e_g_r Posted October 11, 2005 Posted October 11, 2005 Our Head (god bless her forward visionary thinking ) is going to allow y10 + 11 pupils to hire laptops for use at school. Anyone out there do this kind of thing already ? Spoken to one school where they allow kid full admin on the local but apply policy's when connecting to Network (Netware). Looking for ideas on what to do for users data, local only or sync to server, full domain access or just mapped network drive and connect to internet through IP.
Ric_ Posted October 11, 2005 Posted October 11, 2005 Use Citrix and prevent and synchronise folers to the local machine. They can then access their files away from the network but are restricted heavily when on the network. You will also need policies to ensure software license compliancy, etc.
e_g_r Posted October 11, 2005 Author Posted October 11, 2005 Unfortunatly no money for Citrix, will have to rely on 2003.
GrumbleDook Posted October 11, 2005 Posted October 11, 2005 Ooooh yes ... we are in the second year of an expanding scheme. PM me and we can have a long chat about the good, the bad and the ugly.
russdev Posted October 12, 2005 Posted October 12, 2005 Our Head (god bless her forward visionary thinking ) is going to allow y10 + 11 pupils to hire laptops for use at school. Anyone out there do this kind of thing already ? Spoken to one school where they allow kid full admin on the local but apply policy's when connecting to Network (Netware). Looking for ideas on what to do for users data, local only or sync to server, full domain access or just mapped network drive and connect to internet through IP. oh dear words forward think visionary and head should not go togthier russs
ninjabeaver Posted October 12, 2005 Posted October 12, 2005 *shudders* It sounds like a world of pain just waiting to unleash it's fury on you with that "visionary" idea. But I'm just biased with the students I have here. They trash anything and everything.
E1uSiV3 Posted October 12, 2005 Posted October 12, 2005 *shudders* It sounds like a world of pain just waiting to unleash it's fury on you with that "visionary" idea. But I'm just biased with the students I have here. They trash anything and everything. We have been there, done that, got the broken laptops to proove it... Our kids are the same Ninja, tis a nightmare situation and is a massive drain on budgets and time.
nuttygeek Posted October 12, 2005 Posted October 12, 2005 We have a trolley of 32 laptops that can be used by the students on our wireless network so they are locked down, and they just log onto the network as though they were using on of the computers in an it room. So this maps there area on the network and give them their permissions as well, all done through AD Group Policy in 2003. Do you have wireless? where will the students be able to use the laptops? How many laptops for hire? where will they be stored/powered/updated? Nuttygeek
e_g_r Posted October 12, 2005 Author Posted October 12, 2005 The kids loan the laptops from a company. They use them at home and school. Were going to start with wireless hotspots. God knows about storage and chargeing. Can imagine the following - Teacher - "where's your homework" Pupil - "sorry me dad sold me laptop for crack!"
GrumbleDook Posted October 12, 2005 Posted October 12, 2005 We are in our 2nd year. The first year was a pilot of 20 students (technology places) in year 7 and this year we have 84 more in year 7. The year 8 students are no longer taught as a single group and are spread out. No single class contains all students. Families lease the laptops via school. They pay use and we pay the leasing company. They are fully insured including accidental damage, absconding, refusal to pay and even return of machine due to lack of interest. We have no financial liability :-) We set up a single partition with a vanilla XP build. We stick on site licensed software and then any other stuff we have bought for these machines. The students have 2 accounts, a network account (locked down the same as on their desktops) and a local account. The local account is a local admin. They can then stick on their own games, printers, ISPs etc. We have lapsafe Ambassadors dotted around the school for security and charging. If a student who has a laptop fails to take it ti class then they are dealt with as if they have forgotten their equipment. The curriculum is tailored to them using a laptop. Storage ... anything they want to backup most be copied onto their home area. We have a folder (c:/work) which both accounts have access to. They use this to keep their work in. We have previously tried to have it so that we had 2 partitions (system and data) but when the imaged machines came back from the suppliers it was cocked up. We aim to rectify this in future. Cost is around £28 this year (£20 last year, but we had some sponsorship). This includes the machines, leasing costs, Office and Encarta costs, a contribution towards security and a contribution towards technician time (the last 2 are nominal really otherwise it would be £40+) We lear new thing everyday ... the present year 8 students don't like using them. They make excuses because they don't like being different to the rest of the students in their classes. We are looking at ways of getting round this. Anyone who wants more info PM me and I'll give you my details and we can have a chinwag over the phone about other problems / successes
ConTheITGuy Posted October 13, 2005 Posted October 13, 2005 Just to clarify: £28? K? each? a week? Andy.
Geoff Posted October 13, 2005 Posted October 13, 2005 £28 to hire a laptop for the year per student I think he means.
GrumbleDook Posted October 13, 2005 Posted October 13, 2005 £28 per month on a 3 year lease. At the end of the lease they are purchased buy the Chair of Governors from the leasing company for £1 a machine and then donated to the families. All done to make sure they are tax free, and completely legal. The actual cost of leasing the laptop this year is £25.38 a month per machine (on a quarterly payment scheme ... it is cheaper if you pay yearly ... but you need a large lump sum to do this. We are looking at sponsorship to help with this.) As I said above the leasing costs of the machine also include a very comprehensive insurance. The families get a machine worth around £1000 retail (when you include VAT and 3 yr NBD on-site support) and on top of that they have a heap of software (the machine is purchased by the school and so can have school licences) and if they were to buy it in the shops with all the same software it would be £1500+ ... The big issues are user stupidity, parents with a little knowledge about machines who cock things up, poor machine builds (I will post a rant about Dell shortly ... once we have resolved some remaining bits ... let's just say I am not happy!) and the sheer amount of machines that need looking after. Students are not the most vocal when it comes to letting us know there is a problem and so we get parents ringing up saying "his computer doesn't work and why am I paying this money for a rubbish machine" and it is just that they have forgotten their local account password or they have delete a shortcut to word. As I've said ... if anyone wants a more indepth chat PM me. It is worth people knowing about the whole story ... successes and the warts.
OverWorked Posted October 13, 2005 Posted October 13, 2005 We've got (or *had*) 12 laptops on a 802.11g wireless network for pupils to use. We've had a variety of problems. The batteries don't last, and the laptops don't get plugged in to charge overnight anyway, so they have to be run off mains all the time. Wireless is erratic. I've got a strange intermittant DHCP problem. The laptops can get a strong signal, but can't get an IP address via DHCP. I've resorted to giving them static IP's. (Any suggestions? - I'd be very grateful). Most important: Laptops are meant to be used by one careful adult. They are not designed to be used by 300 children. We have a very high rate of damage. After 18 months only 2 out of 12 are working. I spend about 10 hours a week dealing with laptop problems. They are very time-consuming. Having said that, we're just about to order some more. Arrgh!
E1uSiV3 Posted October 13, 2005 Posted October 13, 2005 Wireless is erratic. I've got a strange intermittant DHCP problem. The laptops can get a strong signal, but can't get an IP address via DHCP. I've resorted to giving them static IP's. (Any suggestions? - I'd be very grateful). I had the same problem that crept up on me, it was related to having the APs attached to a managed switch with Spanning Tree Protocol enabled without configuring the APs as endpoints. In the end, i configured the switch to run RSTP instread of STP, and set the "fast link" option on all ports the APs reside on.
OverWorked Posted October 13, 2005 Posted October 13, 2005 Thanks, E1uSiV3 Spanning Tree Protocol? I've never come across that one. I'll have to look it up. Some of the APs suffer from that problem, and some don't. It could be down to the switches they're on. I'd never thought of that. Thanks.
Ric_ Posted October 13, 2005 Posted October 13, 2005 @OcerWorked: I had one AP in my last job that did a similar thing - I had to reset the AP every so often ('twas indeed odd).
OverWorked Posted October 13, 2005 Posted October 13, 2005 @Ric_ Yep, that's what I have to keep doing - reset the AP. Some need it every few days and some never need it. I'm looking into Spanning Tree Protocol now - it's doing my head in!
OverWorked Posted January 3, 2006 Posted January 3, 2006 It works! Thanks E1uSiv3. I disabled spanning tree protocol at the start of the holidays and tried the wireless network again today and it still works. Previously, I was lucky if it worked for 2 hours. If we ever meet, I'll buy you a pint.
Geoff Posted January 3, 2006 Posted January 3, 2006 How odd. I don't see how Spanning Tree could break it unless you had WDS turned on?
Ric_ Posted January 3, 2006 Posted January 3, 2006 @OverWorked: I wouldn't count on your problem being fixed - wait until the AP has been used a bit and it will probably fall over - I think that they remember the MACs of who has been collected and then they just barf. Problems like this are part of the reason that I intend to go for an enterprise level solution (probably Bluesocket and managed APs)
OverWorked Posted January 3, 2006 Posted January 3, 2006 Aarrgghh!! It's true that even the ones that 'work' still need to be reset occassionally (every few weeks). But I've always lived with this. There's no possibility of replacing the APs, so there's probably nothing I can do about it now.
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