April 1996 — Features
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Tips & Tricks for K-12 Educational LANs
For the past several years, I've been employed as a computer technician in an elementary school and worked with my district's administration to develop the labs in our schools into functional computer learning centers. Along the way, I've developed a good grasp of what has worked and what could be improved. For those districts planning to add computer technology to their instruction, these suggestions and ideas are offered as a guide.
Some Hardware Basics
Let's start with some basics. Use multiple circuits for the lab. If you have a lot of computers you'll need to distribute the load on the circuit breakers. Consider having three separate circuits. One for the monitors (shut off the monitors to get children's attention or clear the room at the end of class), one for computers (start up the lab with the flip of a switch), and one for things that should never be turned off like the file server and printers.
To do this you'll need to know the amount of electricity that the computers will draw. It will be expressed in a figure called amps and is often on the back or bottom of equipment. When in doubt, check with the manufacturer. Always round this figure up. For example, if the computer, monitor and CD-ROM drive together draw 4.3 amps, round up to 5 amps.
Place wires and power cords on the back side of computer tables, not along the ledges. Small children, whose feet won't reach the floor, like to prop them up on those ledges. Many a network has gone down by someone accidentally pulling out the plug to the file server. The same holds true for any other networking hardware as well. If anything supporting the network loses power, down it all comes.
It's also a good idea to protect the server with a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) so that if the power fails you can shut down the system properly. If the room will be staffed all the time, one of those $100 models will suffice. Otherwise look for a "server" model that has software to shut down the system if power is not restored within several minutes.
Don't overlook having up-to-date start up and maintenance disks ready to go in the event of hardware problems. Macintosh users can get these[1] by an anonymous ftp: ftp.support.apple.com/pub/apple_sw_updates/ US/Macintosh/System%20Software/System_7.5_Update_1.0/. Keep multiple copies of startup disks and utilities handy; if one disk g'es bad, you'll have another ready to go.
