Senior Design Project Final Report
“The
Interactive Classroom”
Henry
Rivera
Juan
Guzman
Randy
Slater
Jonathan
Lugtu
I. Abstract 2
I-1. Acknowledgement 3
II.
Implemented Prototype
II-1. Introduction
4
II-2. Prototype
Specification 6
II-3. Prototype
Performance & Evaluation 7
II-5. Project
Schedule 8
"Education
is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare
for it today." --
Malcolm X
One of the most influential technologies of the last century has been the development of the computer. Computers were initially built for Corporate America for business purposes. As time progressed, computers made their way into our educational system serving as a teaching aid. The main purpose of integrating computers and schools is to make classrooms more conducive to learning, make instructors more efficient, and allow for more attention to individual students.
We at Educational Computer Networks (EDCN) feel that the current educational system has not utilized the computer to its full potential. Our product “The Interactive Classroom” is a computer network that will bridge the gap from making the computer an occasional teaching tool to an indispensable component of the classroom. Our product successfully delivers high quality streaming video and audio to a remote student sitting anywhere around the world. It allows the teacher to gauge whether the class comprehends the material being taught. This is accomplished through a web interface which allows the teacher to ask questions on the fly and have the results displayed dynamically on the administrator page. Features such as chat rooms, file sharing, a tutor request system, discussion boards, and an events page were added to our product to help increase its educational value. Through networking products such as VPN our company is able to monitor our product twenty four hours a day. Enabling us to decrease the amount of down time should there be a network failure.
Acknowledgments:
We would
like to give special thanks to those who have helped us throughout the duration
of this project:
·
Professor Hongbin Li - Technical Advisor
·
Professor Fred Bruno
·
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
·
La
Introduction:
The
presence of computers in schools issue began in the early 1970s, with the
introduction of special purpose terminals connected to central mainframes. This
model gave rise to the concept that a computer is a sort of teaching machine,
that a computer could help the teacher do the same job, only better, faster,
and with more attention to individual students.
As time progressed the idea of computers being integrated into schools
gained much popularity. Schools all over
the
Our group built this network from the ground up using Cisco equipment. We have developed a computer network which we are calling “The Interactive Classroom”, which uses the technology of computers to its fullest potential, in order to make teaching more efficient and learning easier. Why should a student miss a lecture because the night before he got injured and has a cast in his legs and can’t walk to the classroom? Why should a professor wait until the next day of class to see if the students understood the material that was given, when he could know in real time, just by the click of the mouse? Our product allows teachers and students to have greater flexibility and a more enjoyable learning experience. We believe that this results in an overall better quality of education.
Our project
consists of a number of major goals that we met successively. We successfully designed, implemented, and
managed a small computer lab for a school.
We expected to initially to be facilitating connectivity for 80 users,
and found ourselves to realistically be supporting about 60 machines. Our eventual goals of building a secure,
scalable, reliable, and cost efficient network that will assist in the school’s
needs, as well as provide remote access over the Internet, were successfully
met. The proposed final design that we
engineered is extremely scalable, redundant, and can support well over 750
users.
Our web
applications were successfully created.
We were able to implement streaming video and streaming audio allowing
students to watch live lectures from anywhere around the world. The ability to watch previous lectures was
added for those students who wish watch the lecture again. The ability for student teacher interaction
was implemented via our dynamic question and answer system. The idea of having students help students was
also implemented through a tutor request system, file sharing, and chat
rooms.
Prototype Specification:
The specific design that was implemented in our project was the final design that our group collaboratively engineered, as viewed in Appendix A. The critical components utilized in this prototype are Cisco equipment, which are loaners meant for this project. All components used for this project are described in our budget in Appendix B. The base of the network infrastructure was thoroughly tested and verified before implementation. We did happen to some problems while in the testing stages.
With respect to the network infrastructure, one problem our group faced was the fact that Internet connectivity was initially unstable. It so happens that the Ethernet interfaces on both Router1 and Router2 were unable to obtain IP addresses dynamically from the ISP’s (Internet Service Provider) DHCP server. We then did some research and discovered that in a later release of the Cisco IOS (version 12.1(2)T), DHCP client functionality is possible. At this point, we upgraded the IOS version on both Router1 and Rouetr2. After the upgrade completed, the Ethernet interfaces were able to successfully lease IP addresses from the ISP’s DHCP server.
Another
problem that our group faced was the fact that certain routes were not being
advertised within the infrastructure.
This was due to the fact that Router1 and Router2 were incorrectly
configured. This was resolved by
redistributing routes learned on the Ethernet interfaces on these two routers
connected to the Internet, towards the internal side of the
infrastructure.
After these
two major issues were resolved, we then performed a series of fail-over tests,
which would prove and verify the network infrastructure’s redundancy and
reliability. The next page describes the
steps we performed to test the infrastructure.
Prototype Performance &
Evaluation:
After we
implemented our final design and everything was in place, it was time to test
the performance aspect of the network infrastructure. After we’ve verified that everything was
working at the school, we left everything for about 1 ½ months for performance
evaluations and load testing from the school’s students. This is after we performed all the fail-over
tests that are described in the previous page.
To
accomplish accurate performance guidelines, our group was able to implement
CiscoWorks. This is software that
measures performance and shows various statistics. The following page shows a graph depicting
the traffic utilization and CPU utilization, which we were able to extract from
CiscoWorks.
With
respect to the graph, the statistic for Week 4 was due to the fact that the
students at the school were on Spring Break.
Financial Budget:
This will
be provided on Appendix B.
Project Schedule:
For a
complete project schedule, please see Appendix
C.
Conclusion:
We firmly
believe in the ability of our product to change the foundation of education. The “Interactive Classroom” provides the
teacher a way to gauge if the students understand the material being
taught. If the data coming back from the
“Interactive Classroom” gives the teacher the impression that the students are
not quite grasping the information, the teacher will be able to go over the
material until he is satisfied with the data coming back from the “Interactive
Classroom”. We feel this will force the
students to pay more attention in class.
The
“Interactive Classroom” was able to stream audio and video of the teacher’s
lecture allowing persons who are unable to get to class to participate fully
from the comfort of their own home. A
secure link to the classroom network by establishing a virtual private network
was also successfully established. This
ensures that only those who are given access to the network can connect to
it.
The
network portion of the “Interactive Classroom” is primarily based on Cisco
equipment. It is a system that can be
maintained with minimal knowledge of the products. It is set up so that it is fully redundant
and easily upgradeable. We are confident
that our “Interactive Classroom” will be in high demand because of its easy of
use, stability, and potential as a learning tool.
Our
future recommendations would mainly have to do with the web application
portion. We feel that with the time
allowed and our previous ability concerning web development that we did an
excellent job developing our web applications.
If one wanted to he or she could easily have his product added to our
“Interactive Classroom”. A good example
of this is one senior design group’s project.
It was basically a system that allowed whatever a teacher wrote on a
black board to be displayed on a computer monitor. This is just an example of an application
which could easily be ported to the “Interactive Classroom”. Our group’s major recommendation is that more
work should be put into developing useful web applications for the classroom
environment. We feel that in the long
run more web applications would make our product more attractive to schools.
References:
Hardcover - 450 pages 1 edition (November 8, 1999)
“Designing Cisco Networks” by Cisco
Systems Inc., Diane Teare
Hardcover - 803 pages 1st edition (August 15, 1999)
“CCDP: Cisco Internetwork Design Study Guide”
by Robert Padjen & Todd Lammle
Hardcover - 624 pages Bk&Cd-Rom edition (
“HSRP Background and Operations” by Cisco
Systems Tech Notes
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/619/hsrpguide1.html
“Internetwork Design Guide” by Cisco
Systems Tech Notes
http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/cisintwk/idg4/
“Campus Network Design” by Cisco
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/779/largeent/design/campus_index.html
“OSPF Design Guide” by Cisco Systems Tech
Notes
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/104/1.html
“Virtual Private Networking” by Windows
2000 Resource Kits
“Setting Up a Web Server For Deployment”
by the MSDN Library
Appendices:
A “Final
Design”
B “Financial Budget”
C “Gantt Chart”
D “Client’s
Current Infrastructure”
E “VPN
Connectivity”