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UPDATE April 5, 2009: the meeting which occurred was not designed to answer these questions, it was more of a sharing of best practices from a group of schools that had done 1-1 in some fashion at the 9-12 level. I am going to head over to StudyWiz forums, where I was informed there are some places to ask these type of questions

My hope is to present some suggestions and questions to the MLTI Project Team in the near future. IF the MLTI 9-12 project goes forward, I hope we can use best practices, cooperative planning and innovative ideas to make it as smooth as possible. This is not meant to be an endorsement of Macs, or the current MLTI/DOE plan, just more of a how would we like things done presuming the project consists of rolling out Apple laptops to all 9-12 students and teachers. You can sign your contribution, or not, but if you want to hear back specific information (presuming perhaps falsely that we will get any) let me know who you are and how to get in touch Thanks, I appreciate your input!

Please add what you like to the sections below:

=**Roll Out Ideas/Suggestions/Preference**=

Delivery before the end of this current school year (early June) would be ideal. I'd like to be able to take a look at the image and consult the teachers as to what additional software they will need. It will be much easier to do this before everyone leaves for summer break.

The image should be available in early May to prepare packages and see what is available on it.

Consider a switch to Moodle to accommodate netbook sites and users. Consider a switch to anything that others can participate in. This way we can share our experiences with others outside the walled community.

=Questions=

Can stimulus money be used to pay for staff to support the project? (atw)

Can stimulus money be used toward the $272 per student? Does it need to go into a specific Title fund? (atw)

Can the state come up with a recommended staffing plan (like EPS one guidance counselor per 350 students) to support MLTI (st)

Can we have more details on the wireless upgrade? What is being used? What areas are being covered? Can schools pay for additional coverage? What are the rates and conditions?

Will schools that opt out of MLTI but pursue other 1:1 (by choice or due to fiscal concerns) be eligible for wireless infrastructure upgrades?

Will schools that opt out of ALL 1:1 options (by choice or due to fiscal concerns) be eligible for wireless infrastructure upgrades?

Will the state consider funding electrical upgrades and cost of storage of laptops?

=Software/Disk Image=

Firefox should be set to auto-detect proxies, so that schools that use a proxy server don't have to configure every copy of Firefox before it is usable. Update to FF 3 as well.

Also, there are a number of default bookmarks set for Safari; perhaps these could also be set up in Firefox.

For the admin and teacher accounts, disable the scrubber that renders downloaded apps useless. Adults can decide whether or not to place apps on the desktop. This 'feature' causes more problems than it prevents. (Just an aside on why this is how it is. The orginal requirement was for Apple to scrub the image for games. There was, maybe still is, a list of games on a server that the image checks in with. The DOE has the capability to maintain that list although it is probably completely untouched. Anyway, it taxed the machines far too much to search the whole hard drive for those games. Therefore the scrubber disabled things outside a certain directory automatically and then only had to look in a few directories for the games.)

The middle school machines used to have a package that would allow for website history tracking. It would be great if that package could be updated to work with the new image and with all browsers.

Provide a single image, not a "parted" one so districts who have the capabilities of network imaging their machines can take advantage of it.

Can the image be made smaller to cut down on reimaging time? Every year the image grows and reimaging time increases. Can we take items that most users do not use and make them into packages that can be removed on a school by school basis? For example a school might not want 1GB of pages templates or garageband loops. 

Tie the time server settings to the location settings. That way the "My School" could be set to the school time servers and at "home" it would look to time.apple.com.

Can we rid the image of Appleworks? It's out of date and buggy (not to mention unsupported by Apple). Perhaps you can add a package for the few schools that still want it for legacy support, but I think it would be beneficial for a majority of schools to not have it installed by default. Currently, we have to either disable/delete it or try to convince users that it isn't a good program to use for word processing.

ARD or an alternative for ALL teachers to control or monitor student laptops. (They probably don't desire this because of bandwidth. Even a medium school with several teachers using this would slow wireless networks to a crawl.)

With students taking machines off campus, and often not logging-out/logging-in, it makes it difficult to uniformly deliver package updates via ARD or management policies via MCX. How about a configurable client script which polls a locally owned http server for any package updates that we might like to distribute to the laptops? Or even better, negotiate a better deal for Casper for those districts interested in utilizing it.

Any possibility of allowing the use of mobile (named) accounts rather than the generic 'student' and 'teacher' for those districts who are utilizing OSXserver?

=**Support/Service**= What can we expect for failure rates and turn around times? You have experience with the teacher machines so can we see the percentage that have need hard drive replacements, batteries, power adapters, etc? How about out of warranty repairs that have been done? What is the amount of those repairs grouped by price?

Does the program include and preferential pricing on parts or out of warranty repairs?

Is there an option for insurance? Is there a special price for insurance or is each school on their own?

GSX was used because that was an existing system Apple had for service providers. When it was implemented, the State was told there would be a version developed specifically for large education deployments. Has that been developed? When will it be released?

=Professional Development=

What is offered? How much is online and how much is in person? If it is mostly online and in podcasts, ha someone looked at the effectiveness of those media with some teachers new to technology or already timid about using technology?

Has anyone set aside funds for paying for substitutes?

Are teacher leaders being used and are they receiving a stipend?

Are there plans for any other structures? Is anyone receiving stipends?

If podcasts are being made available, can they be made available somewhere else outside of iTunesU? Having them in iTunesU prevents anyone from seeing them if they don't want to agree to iTunes software license and forces people to update iTunes on their machines periodically which many students and teacher do not have the rights to do and they cannot view podcasts.

=Funds= Can we get a breakdown of how much (percentage or dollar wise) is going towards what? For example how much of the $100 million is towards professional development? How much towards wireless networks?

Since the middle school contract is being renewed early, how much money is the State saving/spending? Is that already included in the $100 million? Please explain what the cost actually is?

Can people purchase additional machines with the image? What is the cost? What are the restrictions/caveats?

Can schools just purchase the ability to use the collaboration system? Can they just purchase the wireless networking? Can schools just paricipate in the profesisional development program? What are the costs?

=Other=

Where is the contract posted/kept? How can we get a copy to read for ourselves what is included and what is not included?

=Software additions that may help facilitate faster deployments:= Novell iPrint - please include means to track the Computer Name, DNS Name, or IP for print jobs Browser History coconutBattery