Sydenham School was one of the first educational establishments to
adopt a Thin Client Network. A few years on and it’s benefiting
both pupils and teachers
Sydenham School is a large comprehensive for girls in South East
London. When IT co-ordinator, John Hobson, joined the school in
1996, he discovered that the IT department consisted of a number of
computer systems, including Pentium PCs, Macintoshes and dumb
terminals, linked together in four autonomous networks.
The school's IT curriculum consists of working with many current
applications including Microsoft Word and Excel. Hobson quickly saw
that not only was this impossible on many of the school's older
systems, but that the mix of different platforms prevented pupils
from working consistently on the same machine. Hobson sought to
implement a strategy that would allow pupils to work on the same
applications, on any computer, while maintaining the desired
computer-to-child ratio of 1:9.His first thought was to upgrade to
a new computer system. When this proved to be prohibitively
expensive, Hobson approached iNET Consultancy to design and
implement a Thin Client Network. "It took about a year to find a
supplier that didn't come in, see the Macs, and walk out the door,"
he says." iNET was the only supplier who stayed and came back for
more." iNET's Bruce Passey explains the details of implementing the
network. "Our first task was to do an audit to ascertain exactly
what computer systems we were working with," he says. "There were
between 80 and 100 systems in all including 50 or 60 Apple Mac LC2s
and 3s. We soon realised there was a lot of cabling to be deployed.
We laid down fibres between all the main buildings of the school,
creating a network backbone running at 100 Megabits a second."The
school's IT department now maintains a Citrix Network running on a
server farm of Compaq 1600 servers, an Internet server and a UPS
system. When connected to the network the native operating system
of the individual client machine is bypassed. All applications are
accessed from the school's server farm. As a result, it is possible
to run modern applications, such as Office 97, on obsolete
machines. Installing the Citrix network has also solved a number of
cross-platform problems. Whether a pupil is working on a Macintosh
or a PC, the same Windows-based applications are available. John
Hobson has noted many advantages for school and pupil alike. "It's
a lot easier in terms of administration. I don't have to configure
individual machines, it's all done centrally." The advantages for
the children are also obvious. "Now the children have a consistent
front end and a single user name. They have access to the same
applications regardless of machine. They can start work in one IT
room, continue it in another, and finish it off in the library if
they want to."Since the implementation of the Citrix Network the
school boasts a computer to child ratio of 1:1. Bruce Passey
details further advantages of the system. "The key benefits of the
system are efficiency and return of investment. With Thin Client
you can centralise technology and maintain control over it. For
example, individual users can be 'shadowed' by the administrator.
If there's a problem, it's easily traced."During the past few
months, work has been undertaken to allow the network to be
accessed from many other points in the school. As well as
Sydenham's two IT rooms, thin clients have been installed in many
teachers' offices, allowing both pupil and teacher to access
ongoing projects in exactly the same format. Future developments
include a system designed to allow local primary schools to access
the Citrix network without establishing an IT department of its
own. Instead, connections are made to Sydenham School's server farm
and applications can be accessed from any platform.iNET's ultimate
goal is to implement a system at Sydenham allowing pupils to access
the school's network from any location using an Internet browser.
Using this system, pupils can continue working at school, at home
or even on holiday.
By Richard Pitt