For this, Illana is the Ethernotes “Hero for the Day” on 31-Oct-09

Getting the Most Out of Your Mac

Do Your Work online

Utilities

A Community Creating Lifelong Learners

Find your local library
Login with your library card
MEL’s elibrary search
How to get eBooks from MEL

Mac Mojo alerted me to this series of online videos for Office 2k8.

Supe’s go out and see all the wonderful things that can be done with a machine and a guy with a computer in front of them. They don’t see the bit guys in the back. When they say, go do it, we’ve got to fight for the stuff that makes it happen.

Compartmentalize:

• You tell me what you need, I’ll tell you what you need.
• If they balk, then ask, “What don’t you want?”
• Having only one server isn’t a goal
• Because OS X server can do it, doesn’t mean you turn on all the services on one server

Need one dedicated Xserver for every 900 concurrent logins. We’re good? Check with Compucraft

Unfortunately the blog server went down at this point. I’ve got to wait to read a white paper to get the rest.

• Using the local admin, create Sidebar how you want to look.

REGISTRATION

• Add Registrations

iTUNES

• Double check that Sharing Libraries is turned off for all

MENU EXTRAS

• Turn off Time Machine
• Time Machine has its own preferences

Train users to read dialogs.

• Especially train mobile users to read sync dialogs
• Youtube: Monty Python and 300 trailer

By default network home directory are created from the Server template.

Use Mobile details to create Mobile home with local user template

Understanding the different user account types.

GUEST

• Basic, simple, anonymous dumb login for KIOSKs
• Sub teacher needs access for a day
• Log out and home directory wiped out
• Very handy
• Performance wise, works great
• Falls apart when you have multiple users

MOBILE ACCOUNTS

• Network managed account cached locally
• Operational capability as a local user.
• Get unique Home Directory
• Lots of capability
• Non-synced: dedicated 1 to 1 that are not student accounts. Not regularly using multiple computers.
• Synced: Portable Home Directory
  • RRts – Rapid Return to Service primary reason
  • Secondary: Work on portable and one other. Use sync to get to files between portable and the teacher computer in the lab.
  • It falls apart where I’m using multiple computers all the time
    • Solution: Seating charts.
  • Local account, network managed, complete mirroring of home directory
  • Careful with wireless
  • Falls apart when you try to out think it. Start filtering and it falls apart. It takes about 90 seconds for student to figure out to put iPhoto and iTunes Library into the folder being synched.
  • What happens when students begin creating gigabyte upon gigabyte of multimedia projects. Answered in load balancing.
  • I currently sync “properly” according to John D. Sync ~/Library at login and let others Background sync
• Use FileVault to encrypt: Use on teacher computer?
• Expiry: delete PHDs after a period of time
• External mobile accounts: Put your Home Directory on a USB drive. Travel all over and plug in your drive.
  • Use “any external volume” to keep PHD on laptop
  • Provide a Firewire cable and Macbook power supply at the teacher station in the lab.
  • Boot holding down the T key and login on the teaching station.
  • Try this with Marcy T?
• Syncing stops immediately when it goes to sleep.
  • Must wait for sync to stop before closing lid
• Background syncing should be every 9-11 minutes. Want a lot of little sync
• Syncing is not backup. If you delete on laptop, it only exists on network until the next sync.

NETWORK ACCOUNTS

• John D. is working hard at making this slide go away
• It’s easy for us.
• 90% of developers assume that is using a local account, not a network account
• other 10% assume it is using a local admin.
• MS Office isn’t a low I/O app
• Just to open a browser creates 50MB of open files
• Folder Redirection built-in (I use for Leopard. I have the login script for 10.4)
• iMovie refuse to create a project on a network share point.
• Adobe scratch disks must be redirected locally.

Apple prefers mobility accounts.

I sat with Hamilton, OAISD and Holland Christian for awhile. Then I moved over and talked to Ryan, a Ravenna graduate.

Ryan’s with Kenowa Hills and manages the lower grade level buildings mostly. They have about 600 Macs total. He’s good friends with the guys at Kelloggsville. We agreed that our biggest technology support problem is the lack of user training. We all agreed, we could use time during curriculum days and at building staff meetings. This attitude is shared with a lot of tech people in attendance.

I’m going to have to review from John D.’s pdf links.

One thing that was an aside is the discussion on a 3rd party print server: Paper Cut

Every District Mission statement boils down to:

• An environment for students to learn and teachers to teach
• and the IT mission statement is to provide support to accomplish the Mission

Policies implement the IT mission

• Active Diretory, Open Directory
• Set policy from centralized location. Not from individual workstations.
• Authenticate/authorization

Workgroup Manager is the GUI for policies

Don’t get carried away with policies

• Shape, don’t control
  • Maybe not Terminal, but yes to Chess
  • Let them pick Desktop picture
  • enforce the Acceptable Use Policy. If the policy is broken and the student can’t finish work, too bad
  • Don’t use technology to solve a social problem
    • Technology will not solve crappy classroom management. “How do I keep the students from using iTunes in class?” John D’s response, “Tell them now is not the time.”
    • Take control of the classroom
• Maintaining more controls=more conflicts=more debugging, more time students try to break.
• definitely occuring at RPS
• Maine enforced a consistent desktop. Students used stickies to create an alternative

Student term for going to HS: “getting unplugged”

• We are not challenging students
• Use computers the kids use at home: “Not much educational software for Playstation”.

The SM Lifecycle Task: Keep track of stuff , deploy stuff (annually in most spots, not RPS), workflow, license management: knowing how many you own and stopping more than that from using, Patch upgrades and app updates, helpdesk.

Proper planning is critical: “We’ve got a new 1-1 initiative, but what if everyone uses it at the same time?”, laptops have to recharge during the day, did you plan for it: outlets in hallways and cafe, battery swap programs.

After september, “Hair on fire” period, we review our lifecycle and begin the “loop.” How do we do it better next year?

Testing: Have yet to find a school that is successful with imaging without an honest to goodness testing lab (what! BCH 109 is not enough?: Servers, 2 desktops clients, 2 laptop clients. 5 machines is good.

ARD

• Asset Managment (at district level)
• lab level teachers use for controlling for education of students.
• ARD task server (Mac Mini) 24/7: Takes ARD to next level.
  • 1 per building is best in our case?
  • Saves you from seeing “unavailable” computers that are really available.
  • Works across multiple subnets.

IMAGING:

• Bombich’s Netinstall discontinuation is throwing us into a tizzy.
• There are other options.
• This is what Compucraft and I are doing this summer.
• Where Ghost costs “too much” on the Windows side, the same capability is 10.5 built in.
• Universal Installer is provided, not Universal Image (this explains my problems with creating new images). Need layered deployments like I do with Radmind.
• Prepopulate distributions with Home Directory templates.
• Terminal: man asr to get the instructions.
• Maco OS Deployment Guide 10.5 at Peachpit is better

USAGE MANAGEMENT

• Keep people from doing dumb stuff to machines,
• Allow them to use the computer.

PATCH/UPGRADE

• Software Update Server (SUS)
• Direct mirror of the Apple Site
• Control of which are installed.
• Create Tree of SUS if desired: Master and replicas. Replicas can have only a subset.
• Never, ever perform SUS updates when logged in.
• 3rd party software
  • No Apple license management
  • Apple tried, but no Windows Remote Desk client
  • Helpdesk and reporting (identify PD opportunities)
  • JAMF Software’s Casper: Cross platform asset management. Powerful for Windows and Macs
  • LANrev: Cross platform asset management: Tim Kamps at HC. Every 20 minutes take a screenshot and a shot of who’s sitting at the computer. InstallEase available for free.
  • Sassafras: K2, management of software licenses. Used by Apple worldwide. The most cost effective solution. Say 30 licenses purchased, the 31st computer will get a message. Eliminate drag drop stealing.
  • Filewave Asset Trustee: Asset management and software distribution.
  • Faronics Deep Freeze: A must for any programming lab. Protects at Root level. We use this on our Windows.
  • Web HelpDesk: What RPS began using for these tickets. This is what they do and they do it best. Integrates with Caspar and LANrev

Some new podcasts will be posted to the Apple Education site. It will boil this down to two 12 minutes podcasts. Unlike our videos, it was produced by director, soundman, camera man, etc.

OOO. We’re going to talk about deployment strategies and real world numbers for servers, laptops and other stuff. Then how much architecture is actually needed to support this through load balancing. My guess is a lot more than what we have.