School Network

Paddyo

Hi

Im looking for some advice on a primary school network setup.

The school will have rougly 80-90 PC/s Laptops all running windows 7

3 splits Students, Teachers and Admin

The school at present has broadband from the NCTE and also another broadband connection for admin.

From what I have read on the forum, Server 2008 R2 and Google apps is the correct way to go.

As regards Ip addresses, should we use the NCTE ip address for all of the computers.

Should we keep the separate broadband conneciton for admin/teachers

For logging into the network, should a user name for each child be setup or should there be a generic class login?

Any advice from people who have aready setup such a network would be much appreciated.

Many thanks
Paddyo

rolion

Hi,

I'm working on two projects like this at the moment,based on the Department & Framework grants and regulations.

Give me a buzz if you think you may need a professional approach and/or assistance...

Have fun...

woolymammoth

Paddyo wrote: »

From what I have read on the forum, Server 2008 R2 and Google apps is the correct way to go.

not necessarily the right way to go. just a different one! At the moment, you have google and microsoft really competing against eachother for this type of business. Google, with Google Apps, and Microsoft, with BPOS (now Office 365). These online suites, they're all hosted online, with microsofts in Dublin itself, not that that really makes a difference. They remove the hassle/need to buy hardware & host / maintain your own mail, etc. They may free up cash for other things, such as a really good broadband connection for using them, but they will certainly free up a lot of time in managing such environments. That in itself, can often be worth so much more!

I would ditch your lovely little dedicated broadband connection for "admin", whatever that meant anyway, unless it's for redundancy, which would be necessary for an online setup descried above. You do not need one line for students and a special line for teachers, or anyone else. The cash could be better spend on a higher speed download, good upload, low contention ratio internet connection.

Everyone should have their own dedicated logon, using active directory on the server 2008 box. You can set up OUs with the appropriate permissions for students and teachers.

now, that'll be €80-90bn, give or take a hundred billion! or €5. Whichever i'm more likely to get! :P

axer

Is the school a DEIS school?

Paddyo

axer wrote: »

Is the school a DEIS school?

No axer, it is a NON-Deis school.



woolymammoth

The broadband connection for the students is provided by the Department of Education through NCTE (www.ncte.ie) - we have no control over its speed or bandwidth or contention - as far as I know. There are various filtering levels provided by NCTE which might not be suitable to all people who need to use the internet in the school and thus the query re the separate broadband connection or as you so nicely put it "your lovely little dedicated broadband connection"

By 'admin' I mean the administration staff in the school

I agree about the individual users logons' and the OUs. I know some schools dont do this - probably to avoid work.

Thank you for your comments

I went to the hole in the wall to get your money, but it told me that there was no money in the account. I asked was that my account or theirs

woolymammoth

Paddyo wrote: »

The broadband connection for the students is provided by the Department of Education through NCTE (www.ncte.ie) - we have no control over its speed or bandwidth or contention - as far as I know.

Ah! I get ya now.

Paddyo wrote: »

There are various filtering levels provided by NCTE which might not be suitable to all people who need to use the internet in the school and thus the query re the separate broadband connection or as you so nicely put it "your lovely little dedicated broadband connection"

bad assumption on my part.. apologies

An additional unrestricted line still might not be necessary though, depends on what you're accessing, or what the school needs.
According to the filtering page (http://www.ncte.ie/Broadband/Filtering/) you can request additional adult sited be unblocked at certain times. If you were to take the Level 6, you can then apply your own in-house filtering to effectively customise it a bit.

There's a lot less work in having a domain where users log in, and setting up OUs or groups, than there is doing it individually on 69-90 computers!

axer

I have setup a few of these school networks.

I would create a login for each of the teachers/admin staff but I wouldnt bother creating separate logins for the students. Just create one student login for them (where the password does not expire or can be changed) and lock them down. You may need to do some testing tho to make sure the school software still works as some of that software is just so badly written.

I cannot see a need for a separate broadband connection for teachers and admin staff or whoever needs it as the level of the NCTE filtering can be adjusted to the middle level which is suitable for primary school and everyone else. If any safe websites are blocked by the filter they can be reported to the filtering service there and then and thee filter will whitelist the site a day or two later. You will find that the most accessed websites in the school will be ryanair and aerlingus.

With regards servers, yes you might aswell go with Windows 2008 R2 if you have 64 bit server hardware (it will not run on 32 bit processors).

The reason I was asking about DEIS schools is I know MS do an offer of €5 per computer per year for Windows and Office licenses (any version at any time) but I am not sure whether it is only for DEIS schools - contact Micromail.ie to find out.

With regards the IP addresses, I would setup DHCP on the server to dish out private IP addresses as there is no need for public ip addresses for workstations.

You might want to setup Windows Sharepoint Services for the teachers for sharing information and also setup a common drive and a home drive for each teacher (and possibly roaming profiles) so that when teachers change classrooms each year they can dump what they need into those drives and access them from the computer in the classroom they move to - saves them moving computers between classrooms which may result in damage.

ressem

Politely disagree with Axer regarding creating individual logins for students.
Without them the students end up carrying out their work on USB keys which teachers regard as a PITA due to them being left in the machines, getting lost etc.

This may or may not apply in the OPs setup, but with secondary school tech graphics leaving cert work there's a fairly strict policy on storing student course work which needs to be submitted.
Storing and backing up this centrally is important.

Besides, creating the accounts is a fairly trivial exercise even using a text file and a batch script.
Longest part of it is Politically Correcting the password list to avoid someone taking offence.

Batch file contents to create users, taking details from the file users.txt, add them to the OU Student Users, set password to never expired

for /F "eol=; tokens=1,2,3,4,5,6,* delims=," %%i in (users.txt) do dsadd user "cn=%%m,ou=Student Users,dc=MYSCHOOLDOMAIN,dc=local" -samid %%m -upn %%m@MYSCHOOLDOMAIN.local -fn "%%k" -ln "%%j" -desc "%%n" -display "%%i" -pwd "%%l" -disabled no -pwdneverexpires yes -memberof "CN=Student Group,OU=User Groups,OU=School Groups,DC=MYSCHOOLDOMAIN,DC=local"

users.txt

User1's Fullname,User1Surname,User1Forename,password1,YearNumberUsername,Descriptive text of AccountType + numerical id
User2's Fullname,User2Surname,User2Forename,password2,YearNumberUsername,Descriptive text of AccountType + numerical id

The text file can be edited and modified in Excel and exported as a comma delimited file.

axer

ressem wrote: »

This may or may not apply in the OPs setup, but with secondary school tech graphics leaving cert work there's a fairly strict policy on storing student course work which needs to be submitted.
Storing and backing up this centrally is important.

Secondary school is a completely different setup and not relevant here considering the OP is setting up a network for a Primary School. Primary school students do not need their own logins. They can still save work locally on the workstation they are on and they definitely do not need USB sticks.

Managing what could be possibly up to 300 user accounts is not trivial either. Think of the issues with password resets etc. Remember we are talking about 4 - 14 year olds here - some that can barely spell or may not be even able to spell at all!

I would create one student account that the password cannot be changed that does not use roaming profiles i.e. the My Documents folder is local the machine and I would create a user account for each teacher and admin staff that uses (if storage and network speed allows it) roaming profiles.

npwinter

Hi Paddyo,

Somebody here has mentioned google and Microsoft hosted accounts. The great news is that Microsoft offer free e-mail to schools as well as charities. I work for a company which sells this to businesses. The same service that costs them €4.26 per person, per month is free to you. They will also set up a domain for you which will be yourschool.edu I'm not certain but I think you'll also be given a Sharepoint site. You may need somebody to help a bit with the setup (I won't plug my company) so ring Microsoft and I'm sure they'll help or recommend somebody.

Best of Luck

Niall

Optimus Prime

Im pretty sure the education edition of google apps is free too. That gives you email address, doc sharing etc on the schools domain for all students etc. a friend of mine works setting it up and running training courses on how to do it. he is google certified.

npwinter

Actually Google mail is virtually free for everybody. I just suggested Microsoft exchange as it is more widely used. Best bet is to trial both and see which is more user-friendly

Optimus Prime

gmail is free alright and is an easy solution, google apps free version has a limit of 50 users, but schools are entitled to the education edition which as far as i know doesnt limit the users or it may be around 1000 or something. the advatage of googles apps is that it offers shared calanders, doc storage and sharing between students and teachers as well as spreadsheets and word processing in the cloud. all stored on google servers. passwords etc can all be managed via an admin console and it can also be linked in with your AD. Its very handy for schools and its free!

rolion

npwinter wrote: »

Hi Paddyo,

Somebody here has mentioned google and Microsoft hosted accounts. The great news is that Microsoft offer free e-mail to schools as well as charities. I work for a company which sells this to businesses. The same service that costs them €4.26 per person, per month is free to you. They will also set up a domain for you which will be yourschool.edu I'm not certain but I think you'll also be given a Sharepoint site. You may need somebody to help a bit with the setup (I won't plug my company) so ring Microsoft and I'm sure they'll help or recommend somebody.

Best of Luck

Niall

is that Office 365 !?