Databus Issue: 2008 4 10/24/2008
Desktop Virtualization
Tim McCarty Former Director of Technology and Information ServMoving PCs from the Lab to the Classroom
PDF
Desktop Virtualization Moves PCs from the Lab to the Classroom and Can Change the Way We Teach
How can we prepare students for further education and life when their education is not tightly integrated with the technology they’ll have to master and use? Most students have more interaction with computers at home than they do at school. This is a disconnect that has to be fixed if we are to remain relevant.
Staying competitive
Dublin Unified School District competes for students as the tri-valley grows with relos from the entire US and large parts of Asia. Parents are looking at technology and how well it is integrated into the learning process. What few PCs we had were relegated to labs and the kids did not get much screen time on them and there was little continuity or room for the students to make a connection. The limited exposure to the computers packed little punch and even less of an impact.
As the Director of Technology and Information Services at the Dublin California Unified School District, I had to figure out how to increase computing capacity without additional funds. I needed a solution that would stretch the limited funding we had for computers into more computing capacity without straining the support system. I needed a solution that would (a) leverage our existing network infrastructure, (b) support standard business and education software, (c) be easy for students to use and teachers to administer, (d) be scalable, (d) be simple to maintain with existing IT staff and resources, and finally, (e) comply with growing demands for greener computing.
Back to the future
I did it with a new spin on an old technology. It is quite simple: today’s PCs are totally underutilized. They sit idle about 95% of the time, even when students are working actively on them. Desktop virtualization is the solution: it takes those otherwise wasted cycles and shares them among multiple users—at a fraction of the cost of buying more PCs. It’s like the old dumb terminals and mainframes, except today’s PCs are the mainframes.
There are multiple virtualization approaches out there, but we chose the NComputing X300. It was simplest and most straight-forward and the least-expensive—it allows multiple kids to simultaneously share one PC for about $70 per added seat (plus keyboard, monitor and mouse). Most importantly, the performance has to be like a real PC, and with the X300 the kids feel like they have their own PC, But it costs a fraction of what it would if you bought dedicated computers.
The X300 includes the virtualization software and hardware. You load the software onto the shared PC. It allows multiples user accounts to be used simultaneously. The hardware is called an access device. It is a simple box that each users monitor, keyboard, mouse, and headphones plug into. Then you run a cable from the access device to a PCI card (also included) in the shared PC. The PCI card in the X300 kit has ports for 2 access devices. That’s three additional users plus one on the PC itself and you have four users sharing one PC. The X300 kit runs about $70 per seat, then add keyboard, monitor, mouse, etc. You can install 2 kits into one PC, so that gives you 3 + 3 + 1 users, or 7 total on one CPU. The performance is excellent. The kids even notice that an NComputing station is faster than the old PCs we used to use in the labs.
Changing the way that teacher’s teach
Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Put two PCs in each classroom, plus 2 X300 kits in each PC. At a very affordable price, you now have 14 workstations that act and feel just like “real” PCs. What’s so special about that? 14 is about half of the typical class size, so here are two scenarios. First, when the kids are working on assignments, they can work as a team of two kids on each station. Two is great for teamwork: one types and one reads. With three, they elbow for position. With two they are engaged and stay on task. Second, send half of the kids to the back of the room to work on the computer-based assignments, and work up front with the other half of the class. Maybe it is the kids who need remedial help in reading. Maybe it is a group getting enriched science exposure. In either event, I just cut my class size in half.
Ongoing benefits
As if up-front savings and engaged students aren’t enough, the benefits continue as long as the devices are installed. The NComputing boxes have no moving parts, no CPU and no memory, so they really don’t break or require maintenance—even with typical student abuse. I didn’t need to add staff to support the additional computing seats which was important because I lacked the funds to expand. It also enabled us to leverage the infrastructure and software that we already had in place and extend it to reach more kids, since each PC supported seven users. Also, when it comes to time to update to newer PCs, we don’t need to update the access devices. They really are dumb terminals, so the cost of our refresh cycles just went way down, too.
Finally, let’s look at the green aspect. Frankly, green isn’t driving most purchases, but it is great to be ahead of the curve. Using NComputing’s green impact calculator ontheir website, I estimate that I’ve reduced our computing carbon footprint by 90%. In fact, The Sundance Channel ECO BIZ program did a segment on our deployment of NComputing.
Conclusion
Expanding computer access without straining your budget, staff, or infrastructure is possible with NComputing. And with more computer access—right in the back of the classroom—our students are being better prepared for post-secondary life and the workforce. And by freeing up teaching time and being able to pay attention to special needs groups, not only is computer-based education improved, so is the entire educational experience. I’ll tell you the same thing I told the Sundance Channel: “It’s changing the way that we teach.”
