Braly Elementary School Computer Asset Plan

October 1, 1996

1 Introduction and Road-map

When Braly elementary school opened in 1992, an extensive network of computers was installed. While the computers at Braly have been successfully used by the teachers for E-mail, word processing, etc., the success of using the computers for student based instruction has been somewhat less successful. Now, four years later, the assets have aged to the point that less and less new software is available to run on the machines. What is needed is a plan for upgrading Braly's computer assets so that they can be successfully used in the classroom and a plan for keeping the Braly computer assets relatively up-to-date. The purpose of this document is to articulate Braly's computer asset plan.

This document is arranged into the following sections:

2 A Short History of Computers at Braly

Braly elementary school was opened as a `science and technology' magnet in 1992. As part of the goal of supporting science and technology, a decision was made to make a significant investment in computer assets for Braly. A computer network and 75 computers were purchased and installed at Braly. While there has been some success with integrating these computer assets into the Braly curriculum, the aging nature of the assets is causing them to fall into greater and greater disuse.

3 Asset Inventory

Briefly, Braly school currently has the following computer assets:

Computers
The school has a total of 75 x386 computers for student, teacher, and support roles.
Miscellaneous Hardware
The school has two file servers in a file server room and 5 printers scattered through out the campus
Network
The school has 10 megabit Ethernet based on 10-baseT technology. This network is connected to district hub via ISDN and to the public Internet via a leased T1 line.
Software
The school runs Novell Netware. There has been an investment in number of educational software applications.
Support Staff
The school has a technology committee consisting of teachers, administration, and community members. The school utilizes district computer support staff.

These assets are discussed in greater detail in the sections below.

3.1 Computer Assets

Braly school has five kinds of computers:

Student Computers
A student computer is one that is primarily used by students in a classroom setting.

Currently, there are 56 student computers consisting of the following:

Student computers do not have floppy disk drives, hard disk drives, or CD ROMs.

Currently, student computers run some version of Novell Netware.

Teacher Computers
A teacher computer is one that resides on a teacher's desk in a classroom setting.

Currently, there are 15 teacher computers. Each teacher computers has the same configuration as a student computer with the following additional capabilities:

The teacher machines do not have any hard disk capabilities and many do not have sound cards.

Each classroom has a large TV/monitor that is connected to the teacher computer. There is a VCR attached to the TV/monitor. Some of the newly constructed classrooms do not have the TV/monitors.

Library Computers
The library has 4 computers that have the same configuration as the teacher machines, but have a 486 processor running at 66 MHz instead of a 386 processor. The library computers have been raided to supply newly hired teachers their machines.
Miscellaneous Computers
There are a number of miscellaneous computers spread through out the rest of the school -- mostly in administrative support roles. They have the same configuration as student machines.

3.2 Miscellaneous Hardware

There is a couple of Netware file servers running in a file server room in secondary building.

There are 5 printers at Braly

3.3 Computer Network Assets

Braly school is completely wired for a computer network. The school is configured for 10 megabit Ethernet with a fiber optic backbone for future bandwidth extensibility. Each classroom has a 10BaseT hub on a wall mounted shelf for easy accessibility. Each of the buildings has a hub for concentrating the classroom hubs. The building hubs are currently connected together via 10 megabit category 5 cable. There is a fiber optic backbone that is currently dark available for future bandwidth expansion. There is a file server room that is the central repository of the file server machines. In the file server room there is a Cisco 2500 router that is connected to a district hub via two 64kB B rate ISDN channels. The district hub has a Sun Netra server that does E-mail forwarding, and serving Web pages to the open Internet. The district hub is connected to an Internet service provider (Exodus) via a leased T1 line.

3.4 Software Assets

Braly school has the following software assets: Unfortunately, the existing Netware network has not been very successful in the classroom. Netware is primarily used in industry for running businesses rather than in the classroom for educational purposes. As such, there has not been a great demand for educational software publishers to produce and sell educational software that runs in Netware environment. Without a rich variety of software, the existing computer assets have fallen into disuse. The teachers are not inclined to continue with the Netware technology given its rather dismal track record in the Braly environment.

3.5 Support Assets

Braly school has the following support assets:

4.0 Educational Goals

The teachers at Braly were surveyed to find out what uses they wished to make of the computer assets in the curriculum at Braly. The following uses were uncovered:
  1. Internet Use
  2. Reading and Writing
  3. Literacy-enriched programs
  4. Multi-language programs in literature
  5. Write enriched programs
  6. Poetry programs
  7. Report writing program
  8. Newspaper writing
  9. Playwriting
  10. Social Studies
  11. Math
  12. Science
  13. Science Research Programs
  14. Cycle Appropriate
  15. Arts, Music, Extra
In order to meet the goals above, it is necessary to

5 Technology Forecast

The computer industry is continually reinventing itself. This section of the asset plan is provided for people who are not intimately involved in the computer industry so that they may gain some appreciation as to why computer asset depreciate so quickly.

5.1 Moore's Law

The fundamental factor that is driving the continual change in the computer industry is Moore's Law (one of the founders of Intel). Moore's law observes that the semiconductor industry seems to be able to halve the size of transistors every 18 months. Since the price of silicon is remaining relatively constant, cutting the size of transistors in half is roughly equivalent to cutting the price of transistors in half; conversely, every 18 months, you can purchase twice as many transistors for approximately the same price as 18 months ago. Of particular importance to the computer industry is the price of main memory and As the price of memory goes down, it is possible to economically add more memory to "standard" computer systems.

Ultimately, a computer without relevant software is not very useful. Currently, the software industry makes most of its profits by selling an initial version of a software application to a customer and then offering the customer a continual stream of "upgrades" that fix bugs and add new features. This continual stream of new features tends to consume more and more memory and loads down the processor more. Eventually, most customers will upgrade their machine to effectively run the newer software.

The combination of Moore's law and the dynamics of the software industry have introduced an interesting instability to the computer industry -- new software needs new hardware which enables newer software etc. The computer industry basically survives by causing a given computer to become relatively obsolete in three to five years. The commercial sector deals with the rapid obsoleting of computers by depreciating them over a four to five year period. New computers are bought and old ones disposed in a continual cycle.

Computers in the elementary and secondary education system are sufficiently new, that the lesson of rapid depreciation has not really been learned yet. Even though all of the Apple II's that were introduced into the primary/secondary schools are now obsolete, the educational system continually purchases computers without setting aside funds to keep updating them.

Braly, too, has not really grappled with the rapid depreciation of computer hardware. After the initial purchase of machines 4 years ago, there have been no significant machine upgrades. The net result is that the computers at Braly are not able to run much of the new educational software that is being developed. While the old software continues to run, the rapid advances in educational software that are currently taking place will not be available to Braly, unless a computer asset upgrade program is developed and implemented. One of the purpose of this computer asset plan is identify the various upgrade options that are available.

5.2 Technology Forecast

This section will attempt to give insight into how much it costs to maintain an overall computer system.

Overall

At any given point in time, if you plot a histogram of current computer technologies they will usually plot out a bell curve. 
    35%	|  	 	 X	 	 	 
    30%	|  	 	 X	 	 	 
    25%	|  	 	 X	 X	 	 
    20%	|  	 X	 X	 X	 	 
    15%	|  	 X	 X	 X	 	 
    10%	|  	 X	 X	 X	 X	 
     5%	| X	 X	 X	 X	 X	 X
	+============================================
	<2MB	4MB	8MB	12MB	16MB	>16MB
	Memory per machine in 1995 (fictitious data)
As the bell curve s plotted from year to year, there is a consistent trend of using denser and faster products; in other words, the bell curve shifts to the right over time.

For example, two years ago 1x CD-ROMS were still being introduced and 2x CD-ROMS were quite expensive. Today, 1x CD-ROMS are unavailable, 2x and 3x CD-ROMS are being phased out, and most people are upgrading to 4x, 6x, or 8x CD-ROMS. Shortly, 2x and 3x CD-ROMS will be unavailable and 4x and 6x CD-ROMS will be phased out. Perhaps, 10x, 12x and 16x CD-ROMS will be phased in next, or the industry conclude that that they have reached the point of diminishing returns and innovate elsewhere.

If your goal is to be on the cutting edge of computer technology, you should be prepared to pay out substantial sums of money; conversely, the technology that is being phased out can frequently be purchased at extremely low prices, but the useful lifetime left in the phased out technology may sufficiently short that it is still not economical to purchase and install. In general, the most economical strategy is to balance cost against anticipated useful lifetime. For cost oconscious people and organizations, staying just to the left of the center of the bell curve is a fairly reasonable strategy in that the products are fairly economical and still have a reasonable lifetime.

5.3 Processor Technology Forecast

Computers are made up of a number of different sub-systems (e.g. processor, memory, network interface, monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.) These sub-systems evolve at different rates. So some sub-systems need to be updated at different rates. The discussion below attempts to discuss the various sub-systems and the rate at which they need to be updated:

Processor
In the IBM PC compatible market (which is what Braly uses), the processor architecture is called Intel x86 architecture. The x386 processor is pretty much phased out (i.e. the processors that Braly uses), the x486 process is well on its way out, and the Pentium (x586 processor) is currently the preferred processor. The Pentium Pro (x686 processor) is starting to gain in popularity. Processors can range in price from $50 to $1200 depending upon how close they are to obsolete. In general, it makes sense to upgrade the processor every three to four years.

Memory
New software always requires additional memory. Currently, 16MB is required to run Windows 95 and its corresponding applications. Presumably, the next Microsoft operating system released in 1997-1998 will require 32MB. The following characteristics about memory are interesting:
Package
Memory comes in a package called a SIMM (Serial In-Line Module), a very small printed circuit board with memory IC's (integrated circuits) soldered to them. Three years ago, the 30-pin SIMM was the standard. Today, the 72-pin SIMM is the standard. All of Braly's current machines use the previous standard -- 30-pin SIMM's.

Speed
Over time memory has been getting faster. 60ns and 70ns memory is commonly required on machines these days. Future processors may require faster memory SIMM's, thus there is a good chance that memory SIMM's can not be moved forward new machines.

Width
Currently memory SIMM's are either 32-bits wide or 36-bits wide. The additional four bits are used for parity checking to detect occasional storage errors. Over time, 36-bit SIMM's will dominate.

Other
There is some high performance memory starting to come down the pike called EDO and synchronous memory. In a year or two, this memory could become the new standard. EDO fits in 72-pin SIMM's, but synchronous memory requires a new package.

The key issue to realize with memory is that it is very rarely the case that memory can be moved forward from an older machine to a newer machine purchased several years later; something always changes in memory technology to make such a forward upgrade infeasible.

Motherboard
The motherboard is used to plug everything into. Motherboards have the following characteristics:
Bus
Most motherboards these day use the PCI bus for fast devices and the ISA bus for slow devices. In the past, VLB bus was what most people used. It is likely that a new bus will be introduced in the next several years as PCI bus starts to run out of steam.

Processor
Motherboards are designed to only support a small number of processors. Some of the newer processor boards can support multiple processors from the same manufacturer but with a range of different speeds.

Memory Slots
Motherboard are designed to accept a certain number of memory SIMM's (usually 4.) The shortage of SIMM slots on all motherboards almost always complicates memory upgrades.

Cache Memory
Cache memory is used to improve overall memory system performance. Most new motherboards will have space for cache memory.

Disk Controller
Frequently, there are one or two disk controllers on must motherboard to support a floppy disk drive, hard disk, or CD-ROM. There are two kinds of disk controllers -- IDE and SCSI.

Keyboard, Mouse, Serial Port, Printer Port
All motherboards have support some form keyboard. Most motherboards provide interfaces for a mouse, a serial port, and a printer port.

In the future, motherboards are likely to have 10 megabit or 100 megabit Ethernet interfaces built on them.

In general, the processor, memory, and motherboard should be purchased together. Sometimes it is possible to give a motherboard a "mid-life kicker" by adding a faster processor, more memory, etc. However, very frequently it makes sense to upgrade the entire motherboard rather than attempt a mid-life kicker.

Monitor
The monitor standard is call SVGA (Super Video Graphics Adaptor.) The following characteristics are relevant for monitors:
Diagonal Size
The monitor size is measured diagonally across the screen. Over the years, the manufacturers started cheating on this measurement, so the new measurement is viewable size. The monitors at Braly are 15 inch monitors.

Screen Size
Computers treat the screen as a rectangular matrix of dots. The computer jargon for a screen dot is a pixel. For a long time the screen size was fixed at 680x400 (680 pixels across and 400 pixels vertically.) Newer screen sizes are 800x600, 1024x876, 1280x1024, 1600x1200. In general, the larger screen sizes are supported by the larger monitors.

Dot Pitch
Dot pitch is how close the holes in the shadow mask are. In general, the closer the dots are to one another, the crisper text and images are on the screen and the more expensive the monitor is. Old monitors use a dot pitch of .38, current monitors use .28, and the newer monitors use .25/.26 pitch. The Braly monitors are .28.

Interlace
An interlaced monitor draws alternately draws the odd lines followed by the even lines of an image. A non-interlaced image is redrawn ever cycle. While interlaced monitors are slightly less expensive, it is generally harder to read text on an interlaced monitor.

Refresh Rate
The refresh rate is the rate at which screen is redrawn. American televisions (NTSC) use refresh rate of 60 hertz interlaced (60 times a second.) Many people can see a flicker at 60 hertz. At 76 hertz, the human eye is no longer able to see any flicker. While 72 hertz is a popular refresh rate, the industry will probably standardize at a refresh rate that is higher than 76 hertz. In order to be compatible with movies and/or television, some multiple of 12, or 30 will probably be the standard (e.g. 84, 90, or 96.)

Multi-sych
A multi-synch monitor is one that can change its refresh rate to match what is coming out of the display card.

Energy Star
Energy Star(tm) is a program to reduce the amount of energy consumed by computer monitors.

In general, there is a trend towards larger and faster monitors with multi-synch capability. Some sort of support for 3D is likely to be the next "hot item" in computer monitors.

While the SVGA connector has been remarkably stable, it has some problems at the higher refresh rates. In the future, some sort of digital standard may emerge.

Given, that computer monitors are such a substantial portion of an overall computer system, it pays to be very careful about choosing when to upgrade a monitors.

The good news about monitors is that they can frequently be used on more than one machine over time.

Display Card
Display cards are what render images on a monitor. The characteristics for display cards that are interesting are:
Video Memory
Video memory is what stores a given computer image. 1MB (megabyte) and 2MB video memory is quite common. 4MB video memory is starting to become quite prevalent for higher end display cards.

Screen Size and Refresh Rate
All display cards have a maximum screen size and a maximum refresh rate.

Accelerators
Many display chips have accelerators to speed the moving of bits around on the screen. Accelerators are specialized graphics computers. 32-bit and 64-bit accelerators are quite common. 128-bit accelerators are starting to come out.

Bus Interface
The computer needs to access the display via a bus interface. The old standard was VLB and the new standard is PCI.

Double buffering
A double buffered display card has two independent buffers that the computer can write to. The computer can be writing in one buffer while it is displaying in another. This provides much better support for computer animated graphics than is currently possible with single buffered display cards. Doubled buffered systems require twice as much video memory.

3D Support
A double buffered display card can also be used to support 3D images, where the left image is drawn in one buffer and the right image is drawn in the other.

MPEG Support
MPEG stands for Motion Picture Experts Group, a group of people who have figured out efficient ways to store motion pictures in digital form. MPEG decoders are hardware chips that can be placed on a video board to improve the speed at which digital video can be displayed by the computer.

In general, display cards will tend towards more and more video memory and accelerators. In the educational environment, inexpensive display cards should be quite adequate.

Also, each time the motherboard technology changes, it is usually necessary to upgrade the video board as well.

Floppy Disk
Most computers have some sort of floppy disk. (The Braly student computers do not.) The current standard is 3.5 inch 1.54MB disk drives. There is some possibility that a new "floptical" standard will emerge that can store over 100MB on a single floppy disk.

In the educational environment, there probably is no need to have any floppy disks on student machines. Teacher machines should have a floppy disk.

Hard Disk
Recently, hard disks are have been undergoing dramatic increases in performance and corresponding dramatic decreases in cost. The characteristics that matter on a disk drive are:
Size
The disk size is measured in MB (megabytes). More recently, disk sizes of GB (gigabytes) are being used.

Seek time
The seek time is how long it takes to move the disk head from cylinder to cylinder on the disk. Seek times are measured in milliseconds (ms.) Seek times of less than 10ms are generally considered to be quite good.

Rotational Speed
The rotational speed is measured in RPM (rotations per minute). For a long time 3600RPM was the standard, but more recently 5400RPM and 7200RPM have become quite common.

Disk Cache
To improve disk performance, many disks have some memory to cache disk data. 128KB is common with 1MB caches available.

Interface
There is a wide array of disk interfaces available. The two families are IDE and SCSI (pronounced "scuzzy".) In general, SCSI seems to be a bit faster and more flexible than the IDE standard. The SCSI standards are, SCSI-I, SCSI-II, Fast SCSI-II, Fast Wide SCSI-II, SCSI-III, and Ultra-SCSI. In general, the disk drive manufacturers are having a difficult time coming up with interfaces that are fast enough to keep up with the rapid increases in disk transfer rate.

The hard disk market is undergoing incredible rates of innovation.

CD-ROM
CD-ROM's have become the preferred way of distributing most software. The following characteristics are interesting about CD-ROM's:
Speed
Speed is measured in multiples of a music CD. Thus, a music CD is rated at 1x. Thus, currently popular speeds are 4x, 6x, and 8x. There may be higher speeds, but the point of diminishing returns has probably been reached when it comes to CD-ROM speed.

Interface
Like hard disks, CD-ROM drives can use either an IDE interface or a SCSI interface.

Number of patters
Recently, manufacturers have been building CD-ROM drives that can randomly access 6 or more CD-ROM's. It does not take a great deal of imagination to conceive of a CD `juke box' which can randomly access over a 100 CD-ROM's.

Writable CD
The price of writable CD-ROM writer drives is currently under $1000 and is likely to drop further. The cost of a blank CD-ROM is under $10 and is likely to drop further.

Capacity
The current CD-ROM technology can store 670MB of data. A newer higher denser format (DTV) is on the horizon that can store 5-6 GB of data.

Sound Cards
Sound cards for the PC industry are a mess. The current `standard' for sound cards are the Sound Blaster 16(tm) and Sound Blaster Pro(tm). Most other sound cards claim to be 100% compatible with one of these `standards, but it is difficult to be sure, since the manufacturer of the Sound Blaster(tm) is not particularly interested in helping its competitors to be 100% compatible.
Mono/Stereo
All cards these days support 16-bit stereo sound. The days of 8-bit mono sound cards are over.

MIDI/Game Port
MIDI is used to talk to electronic musical instruments. The game port allows people to hook up a joy stick to play computer games.

Wave Tables
Wave Tables allow individual instruments to be down-loaded into the sound card (i.e. violin, piano, etc.)

Network Interface
The dominant networking technology is Ethernet. The following characteristics matter about network interfaces:
Speed
There are currently two network speeds 10MB (10 million bits per second) and 100MB. It should be noted that for Ethernet, these rates are burst rates and the technology is unable to sustain transfer rates at the maximum rated speed.

Cable
There are currently two popular forms of Ethernet cabling -- category 5 (Cat5 10BaseT) twisted pairs and thin-net coaxial cable. Both cables work fine, but category 5 is starting to dominate. People keep promising that fiber will take over as the network backbone cable of choice, but the computer interfaces for fiber cable remain quite expensive and uneconomical.
On the horizon, it is likely that there will be 1GB (1 billion (giga) bits per second) Ethernet technology and ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode). These technologies will be rolled out for network backbones first.

Keyboard
Keyboards used to be very stable and rarely changed. However, the resent problems with repetitive stress syndrome (RSI) have caused a wide variety of keyboard to hit the market to ease stress on the hands and wrists.

Mouse
Mice are not very expensive, but they continue to evolve. The biggest problem with mice is that the little roller balls get dirty and need to be cleaned. Eventually, the balls will become optically scanned and will no longer have problems with dirt and grime.

Case and Power Supply
There has been very little innovation in the case and power supply for the past several years and there does not seem to be an new innovations on the horizon.

5.4 Shared Technology

Some equipment is too expensive to be dedicated to individual machines.
Network
The network infrastructure consists a tree-like structure of network cable. There is a central hub for the entire school (located in the primary building) that has a wire running out to each other buildings. Each building has a hub that runs to each classroom. Each classroom has a hub that runs to each computer in the classroom.

Routers
A router is used to connect a computer network to other computer networks. Braly has a Cisco 2500 router that connects the Braly to the district hub via an ISDN line, which is, in turn, connected to the public Internet.

Printers
Currently, there are two kinds of printers -- laser printers and color ink jet printers. Both are useful.

Scanners
There are three kinds of scanners -- hand held, flatbed, and transparency scanners.

File Servers
File servers provide a centralized repository for files that can be conveniently backed up.

5.5 Software Technology

The software technology is listed below:
Operating System
Microsoft makes a lot of money selling operating systems. They try to sell you a new operating system every two to three years. For the near term future, there does not seem to be any viable alternative to Microsoft operating systems. It is possible that at some time in the future it may be possible for schools to use a free operating system (like Linux), but that will not happen any time soon.

Web Browser
There is currently a war going on over Internet web browser. The two combatants are Microsoft and Netscape. Netscape Navigator is free for educational use.

E-mail/NetNews Reader
In addition to the E-mail/NetNews reader built into Netscape Navigator, there are a number of excellent and free E-mail/NetNews readers available.

Educational Software
Currently, there is a fairly thriving market for educational CD software titles for the home market. Braly can make excellent use of this software market.

From a software point of view, it makes more sense to configure the student/teacher computers more like personal computers where individual CD software titles can be loaded onto a machine and run.

6 Upgrade Options

The cost of upgrading computer assets is: 
	Total = Machines x $/Machine
Since there are different kinds of machines (i.e. student, teacher, library, etc.), this equation can be further expanded to look like: 
	Total = Student_machines x $/student_machine +
		Teacher_machines x $/teacher_machine +
		Library_machines x $/library_machine +
		Misc_machines x $/misc_machine
Since there are more student and teacher machines than the other library and miscellaneous machines, the cost of upgrading the student and teacher machines will dominate the equation. Thus, it makes sense to look carefully at the student and teacher machines.

6.1 Number of Machines

The first question is "Is there any way to reduce the number of machines?". Reducing the number of machines will impact the costs directly.

Let us consider the teacher machines first. For teacher machines, there does not seem to be any way to reduce the number of machines. All teachers tend to use the machines at basically the same time -- before school starts and after the last class of the day. It would be difficult to come up with an effective way of allowing teachers to share machines amongst one another. Thus, there is no effective way of reducing the number of teacher machines.

Next, let us consider the student machines. Realistically, computers are only used occasionally in the student's day-to-day activities. This means that there is some opportunity to share one computer amongst several students during the day. The following sharing strategies are possible:

Student Computer Lab
This option causes all of the student computers to be consolidated into a single computer lab. This would reduce the total number of student computers from X to Y. This option is fairly popular at other schools. There is a non-negligible cost of dedicating a classroom towards a computer lab. While the computer lab would have to be time-shared between all of the teachers, just like other one-of-kind resources at the school (e.g. the auditorium, etc.)

An effective student computer lab would contain 30 student computers. It might be possible to set up a computer lab in the space in the middle of the primary building.

Mobile Computers
This options causes the computers to be placed onto mobile carts and they are moved from classroom to classroom as needed. There is one sub-option of leaving the monitors and keyboards in each classroom and only rolling the computer towers between classrooms. Indeed, given the construction of Braly, it is possible move the computers such that they never have to go outside and risk being rained upon. This option requires the purchase of carts and a willingness to deal with additional breakage due to repeated computer movement.

Currently, there are three classroom buildings at Braly -- kindergarten, primary, and secondary. The kindergarten classrooms already swap students between classrooms, so a single pod of 4 computers could be set up in one of them. The primary and secondary buildings, could probably do well with 8 machines per building. This results in a total of 20 (= 8 + 8 + 4) student machines. There is some additional cost associated with running network and power to the computers in the center of the primary building.

Remote Computers
This option is similar to mobile computers, but the computers do not move. Instead, the computers are kept in a central location, and switch boxes are used to connect the keyboards, mice, and monitors to the machines. The cost of wiring up remote computers is not negligible, but it has the nice characteristic of permitting regular machine upgrades being shared amongst all classrooms.

This number of machines is just the same as mobile computers -- 20 student machines.

Classroom Sharing
This option puts some computers is in a number of classrooms, but not all of them. When a teacher in a classroom without computers wanted to use some computers, they would have to arrange to temporarily swap classrooms with another teacher.

The classroom sharing option would probably would put 8 computers in 6 classrooms plus the four computers in the K building resulting in 48 student computers

Status Quo
This option is the one that Braly is currently using. A small number of computers would be placed in each and every classroom and no attempt would be made to share computers between classrooms.

There are currently 56 student computers.

There is one other sharing option -- the teacher computers can be used by the students during teaching hours. The choice of using the teacher computer as part of the teaching curriculum is left up each teacher on a case by case basis.

Upon discussion amongst the teachers at Braly, they concluded that only the last two options (Classroom sharing and Status Quo) were the only viable options for Braly. There is simply no space for a computer lab. The mobile computers looked like an operational headache. The remote computers did not look like they would save all that much money over just purchasing the additional computers. This left the last two options as the only viable options at Braly.

6.2 Short Term Machine Upgrade Options

In general, the teacher machines need to be kept at the same level as the student machines or better.

This section discusses some upgrade options for the Braly computer assets.

New Memory Only (Option M)
This option is deceptively inexpensive. The current Braly machines are at 4MB and sorely need to be upgraded to at least 8MB. 4MB of memory can be purchased for $??.

Unfortunately, a 4MB to 8MB memory upgrade is unlikely to be useful for very long. The latest operating system from Microsoft, Windows 95, seems to work best with 16MB of memory. 16MB of memory can be purchased for $??. Since there are only 4 SIMM slots on each motherboard, it is prudent to fill the slots with an appropriate amount of memory.

Similarly, the newer software is being written assuming that a x486 class machine or greater is being used. This means that some sort of motherboard upgrade is going to be needed in the very near future. Since the newer motherboards use 72-pin SIMM's for memory, any money invested in additional 30-pin SIMM's will be essentially wasted.

All-in-all, this option should not be seriously considered.

New Motherboards & Memory (Option MB+M)
A new motherboard with no memory, processor or cache costs approximately $120. By shopping around it is possible to pick up a motherboard that can accept x586 class machines from 75MHz to 133MHz in this price range. Adding a 75MHz processor and 16MB of memory to such a motherboard brings the total price to $350 per machine.

New Motherboards, Memory, & CD-ROM (Option MB+M+CD)
On sale on 5Jul96, 4x CD-ROM's cost $42, 6x CD-ROM's cost $58, and 8x CD-ROM's cost $98. Given that most educational software comes on CD-ROM's and much of it is not available to run with a site license, it would be fairly prudent to obtain a CD-ROM drive. Presumably, by the time Braly is ready to act, an 8x CD-Rom will cost about $50. This brings the cost of this option to ~$400 per machine.

New Motherboards, Memory, CD-ROM, & Hard disk (Option MB+M+CD+HD)
Hard disks prices have been collapsing. It is possible to buy a 1GB EIDE drive for an additional $150.
Of all these options, option MB+M+CD+HD seems to be the most prudent for teacher machines. The additional cost of hard disks make the MB+M+CD option most appropriate for student machines. A question that needs to be asked is "should we upgrade all of the student machines at once?" In general, if we have the money, it is best to upgrade all of the machines at one time; that way all machines are running the same configuration. However, if there is only enough money to upgrade half of the machines, memory can scavenged from the machines to at least upgrade the remaining machines from 4MB to 8MB.

6.3 Long Term Upgrade Options

The reason for having a plan is to look somewhat into the future for upgrades. What comes next?
New Monitors & display cards
Ouch. It probably makes sense to see what happens in the MPEG and 3D space before purchasing new monitors. This should stabilize in about 2 years.

Hard Disks
Mumble. There is a hidden cost with putting a hard disk on each student machine. The hard disks would need to be backed up and configuration problems will start to abound. While the backup problem is soluble with an over the net backup strategy, the configuration problems will be a support nightmare.

Network Computers
This is a chance that over time easy to administer network computers (e.g. Java stations) may come into existence. At the moment, it is unclear what the advantages and disadvantages of a network computer would be.

Operating System
Currently, Most software runs under Windows 3.1. Microsoft is trying to encourage all developers to write software that only runs on Windows 95. Windows 95 only software is starting to show up on the software shelves. At some point, Braly will have to upgrade its operating system. The cost of upgrading to Windows '95 can cost somewhere in the vicinity of $50-$90 per machine.

In addition, to the basic operating system, Braly currently runs Netware ??.??. The cost of upgrading to Netware ??.?? is $?? per machine.

So the upgrade schedule for Braly would look like:

Year 1
Upgrade teacher machines and half of the student machines.

Year 2
Upgrade the remaining half of the student machines. Upgrade teacher machines to have a new monitor, faster processor, and more memory. Upgrade to a new operating system.

Year 3
Upgrade the student machines to have a new processor and more memory. Upgrade half the student machines to have a new monitor.

Year 4
Approximately the same as year 1.

Year 5
Approximately the same as year 2.

Year 6 Approximately the same as year 3.
As can be seen from this list, there is a continuing expense associated with maintaining the Braly computer assets.

6.4 Funding

Ultimately, the choice between this options will depend upon the amount of funding available to fund computer maintenance.

The following funding sources are available to fund computer asset maintenance:

Capitol Budget
Braly school has a certain amount of funds that are used to fund capitol purchases. Some of these capitol improvement funds can be used for computer asset maintenance. However, most of the maintenance funds need to be expended on other vital capital improvements.

School Improvement Program
The state allocates a certain amount of funds every year for school improvement programs. This SIP funds can be used for computer maintenance.

Parent/Teacher Association
The PTA is permitted to raise funds and disperse them as it sees fit.

Grant Funds
Grant proposals can be written to solicit additional funds for maintenance. Given the heavy computer investment in computer assets at Braly, it is not hard to imagine that one or more computer companies might be willing to help Braly fund...

School District Discretionary Funds
The school district could decide to expend some discretionary funds on maintaining Braly computer asset maintenance.

Donations
Many Braly community members have computers that they no longer use that could potentially be donated to Braly. Such donations are frequently tax deductible.
The key thing to remember about funding sources is that with the exception of grant funds and donations, all the other funds are typically a zero-sum situation; that is, funds spent upgrading Braly computer systems are not available to spend on other valuable projects. The relatively expensive nature of computer maintenance means that a case must be made to each funding source that scarce monetary resources should be spend on computer maintenance.

One of the better ways of assembling significant amounts of funds is through the concept of matching funds. With matching funds, for each dollar raised by one organization, another dollar is matched by a different organization. On possibility for funding upgrades at Braly is to have a 4-way matching funds strategy whereby each dollar raised by PTA is matched by a dollar of SIP funds, a dollar from Braly's capital budget, and a dollar from district discretionary funds. With this kind of strategy each organization feels like its contribution is being highly leveraged.

6.5 First Year Plan

What funding is available to Braly for computer assets during the 1996/1997 school year? The following funding appears to be available: For the sake of discussion, let us assume that $25,000 ($20,000 from the state grant and $5,000 from other sources) is available for hardware and $3,000 for software (from the SIP funds.)

There are 15 teacher machines that would cost ~$650 per machine to upgrade, for a total cost of $9750 (let's call it a nice round $10,000.) The remaining $15,000 could be used to upgrade approximately 36 computers at $400 per computer. The $3000 software funds would be split between the 15 teachers to purchase $200 software per teacher. It is expected that the teachers would coordinate their software purchases so that the software could be shared between several classes. The remaining 12 student machines, library machines, and administrative machines would be upgraded the following year.

The upgrade would be performed in the following three phases:

Phase 1 -- Teacher Machine Upgrades
All 15 teachers would be upgraded to 75MHz Pentium processor with 16MB of RAM, an 8x CD ROM and 810MB hard disk. The teachers will coordinate to purchase a variety of education software titles using the SIP funds. This software could be presented to the students via TV/Monitors that are already present in each classroom. Thus, at the end of phase 1, it will be possible to immediately introduce educational software into the classroom.

Phase 2 -- Initial Student Machine Upgrades
Half of the student machines, 1 classroom per grade would be upgraded to 75MHz Pentium processors with 16MB of RAM and an 8x CD ROM. Memory from the scavenged computers would be transfered into the remaining student machines to upgrade them to 8MB of memory.

Phase 3 -- Remaining Student Machine Upgrades
The remaining student machines would be upgraded to the same configuration as in Phase2. If funds are lacking, this phase will be delayed until the next school year.
A more detailed cost break-down using list prices at Frys on October 23, 1996 is: 
	  129	Intel Triton Motherboard
	  107	75MHz Pentium
	   26	CPU Fan
	+  98	2 x 8MB SIMM's
	---------------------------------
	  360	Motherboard sub-total
	   82	8x CDROM
	   40	16-bit Sound card
	+  35	PCI Video Card
	---------------------------------
	  517	Motherboard +CD sub-total
	+ 121	650MB hard disk
	==================================
	  638	Total
Please note the following:

7 Community Involvement

A significant fraction of the the families already have computers at home. Wouldn't it be nice if we could leverage the machines that are already in place in the home? Here are some possibilities for involving the machines at home in the education process:
Software Homework
One way of leveraging these home machines is to allow students to take some of the school software home for the evening and return it the next school day.

Software Reviews
It is difficult for teachers to find time to evaluate all of the educational software that is out there. Parents could try out a single copy of some software on their children and provide a software review function.

Home Computer Advice
In the Braly community, many parents have sufficient surplus funds that they could purchase a home computer, but have refrained from doing so because they do not know what to buy.

Braly could assemble a brochure that explains to parents what to buy and maybe event suggestions as to where to buy it from. Having access to education software to try before purchasing would be a big benefit as well.

Equipment Donations
Many Braly community members have surplus computer equipment that they no longer need. While much of this equipment is of no use to Braly, a few selected items might be of use. Having an equipment donation and evaluation program might be quite useful.

Software Donations
Many parents have educational software that is no longer being used by their children. This software could be donated to Braly.

Internet E-mail
Now that Braly has Internet access and many parents have Internet access, Parent teacher communication via E-mail becomes a definite possibility. Also, newsletters and notices can be sent out via E-mail as well.

8 Summary

In summary, Braly school now recognizes that it must make a continued and on-going investment in it computer assets if they are every to result in meaningful usage in the classroom setting. This document outlines a viable strategy for upgrading Braly's currently obsolete computer assets to newer and more viable computer assets.