Netbook Update

Ben Grey has a post over on The Edge of Tomorrow that's worth your time if you're in the position of deciding what kinds of devices to purchase for your students. You really should go read the post (and the comments), but I just wanted to pull out my comment as some folks began investigating netbooks after a previous post of mine.

So, here was my comment (in the context of that post and comment thread, but still mostly makes sense on its own):

Let me just contribute a little info about our experience with netbooks running ubermix.

First, they clearly are inferior to the MacBooks when it comes to video editing and photo manipulation. Now, you can still do some basic video editing on low-res video, and also some basic image manipulation (cropping, brightness, etc.), but you certainly wouldn’t want to do a ton of that on the netbook unless you absolutely had to. I also agree that iLife is something that’s not matched elsewhere, which is why having some iMacs or MacBooks around for those purposes is probably ideal (which is what it looks like Ben’s district has done).

Second, a Mac is going to be a little faster than the netbook at lots of things, and that’s nice to have, and typically the screen is going to be larger (both physically and in terms of pixels), which is also nice.

Third, certainly the touch interface of an iPad (and perhaps a MacBook soon?) is a great addition in many instances (and a drawback in terms of text entry, fingerprints, and scratches).

But I don’t want to get into that part of the argument, I feel like Ben looked at many devices and tried to make the best decision possible for his students, so let me talk a bit about what our netbooks running Jim Klein’s ubermix can do, as that might be helpful to folks reading this thread. Our current district approved model is the Asus Eee #1001-PXD-MU17-BU at $259.40. I can’t tell you for sure how long the battery lasts because it lasts an entire school day, but my best guess is around 8-10 hours. Our two-year old ASUS netbooks last between 4 and 6 hours, meaning they do occasionally run out before the end of the school day. In comparison our (Dell, running Windows XP) laptop batteries last 2-3 hours and also seem to degrade and need to be replaced more quickly.

The machines boot in less than a minute (and shut down in about 20 seconds) and you have a fairly extensive list of standard software to choose from, as well as you can add just about anything open source you like. Since, like lots of folks, we are moving to more web-based software, it can quickly and easily access Google Docs (and the rest of the Google suite) using either Firefox or Chrome. It does run Flash, and Java, although occasionally we’ll run across a site that requires a specific OS (typically Windows, sometimes Windows or Mac). In general, accessing the web is quick, easy and functional.

If you don’t want to use Google Docs or something else online, it does come standard with the current version of LibreOffice, which is full-featured enough for almost any student. It also has Audacity, Skype, Gimp, Google Earth, GeoGebra, Scratch, Webcam software, and a variety of other software. The only software we’ve added to it is Logger Pro to run our science probes and some Dell printer drivers (although we have customized the look and feel quite a bit). You can, of course, download and install just about any open source Linux software.

It is easily customizable and has a very nice imaging process. Once you create the image you can copy that to a 4 GB or larger flash drive and then the imaging process takes about 6 minutes per machine using that flash drive. What I do is copy the image to 16 or so flash drives, then set out 16 netbooks on a table and start imaging. By the time I get to #16 the first one is usually done imaging. If your image is complete, then you’re done. What I do because we have netbooks in lots of different rooms is I create one image that has all of the possible printers that our netbooks print to setup on them, then after I image I simply delete all but the one that needs to be there (faster for me than copying a new image to all 16 flash drives). That probably adds about 2 minutes to each machine to do that. So, by the time I image all 16 and then work my way around and delete those printers, it’s probably about 15-20 minutes per set of 16.

These machines are not locked down (although they can be), so students can – if you or they choose – customize them. While that’s scary to some folks (again, you could lock them down), the beauty is that the built-in restore function works in about 30 seconds. On boot up you can restore to your image and it adds about 30 seconds to the boot process and keeps any user documents. Or, you can choose to completely restore – wiping out the user docs as well – and it’s about 3 minutes. You can even set them to auto-restore back to the image on each boot if you’d like. (And while I typically do it, the process is easy enough that any teacher could be given a 3-step list of instructions to restore on their own if necessary.) Other than a little bit of knowledge to first create the image (and, trust me, I only have a little bit of Linux knowledge), these don’t require much support. (In fact, that’s partially why our tech department approved them, because they don’t have to support them.)

While I don’t use this feature, you can push out updates to them from a server. A script is installed as part of your image that checks for updates, and then if you put a new update out on the server it will grab it (either at startup or shutdown I believe). I’ve chosen not to mess with that, at least partially because so far each year the updated version of ubermix has been enough better that I’ve simply chosen to reimage all of my netbooks (again, at about 15-20 minutes per set of 16, working by myself, that’s not bad, but your mileage may vary).

While our netbooks don’t go home with students, they are used pretty heavily and we’ve had very few hardware issues. In four years we’ve had 2 or 3 cracked screens, a couple of failed hard drive/ssd drives, and a fair number of keys that get picked off and then we’ve had to replace the keyboard. They connect easily to our open wireless network and seem to match our Dell laptops running Win XP in terms of download speed via wireless.

While we did do some training with our Language Arts teachers, it really wasn’t around Linux or the netbooks, it was around what to do with them. Teachers and students both just pick them up and use them – if they are comfortable using any computer, they are comfortable using these – not really much of a learning curve. We have them available for check out in our media center, and also in our Study Center, and students – even ones that don’t have a class that uses them – don’t seem to have any issues using them.

So, I’m not necessarily trying to support one side of the argument or the other, but I think many folks reading this discussion don’t have any experience with the specifics of what Ben is talking about with his netbooks running ubermix, so I’m hoping this helps a bit. For us, the cost factor (as well as the ease of setup/support) is huge. Yes, I would prefer to give our students MacBooks over netbooks, but at a greater than 3 to 1 price ratio that’s a tough call to make. I think we’ll continue to see devices evolve. In the meantime, I would encourage everyone to at least explore a netbook running ubermix if you think it might meet the needs of your students and teachers.

Linux on Netbooks and Whiskers on Kittens

This is going to be a long post, but I think (hope?) it will be worth it to many of you.

I’ve blogged previously about the Inspired Writing project that began this summer in my school district. Briefly, all 5th grade classrooms, all 6th grade Language Arts classrooms, and all 9th grade Language Arts classrooms now have ASUS EeePC 1000 netbook computers. (We hope to expand it to grades 5-12 eventually.) Those teachers also went through staff development this summer based around improving reading and writing skills through the use of technology.

At Arapahoe this means that we have 198 new EeePC 1000’s this fall. This gives us a 1:1 ratio in our 9th grade Language Arts classrooms (we have a few sections using Dell laptops that we had previously purchased with grant money), plus we purchased an additional twelve for our Special Services Department, four for our Study Center, and twenty-four for our media center for student check out. (For now, students can check out a EeePC for use in the media center for a class period at a time. Once we get settled in, we’re hoping to expand that for longer time periods and not restrict it to the media center.)

Our district settled on the EeePC’s for many reasons, two of which were licensing costs and imaging issues. We ordered EeePC’s with Xandros Linux, and they utilize our PODnet wireless network to connect to the Internet, meaning that we don’t have to worry about Microsoft licensing costs (they’re running Open Office). And the Eee’s have a built-in restore mechanism that will reset them back to factory condition, thereby minimizing technical support issues (which is critical as my district, like most these days, has had to cut positions).

So one of my self-assigned jobs this summer was to learn more about Linux in order to both support and hopefully improve the implementation of this project. So at NECC I approached Steve Hargadon, who is my go-to person in my PLN for all things open source. For those of you who know Steve, you won’t be surprised that when I finally tracked him down he was running from one presentation to another, but he kindly gave me several names to contact that he thought could help me out. They all did, but one in particular ended up helping me out more than I could’ve expected.

Jim Klein is the Director of Information Services and Technology for the Saugus Union School District in the Santa Clarity Valley in Northern Los Angeles County. When I contacted Jim with some questions, he answered them, but then also mentioned that he had an imaging process I might want to take a look at. Well, not only did he have an imaging process, but he had extensive, step-by-step documentation for how to do it. This documentation is so good that even I, pretty much completely new to Linux, could figure it out. (Jim and I did end up trading well over fifty emails over a variety of questions, which was way above and beyond the call of duty on Jim’s part, but that was mostly due to one typo on the documentation that we eventually figured out and my apparently inexhaustible capability for asking questions.)

So why am I blogging about this? Because I think this is a process that many of you should take a look at for your schools. Basically, here is why I think this image is so good:

1. Jim (and his team) have created a custom Ubuntu Netbook Remix image that's optimized for battery life and made it available for anyone to download and use (with step by step directions). You can use their image or modify it for your own needs. (For my school, this included customizing the launcher to add the apps and shortcuts we wanted available to students on the main screen, changing the default save settings in Open Office, changing the homepage and security settings in Firefox, adding the Diigo toolbar to Firefox as well as the Compact Firefox extension, adding the right printer, and running a script at startup to change the keyboard settings – more on that below.)
   
   
2. This image installs from a flash drive in about six minutes.
   
   
3. It uses open source software, so less of your limited dollars are going to licensing costs. Linux is also a relatively "thin" OS, so it runs pretty well on netbooks even though they have less horsepower.
   
   
4. The image has a built-in, 10-second system recovery option on reboot (adds 10 seconds to the normal reboot time). Yep, I said 10 seconds. Wait, it gets better. The recovery preserves user documents. (You can also choose to wipe out user docs, but that process takes a little longer.) And, unlike the built-in recovery option in the ASUS Xandros distribution, this doesn’t restore to factory settings, but to your image – with all changes, settings, and printers preserved. This is also a recovery process that a teacher can do, without having to track down a tech support person or wait until they have time to troubleshoot it – they can restore on the fly in the classroom (assuming it’s not a hardware issue), so it minimizes impact on instructional time.
   
   
5. It uses the Netbook Launcher interface, which I think is more productive for students and also looks nicer. (IMO, the Xandros interface doesn’t look as professional, which I think makes a difference for high school students, and also requires more clicks to get to what you want.)
   
   
6. It doesn’t lock things down (although you could if you really wanted to) – students can make modifications as they need to. And the beauty is that if students make a modification that causes a problem, you’ve got that 10-second restore option. To paraphrase something Jim said to me, instead of trying to lock everything down, let’s allow students the flexibility to do creative things with their devices. We protect our servers and infrastructure with solid security, but instead of locking down their devices we focus on quick recoverability. (This fits in well with my school’s overall philosophy of having high expectations of students and trusting them to do the right thing most of the time.)

So, what did this mean at my school? After tweaking Jim’s image I then put that image on sixteen 4 GB flash drives (the image would actually fit on a 2 GB drive). Creating that initial set of flash drives did take several hours, but now they are ready for any subsequent image I want to put on them. (And you can quickly add two files that Jim calls “Simple Updates” that I used for adding the printer I wanted for each cart.) We have 32 in each of our carts, so I then imaged half of the cart in about 10 minutes, then the other half in another 10. After about 20 minutes, I had a cart of 32 done, with all the apps, shortcuts, printer and settings I wanted, and with a built-in recovery option. Compare this to the Xandros distribution, where I was looking at 30-45 minutes per machine out of the box to get them ready to go, and without a recovery option that kept my settings. (Plus the Xandros by default doesn’t have things like Audacity or Gimp that are part of my image.) When I went to the next cart all I had to do was replace two small files on each flash drive to add a different printer to the image. I was able to have all 198 netbooks ready on day one with students, with the apps, interface and settings we needed.

Here are some screenshots:







Now, full disclosure, it did take me longer than twenty minutes per cart, but that’s because I decided to do one more thing – switch the functionality of the right-shift key and the up-arrow key. On the Eee 1000’s the up-arrow key is in the place where you naturally press when you try to shift with your right hand. During our staff development, that meant that every time someone tried to capitalize something on the left side of the keyboard, they ended up arrowing up instead of capitalizing. So I went out and found a script on the web, figured out how to modify it for the Eee 1000, and that’s now part of my image. It runs at startup and switches the functionality of those two keys. The reason it took me more than twenty minutes per cart is that after I imaged them, I also took the time to physically switch the right-shift and up-arrow keys on the keyboard. This is not difficult, but it is a pain, and about every ninth or tenth one I messed up the little connector and it would take me anywhere from two to twenty minutes to get it fixed. But, if you chose not to do this, it’s about twenty minutes a cart.

If you have netbook computers in your district, or are considering them, I would urge you – or your tech folks – to take a look at the wiki documentation Jim and his team have created (which includes a ready-to-go image you can download). Also, keep in mind that his image should work on most netbooks, not just Eee’s, although you may have to do a little tweaking. Thanks Jim and team, for making a difference for the teachers and students at my school (not to mention for me personally), and for being willing to share your hard work.

With apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein . . .

Linux on netbooks and my great P-L-N;
Jim Klein, his wiki and Steve Hargadon;
Meaningful learning tied up with (virtual) string;
These are a few of my favorite things.

When NCLB bites,
When the filter stings,
When I’m feeling sad,
I simply remember my favorite things,
And then I don’t feel so bad.