Soup to nuts: affordable tools for building and maintaining labs

ABSTRACT

Limited IT funds are a fact of life at most institutions. You may be surprised by how much you can do with what you have though. Using new products in conjunction with tried and true existing technologies you can take steps to maintain both your bottom line and your sanity at the same time.

Obtaining a competitive price for your computing hardware is the easy part. We're going to go beyond that and work on building a "champagne" lab on a "beer" budget.

What components go into building a lab that can wow your customers without driving you crazy you ask? <ul><li>Deployment Tools: Ghost and ASR</li><li>Software Security: DriveShield, MacShield, KeyServer</li><li>Maintenance: PC-Rdist, Group Policy</li><li>Facility Security: Web Cameras, Access Control Readers</li><li>Printing: Pharos</li><li>Affordable tech laden lecterns: touch panels and processors and multimedia projection</li></ul>

All of the above components have been used at the U of R to create successful and affordable labs. You can use some or all depending on what you need, and many institutions already have parts of these solutions in place. Knowing what's out there and how to bring it all together is the challenge.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.3 COMPUTERS AND EDUCATION
      K.3.1 Computer Uses in Education

Additional Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.5 Security and Protection (D.4.6, K.4.2)
          Subjects: Unauthorized access (e.g., hacking, phreaking); Invasive software (e.g., viruses, worms, Trojan horses)

General Terms:
Design, Management, Measurement, Performance, Reliability, Security

Keywords:
classroom technology, computer classrooms, computer labs, deployment, imaging, management, printing, security