What are the specs of the computers at Papanui High School?
We have about 190 computers in the school, ranging in specifications from an old 80286 machine. That's kept for nostalgic reasons only. A previous principal had bought it about 1991 or 1992, and never used it. It was in a office behind the gym. I discovered it, learned how to use it and became a born again computer person.

We still have some '386s, but the recycled machines we bought recently [from the PC Recycling Channel, Wellington] have just about wiped all of those — that was one of the things we wanted to do. We still have about 20 '486s, scattered round. All the rest are Pentiums. Most are not high powered. Most are now 4–5 years old — Pentium 120s, Pentium 166s.

But one of the things — and this is where the recycled ones were so brilliant — that by spending so little for a lot of them — we purchased 74 — we didn't have to spread the capital budget thinly with just a few high powered machines for each department — we could buy fewer really high powered machines that went into the art and photography area, where they want to do large image manipulation with Photoshop and Freehand — that sort of thing.

When the ICT group was put together to develop the school's ICT Plan to get the money from the Ministry of Education, the thing that became very clear very quickly was that departments which were not timetabled into the three computer labs were feeling really hard done by, because they could never get their classes into those rooms. Two of the computer labs were basically text and information management, and the other was tied up either with a bit of text and information management plus computing classes for the senior school — just a couple of senior ones. Every other department had extremely limited access unless they went to the library, and even that wasn't brilliant access for everyone.

So the key focus that came out of our ICT plan was that access was the issue that had to be dealt with. The only way we felt we could possibly keep all the departments happy was second hand computers. There was just no way we could afford new ones.

Seventy-four recycled machines was quite a lot to buy at the same time. Basically I went to our principal and said, look we still have our original 1992 computer suite of our 1992 '386s. We'll never have a cheaper opportunity to upgrade them all in one swoop. And so for the cost of $500 a machine plus doing an update of the software licence from Windows 95, we've got a whole new suite. The Board agreed it was too good an opportunity to miss.

What was your spec for the CANZ PCs?

We gave the PC Recycling Channel a minimum spec for these computers of P166s with 32Mb RAM and 850Mb hard drive. We wanted them all the same because of the way we run an image system off the server. So we can keep the files on the machine totally up to date, and kids can't trash them without serious effort.

It's worked brilliantly for us, and we're absolutely thrilled, because it's allowed us to do what we wanted in terms of student access to computers. We decided also, that in terms of access, you don't actually want to take classes over to computer labs. You actually want the computers in the blocks where you're teaching and so there has been very strong emphasis in developing computer pods around the school.

Now in science we had already started doing that. We'd crammed 4–5 computers into a little work space — basically a prep room between two labs. We quickly realised you could only get about six computers in — about 12 kids if you were lucky. Even then it was crowded. So we took a fairly bold step and demolished the staff workroom. Staff hadn't been using it much because they were working in either their lab or prep room. So we turned that into our computer pod, with 15 of the recycled Pentiums.

Social Science developed a couple of old storage spaces. They cleaned out social studies textbooks from 20 years ago and discovered they had some room!

It's a bit mickey-mouse in the sense that we've done it ourselves on the cheap, but both the science and social science had '486s, they were networked, like every computer in our school, and we could access CD-ROMs from those machines. But of course the recycled ones allowed us to put Pentiums in, which has the brilliant advantage that not only can kids access the CD-ROM, but they can also access Word files and input directly in their own files.

The maths department is still mainly using '486s in their pod. In the meantime they're happy to run programs like Excel on them. Later on we'll probably buy some newer CANZ machines for them.

How many newer high powered computers do you have?

About ten, spread over the school. The photography people are mainly using Photoshop. I think the art people are using Freehand and Photoshop. The technical department is still debating about what they should be using. At the moment they're mainly using Autocad Light — '97 version. That runs fine on the new recycled machines. It's a bit of a tricky thing — you have to have some files on the hard drive and some on the server, but once you sort that out, it runs quite well.

What software are you using at Papanui High School?

On the machines that are what we call 'on the image' — the Windows 95 or 98 machines — we've got Office 97 Professional, and everything that goes with that. We have FrontPage for constructing web pages. For e-mail we use Pegasus Mail — that's historic — we've always used that — and one benefit of using it is that it's not prone to virus attacks. Our web browser is Internet Explorer 5.

We've got lots of department-specific software in the system. For example in the science department we have things like Crocodile Clips, atomic physics simulations, genetic simulations, data logging stuff. Things like data logging could quite happily be put on a stand-alone machine, but we have it on the network, so you don't have to go to one particular machine.

As well as that, we also network CDs, from a Linux server. The basic ones are the encyclopaedias — Encarta, Britannica and an old version of Groliers. But there are lots of others — someone might say they want a piece of software on a CD for their department. If there's room on the Linux box and we can get it to run, we bung it on and it's there.

Lots of stuff runs off the server, and we try as much as possible to do that, simply because the size of the image on the hard drives is getting bigger and bigger, and we ran into problems with the recycled ones. The main image we were using is over 1Gb — up to 1.2Gb, and as these new machines were only 850Mb, we had to do a separate image. We just cut some of the things off the image — Access for example. We said the number of people using Access is so minimal, they can do it in specific classrooms. That cut things down considerably.

Have you had pressure from parents and others to buy brand new computers?

None at all.

Some of the rooms are still using Pentium 120s and they're still running all the MS Office 97 stuff, all the CDs. Yes, they can be a bit slow — although no slower than my own computer at home — but we haven't had that pressure, except from the art and photography teachers. But we were able to look after them from our capital budget because of the savings we made by buying recycled machines.

We've allocated base models of new machines to the art and photography people, and said this is what we'll fund. If you want to put more RAM in or have a more expensive processor, you can add from your department budget. We can't let them have total wish/dream fulfilment. That's not fair on the rest of the school. We've got to look at equity. They're not doing professional stuff, so they don't have machines that are absolutely the most powerful, much as they'd like it.

I always say that our kids don't work at the speed the computer can work at. I watch them doing some of the things and I think — Oh my God, you could do this on a much slower machine, because you're running at about a 486 speed yourself.

That's an issue, but I think we've dealt with it quite well.

What activities and curriculum areas?

Basically we've tried to spread the machines across the curriculum areas totally, so for example in the science department pods, they're used for simple research questions — you know, go to the CDs and get information. We use the simulation programs a lot. They're great for things you can't do in real time — you can't do genetic experiments in a day, and I use it for atomic physics simulations in the senior school, that sort of thing.

Something I've been really excited about is being done in technology classes — kids doing Lego computer control. It's just magical. My office is windowed to their work space, and sometimes the amount noise...I go out and it's just a buzz. Admittedly this is a good class, but it's such a buzz seeing these kids on a task, being excited about what they're doing.

They're looking at technology in a washing machine. They've had to build a Lego model of a washing machine with appropriate motors and connect that to the Lego interface, which is then connected to the computer. They write a program on the computer that tells the interface how to control the model. They have to set it up to do wash cycles, to do reversing for a certain amount of time, then stop, put it in a spin mode, and so on.

It is just brilliant, and they're having to do real problem solving. This is what I like about it. You can use computers just for research and if you're not careful kids just cut and paste. These kids might ask, "how do I do..." or "I want to do this..." And I'll say "I don't know — it's a couple of years since I've done it — what have you done so far?" And they might say, "Oh — if I just did this."

The excitement was just magical. We dragged the principal over one day and said, "You've got to see this. This is what you want — pupil centred learning."

What about staff training in ICT at Papanui?

It is an issue that not all staff are up to speed on how you can use computers in their teaching programme. I think you do it by getting a few lead teachers who get really excited and can spread the word. One of our teachers is away doing a course at the moment, and another of our leading technology teachers is going to do an extramural course.

My own involvement with the genetic simulation program is an example of how ICT techniques can spread. I looked at it and even though I'm not a biologist, I thought it was something that could be really useful. So I learned how to use it, then taught the rest of the staff and wrote the instruction sheets to go with it. And now they're all starting to use it.

How do you maintain the ICT setup?

We contract out. Historically we have a firm in town that used to deal with schools, and then one of the guys from that firm went out on his own to specialise in working with schools. We contract that guy. One of the people he employs we have theoretically for 20 hours a week. In fact he's never here for 20 hours a week — one, he's always so busy and two, he's actually very quick repairing things, and doing things, so we don't need him for that time. He is incredibly knowledgeable and we are extremely lucky. There are three guys in this little firm, and because they work in at least four other schools, something they might do for one school is passed on to other schools. We couldn't live without them.

The cost of this support is built into the budget. A couple of years ago we said look, this is ridiculous having to apply for support budget every year, so now it just goes in every year — there's no discussion any more — it's just accepted. The board here has been extremely supportive of ICT spending. But then, as a school we've been lucky to have had extra income from international students. Without them, the money would be tight.

Having damn good technical backup is marvellous. When we first started, I used to spend every weekend in here, trying to get the programs to work off the server — originally we were running all the '386s as diskless work stations — no hard drives. I spent hours and hours struggling over that. Now I don't even worry about it. My role now is simply the overview of the running of the network and do annual reports and development plans.

You were talking earlier about your action learning model for research...

We have a strong focus on what we call the action learning model for research, and all classes are taken through it in the library/information centre. There's nothing worse than teachers saying to kids, "you're doing a project — now go out and do it." And students just go and copy stuff out. We emphasise that ICT is simply part of the research process. We try to teach all third formers what that research process is, in terms of focusing and asking what questions you need to research, what are the key words — doing that sort of thing. You don't just send them to a computer and say "find out about something." They're not allowed to go to the computer until they have written down what they already know about the topic — written down what questions they want to find out, written down what key words they'll be searching for.

This approach goes across all disciplines. There are very few subjects where there's no research component. In different years, classes are taken through it in different subjects. One year they might do it through the science classes, next year it might be the English classes or social science classes. It's been extremely useful. It stops the situation where a kid turns up at the library, saying, "I have to research such and such" the librarian says "what do you need to know about it?' and the student replies "I don't know." That's useless.

What future plans do you have for ICT at Papanui?

The next one is to develop the English Department pod — it involves some capital work and changing round some of the rooms.

There's a strong possibility of a big development here. We are smack alongside the Northland shopping mall in Papanui, and they want to take some of our land to put a road through to reduce traffic congestion. If this goes ahead, a couple of our blocks will be relocated and completely rebuilt. When that occurs, we can have purpose-built ICT pods. It's a great opportunity, because we've not been able to afford build pods from scratch and have had to do things like blocking off corridors, putting spaces in corridors, shifting cupboards.

In terms of developing the network, I want to move connections from hubs to switches, which are becoming cheaper. We'll have that sort of ongoing development.

What is the basic network configuration in the school?

We have two big servers connected by fibre optic to the outlying blocks and then in each block it's UTP Cat5 cable. We're still running Novell — mainly for printing and file sharing. Novell is very good at that. We run all the CD-ROMs off a Linux box — our technical guy is just a whiz at Linux.

You haven't been tempted into Windows NT or Windows 2000?

NT is a problem, because a lot of our workstations can't cope with it. NT needs quite a reasonable machine with quite a lot of RAM, and we have a huge range of machines. If we were starting from scratch... One of our previous technicians got poached by Avonside Girls. They run NT over there and he just hates it. He's sick and tired of the blue screens of death and having to run to every machine to update software. He said there are huge issues with it. And yes, there are lots of utilities for doing things with NT, and each one of them is going to cost you $9–10,000 — just dream on — schools don't have that money. We have to do things on the cheap.

What are your contact details?