Tips & Tricks for K-12 Educational LANs.

For the past several years, I've been employed as a computer technician in an elementary school and worked with my district's administration to develop the labs in our schools into functional computer learning centers. Along the way, I've developed a good grasp of what has worked and what could be improved. For those districts planning to add computer technology to their instruction, these suggestions and ideas are offered as a guide. * Some Hardware Basics Let's start with some basics. Use multiple circuits for the lab. If you have a lot of computers you'll need to distribute the load on the circuit breakers. Consider having three separate circuits. One for the monitors (shut off the monitors to get children's attention or clear the room at the end of class), one for computers (start up the lab with the flip of a switch), and one for things that should never be turned off like the file and printers. To do this you'll need to know the amount of electricity that the computers win draw. It will be expressed in a figure called amps and is often on the back or bottom of equipment. When in doubt, check with the manufacturer. Always round this figure up. For example, if the computer, monitor and CD-ROM drive together draw 4.3 amps, round up to 5 amps. Place wires and power cords on the back side of computer tables, not along the ledges. Small children, whose feet won't reach the floor, like to prop them up on those ledges. Many a network has gone down by someone accidentally pulling out the plug to the file server. The same holds true for any other networking hardware as well. If anything supporting the network loses power, down it all comes. It's also a good idea to protect the with a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) so that if the power fails you can shut down the system properly. If the room will be staffed all the time, one of those $100 models will suffice. Otherwise look for a server model that has software to shut down the system if power is not restored within several minutes. Don't overlook having up-to-date start up and maintenance disks ready to go in the event of hardware problems. Macintosh users can get these[1] by an anonymous ftp: ftp.support.apple.com/pub/apple_sw_updates/ US/Macintosh/System%20Software/System_7.5 _Update_1.0/. Keep multiple copies of start-up disks and utilities handy; if one disk goes bad, you'll have another ready to go. As a precaution, locate the file away from the rest of the room, preferably in another room located next to the lab, like a locked closet. A file sitting next to printers or computers that students use invites curious eyes and hands. Whatever you do, don't use this closet as a storage room. Allow the room's air to circulate. And don't pile supplies, like boxes of paper, around it. Later, when you need access, you don't want to have to move a lot of other things out of the way. If you can't keep the physically away from children then use a password-protected screen blanker. Make sure it's something simple; the animated graphics in most commercial screen savers will tie up the CPU and eat into network performance. Use a big hard drive for the server. I like to have applications load off the server. It makes the computer universal,, so any child can run any application from any computer. While networkable software may cost more initially, as the network grows, you can add additional users at no additional cost. In all cases check your software license to see how many computers can legally use it. The Administrator function of networks makes it easy to lock applications to a certain number of users. Others prefer loading applications onto the local hard drive for speed reasons. In my lab, I use a mixture of both. I try out the application on the network and if it doesn't work or is too slow I load it onto local drives. If you can, buy only networkable software. …