Setting: Rip Waugh Elementary School in Pyrites, St. Lawrence County, New York.
The population of Pyrites was stable at about 100 for the he past 100 years. Recently a clean energy company has moved in and a new production plant has been created. This has led to an influx in jobs, which has led to additional families living in Pyrites. The population has now swelled to 3000, and rather than bus the 650 children living living there to other local area schools, a new school building has been planned.
Task: You have been tasked with estimating the cost of first wiring and then supporting the building's networking and storage needs. The building design specifications have not yet been produced, but the parameters for the building have been established as follows (translation - you need to create a blueprint for the building):
Classrooms:
1) Two classrooms for each grade, K-6, 14 total. Each has a maximum capacity of 25 students plus the teacher.
2) For Grades 7-8 there will be one English, Math, Social Studies, and Science classroom. Each will have a maximum capacity of 25 students plus the teacher.
3) For grades 9-12 there will be classrooms for Math, Chemistry, Biology, Earth Science, Physics, Language, Social Studies, and English, again each with a maximum capacity of 25 students plus the teacher.
4) One or Two Art Classroom(s).
5) A Family and Consumer Science (Home Economics).
6) A Technology Education Classroom (formerly known as wood shop).
Other Rooms:
1) A Library
2) A Gynnasium, attached locker room, and PE Teachers' offices.
3) An Auditorium
4) A Cateteria, including a food preparation area and offices for the food preparation staff.
5) Administrative Offices (Secretary, Principal, Superindendent, etc...).
6) The School counselor's office
7) The Nurse's Office
8) Two Special Education Teaching Rooms and attached special education teacher & aids' office.
9) Two 25 Smart Computer Classrooms with projected teacher station.
10) Janitors Office
11) Music Room.
With these needs in mind, the building committee has asked you to esimate:
1) How much space will be needed to support the network infrastructure. What additional space will be needed to support the network infrastructure of the building (central rooms, technology staff offices, closets, etc...) rooms specifically will be needed? Per your suggestions, these rooms will need to be included in the final architectural plans.
2) What equipment will be needed in each of these rooms. They have requested an itemized list of needed equipment. This may include, but is not limited to: computers, switches, routers, network drops, air conditioning, cabling, servers (e-mail, storage, etc...), projectors, podiums, and smartboards. They have asked you to include any equipment you feel would be necessary to prepare the new school for the technology needs of the 21st century.
3) What software will be needed.
4) The ongoing, year-to-year technology support costs, including staffing and equipment.
Without knowing any details, in the initial, rough estimates for building cost, the building committee has allocated of $300,000 for the hardware and software, and $100,000 for ongoing, year-to-year costs (Licensing, Equipment Replacement, people, etc... but not computers).
You should prepare a plan that will provide an appropriate network infrastructure for the new building that addresses all of the identified needs. You may add additional needs that you feel are missing. In addition, you may make the case for increasing or decreasing either the initial startup costs ($500,000) or the ongoing costs ($100,00). You will need to support your arguments with justification for what will be needed, as well as itemized costs, including the vendors that you will purchase the items from). Your report to the building committee should include a report that includes your estimation of the technology needs of the building. You will also need to provide an itemized spreadsheet that includes the specific equipement needed, costs of the equipment, and where the equipment will be purchased. An optional requirement will be to produce a summary PowerPoint presentation that will be used to present to the broader public to help them understand the decisions that are being made.
In total, the deliverables I will look for are:
1) A building schematic, including labeled rooms, network drops, closets, etc. This should be submitted as a .jpg or series of .jpgs. You may consider using Microsoft Visio or other similar sofware (click here for a free trial of Visio).
2) A tabbed spreadsheet, with a tab for each major expenditure category (you decide on what those categories should be).
3) A word doccument that explains why you did what you did, and references the summary information from the spreadsheet. This document should be around 3-5 pages. I'll be looking for rationale for the decisions that are summarized in the spreadsheet.
4) --Optional-- A PowerPoint presentation that presents your proposal.
General questions about the proposal:
1) What do we do about phones?: Be sure to include switches with sufficient 'powered' ports to support the VOIP (voice over IP) phones in the rooms that the closet connects to. Include the cost of the VOIP phones that will be used in each room.
2) What about Printers? Option: Print to networked copiers.
3) Wirless Coverage? Simple, Cheap, $200 Wireless Routers vs. Cisco Managed Wireless Controller ($28,000, xxxx ft radius, about $2000 per hotspot (wirless router)).
4) How Many Computers in a Room? Lifecycle plan must be considered.
5) Opensource vs. commercial solutions? Depends on the area within the school.
6) What equipment goes into the classroom? That's up to you. Some possibilities include: SmartBoard, Airliner, Interwrite, Tablets, computers, projectors, arm, elmo.
7) What goes in the library? Computers, projectors, accessibility equipment, etc...
8) What goes into a dedicated computer lab? Computer sure, but are they laptops, iMacs, desktops, tablets, mobile devices, gps devices, projectors, podium, dvd player? VCR????
9) Minilabs for specials (Tech, Art, Home Ec, etc...)? Sure, you decide.
10) Web Hosting - Outsourced vs. in-house.
11) E-mail? Gmail, $7000 initial, $3000 per year ongoing for archiving.
12) ISP Costs? $600/mo (SLIC). Time Warner Acccess $4,200 per year. 2mbs Up, 10 mbs Down.
13) Antivirus/Antispam MSE (Free)
14) Bus Garage Software? EZ Bus $1,000 Initial Cost, $200 per year ongoing. (School Budget, Not Tech Budget)
***15) Web Site Blocking? - Barracuda, Vision, Iprism ($3,000, $1,000 per year ongoing - Unconfirmed).
16) Administrative Software/Course Management Tools? - Starweb ($20,000-$30,000 per year); SchoolTools ($20,000-$30,000 per year) (School Budget, not Tech Budget)
17) Cafeteria? - Nutrikids (advantages: quicker service to students). $30,000 per year. (School Budget, not Tech Budget).
18) Cost of support technicians and Ed Tech Specialists per year?Network Support Specialist through BOCES = .6 Time = 60-70K (including benefits). .4 Time = 36-42K (including benefits). 80% comes back (you can assume it comes back in the current fiscal year, even though it really doesn't come back for a year or two).
Ed Tech Specialists - Answer from Patti Fisher: St. Lawrence County BOCES: "Ed Tech Specialist $80,560.00 for full time. Most buy part time and get BOCES aid on the cost. They can buy per diem $375.00.19) What types of 'things' are typically funded through grants?
20) General Configuration of Network: Star. Copper
(cat 6) from faceplate (in the room) to the patch panel (in the
closet). Copper from patch panel to switch (within the closet). Fiber from switch to core switch.
This page created 3-31-2010 by Dr. Anthony Betrus. Last updated 5-10-2010.