results.<br>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 10:02 PM, Jeff
Hubbs <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:jhubbslist@att.net" target="_blank">jhubbslist@att.net</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div>Where to begin, indeed. The crying shame is that we
(Aaron, Jim, and I) had done a lot of the scenario
planning work to scale up what we had done to the entire
district - tens of thousands of seats - and create the
industrial processes we'd need to "go big" and still
improve on what we'd done. We had even joined forces
with an established and well-respected 8(a) local
contracting firm to make it easier to do business with
us. But because of the circumstances Jim described, we
couldn't get a fair hearing even though we had
demonstrated in no uncertain terms that our systems
worked extremely well in that environment (even though
we had almost no control over hardware selection). Yet
the outfit selected to do the work couldn't come close
to replicating what we had accomplished even though we
mostly just made use of very common tools and
capabilities present in most any Linux distribution. <br>
<div>
<div class="h5"> <br>
On 7/1/13 7:55 PM, Jim Kinney wrote:<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
<div class="h5">
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>
<div>
<div>where do I begin....<br>
<br>
</div>
As referenced in the ALE posting, two parents
installed Linux in the form of LTSP in their
school. They fought the APS process and
managed to show that having working computers
used more than 20 minutes a week made a
significant educational improvement in the
school. Most importantly, they found a tipping
point ration of 3 students per _classroom_
computer was was the minimum needed to achieve
this impact. The choice of Linux was for cost,
security, reliability. Using thin clients
allowed a lot of students to use a single
"server" in the classroom and minimized
maintenance of the overall process.<br>
<br>
</div>
APS then was motivated by the performance
statistics to do a larger-scale pilot project.
That's where I came in. Assisted by Aaron
Ruscetta and Jeff Hubbs, over the span of 6
months we deployed 33 enterprise-scale server,
2200 thin clients in 7 elementary and middle
schools for APS.<br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>At the end of that school year, schools that
had been performing poorly and had solidly
embraced the new classroom technology showed
significant improvements. Some of these
improvements were not manipulable by faculty as
the tests were done on line by the students.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>Once again, APS had to continue the process
as there was compelling reason to expand what
had started as a parent project.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>What happened next was classic APS
corruption. My team had already been first-hand
witness to blatant theft of servers, contractors
being arrested for attempting to pickup
12-year-old girls, and what smelled suspiciously
of refurbished servers provided as new servers
(of the 33 deployed, 12 failed out of the box
and required new motherboards). APS handed the
next phase of the process to a contractor with
financial ties to a person (who was not an APS
employee but a contractor with no actual
contract) with the authority to decide who got
the contract. The contractor then managed to
never get a single server running LTSP in any
school despite multiple millions spent in server
purchases. They simply didn't have the the Linux
expertise to make it work.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>As I understand it now, the new head of ITD
threw out the entire pile and put in windows
systems. The old head of ITD is under indictment
and many of the APS ITD staff should be joining
him. I would strongly recommend avoiding APS on
this topic.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>I can't confirm the timeline of events, but
my brief look when the APS test cheating scandal
hit the news loosely aligns with my concerns:
APS chose to not continue working with me and my
team likely because of the "trouble" we caused
raising red flags on ethics. The followup group
didn't have the skills to maintain Linux systems
and certainly not LTSP systems so the existing
servers died of neglect. The performance gains
promised in the grant process that funded the
initial and following installations were not
going to materialize so the need to keep the
funding going in the ITD group was a key factor
in APS pushing test cheating. The cheating took
place in the schools that were touched by the
LTSP process that were not being maintained. In
particular, Parks Middle School was one of the
schools that showed remarkable improvements in 2
and 6 months and the teachers attributed it to
being able to split the classes in half (we
installed at a 2:1 ratio instead of the minimum
3:1) and the time spent on test drill in advance
of the actual tests due to an abundance of
working systems. Once those systems failed and
APS was unable to return them to service, the
performance improvements began to fade and thus
the push to regain them at any cost.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>All sour grapes aside, what we saw when those
systems went live was nothing short of total
gratitude from the teachers and rampant
enthusiasm from the students. That was the
highlight of my professional career so far.<br>
</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at
7:07 PM, Dustin Strickland <span dir="ltr"><<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:dustin.h.strickland@gmail.com"
target="_blank">dustin.h.strickland@gmail.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0
0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc
solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>I have been thinking for the past few
weeks about trying to get my local schools
to migrate to Linux. It seems like a
much-needed change. Technology is becoming
more important with each day that passes--
and the coverage of it in the curriculum
is disappointing, to say the least. I
remember when I was in Yeager middle
school, not too long ago, the only class I
had pertaining to computers or technology
was a class on how to use Microsoft Word.<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>Computers are far too important, and
other subjects becoming far too
deprecated(in my opinion), for coverage of
technology in our schools to be limited to
how to use MS Word. It's almost insulting.
Sure, there are programs that the majority
of people need to be familiar with, but
kids need to at least know about the basic
components of a computer and the role of
the operating system. It seems to me a
logical step - in order for the children
to gain an interest and actually learn,
they need to be introduced to Linux.
Perhaps, then, we can see about adding
some more technology into the curriculum.<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>As I was researching this topic to
prepare a statement for the Douglas County
Board of Education, I stumbled upon <a
href="<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.user-groups.ale/44438/"
target="_blank">http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.user-groups.ale/44438/</a>">this</a>
posting. If anyone has any more
information on this case, please let me
know. I haven't been able to contact the
Board of Education yet, but I will keep
you all posted.<br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
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</blockquote>
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<br>
<br clear="all">
<br>
-- <br>
-- <br>
James P. Kinney III<br>
<i><i><i><i><br>
</i></i></i></i>Every time you stop a
school, you will have to build a jail. What you
gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like
feeding a dog on his own tail. It won't fatten the
dog.<br>
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain<br>
<i><i><i><i><br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://electjimkinney.org"
target="_blank">http://electjimkinney.org</a><br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/"
target="_blank">http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/</a><br>
</i></i></i></i> </div>
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