[Fsf-friends] IT@schools

Ajith Kumar ajith@nsc.ernet.in
Thu, 15 Aug 2002 06:38:15 +0530


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hello,
here is a proposal for cost effective computer infrastructure for schools.

ajith


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<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 150%"><FONT SIZE=4><B>Computer
Laboratory for Schools</B></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3>Ajith Kumar B.P., Nuclear Science Centre, New Delhi 110
067</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3>ajith@nsc.ernet.in</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 150%"><FONT SIZE=3><B>Introduction</B></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3>Computer Education at schools and colleges generally
covers the fundamentals, application packages for word processing and
spreadsheet plus teaching some programming languages. Beyond that it
can be used as a tool for improving the quality of teaching science
subjects. Cost of computer hardware has become affordable but the
software sold under restricted license terms are very costly. At
present most of the people and organizations are using illegal copies
and not even aware of the license terms. The GNU/Linux system,
developed by the efforts of the Free Software movement, has provided
a better alternative. </FONT>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3>GNU/Linux followed the design of time tested design of
Unix and offers certain features that can reduce hardware costs
considerably. Instead of having complete independent systems one can
have a Linux Terminal Server system. Under LTS a single system can be
connected to inexpensive graphics terminals. Such a setup is ideal
for schools, offices etc.. This proposal is based on my own
experience in implementing around 100 terminals at Nuclear Science
Centre, New Delhi, and running it for the past one year. There are
many other success stories from all over the world about the
successful usage of LTS. The following sections gives a brief
overview of the system and the enclosed CD contains the LTS package
and many other educational softwares.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 150%"><FONT SIZE=3><B>Hardware
Requirements</B></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3>LTS runs on the standard PC hardware. The Server is a
complete PC with reasonable processing power and the Terminals are
low end Pcs without and hard-disk, floppy or CD drives. The
requirement of a 20 terminal system with Office suite, communication
and programming tools are given below along with the cost estimate.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3><U>Server</U></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3>A 1 GHz Pentium3 machine with 512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk is
sufficient to support 20 - 30 terminals. The cost of such system is
around Rs. 40,000/- only.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3><U>Terminals</U></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3>Terminals are normal PCs without floppy, hard-disk or CD
drives. The CPU need not be very fast and 32MB RAM is good enough.
The cost of a Terminal using cyrix M3 or ADM CPU is around
Rs.13,000/- only.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3><U>Networking</U></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3>A 24 port fast ethernet hub and proper cabling will cost
around Rs. 20,000/-. </FONT>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3>The total cost of the 21 systems comes out to be Rs. 3.2
lakhs only. A 10 terminal system will cost less than Rs. 2 lakhs.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 150%; text-decoration: none">
<FONT SIZE=3><B>Software Requirements</B></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3>On the server we can install one of the GNU/Linux
Distributions like RedHat or Debian and it costs nothing. The GNU
Linux Utilities for Education CD, distributed by Free Software User
Group, Calicut, contains all the Software required for the schools.
Setting up of a Terminals Server using it takes less than thirty
minutes. It has Office Packages, programming language compilers and a
lot of educational software.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 150%"><FONT SIZE=3><B>Advantages
of GNU/Linux based Terminal Server System</B></FONT></P>
<OL>
	<LI><P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
	<FONT SIZE=3>Reduced Hardware costs. A 20 terminal System costs 3.2
	lakhs. On the other hand 20 separate systems will cost from 6 to 7
	lakhs.</FONT></P>
	<LI><P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
	<FONT SIZE=3>Easy to setup and maintain. You need to install
	software only on one system and just use it from all others.</FONT></P>
	<LI><P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
	<FONT SIZE=3>Less maintenance. Most of the time the components like
	hard disks that are having moving parts goes bad. Terminals have no
	moving part other than the cooling fan.</FONT></P>
	<LI><P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
	<FONT SIZE=3>UPS power only for the server if the power does not
	fail every half an hour. In a training envoronment the UPS is mainly
	to prevent software corruption by power failure. Terminals does not
	require it.</FONT></P>
	<LI><P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
	<FONT SIZE=3>Software comes under the GNU General public license.
	According to the license terms we can use, moify and redistribute
	it. Due to the license terms the already existing software costs
	nothing. For proprietary software like Windows, we don't get this
	advantages even after paying huge amount of license fee.</FONT></P>
</OL>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 150%"><FONT SIZE=3><B>Implementation
Aspects</B></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3>The existing computer hardware suppliers can install the
LTS system. There is no new hardware involved. The required software
training can be given within a short <B>time</B> Organizations like
Keltron already has enough expertise to do it. School /College
teachers can be trained to maintain the software. Infact Calicut has
several teachers who has installed and maintain LTS systems. This
expertise can be shared easily.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3>From the financial point of view also it can be managed
easily by the schools. The total cost for 10 terminals is below 2
lakhs. An school with 2000 students can implement it by collecting a
small amount of Rs.100 from each student to have the initial setup
and further subscriptions can be used for maintenance and adding more
terminals.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 150%"><FONT SIZE=3><B>Bachground
of this proposal</B></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3>I have been working in the field of IT for Science and
Technology for the past five years. Nuclear Science Centre uses
GNU/Linux operating system due to its stability and reliability and
has developed a lot of programs using it. Some of them is being
distributed to different universities. Eventhough we were using it
heavily for scientific computaton and control application, some
people were using MSWindows for preparing reports and for
communication. In June, 2001, the MNC selling the most populat
operating system sent a letter to NSC asking a report on the usage of
their software to be submitted within 60 days. This is the tactic
applied by them all over the world and people are forced to spend
huge amount of money or face legal actions. We had many licenses but
nobody was spending time to keep track of it.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3>What we decided was a switching over to GNU/Linux and we
implemented it by using Terminal Server System. It has been
functioning for the past one year and resulted in a lot of savings in
hardware also. Seeing the advantages offered by such a system, I
started spending some time in propagating it. I had trained a group
of people at Calicut, my hometown, and there are several
installations running LTS there. </FONT>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 150%"><FONT SIZE=3><B>Conclusion</B></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3>This proposal is based on actual experience and it seems
to be ideal for a developing nation like ours. If anybody wants to
learn more and take it to schools, please contact me.</FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 150%"><BR>
</P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 150%"><FONT SIZE=3><B>References</B></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3><A HREF="http://www.seul.org/edu/">http://www.seul.org/edu/</A></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3><A HREF="http://www.gnu.org/">http://www.gnu.org</A></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3><A HREF="http://www.linux.org/">http://www.linux.org</A></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3><A HREF="http://www.ltsp.org/">http://www.ltsp.org</A></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
<FONT SIZE=3><A HREF="http://schoolforge.net/">http://schoolforge.net/</A></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN=JUSTIFY STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; font-weight: medium; line-height: 150%">
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