Infrastructure

The following was originally published October 9, 2008 at http://eitfnz.blogspot.com/2008/10/infrastucture.html Schools have a dilemma. When they purchase a piece of electrical equipment it is already outdated and superseded by the same product that does it twice and fast and twice as better.

Take for instance cabling a school. The Ministry standard is Cat5e which can obtain speeds of up to 155 Mbit/s, Cat6a cabling is capable of 10 Gbit/s and Fibre Optics can achieve an amazing 111 Gb/s speed. The dilemma for Principals and Board of Trustees is when to make the jump and purchase these expensive infrastructural requirements.

Likewise, the purchasing of computers is also another dilemma with the same root cause: planned obsolescence. What should we do in order to maintain the highest quality products that will enhance our students’ abilities with ICT?

There are two main options on the table, leasing and purchasing computers. By leasing the computers it takes away the need for a ‘repairperson’ when the computer hardware fails, but it can be costly to lease them also.

Purchasing computers give opportunity to the school to maintain and hold these computers well after their use by date when they seem to morph into a relic from an Ancient Egyptian tomb.

Either options are win situations for companies that provide the computers, but there are new emerging technologies that can enable schools to have their cake and eat it also.

Macedonia is the first country in the world to have 1 computer for every child. They have used the ncomputing's technology to essentially transform 1 computer into 4 with minimal cost and extended its ability to the limits.

Although it may sound like a fat or thin client, the technology behind it is similar but different also. Upon installing the circuit board into the computer and plugging in the cables and box the computer is then sent and instruction to share itself a little more.

If you have ever seen two screen on one computer, this uses the same technology and ‘fools’ the computer into thinking it has 4 screens, the only difference is that these four screens allow different logins, different programmes to load and stream videos simultaneously.

How could school maximise their returns? In order to understand this expenditure it should be understood that in the best interests of the children and school these ideas will benefit stakeholders now and well into the future.

The key is that the xtendas do not have any moving parts thus making them highly unlikely to break down, use far less power compared to having 4 computers, require no upgrading, no power socket and no internet cable.

If schools were to lease the main computer and purchase the xtendas then the school would continually have the latest computers and best technology in the country instead of being left with relics from Ancient Egypt gathering dust.

For Principals and Board of Trustee members alike the moral decision needs to be made, purchase computers and place them into the school until they are archaic or lease computers and purchase the xtendas so when we upgrade the leased computers the xtendas will automatically follow suit and be upgraded to the latest OS and highly specified computer. If we can do this our teaching of technology could be twice as fast and certainly twice as better.

[|Hadleigh Benson]