LinuxLab, a local open source organisation aimed at promoting mass deployments of Linux systems, is putting the final touches to a 30-workstation Linux laboratory at the Alexander Stinton High School in Athlone, Cape Town.
Evan Summers, director of LinuxLab, says the overall cost of the project will only cost around R600 per workstation including a server, UPS and all the required cabling.
Summers says the project has been in planning for more than three months and is expected to be completed within the next week. The pilot project will offer "positive information for other schools wanting to follow the same route".
The workstations for the pilot project are re-conditioned 486 computers originally donated by the Department of Land Affairs to Netday, which then offered them to the Athlone school for the project.
"We are not looking at subject-specific tasks at the moment, but the lab will initially give students access to the Internet and e-mail for research." However, Summers says he is "particularly interested in maths and science" and hopes to take these further in the future.
Bridges.org will conduct ongoing evaluation of the project. "My role is to see the lab going in. Bridges.org will study the impact of the lab in the coming months." Summers says it is important that a third-party be brought in to evaluate the project on an ongoing basis.
He explains that Alexander Stinton school was chosen for the pilot because its staff were receptive to the idea and were prepared to work on getting it going.
The school also has an existing thin-client Windows laboratory running, which Summers sees as important in comparing the two infrastructures. "Having the two laboratories side by side will make it easy to compare the projects. It will be interesting to compare the amount of administration the two systems take."
Summers says The Shuttleworth Foundation has given him a budget of R20 000 to cover all the hardware costs, including server, UPS, Ethernet switches and cabling. The school has an existing dial-up connection that will be used for Internet access. Other organisations involved in the project include SchoolNet, Netday.org.za and Freecom.org.za.
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