School takes the implementation of technology in education one step further
One of Sydney's leading private schools, Queenwood School at Mosman, has developed a creative and simple solution to maximise the way technology assists its 800 students and 100 staff.
The school caters for both junior and senior students and is spread across four campuses three for the senior school and one for the junior school.
While many schools have implemented a laptop program which allows students to make their work portable, Queenwood has gone a step further. The school is implementing an Iomega Zip Built-in storage system which provides numerous benefits to the students.
This system implementation will commence with Years 5, 6, 7 and 8. The system will then be launched in the more senior years where computer use becomes more dependent on the subjects students undertake.
"Work basically needs to be portable. The students have got to be able to work on projects both at school and at home. The only two viable options are notebooks and removable media products. We didn't believe laptops were the solution to student computing at Queenwood. They require a large initial investment and have performance and maintenance issues because they aren't designed to withstand the rigours of a school environment. Additionally, equipment is far more likely to be misplaced or lost by students. Thus laptops end up being a very expensive solution for parents," said Mr Chris Walsh, Information Technology Manager at Queenwood.
"So after testing various solutions, the answer we have come up with is the Zip Built-In drive. Students will have the internal Zip drive in their computers at school and at home, and they'll have a Zip disk, which at 100MB is more than capable of coping with all their files."
"With the Zip system our students will be able to carry all their files between our four campuses, as well as home. With a significant amount of walking laptops are a heavy addition to the books and notes students already carry, and the chance of equipment being damaged or lost increases. With just a single disk, the convenience is a thousandfold, in terms of portability and cost," he added.
Many student projects are now also completed on computers, and often include multimedia.
"A floppy disk does not have the capacity to store all the required information.
Having a Zip disk allows children to continue their work at home and to show Mum and Dad their projects."
Queenwood has designed a back-up synchronisation system for students to ensure all student work will be safe and accessible at all times.
"The key to making the system work is ensuring students have an easy way to synchronise their network and home files. When students want to take work home, they click the synchronisation icon and it downloads all their network files onto the Zip disk, and when they return to school the next day, they click the synchronisation icon again and all their work is updated back onto the network. The time savings of Zip are a great advantage too. To download files, and carry them around would take 20 or 30 floppy disks for a student. Ensuring the information is regularly updated would be a nightmare if we used floppies."
Queenwood will also be encouraging students to accept responsibility for file management, and will allocate 100MB of space to each student on the school network.
Additionally, if a student says their dog destroyed their disk, they can go to the canteen, buy a new disk and synchronise their work from the network without the loss of work that can occur with a laptop.
"We can offer students data protection for 100MB that we couldn't do if a larger (and more expensive) removable storage device such as CDs were chosen. As well, we would not be able to put alternative devices into every computer. It is important that the system is convenient and fast- we do not want our students to have to line up to update their disks" Mr Walsh stated.
A further feature of Queenwood's Zip implementation will be the ability to easily expand the benefits of the system to other applications. For example, the Board of Studies supplies the school with past HSC papers on CD.
"We're planning a library loan system with all past papers for a subject on one Zip disk. This means that if students are interested in a certain subject, all the HSC papers for that subject over the last few years are stored on just one disk. Students can then take the disk home and review it, printing out only the things they really need."
"Another way we want to use Zip is for the effective distribution of Queenwood developed study notes. It will be very easy for a teacher to copy all the study notes on to the network, and for students to download the information. It's an extremely efficient and cost effective way, rather than doing the notes on the computer, giving copies to the students, the students making notes about them and printing them out so they can study from them."
The improved use of technology at Queenwood also applies to the school's 100 staff. With the increased demands on teachers' time over the last few years, many staff now need to take work home to prepare for the next day, or to keep up to date with their school administration tasks. While Queenwood's network is effective while at work, teachers need a way to ensure their files stored on the network are accessible at home, and that they are able to transport their work back to school the next day." Mr Walsh added.
Staff will have the same synchronisation system as the students, ensuring work completed at home is updated on the school network.
"We had to think of a way to give staff access to all of their work at school and at home in a painless, easy, fast, yet professional way. Like the students, staff will have the internal Zip drive in their computers at work and at home, and they'll have a Zip disk, which at 100MB is more than capable of coping with all their files too."
Performance of the chosen system was also a very important consideration for Queenwood.
"Novice computer users can get very frustrated when the performance of their file system isn't up to scratch. It also means that data is more likely to be lost because these users don't have the knowledge to save their data if problems occur. One of the criteria for selecting Zip was it's such a standard within the industry 21 million drives sold so far - and is accepted as the best performing storage system in its class,"
"We also don't think Zip is the end. It's not necessarily the technology we're going to use for the next ten years, but it's great because it doesn't preclude us from doing anything else. If we came up with a solution that was expensive then we would feel we were locked in to that solution for an extended time. Whereas the Zip disk is a terrific economical solution that leaves your options open." he added.
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