One morning in our office, the silence was broken by a familiar notification: a new email from Gianni. It wasn’t just another correspondence; it was a plea for help, but also a spark of hope, coming from the schools in the hilly and mountainous areas of Cortemilia and Garessio in Italy. Gianni Barberis, the technician who had followed the network’s development since 2017, described a challenging scenario to us.
The schools had an urgent need: functional and accessible classrooms for their primary and middle school students. Critically, they already possessed the hardware: they had opted for the Raspberry Pi as an educational device and had Raspberry Pi 3 and some Pi 4 installed in most classrooms, all connected to a Gigabit network. However, over time, software updates became heavier, and the existing workstations became slow. Tasks like streaming became practically impossible to use on these Raspberry devices.
Upon reading Gianni’s proposal – to use ThinLinc technology to “Thinlinc” the Raspberry Pi devices the schools already owned – a wave of emotion hit us. It was more than a technical solution; it was the promise of transforming the educational experience for children, and what was even more exciting: we could achieve this by breathing new life into the existing hardware, without generating unnecessary electronic waste.
The idea was brilliant: to maintain the existing infrastructure – the Raspberry Pis, their keyboards, mice, and monitors – and simply add a powerful server: an HP workstation with an i9 processor, 128GB of RAM, and a 1TB m2 disk, running a Linux Debian 12 edition. This approach allowed them to use the same hardware without making any changes to the network.
This was a crucial distinction from buying new. If the schools had to purchase a new computer for each workstation, the cost would have been around €500 per unit. With the ThinLinc solution, leveraging the Raspberry Pis they already had, the cost per workstation was significantly reduced. This not only represented a substantial financial saving but also ensured that the existing, perfectly functional, hardware didn’t end up as waste.
And the results? They were absolutely fantastic! The installation of the Cendio ThinLinc server revoluzioned classroom performance, drastically changing it. Where before there was slowness and frustration, now there was speed and fluidity. Streaming, which was practically impossible, now works excellently and without problems. Applications that previously struggled to run, such as Scratch (which students really like) and Tinkercad (a 3D design application that allows students to design objects for 3D printing), are now used with ease.
Math classes came alive with geometry software like GeoGebra and also Scratch, allowing teachers to use the computer lab in the best possible way. Children can work together or individually, practicing computational thinking and taking their first steps in IT. The ThinLinc connection brought remarkable advantages, allowing the simultaneous use of various platforms, such as LibreOffice and Google Classroom, to share videos and educational game applications like Learning Apps and Wordwall.
The savings are notable: beyond the initial cost difference, maintenance costs were drastically reduced. Instead of having to do maintenance on 200 individual PCs, they now do maintenance on only 10 central units, with considerably lower upgrade costs over time.
Seeing the direct impact on the schools – the joy of students working together, the satisfaction of teachers seeing their classes gain a new dimension – filled our team with immense pride. We knew we had done something truly significant. Gianni noted that the schools, which previously used computer labs much less due to slow computers and the inability to finish exercises, now use them fully, taking advantage of the decisive and excellent increase in performance. The ThinLinc solution was, without a doubt, an excellent choice by the school and is something that would definitely be recommended to other institutions.
Here you find the links to watch this story on YouTube:
Cendio ThinLinc channel
Boost Italian Schools with Raspberry Pi Thin Clients Run Heavy Apps Efficiently Using ThinLinc
Raspberry Pi channel
Affordable, efficient classroom setup uses Raspberry Pi and ThinLinc