$1m helps link Rotorua schools to one network

By RICHARD WOOD

More than $1 million from the Rotorua Energy Charitable Trust is helping the Rotorua Principals' Association create a wide area network for its 47 primary, intermediate and secondary schools.

Project leader Stuart Ramsdale said the schools would be connected by a radio linking system developed at Waikato University that would provide free traffic between the schools at 11 megabits per second (Mbps).

Six schools would soon begin a trial of the Smartnet Linux-based file and print, email, firewall, web filtering and intranet system from Smartcom, a Christchurch firm, Ramsdale said.

The final network design would depend on the Government's Project Probe decision on broadband suppliers for schools without broadband internet. Ramsdale said about 40 per cent of the schools in the Rotorua district did not have broadband internet.

Probe did not provide any additional money to such schools, he said, but it did ensure there was a firm that broadband internet could be bought from.

The project also included building a standard client workstation environment to make systems easier to support from a shared resource.

Software applications and bug fixes would be installed from the central server using a software management system called Alteris.

Schools would still have control of, and need to look after, their desktop computers.

Ramsdale said a key aspect of the project was to provide collaboration between teachers, because subject matter changed rapidly. Teachers might arrange to develop different sets of lessons and share them with others.

Also, a sole specialist in a school, the economics teacher perhaps, would be able to work with peers in other schools, Ramsdale said.

The trust was funding all costs, he said, including teacher training, the broadband connection, the school servers, the central server equipment, and the time to build and operate the network.