Date: Fri 14-May-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

iinfo-Tech-Team-NHS

Full Text:

INTERNET INFO FOR REAL PEOPLE: Fast Times at NHS

By Bob Brand

Britney Spears meet Cybergrrl!

Bee reporter Steve Bigham, Joe Romano, Internet Sales Manager Charter

Communications, and I were given a tour of the Newtown School District's

Server Room and LANs (local area networks) housed in the newly renovated

Newtown High School. I was blown away!

Steve's front page story, "The Tech Team At NHS Is Staying Ahead of The Curve"

in the May 7 issue of The Bee , captured his observations and impressions.

Excellent read. My comments amplify the article.

The Plan

All highly successful undertakings contain three essential components: a) a

detailed, yet flexible plan, b) a top to bottom group of competent, motivated

people and c) careful execution. The Newtown Public Schools Comprehensive

Technology Plan emerged in 1994. After numerous revisions, many of the

essential elements are now in place. The technology infrastructure is a

tribute to the many community members, educators, and school administrators

who worked long and hard. This 289K PDF Document, revised as recently as

January 1999, is a blueprint for this magnificent network. The first stage is

almost complete.

The Plumbing

The recent expansion of Newtown High School allows for the creation of the

High School Server Room (HSSR), nerve center for voice (phone), data

(computers and LANs), video (VCRs, in-house TV sources and rebrodcasted Cable

TV signals). Shortly, HSSR will tie seven LANs from four schools into the

district (the final two school LANs will be added shortly) into a WAN (wide

area network) providing Internet access, SASI (School Administration Student

Information), Ecotran (school bus transportation software) and other district

wide software packages.

Technophiles might be interested in the high points of the physical layer of

the network: High School -- 3 CISCO 5500 switches, one CISCO 5000 switch, one

CISCO 3600 router, 1,200+ Category 5 drops, connecting 200+ computers; Middle

School -- 8 3COM stackable switched with 400+ Category 5 drops running (drum

roll please) Red Hat Linux on a 90 Mhz Pentium connected via 56k dialup

gateway; Elementary schools -- VIACOM gateway via 56k dial up. Internet tie-in

to the HSSR comes via Charter Cable's optical fiber. Shortly, a VPN (virtual

private network) using Charter's infrastructure will light up the WAN. The

transportation layer of the Network is TCP/IP.

Hardware

A Sun SPARC ULTRA 10 (256 MB Memory) running SQUID 1.22 caches incoming

traffic from the LANs, runs Apache (web server) and Sendmail (e-mail server).

Internet access provided by Charter Communications flows from the 512k bps

cable modem located in the HSSR. Naturally, a firewall filters packets

entering and leaving the network. The school district workstation

implementation breaks down as 70/30 Macs to PCs (Pentium powered Dell

computers).

The ratio at the high school is close to 50/50. Tom Swetts runs the

School-to-Career initiative with students repairing the in-house Dell PCs

while offering a service to the community to upgrade old hardware to Pentium

class performance. The district standardized on Lexmark high speed laser

printers capable of 1200 dpi (dots per inch) output. IP (Internet Protocol)

addressing of this hardware allows for easy network administration.

The Network's Human Face

An explanation of the jeweled movements and fine craftsmanship of a Swiss

watch may be too much of an answer for someone who just wants to know the

correct time. However, an understanding of the underpinning of the structure

becomes important when reliability and security issues arise. The Tech Team,

led by Henryk Michnowicz, director of information technology, clearly grasps

the significance of these issues while balancing the pressures of tight

budgets and ever changing technologic advances.

Plans call for students, teachers, and parents to access grades, homework, and

other activities over the Internet and through the firewall. Some of the

better colleges have this type of system in place on an experimental basis.

However, many do not. My guess is that shortly NHS students will have computer

services available that they may not find when going on to higher education or

entering the workplace.

Quality Content

All network hardware amounts to nothing more than glass, plastic and copper

wire unless good content (software applications) ride on the network. The

challenge for the administrators, teachers and the Tech Team is to smoothly

integrate easy-to-use (and learn), rich, bug-free applications into the

system.

For example, the district website offers a window into the technology that

hides "below the water line." So far, anyone looking in from the outside is

either unimpressed or runs into the web's most ubiquitous cyber-sign "Under

Construction." Pulling together the pieces from the various departments --

art, music, graphics, school-to-career, and sports from all the schools in the

district remains a significant challenge.

The example set by the Comprehensive Technology Plan provides solid evidence

for the potential to showcase the achievements of the school district's

students and teachers through the prism of a website. If the past shows us

something about the future, the district will have a high quality site that

accurately reflects its impressive achievements to date. Stay tuned!

URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) of interest:

http://www.thebee.com/bweb/infotechteam.htm

http://k12.wcsu.ctstateu.edu/~newtown/

http://www.newtown.k12.ct.us/

http://www.chartercom.com/

(This is the 154th of a series of elementary articles designed for surfing the

Internet. Next, The Cluetrain Manifesto is the subject on tap. Stay tuned.

Until next week, happy travels through cyberspace. Previous issues of Internet

Info for Real People can be found: http://www.thebee.com. Please e-mail

comments and suggestions to: rbrand@JUNO.com or editor@thebee.com.)