[ale] Atlanta school converted to Linux by PTA

[Jeff Hubbs]

Daniel -

This is a tremendous story; thank you very much for sharing it and 
congratulations on a job well done.

- Jeff

Daniel Howard wrote:

>Atlanta Linux Folk,
>
>Sorry to take so long to reply to this, my inbox has been rather busy of 
>late.  Yes, it was I and William Fragakis, two parents and now Atlanta 
>Linux enthusiasts, who were tired of constantly running around fixing 
>Windoz 95/98 problems, that with our principal, mounted initially an 
>insurrection, and now promoted to revolution, at Morris Brandon 
>Elementary School in Buckhead.  Current status is that our school has 
>tripled the number of working PCs in each class with zero viruses and 
>spyware issues, miniscule maintenance requirements, and yes, Atlanta 
>Public Schools is looking at our school as a proof of concept project 
>and believe it or not, is seriously considering whether deployment on a 
>district-wide basis makes sense.  But we had to fight a long battle to 
>get there.
>
>There are many issues that are sensitive, and should be discussed 
>offline.  The key however, is to have the support of the principal, PTA, 
>and teachers at your school, and be squeaky clean in implementation. 
>For example, we hardcoded the MAC addresses of every client to its 
>server via the dhcpd.conf file, and turned off dynamic DHCP so that if 
>someone crossed the wires to the server, it would not hand out IP 
>addresses to the teacher's PCs.
>
>The most important element that allowed us to recommend the K12LTSP 
>software was the fact that teachers were only using the PCs for web 
>browsing, office applications, and finally that the Accelerated 
>Reader/Math package we had been paying for was now available in a 
>web-delivered version.  That meant that if we switched to Linux, we 
>could still do all the critical apps we had been doing in Windoz.  We 
>started with the computer lab, purchasing and installing 25 diskless, 
>fanless thin clients (to show where the future of thin client computing 
>was going), and then converted the former computer lab Dell PCs into 
>servers and began installing them in the higher grades, moving down in 
>grade level as we went.  I sought the donation of PCs from local 
>businesses and got over 100 that we converted to thin clients; we now 
>have about 250 fully functional PCs in our school with a student to PC 
>ratio of less than 3:1.  Teachers are now scheduling PC activities daily 
>for students, since in a 6 hour day, each student can get up to 2 hours 
>of individual time on the PC.  While test results are not in yet, one 
>1st grade class recently got the top national score in the First-In-Math 
>web site, and in another, some students doubled their scores one week 
>after we upped the number of PCs in their class.  I also recommended the 
>installation of a cable modem to augment our local bandwidth, as the 
>district feed was delivering dialup speeds regularly; Linux + higher 
>speed Internet connection gave blazing results.  We used an old PC 
>running Squidgard/DansGuardian for web content filtering and site 
>blocking.  Later, we converted the entire 5th grade to a single server 
>to show the scalability of K12LTSP for reducing the number of PCs to 
>manage.
>
>Months after we initially offered to meet with district IT personnel, a 
>meeting was finally arranged whereby we briefed them on the system and 
>the result was a proposal, then counter-proposal, and finally a recent 
>IT hire at Atlanta Public Schools who came to talk to us about it who 
>'got it.'  She immediately asked that we meet regularly with her team so 
>they could observe the system in operation, evaluate the issues/risks, 
>and make recommendations to her on proceeding with other schools.  We're 
>now working on a major briefing to district personnel based on the joint 
>evaluation efforts of our parent volunteers and district IT personnel 
>and the benefits/lessons learned of our project.
>
>My personal hope is that if they do decide to move to Linux, I will have 
>personally touched the lives of every child in Atlanta.  Linux empowers 
>us...and I didn't really know that much about it when we started.
>
>So, in summary:
>1.  Get the solid support of the PTA, principal, and teachers first
>2.  It's easier to ask forgiveness than ask permission, but make it 
>squeaky clean
>3.  A cable modem or DSL small business connection costs only $100 a 
>month and combined with Linux makes web browsing blazingly faster.  But 
>make sure it's filtered!
>4.  Be prepared to address the usual onslaught of anti-Linux rhetoric
>
>For more info, contact me personally.  If anyone outside of Atlanta 
>Public School would like to see our system in action, contact me; since 
>we're officially part of the system now, we'd have to go through them to 
>help other APS schools.  It's truly amazing to see what happens when 
>kids have frequent access to working PCs and the teachers can use them 
>without fear of failure in their instruction.
>
>Some fun anecdotes:
>
>"We're never going back to the old way for our computers!"  Last year's 
>PTA president.
>
>"I'll take as many PCs as you can give me, now that I see that they work 
>so well!"  A teacher.
>
>"What's this new K12LTSP software we have to get trained on?  I just saw 
>an email about training for it."  "You've been using it for the last 
>hour to read your email on the web."  "Oh, I guess I don't need too much 
>training."  Another teacher.
>
>"You mean that's the same old computer that hasn't worked for the last 
>several years, and now it works great?  What is this stuff?"  Another 
>teacher.
>
>"You know what I love about the new Linux software?  The educational 
>application software is the same on every PC, and I don't have to find 
>the CD rom disk, figure out on which PC it's installed, unjam the CD rom 
>drive that the kids have jammed, and figure out which disk in the 
>package runs the software and which disk has the bonus features."  My 
>daughter's teacher.
>
>"You guys rock!"  Many teachers.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Daniel Howard
>dhhoward at comcast.net
>404.264.9123
>
>
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