Background of the project:
The development of information technology and networking economy in the 21st century have immeasurable impact on the education sector, bringing about significant changes to the educational method and learning methods, and furthermore, it exerts far-reaching significance towards the philosophy, model, content and method of education. To implement the “National Planning Programs on Education Management Information”, the Beijing Education Commission proactively expedited the popularization of information technology education at primary and secondary schools, realizing IT-based education in these schools; meantime, it aims to realize the numeralization for the methods of management, teaching and research during the current educational reforms. To the end, the Beijing Education Commission sponsored the campus network construction project, which was named as e-campus, in local primary and secondary schools.
The project commenced from 2001 and was completed in 2005. During the past five years, all of the primary and secondary schools established campus network at different levels with education MAN also being constructed in each district which were all ultimately integrated into Beijing education information backbone network, realizing the interoperations of three network systems of schools, district (or county) education bureaus and municipal education commission. The Red Flag Company, being a leading company in domestic software industry, has always been giving great attention and support to the education sectors of china, especially in the key projects like e-campus that is going to benefit generations of Chinese people. Apart from the designing of the project, the company also played a critical role in the construction of the whole project.
This year, the e-campus project is coming to the end with great success depending on the excellent product quality and considerate services. The Red Flag Company and its products have been well accepted by customers for guaranteeing the smooth deployment of the project. Nevertheless, the contribution, which is made by Red Flag Company for the education industry, is not limited to this project. No matter what accomplishments it has made, the Red Flag Company will continue to support the education’s development of China and make greater contributions.
Customer requirements:
The goal of e-campus project in Beijing is to build up a network environment for teaching and education management services, realizing multiple applications and security administration at the same time when sharing network resources and offering conveniences in the aspect of life and study. Therefore, the leaders engaged upon the work of education popularization wish that the following requirements should be achieved:
- High-performance data-handling capacity
Due to a large number of students and teachers to get involved in network applications and tremendous amount of multi-media information, it is required for the network to have a large-capacity and high-speed data-handling capacity in order to ensure the implements of multi-media applications and remote teaching.
- Good scalability
During the construction of the campus network, it does not need to purchase any new kernel equipments but just some access devices that will be helpful to decrease the schools’ investments.
- Security and reliability
The campus network stores many important teaching information and archive management data; therefore, any damage, loss or theft of them will cause huge losses.
- Easy operation and management
The campus network is going to serve teachers, students and office personnel at different knowledge levels, so the applications must have user-friendly interface, that is, it is easy to operate instead of being quite professional.
Solutions and implementations:
The core of e-campus is to realize the utilization and sharing for teaching resources through various methods, promote the modernization of education, as well as facilitate the leap-forward development of China’s fundamental education. The campus network consists of: cabling system, network platform, network office management system, e-teaching system, e-teaching preparation system, e-office system and anti-virus system.
As the organizers of such a complex and huge project, Beijing municipal government and the education commission adopt advanced networking devices and solutions after comprehensively considering the multi-layer requirements of the primary and secondary schools for the network applications. The Red Flag Linux OS as well as the clustering software solutions adopted by the e-campus project satisfy the application needs of primary and secondary schools at current stage. The design of this solution is quite far-sighted with obvious advantages such as modularization, ease-of-management and scalability, being able to support various comprehensive businesses, protecting investment with advanced tech, friendly environment and energy saving, facilitating management and operation with integrated system, as well as offering a top-notch, viable and suitable campus network solution for Beijing e-campus project.
As a systematic engineering facing the city’s fundamental education, the applications to be adopted must be trans-platform. The whole system will use the three-layer structure of B/S, namely, the front-end is a browser, and the middle-layer is in response to database as the backend. All the data in the system will be stored in the database while the middle layer is responsible for the communications between front-end and backend. The client end only needs to have an OS and navigator which will increase security at the client end and alleviate the workload of system administrators. Many parts of the middle layer (applications) and database servers are using Red Fag Linux server products that will guarantee the system’s stability, security and ease-of-use.
Red Flag Linux server products include diversified development tools and integrate graphic management tools that were awarded with the National 863 Prize, being suitable to be used as teaching platforms for various courses on program designs. Because of its compliance with GPL standard, the open source codes as well as the Linux itself are multi-task and multi-user operating system; it has become the best case in the course of learning “OS”. In addition, the Red Flag Linux integrates the complete networking service software and it is also the best experiment environment for “computer network” studying.
Effects evaluations:
At present, the Beijing Municipal Government and the Beijing Education Commission have collaborated with many companies to establish e-campus project in many districts such as Xicheng, Dongcheng, Fengtai, Shunyi, Fangshan, Pinggu, Yanqing, Daxing, Miyun, Huairou, Chaoyang, Xuanwu, Mentougou, Chongwen and Tongzhou. The system’s build-up in most primary and secondary schools has been completed and the trial operation showed that the network’s intelligence, security, stability and ease-of-use have all reached the expected targets, realizing the fast circulation, utilizing and sharing the teaching and management info among these schools, as well as upgrading the IT-based teaching level. Moreover, it can be helpful to establish the e-system of lessons preparation, make courseware and utilize multi-media teaching software, promoting bi-directional teaching work, creating a healthy, clean and green learning environment for primary and secondary schools in Beijing; meanwhile, it provides the teachers, students and administrators of these schools with a multi-media teaching platform, IT-based management platform and info exchange platform whose features are open and flexible.
The construction of e-campus is not just trying to build a network environment, but also include the applications under campus network. The users are very satisfied with the entire campus solution offered by the Red Flag Company and its long-term, reliable and close partners. This solution is characterized with state-of-the-art tech combined with actual applications with good stability and ease-of-operation in Linux OS; and meanwhile, it has been functioning well in office, document transmission and campus management, conforming to the network construction criteria of these schools in Beijing, as well as laying down a good foundation for the use of the network in the future.
The final interpretation right of this document belongs to the Red Flag Software Co. Ltd.