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Save Your District Money on Technology!

By Alan HaskvitzcloseAuthor: Alan Haskvitz Name: Alan Haskvitz
Site: http://reacheverychild.com
About: Alan Haskvitz is a member of the National Teachers Hall of Fame and has been recognized many times as one of the nation's most successful and innovative teachers. Accounts of his students' accomplishments have been featured in books, periodicals, and on national radio and television. He is a classroom teacher with experience at every grade level and every major subject.See Authors Posts (11)

As usual school district technology money is tight and it was time to upgrade the district’s computers and save money without reducing performance. Instead of contacting larger companies, I recommend you look for smaller, more flexible ones that offer open source software such as Eracks (http://www.eracks.com).This company does business with a large university and the government so it has a proven track record and has been in business a significant amount number of years. All of these must be considered before selecting a vendor.

Using open source software technology may be a concern because school districts are used to paying site fees and the offer of free software may be worrisome. What I would recommend is that the district set up a  thin client setup for a computer lab. This quickly alleviates any worries such as problems opening up Microsoft Office application and a possible big disparity between Windows and Linux?

Open Office works equally as well as Microsoft Office and is easy to master. You can even save in the Microsoft style format. Best of all there is no licensing fee each year. That could save most schools and district thousands of dollars that can quickly pay for a new technology lab and more.

A thin set up is one central server that can be connected to many smaller, inexpensive, diskless units. The cost is easily offset by the savings.  Using this set up each client could use all the applications and save their information and browse the Internet all without any issues. The other great news with this was the main server was able to also be used as a pseudo firewall and block certain sites as well as keep tabs on all the homework and course work provided. No more turning in disks or printing out papers in the computer lab, as everything can be saved to the main server.

Another way to save money is by using netbooks instead of laptops for teachers; we used the newer virtualization technology in our administration office so that we didn’t need multiple servers for database, CRM, and administration. All that is  needed is one virtual server and some netbooks or old desktops to connect to each instance.

Lastly, eRacks told us about using GIMP, a Photoshop like interface that allows students and others to do graphic design without the dollar price tag of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

Change for a district’s technology department that has spent considerable time and funding can be difficult and so having a good customer service representative on call to help with the change is also a plus. However, the bottom line is that there is simply no need to spend so much money on technology when there are alternatives that offer the same for less. A caviat is to check out the company and make sure they have a list of education oriented clients such as eRacks.