What are ICT Schools?

The And@red Plan Glossary

The And@red Plan (standing for Andalusian Educational Network), started in 2003 with the introduction of computers running free software in the schools in the Spanish region of Andalucía.

The Plan is a consequence of Decree 72/2003 of Measures to Encourage the Knowledge Society.

We call the schools in the project ICT Schools. These are schools whose staffs have signed a commitment to receive training and to use the new tools.

Guadalinex is the Linux distribution created in Andalucía by the regional government, with an origin in GNU Linex, the distribution in Extremadura.

How did it all begin?

The history of ICT in the Andalusian educational system

The Guadalinex project is not the first project having to do with ICT and education in Andalucía

But some lessons had been learnt this time

• Technology deployment does not solve educational problems by itself
• The key is not to take the teachers to the computer lab but the introduce the usage of computers in the ordinary classrooms
• Integrating computers in education is a pedagogical not a technical issue
• Teachers are teachers, not hackers
• Only free software and free resources will permit us full control over the process

How did it all begin? (II)

2003: A revolutionary Bill is passed

On March 18th 2003 the regional parliament of Andalucía passed Decree 72/2003 of Measures to Encourage the Knowledge Society

Article 31:
1. Whenever computer equipment for the educational usage 
of schools will be purchased, all hardware will have to be 
compatible with operating systems based on free software.
The computers will be pre-installed with all the free software
that is necessary for their intended uses.   
 
3. The administration of the autonomous region of Andalucía 
will foster the spread and personal, home and educational use 
of free software. To this purpose an Internet help service 
will be created to give advice for installation and use of such 
software.

Full text (in Spanish)

What's Special About the Andalusian Project

Six Key Items

• I. The size: Massive deployment
• II. A Customized Distribution
• III. Remote Administration and Support
• IV. The creation of the role of ICT Coordinator
• V. Training
• VI. Educational Tools

I. Massive Deployment

As many computers as the school staff thinks necessary (one desktop every two students, ICT corners with two/three computers, desktop groups or shareable laptops)

A huge single network, administered centrally (it is planned that in a few years all Andalusian schools will be ICT schools).
Two servers in each school, providing firewire, proxy, cache, NFS homes and contents service.

II. Guadalinex, the Distribution

As we said Guadalinex is the name of the customized distribution of the regional government of Andalucía.

Developed by local companies through a public tender (the tender for V5 was announced on the 28th of September), the present version, V4.0, is an Ubuntu derivative that had an open development.

V4.1beta, an update to Feisty Fawn with brand new festival voices for Spanish, is already available for downloading and testing.

For a survey of distributions, see The Spanish Experiment, Year IV. A Survey of Spanish Institutional Distributions for Education.

II. Guadalinex Edu, the Educational Distribution

Guadalinex V4 is not the distribution used in the ICT schools these days. It was decided that V3 should be the distribution used one more year. Why?

1.- Upgrades are difficult. Remote massive upgrades are a nightmare.

2.- Generic distributions, even if they include some school useful tools or a client-server infrastructure like ltsp, are not educational iff

• ...they do not free teachers from the chores of managing the installation, administration and maintenance of the computers and the network
• ...don't provide teachers easy means to find, develop and share educational resources (even Learning Objects in its technical sense)
• ...they are not accessible to and target all students, whatever their physical or intellectual capacities

3.- The agency responsible of managing Guadalinex in the schools needs time to adapt the new version to the And@red infrastructure and hardware, to create the educational packages missing and to install the new distro in the computers of the new schools in the project, plus upgrading the old ones.

4.- Teachers want a stable system.

III. The Advanced Management Centre (CGA)

The Advanced Management Centre (in Spanish CGA) of ICT Schools was born as a consequence of the services mentioned in articles 4, 6 and 15 of Decree 72/2003.

Its tasks are

• Management of the servers and the local networks of the ICT Schools network
• Users' helpdesk (called CAU-TIC)
• Connectivity support for the rest of the schools in Andalucía
• Maintaining and updating the packages of the FLOSS Operating System installed in the Andalusian schools

III. The CGA (II)

The management of the network is carried out by using two kinds of tools and strategies:

• For the control of the network (cfengine, VISCO, munin) and of the helpdesk workflow (SIGILA, ITIL).
• For the schools infrastructure (gesuser, remote switch off, virtual network beamer, italc)

Documentation for the especial CGA tools: «El Centro de Gestión Avanzado: Gestión centralizada en los ordenadores de los centros TICs de Andalucía»; «Centro de Gestión Avanzado (CGA): La gestión organizada en los ordenadores de los centros TIC´s en Andalucía»; «Adaptación ITIL a la Gestión del CGA». A document in English is «Large-Scale Linux/GNOME Deployment in Andalusian ICT Schools». The tools designed for the use of the coordinators are documented at the CGA site.

IV. ICT Coordinators

No-one in the school is supposed to be a hacker - ICT coordinators are teachers.

In theory, the coordinators' task is the pedagogical dynamization of the schools. In practice they (or the ICT team)

• have to recognize all technical problems,
• contact the helpdesk and
• administer the local accounts and
• the school's LMS.

V. Training

The Effort in Numbers

Teacher training in Andalusia, organized by the regional educational authorities, is free for all teachers.

Over 20% of the whole training effort (courses, conferences...) is allocated to ICT training.

ICT schools have priority in training demands, and a training advisor is assigned to each school.

V. Training (II)

The Effort in Examples

Several kinds of training activities are organized, inline and online. You are invited to visit the network of training centres' webpages.

But the most important objective of the training system is the creation of a collaborative network of teachers, the basis for the construction of free shared educational knowledge.

VI. Collaborative Tools - Averroes

Averroes, "The Andalusian telematics network" is the name of the educational portal of Andalucía.

Although the portal has existed since 1998, providing news, resources and hosting to the schools, we have had access to the alfa versions of the new Averroes, full of new and interesting possibilities.

RSS feeds and the active participation of the teachers are key features of the new site.

VI. Collaborative Tools - Helvia

Helvia, the "educational platform", is the Learning Management System installed in each and every one of the ICT schools.

A scheduled-to-be-freed development of e-ducativa, it provides an e-learning environment for teachers and students, blogging facilities and tools to write and host the school's web page.

The design is that of a network of interconnected servers, permitting to move through the nodes of the network.

VI. Collaborative Tools - Pasen

Pasen (Spanish for "come in") is an interface for the communication with the students' parents.

It provides mentoring facilities (information about attendance, behaviour, marks but also planning homework for the ill, etc.).

VI. Collaborative Tools - BARTIC

Of the tools soon to be announced, BARTIC is the most demanded and the longest waited for.

BARTIC will be (in fact it is starting to be) a resources repository and indexer.

The idea behind it is to create an index of the quality resources already in Averroes, as assessed by experts in each of the educational fields, and after that to start adding new valuable resources.

VI. Collaborative Tools - BARTIC (II)

Of the tools soon to be announced, BARTIC is the most demanded and the longest waited for.

It will permit social tagging, tag clouds and even personal portfolios.

Final

Legal Note: this document has a Creative Commons 2.5 Licence with clauses Recognition - Share alike and Spanish jurisdiction.

All the tools used to create this presentation (especially Slidy) and the resources used are believed to be free, at least for non commercial usage. Please inform me of any mistake you find.

Thank you for your patience.

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