Ask Slashdot: Ideal High School Computer Lab? 268
First time accepted submitter dmiller1984 writes "I am a high school computer teacher and I've been put in the unique situation of designing my ideal computer lab since our high school will be undergoing a major expansion over the summer. I thought the Slashdot community might have some great ideas to help me out. I've never liked the lecture hall labs that I've seen in some schools, but I would like some way to get natural light in the room without worrying about glare on the computer screens (skylights, perhaps?). What are some of your ideas for a great computer lab for education?"
Provide unusual resources (Score:3, Interesting)
Fill the lab with Winders or fruit and students will tend to skid to a halt at a "power user" level of proficiency. Fill it with uninstalled white box PCs and Linux CDs, and they will learn many valuable things in the process of creating a usable network. Sure, they may never again need to do a lot of that stuff, but at least they will understand why it's necessary.
"You know that teacher we hated in the high school computer course? I just realized I learned something that year that prevented a corporate meltdown today."
Ideal College Lab (Score:2, Interesting)
While this is perhaps a bit over the top for a High School lab, I think the ideal college computer lab would be one that puts an absolute prohibition on software going into the lab. The idea here is that competent computer science students ought to be capable of writing all of the software necessary for such a lab... including the operating system and even the TCP/IP stack and even the compilers. Since it is all being done there in the school.... document it and make sure that everybody knows what you are doing.
No, it wouldn't be something built in a single semester or term, but it would do a whole lot of good for people coming out of a college being exposed to actual hardware and working out the problems of how software is built, or why certain things are being done.
Of course this concept of a computer lab is something that professors and university administrators bent on producing an assembly line of future workers for IT companies would hate, because obviously they wouldn't be able to learn the "cool" tools being used elsewhere. But it would give them exposure to actual computer science and be able to understand how operating systems actually work rather than taking it on blind faith and assuming it is a black box.
In that lab, I'd also put paper copies of most of the RFCs from the IETF (or perhaps ASCII text files), as well as copies of the ACM and IEEE journals as well as other legitimate sources of information that competent programmers ought to be reading anyway. Games would be permitted, but it would have to be games that were developed inside the lab and not brought in from outside. Give access to this lab 24/7 to students, and see what some very creative people could actually come up with. Since the OS was just something thrown together by another student, encouraging students to rewrite parts of the OS would even be encouraged (and source code would be presumably available in such situations). Depending on school policies, encourage or even expect students to release everything developed in the lab under some sort of "open source" license (preferably GPL or MIT).
Too obvious (Score:4, Interesting)
That's easy. Give every student a laptop and a copy of Ubuntu and let the world be their lab. Hire a few geeks to answer questions and help the students if they get stuck.
And please, no remote control cameras on the computers. Assistant Principals tend to be pervs.
I did this once in 1988... (Score:5, Interesting)
I designed a small space for 6 workstations that was used for 2 years, it was pretty popular among the students, they hung out there and worked all hours of the day and night, usually 4 or 5 of the workstations were occupied during "normal working" hours. Then, I was asked to design the upgraded lab with 18 terminals in a larger space. The main thing I asked for from a lighting/facility aspect was workspace spotlights (in those days, incandescent lights in a can which throw a spot on the desk but not on the screens - today I'd go LED), and I asked for 72" desks because our students worked in pairs. I arranged the 18 desks in a sort of random/scattered layout (both for the 6 and 18 terminal labs), which put most workstations in a semi-isolated space, usually with at most one other workstation in a "hey, can you tell me..." line of sight asking distance.
Well, it was 20+ years ago, so I don't remember if I actually got the can-spots or not, what I do remember was that the man in charge said "thanks a lot for the design, but we're going to lay them out in rows so that when a visitor looks in the window from the hallway they will see all the screens, it's impressive." Yeah, it was impressive alright. The desks shrank to 54" to make 3 rows of 6 work in the available space, people were on each other's elbows all the time and, generally speaking, no more than 3 or 4 workstations were ever occupied at a time because people felt cramped if more than half the terminals were full, so they generally stayed away except for absolutely required lab time.
Re:Physically secure things (Score:4, Interesting)
Make sure the computer desks have anchor points and cables. Lock the monitors with security cables using microclips in the K-slot lock point holes, and run the same cable through a microclip in the PC case to lock the cases shut and secured. There are also cable trap devices so you can route USB cables for mice and keyboards through them. If possible keep the padlock ends of the cable under the desks, where bored fingers won't have an easy opportunity to pick them.
Locking cabinets and drawers large enough for spare equipment. Think PC cabinets, monitors, cables.
Filtered power strips along the table / desk tops.
School logo mousepads, of course. :-) You'll probably have to have them screwed and glued to the desktops, though. :-(
For equipment, I'm guessing your school already has a supplier of PCs, so you'll almost certainly be getting the school district's bog standard crap PCs. Nobody can help you there. Ask for second monitors, though.
A projector that can hook to your machine. Use tools like VLC to display the student desktops when they're presenting from their machines.
Have VMware virtual machines available on the desktops. It lets the students do work as system administrators without putting the actual host systems at too much risk.
The rest of the suggestions are really more ideas that depend on what you're planning to teach them. Programming? Networking? Intro to PCs 101? Build-your-own? Pen testing? Security? Digital forensics? Computer graphic arts? Administration? DBAs? Modeling? Social engineering?
Want to do network experiments? Have a free-standing rack mount visible at the front of the room. Mount two network switches and two routers in it so you can do networking experiments. It doesn't have to be connected to the school's network. You might put a classroom server in this rack. Again, security is important, so you would at least have to cable lock it down, if not keeping it in a locking cage rack.
For build your own or PC 101, think about asking some parents at the start of the year for old computer donations, and have the students build or rebuild a few in class. Have a toolbox handy with the standard PC tools. Again, the locking cabinets are important for holding unfinished projects and components.
I think Microsoft is still legally obligated to feel guilty about their monopolistic practices. Consider asking them for software suites appropriate with what you'll be teaching them. Ask for classroom copies for each server of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, get a copy of Visual Studio TFS 2010, and for each desktop ask for Windows 7, Office 2010 Professional Plus, Visio 2010, Expression Blend, and Visual Studio 2010 Premium Edition.
You might need a forensic machine for studying hard disks removed from other computers.
Web cams? Audio recorders and microphones? A big honkin' server to run blender? Robotics kits? Bluetooth transceivers?