Here are a few photos of NABB's library, before and after. Before the conversion, the room was mainly used for storage and eventually became a dumping ground for all the items the teachers no longer required in the classrooms.

Space is at a premium in Holmfirth J I & N School, it was therefore essential that whatever furniture was fitted accommodated as much as possible.

Before
This was the NABB's library back in April 2007.














After
In August 2007 it was complete.
































There are 17 thin clients housed in the room. The Promethean ActivBoard is connected to a Windows XP machine in a server cabinet 15m away. The USB leads use repeaters so no data is lost. A standard USB connection can be no longer that 7-10m before a repeater is required.


Each HP 5725 thin client is mounted to the bottom of the furniture using HP's quick release bracket. This provides quick and easy access to all the cables & means that a client is very quick to swap.

I came across a few tools today to ease the setup of common Ubuntu addons. Commonly installed applications & drivers like ATI and NVidea drivers can now be installed with just a few clicks.

These two programs are a great addition to an install of Ubuntu. It saves time having to go through the repositories and find the additional utilities often required. Easy Ubuntu is easy, graphical and safe.

Here is a screenshot:

















This is what Easy Ubuntu does:

Multimedia

• Enhance video player: Install a better multimedia backend (totem-xine replace totem-gstreamer)
• Free Codecs: Add Support for playing mp3 and other non-free formats
• Binary Codecs: Add support for proprietary video and audio formats (w32codecs) (only x86)
• libdvdcss: Read commercial and encrypted DVDs
• MIDI: Add support for playing midi files

Web

• Flash: Enable the Macromedia Flash plugin (only x86)
• Java: Enable the Java plugin (Sun Java for x86, amd64) (IBM java for ppc)
• Videos: Enable viewing videos embedded in webpages

Archives

• RAR: extract and create RAR archives
• ACE: extract ACE archives
• 7-Zip: Extract 7-Zip archives

System

• Repository list: Main, Universe, Multiverse and PLF (replace your previous sources.list)
• Fonts: Install Microsoft and other nice fonts
• DMA: Enable Direct Memory Access to improve DVD reading (breezy)
• Nvidia: install the official driver to enable 3D on Nvidia graphics cards
• ATI: install the official driver to enable 3D on ATI graphics cards

Voice Over IP

• Wengo: a free Voice Over IP software (available in dapper)
• Skype: the most popular VoIP software (only x86)

Another application that does a similar thing but is apparently more configurable is Automatix. See the screenshot below:

To see a list of what Automatix is capable of installing:

http://getautomatix.com/wiki/index.php?title=Software_and_Tweaks

Nabb saw it's first small influx of Year 5 children using the the Ubuntu thin clients. They were very impressed.

There were 6 children in all, I told them how to log in to the machines and then left them to explore! They were engrossed by what it had to offer. Given free reign, they obviously went straight for the games. They loved the variety that Ubuntu had to offer and word quickly spread when one of the children found snake.

In an effort to explore their creative potential, I pointed them in the direction of Tux Paint, a basic but feature rich paint program primarily for KS1 & 2 children. I showed them how to use the stamp feature (readily created images) and they were engaged until break time.















A screenshot of Tux Paint.

They wanted to remain in the library through break time, so I let them, encouraging them all to experiment with the applications offered by Ubuntu. Experimentation will never become a problem with the thin client system and I can remain confident that I'll never 'fix' anything again, as administrative tasks are locked down by default.

In contrast, I've just spent two days locking down Windows Server 2003 whilst effectively allowing all our pupils and staff access to their own personal XP environment! Each user now has their own username and password, therefore allowing access to their own personal My Documents. They also have the ability to customise applications and the desktop the way they want. Personalisation is something all kids love - take ring tones and wallpaper on mobile phones for example!