ProUnison MAR Program working with schools

ProUnison are pleased to highlight recent successes in the use of their MAR status to help schools with their Computer Hardware Requirements

St. Benildus School, Stillorgan, Dublin

The need here was to supply a number of computers to be used by 4th Year Transition students in the Library area that would be exclusive to Transition Year students. Working with Joe Kelly, the teacher responsible for Transition Year, we supplied a number of refurbished computers that had been supplied by the Institute of Technology in Dublin as computers they no longer required.

We wiped each computer's hard drive and installed a special licence for Windows 2000 as supplied by Microsoft under the MAR program that ProUnison is a member of. Then having re-installed all the necessary driver software we delivered the computers along with some cabling, a Network box and a printer sharing box so after some basic assistance the students themselves setup the mini network, sharing a printer and plugging full Internet access from each computer.

The project was a great success with considerable benefits for the students and at very little cost - which is always a major factor for schools.

This was a much bigger project for ProUnison. They had over 30 computers in the school, a lot of them not working for various reasons. Most of these computers were in the computer room where Teachers tried to give some basic introduction to classes of students but this proved to be very frustrating for all concerned as many computers did not work or ran very slowly. Trying to hold young students attention in this environment is very difficult.

Matt Hurley, the Principle, had managed to get donated computers from Companies but all of them had some problem from very little memory, no network card etc.

We started by doing a full hardware audit of all the computers and parts that the school had. Then working with some of the Teachers we worked out each Teacher's needs and also reviewed their Network coverage and what needed to be done. All this was then mapped against their budged and a plan was agreed.

Using the business donated computers they already had and also supplying a number of refurbished computers with new Windows 2000 software licences as well as Microsoft Works licences all provided under the MAR program by Microsoft, we managed to rebuild enough computers to furnish their computer room and put at least 2 computers into most of the class rooms. The upgrading of memory and insertion of network cards allowed us to run almost 40 computers so far and the number is still growing.

On the Network side we work along side a Network specialist company that has added to their network, opening up the Internet to all areas of the school.

The big plus was the introduction of remote support on each computer. We can now access each computer directly from our base in order to deal with a problem. We also monitor each computer so this way we avoid problems happening as much as possible. This type of support is very cost effective from the schools point of view and removes the need to 'be on site' every time something happens.

The other big plus is we can now replace a computer or install a new one much faster as all the computers have the same configuration settings and base software.

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