The Challenge
Due to a soaring number of pupils, in 2008 a Hampshire junior school contacted Soft Egg with the problem that they needed the space currently taken up by the ICT suite for a further classroom and reluctantly realised they had to come up with another solution. The heavily used ICT suite had proved massively popular with staff and pupils and the Head was concerned that they would be moving backwards with ICT rather than expanding its usage in learning. It was agreed that reverting back to 2 Pc’s in each classroom would be detrimental to the pupils development across the whole curriculum, so they needed a modern, alternative solution.

The Solution
The perfect solution was immediately apparent to us. Using our experience of providing ICT solutions to schools without the space for a dedicated ICT area, we provided a mobile laptop trolley with a bank of high spec machines that can easily be moved within the school for use in individual classrooms. The trolleys are a safe storage unit for the laptops to charge and can be placed on a secure docking station against the wall to prevent theft.

The school was an old Victorian building, creating a wireless network throughout was cost prohibiting. Therefore our team used the existing network infrastructure so Wireless Access Points on the trolley would provide wireless access for the laptops. Our engineers then created an image with the schools software to deploy across the network on to the laptops. All the familiar software and data remained the same to the teachers and pupils.

The Results
The staff are delighted and relieved that the absence of an ICT suite has had no impact on ICT in their lessons, and the pupils enjoy making use of the laptops in their own classroom environment. The fact that the trolleys are easily mobile means the teachers can transport the machines around classrooms as and when they need them, and the combination of network points and wireless allows full, uninterrupted access to the network.

Since this initial project, our engineers have become familiar faces at the school in a support capacity and are continually involved in expanding the use of ICT across the school and planning future development