Futures/Action Plans
Cardinal Hayes High School has benefited from various grants, state and federal programs. We currently have a few technology active projects with completion dates for 2008 Summer that gear towards better security, standardization, control, and an infrastructure that is robust enough to grow with future technologies.
Website:
A class is in place for the next school year which will allow students to help update content and maintain the website. Similar to the benefits from the former Cisco Academy classes (no longer offered), in addition to making the site richer and keeping information current and free flowing, students will learn viable technology skills opening up career opportunities for them. Note: While there is no computer department, technology related classes are currently spread across disciplines from Art, to Math and English.
Infrastructure Project:
We have currently received and will be installing new Cisco Catalyst switches. These are intelligent switches that monitor and route data traffic throughout the school. They are future ready as the can handle 1000bt throughput.
We will be rewiring the entire building thanks to eRate funding. The current wiring was not set up for high bandwidth and in many cases was not set up to the best working and aesthetic specifications. We are removing all the old Cat5 cable and putting Cat6 cable with additional fiber optic backbones and runs.
We will be changing the copper lines that come into the building which have been a bottleneck with fiber optic lines.
We will be putting new up-to-date servers running Server 2003 Operating System and switching over the whole network to an Active Directory system. This will greatly enhance control over the network and user groups – making it easier to monitor, make changes, upgrade, push out new software, antivirus and spy ware definitions.
Standardization Project:
Windows 98 was never meant to be a networked computer operating system. It is also no longer supported by Microsoft. We will be totally removing all Windows 98 systems from our networks and replacing them with Windows XP operating systems. An additional benefit of using one manufacturer model, “IBM”, and mirroring the computer hard drive image will make for much quicker maintenance turnaround time and a general ease of use for users throughout the school with virtually the same computer everywhere at their fingertips. In addition, Windows XP works with the active directory services will allow for remote administration, training, and support on the computers on the network.
We are also looking to make sure that every computer has the same version of Microsoft Office (2003) and other software across the board – a standard desktop environment.
Each computer has antivirus, anti-spam, and other security software (Winlock, Deepfreeze) to protect the integrity of the system, network, and user data. Minimalizing errors, repairs, and slowdown increases usability and promotes efficiency.
Lab and Laptop Project:
Part and parcel to this project is the plan to replace desktop computers for teachers with laptops. Teachers will more easily be able to use these laptops with projectors and smart boards in the classroom. Additionally, with the ability to take their computers with them throughout the building, to outside training sessions, and to their homes we believe there will be a greater ownership of the technology which can then only benefit lesson preparation.
There is a trend now to reduce the amount of labs in classes and create mobile laptop carts to move from classroom to classroom. We agree with this philosophy.
We will reducing our labs to 3 and bring in two mobile laptop carts with 36 laptops each.
New Media Center and Art Wing:
Working with a grant and expert help from Martin Scorsese and foundations he supports, the new Art Wing will contain a New Media Center with fiber optic access directly through to the Internet, state-of-the art audio/video editing and creation software from Adobe (software already secured).
The students in the New Art Wing will benefit from software recently purchased from NYSSL funds – the entire ADOBE creative suite..
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