ICT Update

14th June 2007

Replacement of Optima Teacher Laptops

Please be advised that the Dell laptops will start arriving in schools from today.

Information has been provided so teaching staff can join new machines to the domain and transfer their own data. Click here to access all the documentation.

Please read through the documentation and familiarise yourself with the information available, especially the replacement guidelines and procedures for connecting a new machine.

Group Policies

A last call for request for schools to advise which settings they would like to have included in Windows Desktop Group Policies for Student Accounts. We haven’t had much feedback at present. Requests so far include restricting access to the Control Panel and Run Command, also disabling the Alt-Ctrl-Del at the logon screen.

Please send input to phillippe.monforte@nt.gov.au by the end of this week.

Innovative Teachers Awards for 2007

Every year Microsoft celebrates the successes of visionary teachers who have introduced innovative technologies into the curriculum, supporting the enthusiasm of digital natives in our schools today and improving learning outcomes for tomorrow.

This year Microsoft has included a word document application form for teachers to download and complete with an online submission tool to be available shortly. (Applications open 5 June, 2007 and closes 31 July, 2007). Both peer nomination as well as self-nomination is an option for teachers.
The URL for the application form is at http://www.microsoft.com/australia/education/pil/innovativeteachers/awards.mspx

Award winning teachers will win a trip to Sydney to attend the ACEL National Conference, October 9th – 12th as well as a trip to Hanoi, Vietnam in April 2008 to attend the Microsoft Asia Pacific Innovative Teachers’ Forum.

Hewlett Packard UPS Failures

Many schools have experienced HP UPS failures. HP is continuing investigation of these failures, however to date, has not identified a manufacturing problem.

After attending two schools, they make the following observations and recommendations.

The HP Server and UPS equipment require constant air-conditioning to remain within operating tolerances. ITSD understand that most schools have air-conditioned their server rooms, however a small minority don’t have air-conditioners, and some turn them off for extended periods each day.

HP also used sophisticated power measuring equipment at one school, to record and analyse the power being supplied. They found significant voltage fluctuations, which may be related to an air-conditioner, or other electronic equipment starting/stopping. They also found regular (1 sec interval) spikes, which caused the UPS to switch to/from battery mode every 1 second.

Both of these environmental issues are likely to be resulting in reduced UPS life and increased failures.

For remote schools, If you are experiencing ongoing failures, it may be advisable the next time an electrician is on-site to ask for a report on the stability of electrical supply, and to identify if any equipment in the school is causing large voltage spikes i.e. air-conditioners.

Switches – Managed or Unmanaged

A managed switch lets you take control of your network and all the traffic moving through it, while a non-managed switch simply allows Ethernet devices to communicate with one another. For example, when you connect your Ethernet devices (PC, network printer and so on) to a non-managed switch, they usually will communicate with each other automatically. They use a protocol called "auto-negotiation" to agree upon certain communication parameters. One parameter they negotiate is the data rate — generally 10, 100 or 1000MBps. Another is whether to use half-duplex or full-duplex mode.

A managed switch, on the other hand, does all of this as well, but also lets you provide you adjust the communication parameters of each port on the switch to any setting you desire. This gives you the option of monitoring and configuring your network in a variety of different ways, as well as giving greater control over how data travels over the network and who has access to it.

Through the use of SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), you can view a multitude of network statistics. This includes the number of bytes and/or frames transmitted and received, errors generated and port status. Statistics for each can be viewed for each individual port in the switch; most managed switches make this data available via a Web interface. Most managed switches also offer advanced features that help to enhance your control over the network.

Some features benefits include: Quality of Service (QoS); Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN); Bandwidth Rate Limiting; Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP); Port Mirroring; and Trunking redundancy.

Both D-Link and Netgear offer Education pricing. ITSD recommend Managed switches and offer advice on selecting the right switch to meet your requirements, However, you should contact a computer reseller (ie Editure), or a Data Cabler for purchase, installation and configuration. Please email phillippe.monforte@nt.gov.au if you require additional information or assistance.