Milestone Report on the Otago Schools Virtualisation Project

June 2009

Background

In 2007 Otago Secondary Principals expressed a strong desire for greatly enhanced connectivity to the outside world. This would enable vastly improved access to educational and administrative ICT services and the ability of aggregating demand and resources to achieve this. Essentially, a huge increase in connectivity speed was needed.

The Ministry of Education, The Community Trust of Otago and the Central Otago Lakes Trust have since contributed funding to Virtual Education Networks Ltd to allow the investigation of the possibilities around increased speed.

Better connectivity would enable shared ICT services to be hosted outside the school.

The proof of concept is trialling virtualisation of services:

  • hosted email package
  • student managements system
  • learning management system
  • all information/data stored and backed up offsite
  • risk management is outsourced
  • active directory and identity management
  • video conferencing

Additionally new educational services are now being investigated:

  • Multiple Video conference sessions
  • Remote access real time
  • VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol)
  • IP CCTV and or TV
  • Quality streaming video and photo storage

2009 Term 1

Fibre optic connectivity is “in” Mt Aspiring College (Wanaka), Logan Park High School (Dunedin) and the IT supplier for the 2 schools – Decision1 (Dunedin). Connectivity was installed by Telecom/Gen-I and their agents, with a Cisco router also configured and supplied by Gen-i/Telecom. The process of getting fibre installed was relatively simple and painless for the 3 sites.

Downer EDI was the appointed main contractor. Communication was a real strength throughout the process. The project manager for Downers liaised consistently over; consent from councils, any proposed trenching and site digging, splicing and termination, installation of media convertors and the supply install and testing of the router. The install was achieved in leas than 6 weeks after formal external and internal sign off.

Since installation of the hardware there was a period of some days while the exchanges and routes were finalised and tested. Again the communication was excellent. At all times the deadlines were adhered to. The technical aspects were very much “business as usual”.

The 2 schools since then have been moving steadily down the agreed timeline. In essence they were moving towards outsourcing all their IT services. The schools server associated hardware is gradually being “shut down” and made redundant. Services are being moved very quickly – “into the cloud” / “virtualisation”. Overall the rate of change is very impressive. Much more has been achieved in the first 6 months than was anticipated.

Service, ownership and support of servers/services is dramatically changing. Offsite or in the cloud currently:

  • High speed internet
  • Protection/security from outside “attacks” – ie firewall
  • Web based internet filtering packages
  • Web sites (staff, students school)
  • Email, calendaring, documents and websites via Google Education Apps
  • Moodle (learning management system)
  • Identity Management
  • High definition Video Conferencing
  • Back up and management of services

Soon:

  • Student Management System
  • Data cached locally and stored offsite (July)
  • CCTV/LI>

The process is being reviewed and evaluated by Polson Higgs - to find the costs, benefits and opportunities. A business case is being developed.

Who is involved so far?

Ministry of Education, Ministry of Economic Development, Telecom, Gen-i, Decision1, Connector Systems, Polson Higgs, Otago Community Trust, Central Lakes Trust, Effectus, Mount Aspiring College and Logan Park High School are the main “ingredients” at this stage.

Peter Hills

June 2009