Networking Infant School Laptops?

[RufusA]

My daughter's infant school has recently been given 10 Dell laptops (by their PTA) to form an IT suite.

At the moment they are all sitting standalone in a row, and are being used to run various bits of (IMHO low quality) educational software. However a lot of time seems to being wasted installing the required program, and saving each kid's work on to a shared memory stick so that it can be printed in the staff-room.

I'm happy to donate to the school some "stuff" to make this a little easier for them, but thought I'd come here to sound out if it's likely to be suitable in that environment and see what the great and good in Hexus would recommend.

As some background the school is small, the staff aren't very IT literate, there is no tame IT expert on tap that they easily call on to assist, and a lot of the time the IT suite would be being supervised by Mum helpers of varying skills.

Whatever gets given to them needs to be reasonably bullet proof, capable of lasting 3 - 5 years (with similar warranty), and apart from the inital setup shouldn't need any ongoing intervention.

Also being a school, then security, privacy etc. would be a concern!

Current thoughts are:

WiFi/WAP probably not a good idea. Tendency to be a little flakey and risky that someone might tinker and make laptops etc. visible externally.

A dedicated server probably overkill, involves having a dedicated location for it to sit, and need some knowledge to set up and run effectively. May not run 24x7 without occasional reboots, SP installs etc.

So would a switch and NAS be suitable / sufficient.

With a bit of configuration each class could have their own login/area on the NAS and education software could be available on a common shared read-only area.

As for hardware would the following be good choices:

a) A compact 16 port switch i.e. NetGear FS116UK
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=770276

b) A robust configurable NAS, with a 2nd hard-drive to provide RAID1 i.e. ReadyNAS Duo
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=797762

Then at a later date possibly add a network printer?

Are there better options for similar money? Should I be looking at something with in built DHCP server and NAT for future expandability?

Or is this the wrong way to go completely?

TIA - Rufus.

[peterb]

The problem (which you have touched on) is support - who is going to support this? If you set it up - are you going to be willing to do it?

Are you planning to connect to the internet? Becomews iffy then because of the risk of access to inappropriate sites.

In principle, what you suggest - a 16 port switch would do the job - you could manually allocate IP addresses to each machine and easily set up a peer to peer network - and ou could add a NAS box to that for common storage areas. However how is the storage of the children's files going to be enforced?

Really you are looking at something a bit more complex, such as a true client server set up - the server could be Windows server 2003/2007 or you could use a Linux box set up as a Domain controller - but that would only work if the laptops have XP professional - XP hoome won't connect to a domain. (SAMBA - the linux SMB application doesn't support Active directory, but that needn't be a problem in this context)

That way you could enforce the default file store to be the server drive. You could also have some form of centralised software distribution - but with each feature you add - you are adding to the support/complexity side.

If you are planning internet, then you would probably want to connect through the LEA (or whatever they call themselves) portal, which will take care of site blocking etc.

I'm sorry to appear negative in this post - it sounds a great opportunity, but as you have realised, there is more to setting up a network than just plugging a few computers together, and you need to sit down and think that through, possibly discussing it with the head and or the school governors.

[usxhe190]

peterb is right - you need someone to support the network...its a trade off - easier/faster means more support...

[dave111]

is this of any use...
http://lifehacker.com/397597/windows...ds-experiments

[CrazyMonkey]

Some NAS have the ability to use certain Linux Distro's. If you were to use a NAS i'd say this would be the best way, atleast then you could have some control over file storage and centralization.

Other than that i believe it would be a very tricky job - Does the school have an IT administrator or the like? Perhaps worth having a talk with him/her if possible.

[RufusA]

Thanks everyone for your input. In particular Peterb for the wise words of caution.

Spoke briefly to the headmistress and the "IT Administrator" for the school is the caretaker! In so much as he's the one they call if a piece of equipment is broken or needs moving, or a projector needs setting up! It's a little scarey to say the least!

My gut feeling is to politely walk away from the problem. It *really* needs someone to spend the time to audit all of the IT equipment in the school (a rag-bag lot of donated [broken] computers, random machines bought and the odd LEA piece of installed kit), talk to the teachers and staff and find out how they want things to be!

However I feel that Pandora has left a box somewhere for me to find, and there is a world of pain awaiting for anyone who steps up to the mark. I also imagine there are some software licenses being breached along the way!

I might try and float the idea of paying for a local IT company to come in a spend a few hours on site and get them to put together a proposal for a low cost network and ongoing support. That way if it all backfires at least it won't be my name and number on speed-dial!

Rufus.

[Moby-Dick]

I might try and float the idea of paying for a local IT company to come in a spend a few hours on site and get them to put together a proposal for a low cost network and ongoing support. That way if it all backfires at least it won't be my name and number on speed-dial!

when I worked for a small outsourcers one of our clients was a little primary school.It wasn't really a huge problemn to support them , and we didn't charge them that much. Worst problem was their kit was very much like yours - a mixture of varius RM systems , which meant getting drivers for the wireless NIC's was a PITA ( all the systems where on trolleys so wired netweorking wasn't really possible )

[MaddAussie]

I used to work at the local county council and they used to support all the schools in the area might be worth speaking to the school again to see if they can go down this route?

[Sam_S]

I was under the impression all schools were 'looked after' by the LEA, who then may or may not allocate dedicate resource for support, or use field engineers for it.

[aidanjt]

You can get NAS boxes that provide network-in-a-box functionality, i.e. dhcp server, dns server, print server, web server etc. that can be enabled and disabled as needed.