<div dir="ltr">&#39;Murica<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 10:24 PM, Jeff Hubbs <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:jhubbslist@att.net" target="_blank">jhubbslist@att.net</a>&gt;</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>We moved on.  You know - food, heat,
      mortgage, and stuff.  For my part, I&#39;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><div><div class="h5">
      <br>
      On 7/1/13 10:09 PM, Dustin Strickland wrote:<br>
    </div></div></div><div><div class="h5">
    <blockquote 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">&lt;<a href="mailto:jhubbslist@att.net" target="_blank">jhubbslist@att.net</a>&gt;</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&#39;d need to &quot;go big&quot; and still
                improve on what we&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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> <br>
                    On 7/1/13 7:55 PM, Jim Kinney wrote:<br>
                  </div>
                </div>
              </div>
              <div>
                <div>
                  <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
                          &quot;server&quot; 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&#39;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&#39;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&#39;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 &quot;trouble&quot; we caused
                        raising red flags on ethics. The followup group
                        didn&#39;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">&lt;<a href="mailto:dustin.h.strickland@gmail.com" target="_blank">dustin.h.strickland@gmail.com</a>&gt;</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&#39;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 &lt;a
                              href=&quot;<a href="http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.user-groups.ale/44438/" target="_blank">http://article.gmane.org/gmane.org.user-groups.ale/44438/</a>&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;

                              posting. If anyone has any more
                              information on this case, please let me
                              know. I haven&#39;t been able to contact the
                              Board of Education yet, but I will keep
                              you all posted.<br>
                            </div>
                          </div>
                          <br>
_______________________________________________<br>
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                          See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at<br>
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                          <br>
                        </blockquote>
                      </div>
                      <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&#39;s like
                      feeding a dog on his own tail. It won&#39;t fatten the
                      dog.<br>
                      - Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain<br>
                      <i><i><i><i><br>
                              <a href="http://electjimkinney.org" target="_blank">http://electjimkinney.org</a><br>
                              <a href="http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/</a><br>
                            </i></i></i></i> </div>
                    <br>
                    <fieldset></fieldset>
                    <br>
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</pre>
                  </blockquote>
                  <br>
                </div>
              </div>
            </div>
            <br>
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          </blockquote>
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        <br>
      </div>
      <br>
      <fieldset></fieldset>
      <br>
      <pre>_______________________________________________
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</pre>
    </blockquote>
    <br>
  </div></div></div>

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<br></blockquote></div><br></div>