[K12OSN] Talking to school about K12LTSP

[Robert Arkiletian]

On 8/18/06, Henry Hartley <henryhartley at westat.com> wrote:
>
>
> I recently met with the technology guy at my daughter's school.  He's
> not really a Linux person but has no real beef with it.  He's just not
> needed it for much up to now.  He does use Linux for a proxy server and
> running DansGuardian so he's not averse to using it where it suits him.
> He's also got an engineering degree from MIT so I'm guessing he's pretty
> bright.
>
> The school is in transition right now, having moved out (in the summer
> of 2005 after 16 years) of a rented location into two temporary
> locations (one church for the elementary school, another for the middle
> and high school).  The school has purchased 60 acres and hopes to be
> moving into their new facility by January, 2008 (although it may not
> happen before the following summer).
>
> One topic of our conversation was K12LTSP.  Currently, the school relies
> almost entirely on wireless networking because of the nature of the
> facility.  Plans for the new facility, however, do include network
> cabling.  There is something of a lab right now but it is basically
> laptop computers that share storage space on a network server.  Windows,
> naturally.  I gave a brief overview of K12LTSP, as best I could.  He had
> a few questions and I thought I'd start with this one.  Actually, after
> this, I may simply suggest he join the list and ask for himself, since
> he'll be in a better position to ask the right questions.
>
> Sometimes, when students are using his lab computers, he wants them to
> have internet access, so they can do research.  Other times, he wants
> them to NOT have internet access, mostly because he wants them focused
> on what they are doing.  No point in tempting teens.  He wondered if it
> would be possible to schedule this sort of thing centrally, either by
> class, by student, or by hardware.  That is, let's say he has two carts
> of computers which can roam to the various classrooms.  From 8:30 to
> noon, he wants one cart to have internet access and the other not to.
> Form noon to 3, they both should.  Or, from 8:30 to 10:00, the students
> in this class have internet access, this other class does not.  That
> sort of thing.  Is that something that's hard, easy, or just too much of
> a headache to deal with?



Not sure how well k12ltsp would work in a wireless situation. Maybe someone
else can answer that. But as long as you don't have /home mounted nfs. You
can simply issue the command

#ifdown eth1
No internet.

#ifup eth1
Internet is back.

It's that easy. I do it all the time to prevent kids from getting distracted
while I am lecturing. You can put it in a cron job or do it manually,
whatever.


--
> Henry
>
>
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-- 
Robert Arkiletian
Eric Hamber Secondary, Vancouver, Canada
Fl_TeacherTool http://www3.telus.net/public/robark/Fl_TeacherTool/
C++ GUI tutorial http://www3.telus.net/public/robark/
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