Netbook project case study

Background:

Increasingly schools are participating in large scale Netbook implementations to provide a modern learning environment for the generation of students dubbed “digital natives”. One-to-one, or one-to-many pilots lease Netbooks, usually for about three years. The Netbooks accompany students from class to class and home for project or research work.

Typical school Netbook pilot challenges:

Large scale projects must be centrally managed or risk wasting the technology investment with wide-scale tampering and damage to Netbooks
Often, school or district administrators are suddenly overwhelmed by the huge volume of new student Netbooks that require intensive technical support
Computer failure is usually assumed to be a hardware problem, resulting in expensive call-outs for technical support. However usually the problem is a simple software glitch which could have been resolved onsite with recovery software.
Student Netbooks move beyond the school’s security umbrella and must be protected and maintained remotely, whether on a field trip or at home
Multiple networks, and roaming Netbooks require centralized management that can always track the computer’s network, status or changes in configurations.

About the Project:

The project began as a pilot, providing one-to-one Netbooks to two classes in 15 schools in different localities throughout the country. A collaboration between the Ministry of Education, Parents and individual schools; the project aimed to create a fully digital learning environment, together with electronic white boards and a wireless networks.

A two-tier technical support system was instigated. The school administrator was expected to trouble-shoot day-to-day computing concerns and failures, with escalation to the service provider when the school IT administrator couldn’t handle the problem.

However, a key challenge for the pilot emerged when it became clear that the school IT administrators were faced with an unprecedented demand for support.

Without sufficient maintenance, the Netbooks had started to pile up and multiple daily call-outs were being made to the service provider. By 2009 the project had reached crisis-point and was on the verge of cancelation. Most of the Netbooks were unavailable to students and their pedagogic benefit lost due to the overwhelming amount of maintenance required.

The Project Managers concluded that a central management system had to be implemented in order to overcome the challenges faced by all the Pilot’s participants:

Project Managers had no project overview, or information regarding the condition and performance of every Netbook
Administrators were overwhelmed by hundreds of minor complains every week
The Service Provider was facing up to five call-outs each day, often for straightforward software issues
Teachers and students, whilst excited by the opportunity the technology offered, were losing precious class time due to lack of Netbooks availability

Radix Selection and Implementation:

After a thorough analysis of available solutions, the Radix Netpoint Manager system was chosen because it integrates perfectly with Reload recovery system and could significantly extend the pilot’s life-cycle. Whilst robust enough to handle multiple student computers on numerous networks, Radix solutions are also cost effective enough to accommodate the budget limitations of the pilot. A further advantage was the Netpoint Manager's ability to centrally manage the computers no matter whether they were in school or at home, unlike competitor offerings which were unable to cater to the needs of roaming student Netbooks.

After a painless implementation process and some preliminary training, the school administrators found their work-load significantly reduced. Radix Reload was able to identify and instantly recover 90% of failure issues as relating to software crashes. This not only saved administrators hours of maintenance tasks, but also limited the Service Provider call-outs to more serious hardware issues.

Measurable Results:

Centralized project management - The Project IT and Pedagogic Managers receive a bird’s eye view of all participating Netbooks, indicating any number of parameters including their location, condition or even blacklisted application installations.

Hierarchical management system - Critical for the project’s continued success, the Project Manager and school IT administrator require different overviews and information. For example administrators require more tailored information per unit indicating configurations, what’s installed and licensed and alerts for tampering or threats from viruses.
Scheduled installations - Multiple computers across several networks are not all online simultaneously, with Revolutions the administrator schedules installations, updates and configurations to occur the next time the computer is online.
One-time passwords for fast recovery – This mechanism gets students back to work and keeps administrators abreast of all Netbooks. By simply contacting the administrator by SMS or email, users receive a single password for recovery. Administrators can determine how automated this process need be, sometimes applying multiple passwords.
Remaining constantly appraised - Whether connected to the school’s sub-network, NAT, LAN, behind a firewall or home-grade router every student Netbook can always connect to a server, ensuring no Netbook falls of the radar. Revolutions brings improved load balancing, gateway communication and allows the redundancy server to be activated if the school sub-server fails so everyone always stays connected.

Customer’s Last word:
Thanks to the success of the Radix Netpoint Manager and Reload implementations we’ve managed to save this project and now can start to plan for the main roll-out which will involve thousands of Netbooks for students.