 Developing VDI in Irish education. We are delighted to be working with Ascend Cloud solutions who are supporting a pilot program to examine cloud-based VDI in action in secondary schools. We hope that this program will show the benefits of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure in an education environment. More updates to follow. Updated as of 15th February 2021. Technology is forever changing and a key problem of any school is to match the large demands of the school with the limited budget available. Is there a system can tick most, if not all of the boxes that enables a school to use ICT to develop and improve teaching and learning within a school at a viable cost? We think so! Our experience in developing ICT has gone through three phases. Phase 1: The original / traditional ICT set-up of individual devices in classroom that must be updated individually. Phase 2: This is Generation 1 of VDI in education. Linking of PC's and devices to a central server. All user virtual machines, administration and updates managed centrally. The phase 2 model requires a teacher or technician to manage the ICT system. This can prove to be both expensive and time-consuming. We use a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) where software manages the individual virtual machines and applications in our school. Phase 3: This is Generation 2 of VDI in education. This is what we believe to be the future of ICT in education. This starts with a development in ICT infrastructure and we believe that by having a functional system, this will enhance teaching and learning in the classroom. This new phase now has the server (which processes all virtual machines, data and applications) in the cloud. (Similar to the servers which process your Gmail accounts or web pages.) School no longer need to buy a server, pay for it's upkeep or require staff to maintain a server. You now have a cloud-based subscription system that you only pay for what you use. Schools no longer need to purchase expensive PC's, laptops or tablets. Since the external server does the processing, second-hand / old devices can now be used. Recently, we have trialled Raspberry Pi devices in the classroom and the outcome has been amazing. Through the use of a server, you can now install ICT devices in the classroom at a much lower cost than ever before. We have started a trial of a 'plug-and-play' system in a few houses as part of an external study. Results will be published once available. We believe in developing Eduction Infrastructure As A Service (EIAAS) as we believe it can, and will, transform education. Original DOTIE website: The original function of this website was to encourage businesses to donate old PC's to us so that we could refurbish them and then provide them for free to local primary schools for free.To date, we have allocated over 300 devices to 14 different local schools. |