JEvents

 

A few of the "better developed" proposed projects alluded to above will soon appear on this web-site as encouragement for "angel funding" from site visitors who have sufficient funds to contribute to the intended collaborative design and development efforts.

The Lab Equipment and software always needs updating and upgrading.  See the "Needed In-Kind Donations" article on this site for details.  The Lab Equipment currently consists of a 10/100 Mbps LAN for desktops and servers, WiFi (b/g) wireless networking for laptops, and a high-speed DSL connection to the Internet. Networked computers in the lab number 5 to 10 depending on the number put in service for "serving" purposes. There are currently 3 dedicated server computers, each a Pentium 4 with high-capacity SATA hard-disk storage. Among other things with such a LAN "we" can experiment with load balancing locally before deployment of server software to one or more public "test" or "live" (production) sites.

Some test goals: We want to be able to experiment with various configurations of "thin" (stupid, dumb, slow, but rugged and durable) and "thick" or "robust" (smart & fast, but expensive) client computers in "test classroom" scenarios. We are materially able to do some of those tests now, if and when they become a priority. For client computers currently there are 5-6 laptops available of various ages. Ages range from 5 years old Pentium 4s to an Apple G4 notebook, a Pentium 3, to 2 12 years old Pentium 2s. All of these can be used as simulated thin-clients or as thick/robust/smart client workstations and can be put to use in a variety of test-classroom and test student-course-materials presentation and learning interactivity scenarios.

The older laptops and a few older Pentium 3 desktops are used for "regression testing" of the same tests we would perform with newer, more recent hardware and software, but using slower machines, perhaps with no file storage capabilities on the laptops, and perhaps running older operating systems.

Some Intended Publications: We hope to publish best-case configurations and performance reports about the uses of older equipment which in turn can use "well" newer or newest educational software, course-ware, and distance learning techniques and web-sites. We hope to publish these reports in several languages such that they will encourage and guide certain "poorer schools", school districts in developed and developing countries to adopt state-of-the-art distance learning services and materials in their curricula if and when all they can get is the "older computer equipment" and networking hardware.