* St. Agnes Academy could serve as a model for implementing virtual applications in our schools
St. Agnes Academy in Houston could serve as a model for implementing virtual applications in our schools. Instead of bound books, students carry laptop and tablet computers and download streamed virtual applications and ebooks whenever they are needed. This school earns an A+ for cost savings and efficiency.
St. Agnes Academy is one of the premier college preparatory schools in Houston. The all-girls school is known for excellence not only in what it teaches, but how it teaches. Far ahead of its public school counterparts, St. Agnes is known in the education community as “a laptop school.” Each of the 860 students carries a laptop or tablet PC to class instead of lugging a heavy backpack full of textbooks around.
At the beginning of the school term, the students download the books and software applications they need onto their laptops. Everything is set up as virtual applications that can be downloaded in minutes. This allows the students to get access to their course materials anytime and from anywhere. So much for the old excuse, “The dog ate my homework.”
Jason Hyams is the director of information technology at St. Agnes. When he came to the academy in 2005, the school already had a wireless environment and the students were using laptops in class. However, the way they used their computers was more a “wired” solution than a truly mobile environment. In class, the students would log in to a domain and the hard drives were scripted. The students had access to shared printers. Though the solution worked, the devices weren’t really being treated as mobile clients.
One of Hyams’ first actions was to install a Web-based student portal that added the capability for hot spot printing, Web-based storage for files and folders, a chat board, a blog board and Web-based calendaring. Students gained the ability to collaborate and share files with teachers and classmates.
Hyams’ next challenge to tackle was the installation of the electronic textbooks. In 2005, the process involved teachers handing out boxes of CDs and the students manually loading the e-books onto their own PCs. Because the computers are student-owned and managed, there could be any number of problems with the software installation. This consumed days of important class time.
Hyams wanted an automated way to push the e-books and other applications to the unmanaged devices. He evaluated SoftGrid and AppStream and eventually selected AppStream, which is now part of the Symantec Endpoint Virtualization Suite. AppStream allowed St. Agnes’ IT team to stream the e-books to the PCs, manage the software licensing, and remove the software at the end of the school term. At this point, the software packages were just an MSI rollout. Nevertheless, the technique worked well.
By 2007, AppStream and Altiris were working together, allowing Hyams to create true virtual applications. He created a Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) package for Microsoft Office, the school’s accounting software and some Adobe applications. A student taking a PhotoShop class, for instance, could stream the application software to her laptop and take it home to complete her lab assignment. After this success, Hyams moved all e-books and software applications to SVS.
As a result, today the school has a truly virtual environment. Students can download books and applications as they need them in a matter of minutes. They can work offline and from any device that allows them access to their student portal. Because the school controls the applications, it can uninstall the applications and e-books at will, allowing the school to reclaim licenses that are not in use and save money on books and software. There is no need for a one-to-one ratio of licenses to students anymore; all licenses are in a pool for use by students with a current need.
If a student’s PC fails, she can turn it in for repairs and use another device to get to her applications and school work. From another PC, the student can go to the student portal, install the virtualization agent and download the required applications. There’s no disruption to the student’s learning environment.
Hyams says the biggest challenge he faced when implementing the virtual applications was in sizing the front-end server capacity. Initially, he vastly underestimated the required capacity. Now with three front-end servers handling the streaming, students can download their necessary applications at download speeds up to 1/2Mbps to 1Mbps.
Virtual applications make this “laptop school” more efficient while saving the school and its students money on books and software. Our cash-strapped public schools could learn a thing or two by studying the St. Agnes IT model.
