An old joke tells the story of how it took twenty years to get the overhead projector out of the bowling alley and into the classroom. The pace of change has quickened and today many of the tools that are common outside of the school are finding their way into classrooms.

This article will explore two of these technologies that help teachers provide powerful learning tools for their students.

Linux Terminal Server Lab:
Sid Leader is a former television news producer turned teacher working at Whitaker Middle School in Portland, OR. In his first year at Whitaker, Sid inherited a computer lab with a mishmash of old and broken equipment. He found himself spending too much time troubleshooting machines and too little time working with students. His dilemma caught the attention of his school district information technology department and a solution was proposed. The solution involved the installation of a 30-station Linux terminal server lab.

Using low-cost workstations and a beefed-up server, the terminal server lab provides thirty students with access to the Internet and to productivity tools. The workstations Mr. Leader`s students use are low-cost, recycled PCs that are connected to a server running Linux. The work stations require so little "computing power" that even older-generation PCs will work on this network.

The server logs each student on the network and provides selected applications and files to the individual workstations. The software includes Open Source applications including Web browsers and needed support for multimedia plug-ins. While saving the district thousands of dollars in software licensing costs, this type of lab allows Mr. Leader`s students to save their work to a file server. Student work is backed up nightly and students can access their work from any computer on the school network.

Mr. Leader`s lab is based on the K-12 Linux Terminal Server Project (K12LTSP, see http://www.k12ltsp.org), distribution which includes RedHat, Linux, and the LTSP terminal server packages. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License which means that it is free and is based on Open Source software. The software can be downloaded from the Linux Terminal Server Project site, or an installation CD can be purchased.

For more information see: http://www.k12ltsp.org*.

Push-button Web Publishing:
With the growth of Internet access, more and more parents and teachers are seeing the benefits of using the Web to publish classroom information and assignments. While the power can be seen by just about everyone, most teachers do not have the time or technical skills necessary to publish online. Resourceful district teacher leaders have started taking advantage of low-cost (or free) Web browser-based tools that make Web publishing a much simpler process.

Both of these tools allow a teacher to set up a Web site in a matter of minutes. The key is that the content creation is up to the author while all of the tedium and mystery of getting that content onto the Web is handled by filling in a template in a Web page.

Pages and entries are added easily. While dedicated content management systems can be quite expensive, two low-cost (and in the case of Blogger, no-cost) solutions that are finding wide use are Radio and Blogger

Rose Palmer is an elementary math teacher who works as an instructional specialist for Portland Public Schools (PPS). In addition to conducting professional development workshops, mentoring teachers, and helping produce a parent newsletter, Ms. Palmer is charged with posting information to the PPS Elementary Math Web site. She uses Radio to post information about upcoming workshops and family math curriculum nights. With every Portland classroom connected to the Internet, the math curriculum team sees the use of Radio as a powerful tool for dissemination of curricular information and materials.

"This tool has allowed us to easily share information with over one thousand teachers. Without this type of tool, I would not have the time or technical skill to provide this resource. The power of Radio is that it allows me to very easily create and post the information that I need to share with my teachers and their families."

Information about Radio, Blogger and the Portland Elementary Math Web site can be found at the following sites:
http://radio.userland.com*
http://www.blogger.com*
http://teachers.pps.k12.or.us/elementarymath/*