I suck at writing. My English Teacher in college tried to convince me to become an English major. Perhaps if I had listened to her I would have spent the last 20 years writing. If I had done that then maybe I would suck less today which is when writing really seems to matter more and more. We are in the age of the content creator, when publishing costs have been reduced to zero and everyone has an equal voice on the Internet. If only I’d listened to my Teacher, I’d have been better prepared to take advantage of this wonderful future. Of course, had I chosen a life of English, I would have missed out on the best parts of my life. I met my wife in an Intro to Databases class at Humboldt State after all. A University not known for it’s English program by the way. So I guess I’ll just have to be content that I know how the words I type make it onto the Internet and out to the world and just deal with the fact that they quite often sound like they were written by an IT guy that learned how to write C++ and SQL in college rather than the English language.
There is no box
thinking out loud about technology, education and life
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I just read Paul Yip‘s blog post “A Question of Vision” answering a question about how to keep Laptop Carts up and running. Two things struck home for me in Paul’s response. First, the honest conversations about how to use technology in the classroom are not happening enough. And Second, while my school has had several rounds of PD in differentiated instruction, EL instructional strategies, classroom instructional strategies, building PLCs, etc.. technology was not featured prominently in them. Technology PD has been mostly separate from Instructional PD and as the IT guy and a Teacher I’m now seeing that as an area I need to start addressing.
Getting back to Laptops in the classroom. By definition introducing new technology into a classroom should change how a teacher teaches. It should change what, when and where teacher’s teach. It should change teachers as teachers. If it doesn’t, then it’s a wasted use of limited school funds. So yes, the discussions need to take place. I remember when we put four computers in every classroom seven years ago, the reactions from teachers ran the gambit from “take them out now, I will never use them and I need the space” to “I can’t use them, there are only four” to “Awesome!”. Back then we did not really have the conversations that we should have and so some teachers embraced the change while others stacked it on a shelf and left it to obsolete itself.
Now as we are about to deploy netbooks into our ninth grade Math and English classrooms, I’m wondering if the conversations we’ve had this time around have been enough. I hope these teachers truly understand what is in store for them as they work to integrate technology into their classrooms in a radically different way than they have seen in the past. I also hope that the administration recognizes the support these teachers will need in order to successfully integrate this new technology into their classrooms and are committed to providing it.
I’m also concerned that the CA budget cuts have pushed most Teachers back into their “safe” places. The trend I’m seeing now is to resist change and hold the status quo. When it comes to technology, this is not how Teachers need to be thinking. Students are getting more and more wired and tech savvy every year. We should at least be meeting them half way if not flat out running to get ahead.
Technology in the classroom should not be a zero-sum game. It should not be about taking something away and replacing it with something else. It should be about building on what is already working while trying something different, taking risks, experimenting and making changes in an effort to engage every student. Teachers can’t wait for the perfect recipe of technology and curriculum to start teaching in the present. The budget crisis offers the perfect opportunity to have frank conversations about what is and is not important in the classroom, about what Technology can and cannot do and about why we teach and what and how we teach it. Instead I am afraid the budget crisis has pushed people back into the safety of their old ways, isolated them further in their classrooms as they try to hold onto what they have. We should all be taking a hard look at where we are and looking forward to where we need to be. Technology in the classroom is not going away anytime soon. Unless of course CA runs out of money.
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Wikipedia defines a SAN as:
A storage area network (SAN) is an architecture to attach remote computer data storage devices (such as disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes) to servers so the devices appear as locally attached to the operating system. A SAN typically has its own network of storage devices that are generally not accessible through the regular network by regular devices. The cost and complexity of SANs dropped in the late 2000s, allowing wider adoption across both enterprise and small to medium sized business environments.
SANs come in all flavors but despite what Wikipedia says about costs dropping, I don’t know of too many small schools that have adopted SAN storage. They are still generally cost prohibitive. Most small schools I know have adopted SAN’s cheaper cousin, NAS (Network Attached Storage). NAS has the advantage of being cheap because it uses existing technology like SCSI, USB or eSATA to connect external storage directly to servers.
NAS is great if you want to add storage to an individual server, or add storage on the network as a shared folder but if you want to build out a single storage node and slice it up to multiple servers, you really want a SAN. So what is a small school to do?
Enter FreeNAS. FreeNAS is an open source embedded operating system that turns regular PCs into super network storage devices. For small schools, its a great alternative to expensive commercial SAN offerings. Full disclosure here though, you’re not going to get all the bells and whistles you would with a true commercial hardware SAN. No redundant controllers, fiber channel interconnects or high speed drive back-planes but for the basic functionality of a SAN that allows you to consolidate storage and share it with multiple servers, FreeNAS is more than capable.
So how do I use FreeNAS? Well I use it in three distinct ways. Initially I setup a FreeNAS box so that I could share files and backup configurations on my ESXi VMware hosts much like I would a traditional NAS. Technically in this case, I am using FreeNAS as a central NFS file server and not a SAN but it was a good introduction to the OS for me. My first FreenNAS box was an old Dell GX270 tower with a couple 250GB EIDE drives in it. I installed FreeNAS onto a 512MB flash drive, enabled NFS and attached my VMWare hosts via the storage configuration in the VSphere Client. Easy.
The next project was to provide “off site” backup. I had my computer class build a white box system (the case is actually black) using a basic Intel Motherboard, an Intel e5200 CPU, 2GB of RAM and 6 1TB Western Digital Green hard drives. Total parts cost was less than $1000. Again, I installed FreeNAS to a flash drive and proceeded to format the drives in RAID 5, enable and configure the iSCSI service and place the system in the furthest building from the Server Room that I could. I ended up with a headless box and a bit over 4TB of storage sitting in the Cafeteria network closet waiting for data.
FreeNAS is the means but iSCSI is really what makes it all come together. I setup my Windows Server 2008 backup server running Backup Exec 12 to connect to the iSCSI targets on the FreeNAS box. Windows Server 2008 comes with the iSCSI initiator sofware that allows you to connect to an iSCSI target, if you are using Windows Server 2003, you can download the initiator from Microsoft here.
In FreeNAS I broke down the drives into 2TB parts. Once mounted through iSCSI, they showed up as regular drives under Windows. Then I created Backup-to-Disk folders on these drives and now every night, the backups run across the 1Gb link from the server room to the Cafeteria network closet using iSCSI. In the event my backup server ever died, I could install Backup Exec on another server, attach the iSCSI targets to the FreeNAS box and be back up and running in no time. And even though all that data is traversing the network, its way faster than the SCSI tape drive ever was.
I’m doing something similar for our network home folders. Again I’m using the iSCSI features of FreeNAS to share out storage to a windows file server. The home folders are located on the iSCSI drives and shared out through windows file sharing just like they would be if they were stored on locally attached storage. I also had my class build a dedicated FreeNAS box for this, again using off the shelf desktop Intel parts and 1TB western Digital Green Drives. I eventually plan to build a second FreeNAS box and use DFS with another windows server to build in redundancy for the home folders.
Recently I wanted to experiment with running VMWare guests off of a SAN. I got the idea when Drobo came out with their Drobo Pro certified for VM. So the third way I am using FreeNAS is to store and run guest VMs. Again, iSCSI is the protocol but this time instead of windows I have the VMware host connecting directly to the FreeNAS iSCSI targets. I am not running this with any production systems, but I have been running two test systems for the past few months without any issues.
The next step in my Poor Man’s SAN project is going to be to setup dedicated gigabit switches to create an isolated iSCSI storage area network. This may improve performance or it may just separate out the iSCSI traffic from my backbone network. I’ll know for sure when its up and running.
Ok, so maybe it’s not a real SAN, but for a small school with no budget FreeNAS on generic Intel hardware with cheap 1 or 2TB SATA drives is an affordable solution with a lot of potential.
“Storage area network – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Sept. 2010. .
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I passed six Google Apps tests and all I got was this lousy… No wait. I’m now officially Qualified in Google Apps. As an Individual I get the above colorful PDF file to print and post on my wall (or embed in my blog). If I’d like to take it a step further I can apply to become a Google Apps Certified Trainer, which I presume would come with an even more colorful PDF file and some sort of official badge to display on my blog. Regardless of if you decide to become qualified, certified or none of the above, if you have any interest in learning about Google Apps, head over to the Google Apps Education Training site. Its packed full of great information.
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School is a train. I don’t mean one of those long slow freight trains bogged down by a hundred tons of steal and cargo. No, school is a bullet train charging down the track, leaving the day 1 station on the lightning run to 180. Once the school train sets off, altering the course of that speeding machine is a superhuman task. The train keeps going, only stopping for the occasional holiday or mid term break when you might have time to hop out, bang the track with a big hammer to make a minor course adjustment before you have to hop back on and speed away again.
Did I mention the school train moves fast? Day 30 flies by, then day 45, 90, 120 and soon the train is slowing into day 180 and the ride is up. You are left with what you were able to accomplish during the ride using what you had with you on day 1, supplemented with the few things you brought back on board during the occasional stops along the way. But for the most part, what you brought with you is what you used.
The time to truly affect the course and eventual outcome of the train is in the summer, after the short four week hop to summer school has been made and the train is safely back in the maintenance yard. It’s a short window, but proper planning and track laying can make or break that next 200mph trip. Unfortunately, this is the time the people that make these decisions take their vacations. So the track goes unchanged. The train may get a new paint job and some fancy new gadgets, but it’s still making the same trip as the year before.
On that trip, the train doesn’t slow down because the computer lab fails, it doesn’t alter course because Apple releases a magical tablet device, it doesn’t make an unscheduled stop because the Internet goes down. It keeps going, no matter what. It sticks to the schedule. It keeps going until it gets to day 180.
The train is a challenging place to work. You work with the people that got on the train day 1 and you probably don’t see many new faces all the way through until day 180. For the most part, you stay in your section of the train. Occasionally you meet with other passengers to hear about how well last year’s train ride went or to discuss a group of passengers that might be getting off the train early. It’s basically the exact same conversations you had last year. It may even be about the same passengers. Not much changes on the train from year to year. Same train, same scenery when you look out the windows, same destination.
I think its hard to look at the train or the destination when you’re on the train speeding down the track at 200mph. Maybe what we really need in education is more time to think about where we are going and how we get there.
What is it that we want to change in education? Is it the destination? The tracks that get us there? The train? Or maybe even the passengers? Can we reach a new destination if all we change is the track and we leave the same trains running on them? Are trains even the best way to get there?
photo source http://www.flickr.com/photos/telstar/216062271/
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In part one I talked about the need to get students setup with their network accounts in the first days of school. I conveniently left out Teachers. We usually have teachers back two days before the “official” start of school with students. Those days are generally designated as professional development days when new concepts (sometimes old) are introduced and teachers are expected to become experts at something over night or better yet, re-design their entire first few weeks of class around some profound new understanding of learning the weekend before school starts (I’ll cover this thought process in another post, promise).
What it has not historically been is a time to get teachers into their classrooms to make sure technology is working and that they are ready to go on day one of school with students. This year was even more difficult because with budget cuts from the State, we only had one day before the official start of school. Thankfully teachers were given the afternoon in their rooms however not very many turned on computers or checked online services to see if they were all set to go. Which led to much fun and excitement for me in week two when every teacher decided it was time to put students on the Internet and a cascade of help requests started flowing in. It was all mostly little things that together added up to a mini crisis for me.
So for next year I’ll be the one going through the rooms checking all the computers the week before school and making sure everything was put back after facilities moved everything around for cleaning over summer, or after teachers came in and rearranged things or pulled all the computers off the tables and stuck them in a pile in the corner (yes that happened one year). I’ll also see if I can build in some time to the training to remind Teachers not to wait until five minutes into the lesson to see if their Internet resources are still accessible or that they’ve forgotten the password to their favorite web 2.0 service.
Because I’ve realized something about working at a school district, time is never on my side. I am always up against time because the school day doesn’t stop, for anything. The learning must flow. That means that in the ever more connected learning environments of today’s schools, so must the Internet.
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We just finished our first two weeks of school. It was quite literally a blur. My take aways though will hopefully help me to improve next year. So what are my take aways?
Well, for starters it has become obvious to me that getting students setup with all their different accounts on week one is becoming more important than ever. We’ve got teachers wanting students online and working by the third or fourth day and with over a half-dozen different network accounts for students, it can get messy real fast.
This year I was able to link Moodle to AD and Google Apps to Moodle, so at least kids only have to know their Windows logon and password to get access to all three, but that still leaves Typing Master, Accelerated Reader (not dead yet, I’m afraid), our Student Grades portal, the cafeteria meal tracking system, and a few I am forgetting. Not to mention just the basics of how to logon, where to go to access everything, tracking Acceptable Use Policy forms, media release forms, resetting forgotten passwords on the second day after they had to change them, looking up forgotten user account names. It all takes time, and a lot of it because it is not all at once, it’s spread out throughout the entire day. I know there has to be a better way to handle it next year.
And this got me thinking about what Jon Corippo said they do at Minarets. The first few weeks, they rotate students through stations where they learn one thing, whether that is how to use iMovie or care for their macbooks, every student goes through the rotation. How great would that be if I had every student rotate through the account setup station and I could take 20 students through a period and make sure all their logons worked and that they knew how to logon and access their accounts.
Of course this is way outside the box thinking for schools but it reminds me of new hire orientation at a job. When you sign on with a company that has its act together you usually spend a day or two just getting situated, going to the HR orientations, getting your logon info from IT, signing a ton of paperwork. Well, maybe its time we had a real orientation for students to make sure they are all on the same page, that they are given an opportunity to be introduced to the school culture, to practice the expectations that they will be responsible for during the school year in a more intimate and authentic setting than an hour rally with 200 of their peers and teachers far removed from the experience.
Lets get away from the start of school lecture hall routine and break out into small groups with project based learning activities and set the mood for the entire year. And if I happen to get every student their logon and accounts setup in the process, well that works for me.
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Assembling quotes for grants is kind of like making up a big list of toys you want for Christmas. You get all excited whilst making the list, asking for new bikes, Legos, GI Joe or Modern Warfare 13 and then come Christmas day you find that all you’ve gotten is a new pair of socks and you realize making the list got you all excited for nothing, because you were probably going to get the socks no matter what.
Well, this year I think I’d be happy with socks, because anything we get through grants is going to be more than we would have gotten. Not even socks for us this year I’m afraid. And that’s why I’m putting together quotes for technology I will probably never see.
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I am knee deep in my LTSP-Cluster migration right now. It has taken me twice as long to get to where I am than I thought it would. That old saying that the best laid plan goes out the window as soon as there is contact with the enemy certainly applies. I decided to try setting up LTSP-Cluster under 10.04 and seeing how documentation is incredibly scarce, followed what little I could find (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuLTSP/LTSP-Cluster) and managed to get it working. Next I setup the integrated AD login and then spent several days with my old nemesis Pam_mount trying to get Windows Home folders to map when logging into Ubuntu. And to my surprise I did. So yay! Then I went around testing our varied and many client hardware configurations and low and behold, 10.04 has a problem with a large chunk of old Dell GX260 Desktops with integrated Intel graphics. I also ran into major performance problems with some of our older thin clients. 10.04 was bringing them to their knees. Ooops.
Rather than abandon the GX260’s and an entire lab full of thin clients, I went through the whole setup process again, this time with 9.10 (thank you VMware). Turns out 9.10 plays well with both the GX260’s and the old thin clients. So problem solved. So I can log students in via AD, their home drive gets mapped and away they go. I could run this way, expect for one small problem. Linux Home Directories. Users don’t log into the same server every time, one of the main advantages of LTSP-Cluster over plain vanilla LTSP. This causes a problem however as something saved on the Desktop in one session may not show up in the next if the user is connected to a different Server.
The solution would be to map all user’s Linux home folders to a network server however there is absolutely no documentation on LTSP-Cluster on how to do this. The other option is to abandon Active Directory and use the Guest login feature of LTSP-Cluster. This would effectively create Kiosk like machines that students don’t even have to log into. Because all of our applications are Web based, this actually makes sense. Students would just need to launch a browser and login to their Google Apps account or Moodle. I have a few reservations, but I am leaning toward this solution right now, as summer is running out and I need to start wrapping up this migration and getting everything else back in order.
I’ve learned a lot about LTSP-Cluster but I still have a lot more to learn. I’d like to better understand how to customize the client image, how to centralize user’s home folders and spend more time with the built in RDP client settings but for now, what I’ve got will have to do because I’ve got a ton more stuff to do and not much time to do it.
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We have a computer lab that is due for an upgrade. I’ve been struggling with which direction to go because I really don’t want to buy desktops anymore. We are trying to move to a 1:1 but the budget is a big hurdle, especially here in CA right now. I was thinking about using the EEE Boxes as thin clients because at $199 they are the cheapest thing I have seen.
But then today I saw a presentation by Fresno Unified School District where they had a picture of a computer lab made up of netbooks plugged into keyboards, mice and monitors. A little light bulb went off. We can buy 36 netbooks, connect them to the existing keyboards, mice and monitors and in a year or two pull them out and use them in our 1:1 initiative.
Problem solved.
There is no box 