Computers : School life : Students

School life
Computers

At Nunthorpe we have over 10 full computer rooms with up to 30 computers in each, most of these rooms have interactive whiteboard systems provided as well as audio so the teaching staff can deliver rich multimedia content to students and enhance the learning experience.

We currently have around 95% of the site at gigabit backbone speeds to each of the classrooms and we try and maintain a 99% uptime of the core network services such as SIMs, Lesson Monitor, email etc.

We are currently investing in virtualization to reduce total cost of ownership and decrease the need for physical servers and in turn reduce our carbon footprint; we deliver critical applications direct to the desktop via terminal servers and look to these technologies for future use at the site.

Science, English and Maths all have dedicated laptop trolleys for students to use during lesson times enabling even more creative and exciting possibilities for students at Nunthorpe, in the new Sixth form building students and staff have access to 6 laptop trolleys, they can book laptops out for use during free periods or use them for study during lesson times.

All fulltime teaching staff, at the main school, are loaned a laptop by the school for them to use during lessons and for electronic registration of students during the school day, staff are allowed to take laptops home if they require to do some work from home. Every staff and student users have access to email from inside and outside the site, access from outside can be via a web mail interface or using and email client.

The sixth form has an ICT music suite that is second to none, it utilizes the power of Apple Macs combined with state of the art outboard processing systems, combined with a computer controlled lighting and sound system in the dance pod makes for an excellent environment for any student to expand and explore ICT and music.

Students and staff have access to over 150 computers in the sixth form arranged in pods as well as a media studies room with 15 Apple Macs. Every room has an interactive whiteboard and sound system and we have 3 sets of portable hi definition video conferencing equipment, the entire site is covered by wireless networking which allows for greater flexibility and freedom for users.

All Internet activity at the main school and the sixth form is monitored and we maintain the highest possible security for both staff and students using Equiinet cache pilot and Smoothwall as our filter and proxy systems.