Liston College
bases ICT on recycled computers (June 2003)
 |
| Year 12
computer studies students in the Liston College computer lab,
using CANZ recycled computers supplied by The
Ark. |
ICT at Liston College, in
Waitakere City, Auckland, is strongly based on recycled computers.
Currently 100 of the school's 120 computers are recycled business
models including Compaq and IBM, purchased from Auckland
CANZ-accredited recycler, The Ark.
All computers in the school are
linked in a "thin-client" network, controlled by Citrix software and
hosted by a Windows 2000 server farm. The thin-client network makes
the recycled computers much faster than their nominal processing
speed. The classroom "client" computers do very little processing
themselves, as the main programs reside on the higher powered server
computers. All the client computers need to do is send data from
students' mouse clicks and keyboard strokes across the network to
the processing server, and then refresh the image on the client
monitor screen after the server has done the processing and has sent
the result back.
Tony Swanink, HOD Maths at Liston
College and responsible for computing in the school, says the
reycled computers/thin client policy has worked out well. "They've
been great," he says. "There have been very few reliability
problems, and given that we run nearly all software via a
thin-client arrangement, speed is generally not an
issue."
Swanink says the policy has
greatly expanded the availability of computers through the school,
so that now all classrooms have computers in them for student use,
and all teachers have a terminal.
"Buying new would have resulted in
considerable delays in getting this number of computers through the
school, for little, if any, gain in terms of end-user
use."
Currently the school has one
dedicated computer lab and uses another classroom mostly as a
computer lab. A second dedicated lab is planned to be installed
during the next 12 months, using more recycled computers.
The school received professional
help to design and set up its thin-client network from Auckland
company, the Business Technology Group. This company has an ongoing
contract to support the network. As well as this, a Vivid Computers
technician carries out routine maintenance, 12 hours a week.
Liston College started buying CANZ
computers from The Ark in the 1990s and expects to continue doing
so. Faster computers are still needed though, for curriculum areas
that demand a high level of processing power. New machines have been
bought for the art department, the technology area, for staff (under
the government laptop scheme) and for the office.
Liston College's website address
is http://www.liston.school.nz/
|
Liston
College Computing Setup
- Year 7-13
Catholic boys' school; roll 704; 36 classrooms.
- Client
computers: 120, of which 100 are recycled CANZ machines:
Pentium 133 and 166Mhz.
- All PCs on a
Citrix thin-client network.
- Main software:
MS Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Publisher, Access),
Internet Explorer, AsTTle, Autograph, MUSAC administration
software, Accelerated Reader, Geometer's Sketchpad,
Paintshop Pro.
- Six servers,
based on Windows 2000. Two dual-processor 800MHz Pentium III
machines with 1Gb RAM, host student software. A
dual-processor 1.6 MHz Pentium III machine hosts software
for teachers and administrators. Other servers, ranging
between Pentium II 300MHz and Pentium III 800 MHz, function
as primary and secondary domain controller, data store,
exchange server, RAID 5 configuration and proxy
server.
|
|
top of
page
RETURN TO CASE STUDIES HOME PAGE |
|
