I. General Guidelines

There are three computer labs within the Hall-Dale school system, one lab for each school unit. Each lab has differing capabilities depending on the academic needs of our various learners (K- Adult). At present (1/05), there are also three differing Windows operating systems at each of the three labs. There are however, many common elements pertaining to all three PC labs as follows:

A. Common Items at all three district PC labs.

1. Deep Freeze enabled – all PCs in district computer labs are “locked down” with Deep Freeze software. This software database “remembers” the exact configuration of each PC and restores the PC to it’s original state upon restarting the PC. This software then, upon restarting, removes the effects of all viruses, Trojan horse programs, spyware and all other malware that has been inadvertently or purposely downloaded onto the PC. All configuration changes, documents or programs that were added to the PC are removed.

All work must be saved to networked folders or floppy disks or else it will be deleted upon restarting of the PC.

2. Open Office Software Suite – all district lab PCs now have the Open Source Open Office software suite, which contains the following modules – text, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing and web page or HTML.

3. Typical Microsoft Accessory programs – all lab PCs have simpler to use word processing programs such as WordPad and Notepad, the Internet Explorer Web browsing software, calculator and Adobe Acrobat Reader (for pdf files).

4. AVG anti virus software – all PCs are still protected with AVG software such that infections that occur prior to PC restart can still be dealt with and reported to administrative servers.

B. Recommended PC Lab preparation guidelines.

1. 4 Weeks prior to teaching – test your software, video, printing, sound and file saving. Ensure that whatever function will be performed by your students is satisfactorily performed on a number of Lab PCs. Have at least one student logon and verify that the programs work for the student account as well. Contact the IT group with any discrepancies well before the anticipated teaching date.

2. Have back up exercises or handout(s) at the ready in case of technical difficulties or loss of the Internet.

3. Research the exact URLs of potential web sites involved with the learning activity unless content searching is an expressed outcome of the learning activity. It is better to have pre-researched, higher quality learning sites.

4. Week of teaching - ensure that all PC users have a functioning network logon and password.

5. Ensure that all lab stations have required peripherals (earphones, keyboards, mice, mouse pads, etc) and appear to work properly. Report discrepancies to the IT group with as much advance notice as possible.

6. Day of teaching – if at all possible, start PCs at least 15 minutes prior to class.

7. If possible, have students log on immediately in order to allow PC start sequence to complete and anti-virus programs to complete. Then perform your introduction to the activity while allowing the PCs to complete anti-virus scanning which slows the PC response.

8. Circulate to all PCs and clear spurious messages.

II. Lab Differences

The PCs at the Elementary and High Schools have Windows XP professional and Windows 2000 professional respectively. These operating systems “remember” each differing PC user and store most of the PC’s information, specific to that user in totally separate locations. Examples are desktop schemes, printers, bookmarks, start menu items, etc. In other words if user ejones saves a document into the My Documents folder, if user mwhite logs on to the PC and looks for the document...it wont be there. The network printer that mwhite adds to her desktop wont be seen by ejones when he logs on. This is not the case on the Windows 98 PCs in the Middle School. At all three schools however, once the PC is rebooted, all information stored anywhere is deleted.

A. Elementary School Lab – the learning activity CDROMs may be required to be inserted in order to get the program to work. Due to the age of the software, some programs may prompt the user to reinstall the software. This is a compatibility bug with XP....just click no or cancel or the upper right X if prompted to install the software. Students should save onto the hdkids folder on the network. Teachers can then make a copy of their class work and copy it into their own folder for safekeeping.

B. Middle School Lab – the networked Type To Learn program is available on each PC.

A. High School Lab – GIS software is available on each PC.