sreiach

I've done ALOT of reading about thin clients for the last two days. Not sure why but I think I accidentally clicked an article about the Sun Ray Clients which started me going. My question is for those who run them. How 'well' does primary software ie KidPix, MathBlaster etc Run over a thin client? I've read conflicting reports from 'Everything works great' to 'Sound is delayed and artifacts are left on the screen'. I'm sure alot of this depends on the network setup. But lets assume I have a gigabit fibre backbone and 100mb to the desktops. Can a replace my primary school classroom computers with thin clients without the kids thinking their Magic School Bus isn't so magic? Are XPe clients the way to go as they allow local processing of media and web browsing? Ive read a lot of case studies about how thin clients have saved a school billions and billions and billions but they never go beyond office apps and web browsing.

I have a slightly modified approach. My Home folder structure mirrors my AD structure. So in AD its like this: Students ->2005 ->2006 ->2007 Each year (OU) based on the students graduation year. Their user areas are the same: \\server\Students$\2005\firstinitiallastname So each student gets there own user area which is directly mapped to u: So students never even see another students user area. This structure makes it easy so that at the end of the year I just delete the OU and the year folder containing the individual student folders. Easy cleanup. I have some kids who leave before graduating but thats easy to take care of by hand or with a script.

It's interesting how similar experiences can lead to different results. When I started at my current jobs teachers had 'rights' to install what they liked and control of their classroom PC. Nightmare. I was being called every 10 minutes because - camera software messed up some other software, "im getting a blue screen", "I dont know i just clicked YES to everything". The last straw was walking up to a teachers computer and seeing he had a picture of his 'female friend' in a bikini as a full page wall paper (not kidding). From then on we're like any other business. This computer does not belong to *you*. It is given for use by the company to do what the company requires of you. If we need you to do something we will provide the means. They now have completely locked down computers just like the students. This goes for the Principal and administration too. So for digital cameras they can either use a school provided camera or use a multi card reader provided in open computer areas or labs. Same goes for scanners etc. I've cut my requests done to almost nill. I'll accommodate some unique software requests. For example installing Google Earth, or some unique kids education software in the primary school.

I go the route of banning games as much as possible as well. Mostly in part because the teachers begged (ok not literally) for it. They found the were spending most of there class time walking up and down stopping kids from playing games. As soon as the teacher turned around the would just bring them back up. By blocking games the teacher felt comfortable spending more time helping students rather then trying to hunt down the game players. We also use classroom monitoring software Sychroneyes. Which is awesome. The teacher can see every student's screen at a glance and block individuals ones as they please. However, this requires them sitting at their desk. Like Geoff I use Dansgaurdian. That way you can ban phrases like etc... takes care of the majority of sites.

The source code is freely available from Microsoft. Distributed with the license mentioned above. http://research.microsoft.com/research/downloads/Details/aeee3085-a219-47d6-88fc-a2501f00800d/Details.aspx No reverse engineering needed.

Though I understand the possible legal implications. In this case the license included with this software specifically states that it can be redistributed, modified and posted on websites for non commercial purposes. In fact for a M$ license it's pretty friendly! Full License Having said that I'm new here so if there's a blanket policy let me know!

John, Mind sharing that 'enhancement?' I'd love to show that off to teachers on Monday. I can't play with it right now (on a mac).

Take a look a this video. It's and impressive way of using a whiteboard. Could it be done with a mouse? Probably, but I don't think it would have the same instructive effect.

Sorry, I think I got ahead of myself when writing. What I had in my head was related to routing. If you block routing (or using ACLs) between certain vlans ie administration and accounting it does provide SOME added security. Not full proof of course but does make more of a challenge. What I was trying to get across was that basic IP security can be established by fuction rather then physical location. Which I think is a school enviroment works well. Most script kiddies first instinct it to do a ping search thinking if I can't ping it -- i cant hack it. (At least thats the mantra of the one's I've run into ) But as we all know with the right tools and a little time we can all clean out the Villagio. 8) Oh here's another link I found introducing VLANS with some diagrams: http://net21.ucdavis.edu/newvlan.htm It provides this nice disclaimer about vlan security:

VLans provide a way for you to segment you network into smaller broadcast domains REGARDLESS of where the computer is located on the network. Usually this is done based on function and security. For example: If i had a three story building with : Administration, Accounts and Servers on each floor. Normally is some cases each floor would have a switch and that switch connected to a main router for the building. So each floor is one network, all broadcasts go to everyone on the floor regardless of function. With a vlan we can breakup those domains into functions. So all Administration computers, even though are on different floors and switches, can be there own network. Same goes for accounts. Servers get there own private network even though there on completely different floors . VLANS also provide added securitry so if you wanted the Accounts computers to have no access to administration computers you can. To put this in a school type example. If you have wireless access points all over campus you can have them in there own vlan (and subnet). A rogue laptop on your wireless wont tear down the whole system. With added vlan security you can restrict wireless to just being able to access the internet and nothin else on campus. At my school we have IP security cameras all over the campus from the front gate to the back. Plugged into switches all over the place. With my vlans they're all in the same network and subnet. Nice. Since these cameras are heavy broadcasters those broadcasts only get received by the other cameras not the whole of my network. The cool thing is I can plug a computer into one port in my switch, another computer into the port right next to it and they will be on two completely different networks (or subnets). Hope that provides a clear example of what vlans are and can do.

I recently (last summer) just broke our whole campus up into VLANS. I did this for several reasons. Its a k-12 school on a spread out campus. About 400 connected machines with wireless access points, server, IP security cameras. The do have many advantages but in some cases its just not worth the extra effort. Here's a cisco link. Unfortunetly cisco docs tend to get to technical in a hurry. http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/software/ios113ed/113ed_cr/switch_c/xcvlan.htm If you could explain why they feel they need VLANs if would prob. help us point you in the right direction for a solution.