To whom it may concern, The following article outlines some of the benefits of adopting a cloud-based ICT infrastructure in education in Ireland. (A 5 minute read that may change your mind about ICT in education!) Imagine a system that can be all things to a school ... supporting teaching and learning, a system that requires less personnel to manage and very importantly, something that, if done on a large scale, can save the state huge sums of money. Does this sound too good to be true??? This system is here .... and we have seen the benefits of a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure system in our school for the last c.5 years. In the most basic of terms, imagine a new type of ICT system that moves away from the traditional c.25 PC's in a room with constant maintenance required for every device and then factor in the cost of replacing these devices every 3 to 5 years. Consider a new system that is centrally managed, where every user can log on from any device that can access the internet. Applications can be added or removed depending on the needs of the student or class, updates are overseen elsewhere, and with a cloud-based system, the entire system is managed by a third party. This new system enables a second life to devices that would have otherwise been dumped. Our own school has c.240 devices and the vast majority of the devices currently been used are more than 8 years old and have been sourced from firms who were about to discard them. Recently, we have been able to link our system, via Raspberry Pi devices to our server. In our case (and since we sourced monitors for free), we can create a computer room for only a few hundred euro. (See attached images) Advantages of the system include: •The system is a
server-based system which manages user accounts allowing use to various
programs.
•The programs are managed
and updated centrally.
•The user can log in from
any device.
•All work done is saved
securely.
•Old PC’s no longer need to
be replaced as the server does the data processing resulting in no need for
schools to spend money on PC hardware.
•The system is bigger,
better, faster, cheaper and more manageable than anything else available.
• The system is a win-win
arrangement for the state and all schools. Ours is a proven working model that
has greater demands by more users, using more programs than ever before. We would like to hear from people interested in adopting this system in their schools or who would simply like to find out more. In our own situation, we were lucky enough to have the support of a local ICT firm who wished to use our school as a test case to use virtualization in education. Our system has become bigger and better, with greater demands by more students using an infrastructure that is run be fewer staff than before. Our past pupils request to keep their students accounts as they find our system better than what they use in many third level colleges. We built our system from the 'bottom up'. We manage our system internally but our goal is to create a cloud-based system that can manage the accounts of students in schools the length and breadth of the country. Our focus is providing the best system to enable our students, teachers and schools to reach their full potential. We are not a business, we are not interested in profit-making, our goal is to inform school management and principals to make an informed decision on a new, cost-effective system that will transform education in Ireland. For more information, please review a recently published article in the Irish Education Matters academic journal: Please find attached also a .PDF which describes an activity that we would like to undertake if funding was available. If you would like to find out more or have a query, please do not hesitate to contact myself or Darren Platts. Emails: tcollins@bgsmail.ie - Trevor Collins dplatts@bgsmail.ie - Darren Platts |
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