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Find more Kappan articles in the POWER TOOLS: Electronic Messaging: Growing Your Own WAN I HAVE A HARD and fast rule for myself: never install technology in a school if you can't teach someone there to run it. This might not seem like a hard rule to abide by, but it is. Novel and Windows NT servers are examples of technologies that break my rule. To train someone to run these servers requires, first, that you start with a very technically oriented individual who is probably proficient in DOS or UNIX. Second, the person needs at least two rounds of training that will probably not be available locally and will cost about $2,000 per session, including travel and lodging. Third, between training sessions, the trainee needs a server to practice on, and that means one that is not currently operating a network. Finally, if you don't keep your newly trained expert happy, he or she will run off -- such skills are highly marketable. Of course, you could rely on district-level expertise, but the folks in the central office are, by definition, not on site, and so this alternative also violates my rule. If you believe in my rule as strongly as I do, it will affect how you go about providing electronic communication (e-mail, conferencing, file transfers, and so on). What I am discussing here is people-to-people communication, not World Wide Web browsing. Admittedly some Web browsers (e.g., Netscape and Microsoft Explorer) have e-mail features. Indeed, the February cover story in Byte does a good job of explaining the pros and cons of browser-based communications, and to my mind the cons outweigh the pros. I prefer the ease of administration and guaranteed deliverability of proprietary e-mail, so that is my subject here. What I am about to explain is a solution that I am working on for a district of 15 schools. It's a sort of "grow your own" Wide Area Network (WAN) e-mail solution. In fact, it might scale up to larger districts of 50 to 100 schools, but I can't say for certain. Client/Server Technology A great deal of software that runs on a server runs only on the server. By that I mean that, if you are at a workstation using this server software, the software is actually running on the server or the server has sent you a copy so you can run it on your workstation. This is a remarkably inefficient arrangement because one of the two machines -- either the server or the workstation -- has to do all the work. There is no cooperation. It's as if the pitcher throws a baseball, and then -- like Bugs Bunny in a cartoon -- dashes to home plate to catch it! An alternative that's no better is the use of the Internet for communication. All communication on the Internet is address driven. Messages are encoded with an address and subsequently passed from server to server until, God willing, they arrive at their intended destination. To return to the baseball analogy, it is as if a player tosses the ball to another player, who then tosses it to a third player, and so on. Of course, any one of these players might drop the ball or pass it on to the wrong person. In a client/server arrangement, the server software works hand-in-hand with software on your workstation. With client/server e-mail, the server does what it does best (store and forward mail), while your workstation does what it does best (send, receive, and display the mail). Well-programmed client/server software is a joy to behold: it's fast, efficient, and nearly 100% reliable. It's like having the pitcher and catcher working together. FirstClass Over the years I've worked with a variety of e-mail software, and today I'm sold on FirstClass software from SoftArc in Markham, Ontario. FirstClass is the fourth-largest-selling electronic messaging software in the world, behind only Microsoft Mail, cc:Mail, and Groupwise. In addition, SoftArc is the only major messaging vendor to offer server and client software for both Mac and Windows operating systems. You can even mix and match clients and servers. For example, Windows users can attach to Mac servers. (Since Mac servers are easy to run, this helps me with my rule.) FirstClass is client/server e-mail software at its best, and it offers a wealth of other messaging features that I'll discuss below. Once you get FirstClass up and running on several local area networks (LANs) at individual schools, it takes only a few minutes to connect the sites. As you connect more and more sites, you begin to "grow your own" district WAN. FirstClass is available from SoftArc, Apple, and certified SoftArc consultants in the U.S. and other countries. Apple and the consultants usually discount the software more than the company itself, and they might even help to install it. The software is priced according to how many network and remote users you will have and how many extra "modules" you need. The basic kit comes with provisions for 50 users and two remote users (connected via modem) and costs $999 from Apple. If you want a Mac server to support Windows clients, add $224. Modules to add users and to support other network protocols (TCP/IP, IPX, etc.) are available for between $200 and $500. Adding users usually costs from $10 to $20 each, depending on the size of the network. FirstClass (for Macs) ships on just two diskettes -- one for the server and one for the client. Packing all the features of FirstClass into such a small package requires elegantly written code. The tightness of the code pays off in two ways: the program will run on relatively low-end Macs, and it runs blazingly fast. After about an hour's study of the installation procedures and options, the installation itself takes about 30 minutes, plus the time to enter the names of the users. After opening the FirstClass "client" and entering your password, you see the basic user screen shown in Figure 1. A mere double-click on the Mailbox brings up a list of incoming and outgoing mail messages. You can store any number of "unsent" messages -- a useful feature for letters "in progress" -- and FirstClass even puts a postmark on "sent" messages. In addition to mail, FirstClass also provides News and Conferences folders. The News folder might contain the school bulletin, the parent/teacher organization newsletter, technology updates, and so on. The Conferences folder contains discussion groups on a variety of topics. These can be moderated or open, public or private conferences, and the discussions can splinter into "threads" that pursue emerging themes and new subtopics. I often start new users out with a "Trading Post" conference that is much the same as the classified advertising section of the newspaper. Such features make FirstClass a lot more than just e-mail. The basic client desktop can be enhanced by adding folders that provide access to other FirstClass features, including Volumes (for uploading and downloading files), Mail Lists, Forms, and so on. You can even conduct surveys and hold elections in FirstClass. FirstClass also has BBS (bulletin board software) built in, including a completely automatic on-line registration of BBS users. This function might be used to allow parents and other community members to have access to the schools' electronic communications system. There's even software to track BBS use and to bill remote users for the time spent on your server (probably not a good idea for a school). After a year of using FirstClass at one school and being totally satisfied with its performance, I installed the identical software at a second school. Connecting the two schools became the next order of business. Since both schools already had a phone line and modem for the servers, so I would be able to manage them remotely, connecting the two became simply a matter of configuring a "software gateway" between the two servers -- a feature already included in FirstClass. Essentially, each server has a dial-in account on the other server. You can set the gateway so that one server calls the other when it needs to or at specified intervals. At the moment, I have them talking to one another every hour, but I think I'll change that to every 15 minutes. So far, the longest it has taken the two servers to swap mail has been about 10 seconds; thus the modems are almost always available. So I now have a sort of wide-area e-mail network. It might not be instantaneous, but it works well and took very little effort to set up. I plan to grow more of these gateways. So what happens when 10 to 15 servers start calling one another? No problem. FirstClass has a user configurable "multi-site mail" feature that lets you specify "routes" and "hops." The servers will do this for you automatically, but you can choose to design it yourself. With a little forethought, you can minimize the number of hops a message goes through to get to its destination. The servers can even automatically synchronize directories from site to site; that is, whenever two servers connect, they will automatically update one another's user lists. Even with dozens of servers and thousands of users, this directory-sharing process is so efficient that you can scarcely tell that it's taking place. (For you techie types, a lot of this FirstClass wizardry is accomplished with aliases and pointers. So be warned, and back up carefully.) In addition to these features, you can connect FirstClass to other e-mail servers or to the Internet (via an SMTP [Simple Mail Transport Protocol] gateway). Of course, only one of your FirstClass servers needs a dedicated Internet connection. The next release of FirstClass -- due in the summer of 1997 -- promises even more features, including a web browser. Lonesome Educators In my work building high-tech schools, I have been astonished at the response of K-12 faculty members to the introduction of e-mail. They don't just like e-mail, they crave it. (If anyone needs a dissertation topic, this one seems ready-made for research.) Apparently, if you take a bunch of adults, let them talk with one another for a few minutes before school, sequester them with children for six or more hours, and let them talk a little more after school, you have some lonesome educators on your hands. This phenomenon is even worse for principals, guidance counselors, data-entry folks, and media center directors. These "one of a kind" people at a school site really benefit from the e-mail gateways that are created as you "grow your own" WAN. So get busy. ROYAL VAN HORN is a professor of education at the University of North Florida, Jacksonville (e-mail: rvanhorn@unf.edu). |
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