<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div>I had no more resources to throw at it. After it was all over, I ran the numbers and thanks to the ridiculous number of meetings I had to go to on the project I made just barely over $5 an hour. Can't feed a family on that even working 60+ hours a week.<br>
<br></div>We looked at expanding that process and there was just not enough traction to justify staying in it. Marketing up against "everyone use Windows" was outside of our financial ability. When I spoke at NECC (National Educational Computing Conference) in San Antonio in 2008, the room was quite surprised to hear the greatest single challenge was "political engineering". My surprise was that the room was packed to overflowing.<br>
<br></div>Don't get me wrong: the process WORKS. We came up with the first generation of LTSP that would scale to 10's of thousands of simultaneous clients. What we did has not be replicated at even half that scale anywhere in the western hemisphere to date. There are some projects in Europe and Scandavian countries in particular that are close to that scale.<br>
<br></div>Technology changes as well. What worked then for thin client processes is not an ongoing solution now. Between 2006-2007 and now, KVM and SPICE have progressed to provide a far better user experience than what we could do then with LTSP. Server technology has vastly exceeded what we built with in 2006. A dual proc, dual core with a total of 8GB RAM was sizable then and laughable now. Schools we installed with 5 servers we could do now with 1 and still have expansion room. <br>
<br></div>There was a serious emotional toll on the project as well. Watching the leadership squander resources to pad their own pockets or just out of total ignorance was bad enough. But watching them do it at the expense of 140,000 kids who already getting kicked in the social balls just by being there was too much.<br>
<br></div>On the very first school we worked at, we met the librarian who was tickeled pink about the whole project. When I ran into her the following year at DragonCon, she was spitting bile over the project in general and us in particular. It seems the day after we were "officially done", some windows idiot from ITD went to her school and messed with the servers and they never worked again. Of course I was never informed of this or else I would have certainly RUN and fixed things. In fact, that school was the one where we verified the restore process that was fully documented (step-by-step cookbook) and provided to APS. They broke it and didn't care. And the people who were trying to make things work there had no power to get anything done. As far as the librarian was concerned, we built an unstable system that broke as soon as we left and no one could fix it so it was bad from the beginning.<br>
<br></div>People expect Windows to crash and loose data. But a Linux system is touted as being so uch better and more stable so that when ANYTHING goes wrong, the PHBs and everyone want to throw it all out. APS really thought LTSP would work like a VCR. Set it up and walk away and it magically works with no intervention. Well, for the most part that was true for most of the rest of the year. The next school year, all the thin clients were in different rooms and didn't autoregister (by design - needed to KNOW which room they were in for many reasons) and manually registering was about 20 file edits per system. <br>
<br></div><sigh> good and bad memories from all of that.<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 10:09 PM, Dustin Strickland <span dir="ltr"><<a 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">Well, why not try a different area? You might be surprised at the results.<br></div><div class="HOEnZb">
<div class="h5"><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 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>
<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 "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 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 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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<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'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 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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</blockquote>
<br>
</div></div></div>
<br>_______________________________________________<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'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 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>