Curro School is among the first in the Western Cape to implement a revolutionary IT system. The school has installed terminals in the place of personal computers (PCs) for its learners, teachers and admin staff, and Provincial Minister of Education, Cameron Dugmore, and his team visited the school at the end of 2007 to view the system.
Eduard Ungerer, Director at Curro, says that while it is too soon to specifically quantify the benefits, he has no doubt that the solution is the way forward for computing.
"In the context of global warming and South Africa's electricity shortage, terminal computing is the future," he says.
The terminals, supplied by leading international company, Revnetek, generate a fraction of the heat of regular PCs, and therefore use significantly less electricity.
A terminal uses less than 5 watts of energy, versus 350-500 watts used by an average PC. Because the terminals have no moving parts, maintenance costs are also significantly reduced.
With the Department of Minerals and Energy due to launch the Schools' Energy Awareness Campaign in May this year, schools will be under increasing pressure to reduce their energy consumption. Revnetek's solution may present an important way for them to do this, while enjoying a host of other benefits the system offers.
Ungerer says that being a private school, Curro is well placed to make a contribution to beating a new path for IT in education.
"Like any early adopters, we've had our teething problems, but we feel that our learning curve will ultimately benefit other schools that don't have the resources available to us," he says.
"This is an important contribution because we all have a responsibility to find 'green' solutions in various aspects of our operations. If we can showcase a new IT solution that benefits the environment, and has the potential to reduce operational costs, we are delighted to be of service to our fellow educators."
Curro has already used the experience gained from the Durbanville school's implementation to ensure a smooth transition for its other two schools, one in Langebaan and the other in Hazeldean, Tshwane. Durbanville has 140 terminals, and Langebaan and Hazeldean have 25 each.
Trevor Joseph, SA CEO of Revnetek, says it has been an exciting challenge implementing the system for Curro. "The education environment is complex as you have diverse groups of users with completely different needs," he says. "On the one hand, the learners need access to specific programmes, the teachers have totally different needs, and the admin staff a separate set of requirements. By working closely with Curro, we had to find a way to accommodate these needs and maximise performance and uptime.
"In addition, because Curro is not able to receive free Microsoft software like public schools, it also benefited from reduced licence costs due to converting to a server-based network configuration."
According to Ungerer, because the system is server-driven, the school has been able to increase security. "We have been able to limit learners' Internet access to appropriate sites, as well as ensure integrity of our IT system as children are not able to download personal programs to the school's system," he says.
"We also feel that the terminal computing solution allows us to engage more effectively with an open source environment. This, coupled with the environmental component has enabled us to future-proof our investment."
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