[GRASS-user] setting-up a FOSS GIS lab

[maning sambale]

Hi,

I am a new instructor on Basic GIS in a small college in the Philippines.
We find it hard to request for a dedicated GIS lab for student to
tinker around.  In last term's basic GIS course, we used the
foss4g2006 lausanne live-CD for our exercise using the schools generic
computer lab.  The live-cd works just fine, we basically set-up the
samba server so that students can access Philippine datasets for the
exercises.

For this term, were trying out the ominiverdi live-cd.

With constant lobbying, I finally persuaded the department to explore
setting-up a dedicated GIS lab.  No assurance on when and how will
this initiative will go through, but I was asked to write a proposal
on how do we plan to implement this project.

I would like to ask this list on experiences in setting up a GIS lab
for students (both for undergrad & graduate course).  Initially, I
have the following on my mind:

hardware: 1 server, 5 thin clients
OS: Linux LTSP route (debian-based)
GIS applications:  OSGEO stack (GRASS, QGIS, Mapserver)
databse and stats: R, postgesql
other apps: standard office applications (openoffice, firefox, pdf reader)
online course management: moodle

Any ideas on how we should go about this?  One thing thats bugging me
is, can LTSP setup handle GIS computing-intensive tasks using the thin
clients.

Apart from preparing the proposal, I am also looking for sponsors or
where we can submit the proposal for possible funding.  I know ESRI
has this "altruistic" facility to schools.  But I also want the lab as
advocating for software freedom (as in speech) philosophy.  Any
org/institution we can ask for help?

Any ideas would be helpful.

cheers,

maning

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