You want to give your users an easy-to-use, secure desktop that’s cost effective to deploy on notebooks, netbooks, nettops and workstations. But you can’t afford the exorbitant licensing, maintenance and support fees that proprietary vendors typically charge. Fortunately, there’s SUS E Linux Enterprise Desktop from Novell. Our simple, straightforward technology seamlessly interoperates with your existing IT infrastructure, including Microsoft Windows. And it comes bundled with OpenOffice.org, Firefox*, e-mail and instant messaging clients, integrated multimedia support, plug and play support for thousands of devices and much more.
Customer Situation
A large school district serving more than 130,000 students envisioned a one-to-one mobile computing initiative to help students achieve academic success and prepare them to learn, live and work in the 21st century. They wanted to give students access to laptop computers with software tools and resources. The question was: how? Cost, of course, was an issue, because funding within school districts is always very limited. The desktop operating system had to be not only affordable but reliable and easy to use and manage as well, to benefit students while being economical for the district.
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The Solution
The district selected SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop from Novell as the standard platform for its mobile learning environment. The initiative is currently in the first phase of a three-phase implementation that is expected to run for several years. The district is enthusiastic about pioneering this program to personalize student learning. The new computing environment will provide meaningful learning experiences for all participating students, especially those who do not have access to computers at home. The district believes it will help students develop higher-order skills and function more effectively in the world beyond the classroom.
The long-term vision includes student access to a managed network that will provide an Internet/intranet connection to schoolwork, teachers and classmates and give students anytime, anyplace access to educational resources. The school district plans to use open source applications included in SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop for office productivity, audio and video, Web browsing, geography, language arts, math and science. In the future, teaming and conferencing capabilities could further enhance learning by facilitating collaboration on group projects and making it easier for teachers, staff and students to interact with each other online. |
