Lab Management in a 1 to 1 Environment

According to one study published in eSchoolNews more than 23 percent of schools with over 4,000 students said they are implementing 1-to-1 computing programs in at least one grade. As wireless one-to-one environments in schools become more popular schools must deal with the many challenges of providing students with laptops.

Schools with a one-to-one environment face several challenges, ranging from students with local administrative rights to wireless network administration with many access points and subnets across a large campus. All of this requires some design planning to successfully run lab management software such as CrossTec SchoolVue.

Resolving computer names to IP addresses over subnets and VLANs complicate the building of class lists in real-time, primarily because it is not possible to get a complete list of all student computers from a network browse. Only those that are turned on and connected to the wireless network at that moment will appear in a typical network browse. Furthermore, many teachers are only trained on the usage of the software once or twice before the first day of class. If they were to try and browse either a Gateway or the network and retrieve a list of one thousand computers named by their serial numbers, there is little chance they will be able to build six different class groups every semester.

CrossTec Technical Product Manager Albert Caballero has written a 15 page guide to setting up SchoolVue for use in a 1 to 1 environment. The paper covers: Reliably and quickly connecting to DHCP Clients over subnets and VLANs; Building Class Lists without Tutor/Client interaction;
Staying connected to Clients even if there is a less than optimal wireless infrastructure.

If you are considering such an environment, or have already established one and your current lab management application doesn't work - you will want to download this white paper - Using SchoolVue over One-to-one Wireless and Multi-subnets.