Welcome to Gaia! ::

CNT 120 Technology Plan Description - Fall 2007

CASE DESCRIPTION
Urban Acres School District is a suburban school district with approximately 2,730 students and 930 staff (Approx. 430 teachers, and Approx. 500 support staff). The district is comprised of five buildings - 3 elementary, 1 middle and 1 high school. The high school has an annex that acts as the administration building and is located at the center of the school district.
Elm Street Elementary - K-5 building with approximately 410 students - 3 miles west of high school
Old Main Elementary - K-5 building with approximately 420 students - 2 miles east of high school
Bridge Street Elementary - K-5 building with approximately 430 students - 3 miles south of high school
Suburban Middle School - 6-8 building with approximately 730 students - 1 mile north of high school
Suburban High School - 9-12 building with approximately 1060 students
High School Annex - Administration Building with approximately 100 administrators (Updated last year.)

Currently, the district has the following technology:
Elementary Schools:
Approx per building: Students - 420, Teachers - 25, Building Staff/Admin - 15, Classrooms - 25, Offices - 4
The building is a basic 2 floor building. The 1st floor contains - Grades K-2 classrooms, offices, all purpose room, and some special classrooms. The 2nd Floor contains - Grades 3-5 classrooms, library, and some additional special classrooms.
Building Network: Each school has a local area Novell network using 10BaseT hubs. There are 4 drops of Cat5 cabling and one fiber drop in each classroom. The classrooms are connected to the Novell server.
District Connection: The elementary schools are not part of the district wide-area network and; therefore, the teachers do not have access to email, the Internet, or a central storage facility.
Computers/Equipment:
• Computers - There are 5 computers in each classroom - mostly outdated, PC 386 machines and several Apple IIe’s. The PCs run some essential math and reading curriculum software, but the software cannot be updated because the machines cannot run the newer software. The students have four of the 386 machines in each classroom and the remaining PC serves as the teacher workstation. The Apple machines ran educational software that is no longer used since the computers can no longer be serviced. The remaining Apple computers are used for basic word processing. Each building staff/admin person also has a 386 machine.
• Printers - There is an old Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 4Plus printer on each floor. This printer is shared from a teacher workstation and is available for all stations to print to in a centralized location.
Other: Desktop security is only a minor issue in the elementary schools.

Suburban Middle:
Approx per building: Students - 730, Teachers - 55, Building Staff/Admin - 35, Classrooms - 55, Offices - 5
The building is a basic 2 floor building. The 1st floor contains - Grade 6 classrooms, offices, cafeteria, auditorium, gymnasium and some special classrooms. The 2nd Floor contains - Grades 7-8 classrooms, library, and some additional special classrooms.
Building Network: The school has a local area Novell network using 10BaseT hubs. There are 4 drops of Cat5 cabling and one fiber drop in each classroom.
District Connection: This building is connected to the high school building via a fiber line (24 strands) that the district owns. The teachers at the middle and high school buildings have email and Internet capabilities.
Computers/Equipment:
• Computers - Each teacher and staff/admin member has a 486 machine (about one-half of these run Windows 95 and the others still run Windows 3.1) with a 10MB Ethernet nic card and cd-rom drive.
• Printers - There are 2 LaserJet 4Plus printers on each floor that are shared for staff.
• Computer labs - There are 2 computer labs available for classes to use. These labs contain older 386 machines running Windows 95. Each lab has its own printer, but the machines are not set up for Internet access
• Library - The library has cable drops, but no networked computers.
Other: Desktop security is an issue in this school.


Suburban High School
Approx per building: Students - 1060, Teachers/Aides - 75, Building Staff - 45, Classrooms - 75, Offices - 10
The building is a basic 2 floor building. The 1st floor contains - Grade 9 classrooms, offices, cafeteria, auditorium, gymnasium and some special classrooms. The 2nd Floor contains - Grades 10-12 classrooms, library, and some additional special classrooms.
Building Network: As in the other buildings, there are 5 cable drops in each classroom (four Cat5 and one fiber).
10baseT hubs are being used to connect computers to the closets.
District Connection: From this building, a T1 line runs to the district’s ISP, so the teachers and staff have email and Internet access. This building is connected to the Middle School with 24 strand fiber optic cable owned by the district.
Computers/Equipment:
• Computers - Each teacher and staff/admin member has a 486 machine (about 1/2 of them running Windows 95, the rest running Windows 3.1) with a 10MB Ethernet NIC and CD-ROM drive.
• Printers - There is a total of 12 LaserJet 4Plus printers that can be found in the building. There are 4 printers on each floor of the building that are shared for the teachers to use. There is an additional one each that can be found in the main office, the guidance office, the library and the athletic office.
Computer Labs:
• Business Department: 2 rooms with 24 computers in each. One lab has recently been updated to Pentium II computers; the other lab still contains 486 machines. The updated lab runs Microsoft Office 97 and Microsoft Works; the other lab runs Microsoft Works and Corel.
• Science Department: One lab of 5-year-old Macintosh computers (not part of the district network).
• Technology Department: One lab of 8 Macintosh computers (not part of the district network).
• English Department: One writing lab containing 24, 486 machines running Microsoft Word version 2.0 and Publisher version 2.0
Other: Desktop security is an issue in this school.

Miscellaneous Network Information:
• IP addresses are static, with a class C license - the district will soon run out of addresses using this method.
• The ISP provides a firewall for security and a filter for the Internet.
• Servers - 2 print servers (1 each at MS and HS), 1 E-mail server at HS for MS and HS, and 1 file server at H.S.
• Staff in the district has been somewhat resistant to change. Several of the teachers in each building do not use the available computers.

District Goals:
The district has just received approval from the school board for a technology budget of $500,000 per year over the next 3 years to update the district. The money will be available each July 1 for the next year of the technology update. As per usual in a school district budget, if the allocated money is not used, it will probably not be available for the following year. You, as the network consultant, must come up with a plan to implement this update as well as suggestions for future updates beyond the 3-year period. The plan should focus on updating the schools and addressing the district goals.

The District has provided you with the following goals (they are listed in priority order):
1. Solve the IP addressing problem
2. Connect the elementary schools to the wide area network
3. Provide email and Internet capabilities to all teachers and staff members in the elementary schools
4. Standardize the software used within the district (word processing, spreadsheet, database, and email)
5. Outline a training plan for all staff members
6. Update student computers, beginning with the elementary schools, so that students have WAN and Internet access
7. Update the hardware to 10/100MB capability (hub and nic replacement)
8. Update the servers
9. Provide a solution for getting rid of old equipment
10. Suggest an equipment replacement schedule for the future so that the district is not replacing all computers in a single year
11. Decide upon a maintenance plan for repairs/additions to the network

Question one.

How many HUBs/Switches should assume for each School? Im currently working on goal 7

i'll look over it again better and see other possibilities maybe but mostly i'd say since your working on a budget and need quite alot of changes to run a basic server model.

Upgrade the main servers nicely add simple W-lan cards to the currently outdated ones and use remote access giving all student an id on the server

it upgrades the intire school system at once and you can give the teacher admin clearence and he/she can monitor the intire class at once.

This should also solve some ip problems since you keep the studen id's in the closed lan network to the server and only need to allow that one to connect to the net

Used to have that at an old job of mine it's very efficient since you just have everything on remote server so getting files is very easy and it allows annyone to look on at what's going on. Wich is probably very usefull in a school situation. That and it's cost effective.

Most of the cost and work goes into good router and servers though.

A note on recycling:
There are a number of places that will take in older computers/equipment and recycle them in some way (like to someone who needs them, overseas, etc.) Though some of the existing computers may be upgradeable. Here are some things I found through Googling (computer donations recycling):
Care Circle: www.Carecircle.net
Share Technology www.sharetechnology.org lists a number of ideas
Computer Hope www.computerhope.com/disposal.htm
I saw recycle for the Troups as well. Lots of possibilities to do some good.