New Mac Suite

[Tricky_Dicky]

Hi,

 

Looking for opinions really.

 

Do you think it would be a good idea to have a Mac suite in a primary school? Basically.

 

We have a 3:1 ratio of laptops to students which are PC and we are looking for ways to really improve the ICT and after introducing some macbooks and seeing how well they were received we are thinking of installing 30 iMacs to really push the kids (and teachers).

As anyone done this in a primary or seen it done, what has been the outcome?

 

Thanks

 

Rich

[maark]

get 60 decent XP/win7 laptops instead for the same price

[frosty]

I would love our feeder Primaries to have Macs so when they come up to us they have some prior knowledge...

 

Great idea...

[Steady]

Nice though isn't it. And the look nice too ...

But that is where it stops. You will be very restriced to your educatiomal programs on a MAC - yes you will have the internet and a reall 'flashy' MAC suite but if you have any regular programs you use then you will either have to fork out more money for the MAC versions (if they do them!) or go with out. An in my experience Teachers don't take NO for an answer.

I can say you will be blessed with out the dreaded InterNet Explorer but have you thought how you will lock them down? PC skills are not much use on a MAC ... If you have MAC experience then that's great but you will be in the minority and you WILL be expected to train others on tasks that they will already know if they had a PC to use (if I had a penny for every time I have been asked where the right click has gone!). Installing programs, imaging machines recovering files - all the simple tasks on a PC take on a new dimension with MACs. Oh not to mention the fact you can't just fix them, you have to send them away (even with Aplle Care) and that's at your own cost.

 

Better the devil you know ...

 

Steady

[jamesmay]

We have installed 32 iMacs in addition to our room of 32 XP Desktops. Well received and great cross curricular space, but depends what its going to be used for. Integrating with Active Directory hasn't worked the way it would be expected and esp with snow leopard having problems with office applications saving.

 

For stuff like Comic Life Magiq, Stop Motion animation, iLife Suite and connecting to learning platforms and using all the features, they are great, for teaching traditional side of ICT like office and stuff, eugh!

 

James

Self Confessed Mac Lover!

[Tricky_Dicky]

get 60 decent XP/win7 laptops instead for the same price

That's a serious consideration we are looking at. They certainly aren't cheap.

 

Nice though isn't it. And the look nice too ...

But that is where it stops. You will be very restriced to your educatiomal programs on a MAC - yes you will have the internet and a reall 'flashy' MAC suite but if you have any regular programs you use then you will either have to fork out more money for the MAC versions (if they do them!) or go with out. An in my experience Teachers don't take NO for an answer.

I can say you will be blessed with out the dreaded InterNet Explorer but have you thought how you will lock them down? PC skills are not much use on a MAC ... If you have MAC experience then that's great but you will be in the minority and you WILL be expected to train others on tasks that they will already know if they had a PC to use (if I had a penny for every time I have been asked where the right click has gone!). Installing programs, imaging machines recovering files - all the simple tasks on a PC take on a new dimension with MACs. Oh not to mention the fact you can't just fix them, you have to send them away (even with Aplle Care) and that's at your own cost.

 

Better the devil you know ...

 

Steady

The current range of eduactional programs for the macs are slim but is increasing. The 2Simple range which our teachers use a lot are all slowly being transfered over to both platforms however I don't know how long it will take.

For locking them down we are getting a mac mini server, I've used macs for a few years but only as a desktop user, never admin so I'm getting some training from the company who are quoting us for installing them. They are also including a staff inset day for the staff, but how many will listen is a different matter.

Hadn't thought about the re-imaging. Is it massively more difficult?

 

We have installed 32 iMacs in addition to our room of 32 XP Desktops. Well received and great cross curricular space, but depends what its going to be used for. Integrating with Active Directory hasn't worked the way it would be expected and esp with snow leopard having problems with office applications saving.

 

For stuff like Comic Life Magiq, Stop Motion animation, iLife Suite and connecting to learning platforms and using all the features, they are great, for teaching traditional side of ICT like office and stuff, eugh!

 

James

Self Confessed Mac Lover!

How are you intergrating with AD?

Have you put Office for Mac on them or gone for iWork?

 

Cheers for the input so far.

 

Rich

[Guest Guest]

If you're going to get 30 macs you will NEED a server. You can run the server OS on a mac mini, i wouldnt like to mind.

 

Is look at mac minis. You can pick them up for less than £550 with a monitor. Next model up is the iMac which start at £900ish and arnt any better specced than the minis.

[RinSewand]

reimaging is a matter of holding down 'n' as they boot, and selecting the image you want (provided you have a server to dish the images out)

[Tricky_Dicky]

We're getting the 20" iMac for education, £600 a piece which I thought was pretty good.

The server will only be handling policies, all storage/processing will be done through the existing AD I think.

 

Cheers RinSewand, Can the mini be the imaging server as well? Obviously the images would be held on a storage server for space.

[jamesmay]

WEll we have done the magic circle integration, machines bound to the mac server and the AD domain, but in the summer rebuilt im considering them being 2 seperate entities. I know it can be done but cant find the resources on how to do it or afford a company to come set up; Home directories. You can extend the AD schema so that when logging onto a pc they get a home directory as specified in AD, then if log into a mac get a home directory specified in Work group manager. This maybe down to the way we redirect my documents etc

 

We have microsoft office 2008 on them and while is a great tool, with snow leopard we have had problems saving to the smb home directories(read only, file open with other user, this type of word file cannot be opened) All a bit of a pain so considering the work suite...

 

We have got the edalive software, some coole maths/english games.

 

Also worht looking at is having rmote desktop for control, installation etc

[RinSewand]

As I was lead to believe by an Apple man - you can use the Mini as a fully functioning server so yeah - provided you have enough storage space to hold the images, you can use it as the imaging server.

[jamesmay]

mini works very well as a server for doing all the basics like workgroup manager, imagining, web etc, and its a great deal for the one without optical drive and 2 hdd in. Wont handle stuff like podcast producer etc though at same time

[marco84]

If you go with the mac suite you may want to look at something like ADmit Mac.

Not used it myself I've just heard it mentioned before!!!

[soveryapt]

The Redeemer School in Blackburn (The Redeemer CEP primary school : Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council) are pretty much fully Mac based.

 

I'm not sure if they have a technician on site or if they buy in help, but might be worth dropping them a line to see how it has worked, any pitfalls they've had, etc ..

 

[richardp]

Hi we have 30iMacs for users and 4 laptops for staff here.

 

I would say that the old argument for getting macs that they are better for multimedia stuff doesn't really hold up much these days. A lot of the applications now have windows versions (comic life, i can animate etc...) plus they do crash and do as many "funny" things as windows does when you are trying to manage 30 of them in a mixed network environment. For example I believe it is still the case that safari cannot access https pages when you are routed through a proxy (not used safari for ages because of this so maybe it is fixed) so any sites that use secure pages will not be usable unless you install another browser. Also I have had problems with the time getting out of sync for some bizarre reason so it prevents you from logging in with a AD domain account until the time is synced as local admin. This was much more regular when we were dual booting them with windows, which we have abandoned for now until imaging a dual boot system becomes easier. Also randomly I will sometimes have to unbind then bind some macs back onto the AD domain for no reason to allow login with an AD account. I have definitely found that once you go beyond a single user environment with a mac or go outside what apple have predefined for you (such as idvd templates etc...) things get more complicated and therefore prone to problems. Even if everything runs smoothly you are adding in a completely new system which means more work.

 

 

Having said all that the primary and secondary kids we have had in using the macs seem to get a real buzz out of using them also I believe it is a very good idea to expose them to other operating systems and software. I personally like OS X as an OS but not to the point where I am blind to its problems. It also can only make your CV look more impressive with imacs and os x server on it. There are problems with support as it seems almost impossible to get any kind of onsite support from apple in the uk. I know of one council who spend approx £40,000 to get better support from them but that still does not get them onsite. If you can justify the expense and see real benefits for the students and can cope with the extra work then go for it.

 

Richard

[stevenwba]

the great thing about the 2 simple range is that there available online too

[Tricky_Dicky]

Only some of the 2Simple range is available online at the moment, I'm hoping and waiting that they will all become available online.

[Sean-OC04]

Hi we have 30iMacs for users and 4 laptops for staff here.

 

I would say that the old argument for getting macs that they are better for multimedia stuff doesn't really hold up much these days. A lot of the applications now have windows versions (comic life, i can animate etc...) plus they do crash and do as many "funny" things as windows does when you are trying to manage 30 of them in a mixed network environment. For example I believe it is still the case that safari cannot access https pages when you are routed through a proxy (not used safari for ages because of this so maybe it is fixed) so any sites that use secure pages will not be usable unless you install another browser. Also I have had problems with the time getting out of sync for some bizarre reason so it prevents you from logging in with a AD domain account until the time is synced as local admin. This was much more regular when we were dual booting them with windows, which we have abandoned for now until imaging a dual boot system becomes easier. Also randomly I will sometimes have to unbind then bind some macs back onto the AD domain for no reason to allow login with an AD account. I have definitely found that once you go beyond a single user environment with a mac or go outside what apple have predefined for you (such as idvd templates etc...) things get more complicated and therefore prone to problems. Even if everything runs smoothly you are adding in a completely new system which means more work.

 

 

Having said all that the primary and secondary kids we have had in using the macs seem to get a real buzz out of using them also I believe it is a very good idea to expose them to other operating systems and software. I personally like OS X as an OS but not to the point where I am blind to its problems. It also can only make your CV look more impressive with imacs and os x server on it. There are problems with support as it seems almost impossible to get any kind of onsite support from apple in the uk. I know of one council who spend approx £40,000 to get better support from them but that still does not get them onsite. If you can justify the expense and see real benefits for the students and can cope with the extra work then go for it.

 

Richard

 

 

Hi Richard,

 

I don't understand your phrase "it seems impossible to to get any onsite support from Apple in the uk"

 

Apple have never supported their products direct to end users in the uk, they rely on a network of Authorised Service Providers such as ourselves. Have you not spoken to one of these in your area ?I'm sure they would welcome the chance to talk to you....

[GrumbleDook]

Personally I think that all schools should be looking to make use of more than one OS, whether we are talking about Windows, OS X or *nix. The same way we should be looking to have more than one application for doing jobs to make sure learners have choice and can work on those transferable skills.

 

But back to the question in hand.

 

Mac Mini as a server works for the workgroup manager side of things, but you might want to look at external storage attached to it for hosting images (considering how frequently / infrequently you will rebuild machines). Also have a look at threads on here about DeployStudio and Apple Remote Desktop too.

 

Also consider dual booting them as well. I know it is additional expense when it comes to licensing arrangements but it also give you more flexibility too. No more "but we can't do this on the macs as it only runs on PCs" or "If only we have Macs to run that on as we need to do something a bit different". Again, a number good accounts of deploying dual boot in recent threads too.

 

HTH

[Robbocop]

TrickyDicky, we've supplied a number of Primary Schools in the Birmingham area with Macs over the last few years, and they're really loving them. If you want me to give you a couple of contacts so you can maybe go and have a look what they're doing with them, let me know. I ought do do that privately though, rather than publicly, to be fair to them.

 

The posts about running traditional Primary applications is true, but that's not what people are doing with them. They're using iLife, Comic Life, iStopMotion and so on to create rich media and embed literacy and other core skills into some fun activities. The work the kids are producing is amazing.

 

In most cases they have deployed a Mac server as well, and we've been happy to work with the Windows service provider in a couple of schools as well to make sure there are no glitches.

 

Let me know if you need to talk to some other Primary IT support guys and I'll hook you up.

 

Rob

[HodgeHi]

We are a primary school in West Bromwich (sandwell) that has been running mac systems for over three years now. The head has been delighted with the transition.

 

We had a suite of 25 PCs when i arrived and we went the mac route to give users the benefit of utilising different operating systems. We have a good mix of software, Some PC-based and some mac-based. But some PC-based stuff can be 'edited' to run on a mac as they are only flash based.

 

I think i mentioned this before in another thread with regards to software. Try to buy online based content for the VLE as most software vendors are now porting their apps. This allows you to use the software across all OSes no matter what they are.

 

We use Open Office on both Windows, OS X and iWork '09 on OS X. Pupils choose what they feel comfortable with. Staff choose Windows and want to choose Office

 

Administering macs is good fun i think as well as frustrating at times. But no more so than Windows/linux etc based machines. I learnt most of what i know on the job so it's not too bad

 

Using a Mac Mini as a server is a good way to start off, i.e. for learning purposes and deployment of images (which IMO is easier than Windows) but i feel when the kids start getting more familiar with the OS and it's apps, you will want to push things further. This will mean you will probably start pushing the Mac Mini to it's limits. But saying that i have used one of these new little things and must say, they are quite nippy.

 

We currently have an Xserve with 8GB RAM and it serves up home dirs over AFP (fully networked accounts) and also runs as an OD Master, SMB Server, FTP Server, NetBoot Server, software update server, a mail server for the pupils to learn email and a web server. We have coupled this with an XRAID with 1TB RAID striped and mirrored, for our storage.

 

We have the AD side of things re-directed to our OS X Home dirs documents folder along with other shares stored on the XRAID.

 

We started off with Garageband as we have sandwell Music come in and teach the kids the fundamentals of music using ICT and this worked well. In fact three years on we still do this.

 

We now use iWeb to teach KS1 how to create web pages and for kids to interact with each other's sites to produce our own inter-networked encyclopedia.

 

In total we have nearly 100 macs (iMacs, Macbooks and Mac Minis) now in school with StudyWiz installed on one of our own XServes and a 2nd XServe serving up our School website and mail (We have 2 servers elsewhere in Co-Lo).

 

I am investigating the possibility now of deploying Linux as a 3rd OS to expose the kids even more to variety of platforms.

 

I think what it comes down to is what you want to achieve. If your school has visions and goals that they feel OSX can help them reach then it may be well worth the investment.

 

On the flip side though, don't just hand over the cash to get shiny equipment. Think it through. Find out what they can bring to your school.

 

And if you want to see how i have implemented this stuff then by all means, pay us a visit.

 

Please note though, it's just the way I've done it. I'm not saying it's the right way, just my way

 

Oh and my experience of the new edu iMac hasn't been the best. They have Nvidia chipsets for the networking. Now, it may just be that the machines start quicker than the older models therefore the networking hasn't started yet but they seem to take longer for then to connect to the domain in XP. This causes a little confusion. Be warned

 

 

Well, that's my 2p worth.

 

Hope it helps.

 

PS. Try to get a good company on your side as well. We got a great deal with KRCS for our macs and support is brilliant. They have helped me out many a time. Thanks antonio

[Robbocop]

There are problems with support as it seems almost impossible to get any kind of onsite support from apple in the uk. I know of one council who spend approx £40,000 to get better support from them but that still does not get them onsite.

 

Richard

 

That's what us ASE Resellers are for Richard! We don't just sell the boxes, but pre-qualify what you want to do, then supply, install, integrate and configure, troubleshoot, test and then support and repair. I'm sure the other resellers on the forum would agree, so there are plenty of us to talk to

 

Rob

[richardp]

That's what us ASE Resellers are for Richard! We don't just sell the boxes, but pre-qualify what you want to do, then supply, install, integrate and configure, troubleshoot, test and then support and repair. I'm sure the other resellers on the forum would agree, so there are plenty of us to talk to

 

Rob

 

Hi yes sorry I do understand that there are plenty of resellers out there that can offer great support (we use one ourselves) but I just wanted to point out that apple do not provide that service directly (although some of the info on their site can give you that impression unless you read the small print). Also that it is something else to take into account for any budget proposal etc...

 

I also completely agree that we should be promoting the fact that there is more than windows out there as an option and that it doesn't really matter which OS or Software/Hardware you use so long as you can achieve your objective/project. From my experience the students are really not phased by the fact they are using OS X rather than Windows but I do find the teaching staff reluctant to use them as they do not have the experience / confidence. However since we have had our mac suite here and a number of schools have been to use them we have had two secondary schools purchase macs because they were impressed with how the students got on with them. Also we have even hosted a Final Cut Studio training session with some teachers and staff from those schools which seemed to be well received, with one of the schools coming back to do a video project off the back of it.

 

Richard

[Tricky_Dicky]

A Massive thank you to everyone who has commented on this thread! It's been really interesting listening to everyones opinions.

I think (please correct me if I'm wrong) but the general concessus is that Macs are very nice doing what they do (iLife, comics etc) but they are not the be all and end all of IT problems and in fact create several of their own so think things through carefully before buying them.

Just before everyone gets bored of the topic I was just wondering what experience people had with dual booting the Macs to give the best of both worlds. I'm starting to think this might be the way forward.

Thanks again

Rich

[HodgeHi]

I was just wondering what experience people had with dual booting the Macs to give the best of both worlds.

 

We dual boot here. Setting up a dual-boot system is a relatively simple process. The only part i am struggling with is the automated process of the Windows Xp side. I do this manually as i don't have the necessary skills/knowledge yet to script this part. What i mean by manual is renaming each machine uniquely and joining to the domain.

 

The mac side is taken care of more or less completely by the imaging process. Once deploy studio is installed, configured and running as it should, then the imaging process, configuring the OS X partition, and deploying a dual-boot setup is as easy as deploying a single OS. There's a little bit more work on the Windows side but that's only because of my limitations. I'm sure others fully automate the process.

 

Also using Boot Picker gives users an excellent way to choose between OSes. Its a simple window that starts up before the login window, that has 2 images 1 for each OS. You can list points about why each user would want to choose a certain OS. Then the user makes the decision and clicks the appropriate image.

 

Again the Boot picker is as simple as deploying the installation file. ARD is a great tool to do this type of deployment, but installation files can also be installed as part of the imaging process using deploy studio.