Department of Information Technology
Documentation for accessing services from remote location:
Using Portal to access student Hand-in and Hand-out folders.
Success Stories
As a member of the Berks County Wan Consortium, and recipient of Efund, the Hamburg Area School District is able to install a 100 MB Fiber Optic Connection to County Hub location. This increased Internet access to 5 MB and is burstable up to 50 MB. The district was also able to connect to Internet 2 for Educational content and receive a Distance Learning system.
The number of classrooms increased in the Elementary buildings by converting computer labs to classrooms and implementing mobile wireless laptop carts. This helped to prevent the school from purchasing additional temporary classrooms during a new building project, thereby saving tax payer dollars.
The Point of Sale system used in our school Cafeterias helps increase the district's discounted rate for telephone and Internet communications costs by tracking free and reduced lunches more efficiently.
The High School and Middle School TV studios broadcast live morning anouncements within their buildings. In fall of 2006, the High School TV studio was integrated into curriculum.
Through a qualifying grant, the Hamburg Area School District was able to purchase the World Book Online Reference Center for every student in the district. World Book Online features accurate, authoritative, easy to read articles from the World Book Encyclopedia and several other reference materials, including a dictionary, atlas, and Spanish-language encyclopedia. Every article from the print version of the encyclopedia set is included, plus thousands of new articles updated almost daily. World Book Online is not only available for in-school use, but for home use as well. Because it's web-based, students can use the Internet to access it at any time of the day or night.
By using Red Hat Linux and Squid open source proxy for content filtering in the four Elementary buildings, the school District saves $1,500.00 in licensing costs.
By using OpenOffice software on Elementary Laptops, the district saves $7,950.00 in Microsoft Office licenses.
First in Berks
Hamburg Area School District was the first in Berks County to implement the Follett Destiny library automation system in August 2005. This new web-based automation system from the Follett Software Company allows each building to access a single database via the Internet to search and circulate books. Because it's web-based, the entire system can be accessed wherever an Internet connection exists. This means students now have the ability to search the library collection from their classroom or home and decide what books they would like to read!
Volunteering to serve as a pilot district within Berks County, Hamburg Area School District implemented an Elementary electronic report card system during 2005-2006 school year. This move helped the district save time and reduce costs. Previously report cards were filled out by hand for approximately 1200 students.
On December 4th 2006, Students speak live with Dr. Phil Silverstein via Internet 2 circuit using the school's Distance Learning system exploring the Immune system HIV and/or AIDS.
District Technology Services and systems
The Hamburg Area School District technology department currently services approixmatly 830 computers, 10 servers, 6 Mobile wireless laptop carts in four buildings. The network is built on a strong base using a Cisco Catalyst switch, and secured by a Cisco Pix Firewall. The High and Middle schools are connected via fiber to a 1000Mbs backbone. Interent access is provided by 100MB Fiber Optic county wide WAN, with 5 MB burstable up to 50 MB Internet access provided Verizon. The four Elementary Buildings use Cable modems to access the School District's network via the Internet.
District web site stats
Current NOS, desktop OS, and services:
Novell 6.5 (NOS)
Zenworks 7 ( application distribution)
GroupWise 7 (Email)
Apache web Server (Web Access)
Gwava, Email Spam Block
Microsoft Windows 2003 Server
SQL server
Windows XP
Windows 2000
Follett Destiny Library System
Food Service Solutions (POS)
Paketeer, packet seeker
BlueCoat systems provides content filtering
SUSE Enterprise Desktop, testing
iFolder available to elementary Staff and mobile users.
Ongoing and upcoming Projects
Upgrade current child accounting system to latest Pentamation product eSchool Plus
Teacher Access Center
Nursing module
Parent Access and web based gradebook
Pursuing "Classrooms for the Future" Grant
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