Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Network Assistant in the iMac lab
Today was my wife's first classroom day as computer lab teacher. She has 30 bondi iMacs, an iMac DV for the teacher, a G3 server, and a snow iBook for use at home and to carry in as needed. We are scrambling to set up some extra clamshell iBooks for classes of more than 30 students.
Apple's Network Assistant has proved to be a key utility for setting up and running the lab. The school had both version 3.5.2 and 4.0.1 but had lost the 4.0.1 CD. Luckily I found a Network Assistant 4 CD on eBay, as the older versions don't work well with Mac OS 9.1. We chose that OS so every student computer could run the same software. Then we set up one iMac the way we wanted, and used the Copy Hard Disk function of Network Assistant to duplicate it eventually to all 30+ Macs. As updates and changes are needed, many of them can be sent as file and folder copies through Network Assistant.
While teaching in the lab, other functions of Network Assistant come into play. She can lock the screens, start and quit applications, and change color depth on all the Macs at the same time. Some things you want to do are not available in Network Assistant, but if you can do it in an AppleScript, you can copy the Applet to all the Macs and Network Assistant can run the Applet. So I found ready-made ones to change screen resolution, and made my own for Run Launcher, Close Finder Windows, and Put Away Shares.
Apple's Network Assistant has proved to be a key utility for setting up and running the lab. The school had both version 3.5.2 and 4.0.1 but had lost the 4.0.1 CD. Luckily I found a Network Assistant 4 CD on eBay, as the older versions don't work well with Mac OS 9.1. We chose that OS so every student computer could run the same software. Then we set up one iMac the way we wanted, and used the Copy Hard Disk function of Network Assistant to duplicate it eventually to all 30+ Macs. As updates and changes are needed, many of them can be sent as file and folder copies through Network Assistant.
While teaching in the lab, other functions of Network Assistant come into play. She can lock the screens, start and quit applications, and change color depth on all the Macs at the same time. Some things you want to do are not available in Network Assistant, but if you can do it in an AppleScript, you can copy the Applet to all the Macs and Network Assistant can run the Applet. So I found ready-made ones to change screen resolution, and made my own for Run Launcher, Close Finder Windows, and Put Away Shares.
