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St. Mary's Parish School
Restructuring an antiquated 400 user system.

St. Mary's Parish School in Littleton, Colorado needed help with an aging computer system. In 2005 there were approximately 400 users logging into the school's 100 iMac G3 and iMac G4 computers with accounts being served from Mac Manager on an original XServe. There were many issues with reliability, speed and disk space. Backups were inconsistent and being done manually to external drives leaving St. Mary's data in a dangerous state.

During the summer of 2006 we upgraded the server to Mac OS X Server, and used external hard drives to increase the disk capacity greatly. A backup system was setup using EMC's Retrospect to schedule automatic backups. In addition to upgrading to Mac OS X Server, adding the drive space and backup software we optimized the network equipment by upgrading from old hubs to newer 10/100 switches placed in strategic locations.

At that time the computer lab consisted of 30 iMac G4 computers that were used for educational websites, typing tutor applications and instruction with various applications like Microsoft Office for Mac and Audacity. Throughout the 2006 school year we maintained these computers, applying software updates, installing educational application updates as they became available and general troubleshooting.

In 2007 the school purchased iMac G5 computers for the computer lab and another XServe to act as the main file sharing and home directory host computer. Mac OS X Server v. 10.4 TIger was installed and the existing users were migrated over and new students added. With enough disk space in the new server to handle the shared files and home directories we were able to repurpose the external hard drives. The 2007 school year saw the introduction of imaging computers. By creating images and using NetBoot and NetInstall we were able to install updated operating system software and applications much more quickly across the now 150 computers that were of 5 different types. This reduced the setup time of new computers from 2 hours to 30 minutes. By configuring Web Proxy Caching and Software Update Services we were able to reduce the traffic on the WAN and optimize our use of the single T1 Internet connection.

The 2008 school year brought the upgrade to Mac OS X Server v. 10.5 Leopard. This allowed us to setup Wikis for the grade groups and blogs for the individual students and teachers. The iCal and iChat services were configured to allow the principal and office staff to share calendars and communicate quickly.

How teachers and students utilize the current system
Teachers use the computers to access the hosted school information system to input grades and interact with each other and the parents of the students. They share files including lesson plans and research. They give presentations using projectors attached to the computer and a smart board interactive white board. The library includes research computers and book checkout stations. There are 2 mobile laptop carts that include specific wireless access points and can be used to provide laptop computers to all students in a classroom.

Each student has his or her own login account and can access it from any computer in the school. The students use the computers to research topics and write papers. When the work is done it is saved to a write only shared folder named the Work Drop Box for teachers to review. Students also use the computers to create HTML webpages, Wikis and Blogs, edit music, video and photo galleries, learn foreign languages, create animations, learn to type and spell and, of course, do their homework.

Time Requirements
The entire project required 10 hours initially to assess the situation and create a customized plan. The execution required 3 onsite hours per week to maintain the hardware, software and troubleshooting with phone support available as necessary. During the summer months, the focus was on getting the hardware and software up to date and configured for the next school year.

The Benefits that the transition brought to St. Mary's
  • The problems that the environment initially presented were overcome by restructuring the existing technological assets. 
  • A strategy was designed and put in place to help St. Mary's plan for the future in a scheduled, cost effective way. 
  • St. Mary's saved 2/3 of the cost of a qualified full-time tech by hiring an independent consultant. 
  • School administrators and the computer lab teacher could count on our friendly consultants being on time and ready to work.
 
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