Allway Sync: Free File Synchronization

Ever heard of this product? Allway Sync touts free file and folder synchronization for Windows. A district today was nice enough to show me this product and what seemed to be a very clean, easy-to-use interface. Need to back up that Exchange database, a PST or the 'My Documents' folder of that user that will find a way to accidentally delete it? This may do the trick. It states that it is free "for moderate personal use only". Of course, the 'pro' license is all of $19.95 for a device.

I believe you can also copy from a single source to multiple destinations (at least that's what the screen shot seems to indicate).
I've seen what several districts are trying to do with low-cost backup solutions and this might be a viable option for those who don't want to hold their breath and rely on a manual copy/paste or scripting a copy operation and wondering if it was successful.

Hyena - product mention

I have a school district using Hyena for systems management. It's a little different than some other tools I've seen. In this case, the district uses the Hyena interface in place of AD Users and Computers and performs all tasks from that interface. Additionally, the tool gives them an easy way to stop/start services and remote into machines. It apparently uses VNC and installs/uninstalls that product as the administrator enters/exits the remote machine.

Also of note is the fact that this product is licensed based on the number of administrators using the product (rather than the number of machines to be managed). In our environments, we certainly have a large computer/admin ratio and licensing models like this can be of some benefit. They noted that they paid a few hundred dollars for a license for 3 (I think) admins.

At any rate, I thought it worth a mention in case any of you are looking for a new administrative tool.

Cooling the data center

This is a challenge for all school districts, particularly since many have upgraded their internal WAN links and are consolidating servers and services into a single data center. I see both ends of the spectrum in my visits with districts. Some are doing the best they can with residential wall units, fans and cutting vents into data center doors. Others have upgraded their facilities and have nice room-based units specifically designed for computer data centers. Those in a pinch may consider decent-sized portable units that can be picked up at most local supply stores, such as these examples.

If you get serious about this, it's not a bad idea to engage a partner who can inspect your data center. A knowledgeable partner will check wattages and heat output on all equipment to be cooled, will check existing cooling equipment and ventilation and may also have some good suggestions on proper layout for racks and cabinets. It's surprising how the proper ventilation and orientation of a rack can make a difference in the overall cooling needs.

Two big players in this market are Liebert and APC. Traditioally, I always thought of Liebert as a cooling company and APC as a power/UPS company. Each company works in both markets, meaning that you can get Liebert UPS devices and APC cooling systems.

One district I work with has installed a few units by a company called Daikin and they are quite pleased with the results. Their data center stays at about 60 degrees and they have 3 or 4 racks full of servers and storage. They started with a center unit that I believe is an FXHQ model. They eventually had to supplement with two of the FTXS24 units. These are attached to pumps to remove water that accumulates during condensation and proper drainage installation is definitely a consideration. Ask one of my districts that dumps their water buckets daily. :)

I would caution against a wall unit built for a home. Remember that the heat being generated by servers and these types of electronics is a very dry heat, which is quite different from the type of cooling required in residential zones, where humidity is a good bit higher.

I've talked to enough districts over the years to say with some certainty that excessive heat, over time, will cause hardware to fail more rapidly.

Broadband funding and ARRA

After several mentions by school districts and by our leadership on today's webcast, I've decided to take a few minutes to sift through the details of a $7.2B program that is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

The biggest question I get from school districts is "can I apply" or "how can this money help me". Maybe we'll get to the bottom of this as I hit some highlights:

Of the $7.2B, $2.5B is related to RUS and BIP and $4.7B is related to NTIA and BTOP. Now, let's dissect the alphabet soup - RUS is the Rural Utilities Service, BIP is the Broadband Initiatives Program, NTIA is the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and BTOP is the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program. Clear as mud? Well, it's a bit easier to think of these acronyms in pairs. RUS and BIP go together, as do NTIA and BTOP.

The document with all of the details is the formal notice of funds availability. Any info below will come from this document...

RUS and BIP - To quote from this document directly

The Recovery Act appropriates $2.5 billion of budget authority for RUS to extend loans, loan/ grant combinations, and grants to projects where at least 75 percent of an RUS-funded area is in a rural area that lacks sufficient access to high speed broadband service to facilitate rural economic development. RUS has developed BIP to fund broadband infrastructure in qualifying areas.

This might explain why our state webcast today discussed working with qualifying entities. These funds are targeted at entities to build out the infrastructure. Obviously, school districts could take advantage of this. It's probably in more of an indirect fashion than some have visualized.

NTIA and BTOP - Again, quoting the funds availability document

The Recovery Act also appropriates $4.7 billion to NTIA to provide grants for broadband initiatives throughout the United States, including unserved and underserved areas.12 NTIA is tasked to spur job creation, stimulate long-term economic growth and opportunity, and narrow gaps in broadband deployment and adoption. The NTIA program is titled BTOP. Consistent with its appropriation, BTOP is divided into three categories of projects: Broadband Infrastructure, Public Computer Centers, and Sustainable Broadband Adoption.

This seems a bit more interesting, but we need to know more about the categories of BTOP and any other qualifiers. One of BTOP's stated objectives is of particular interest to school districts:

To provide broadband access, education, awareness, training, equipment, and support to community anchor institutions (e.g., schools, libraries, medical facilities), or organizations and agencies serving vulnerable populations (e.g., low-income, unemployed, aged), or job-creating strategic facilities located in state- or federally designated economic development areas

This is where, again, school districts are encouraged to work with providers to make them aware of their need of being connected. Without making this blog entry much longer, other facts in the funds document about BTOP are (1) all applicants must propose to offer broadband service, (2) awardees under BTOP must provide matching funds of at least 20 percent of the total project cost and (3) grant recipients are expected to present projects that will sustain long-term growth and viability.

Suffice to say that these applications appear to be geared toward service providers, though our school districts need to be aware of the opportunity that this may present by touching base with local providers to discuss your needs, etc.

Title IID, EETT, ARRA, etc.

I'm sure I've posted about this in the past, but I thought I'd take a fresh look at what's being stated regarding EETT (Title II Part D) funding for Kentucky, particularly as it relates to ARRA (or 'stimulus') funding. I have no inside knowledge of any relevance and I'm simply going to use Kentucky's state table posted on the USDOE web site (KY is page 43) for my analysis:

First, note that the FY2008 actual figure is $3,886,884. There's a certain small amount held back at the state level for administrative purposes, but let's assume that this is the grand total. This is the amount that Kentucky divides into a 50% formula-based distribution, with the other 50% being distributed via competitive grant application.

When looking at the "Recovery Act Estimate" column, I see a value of $9,899,923. That's a 254.7% increase of the actual FY2008 amounts and this is exactly why I tell school district to expect a one-time Title IID amount of roughly 2.5 times their FY2008 allocation. Again, I'll stress that I have no official information that states this - it simply makes sense based on the federal estimates. It's fair to assume that there will be roughly half of that larger amount distributed via competitive grant. With 250% of the funds available, we would certainly hope that more districts would be awarded and the awarded amounts would be larger than before.

Looking ahead to the "FY2009 Estimate", I see $4,029,567. This is similar to the FY2008 actual amount. Accordingly, my advice to districts is to expect a 'traditional' FY2009 amount similar to the FY2008 figure in addition to the one-time ARRA fund injection. For the short term, this is a wonderful development!

Lastly, pay attention to the "FY2010 Estimate". The figure is $1,501,732! I hadn't noticed this before and this is strictly an estimate at this time, but I think it's important to point out that current documentation suggests a significant drop-off in Title II Part D funding after the coming stimulus funding and FY2009 allocation. A 62.7% decrease from FY2009 to FY2010 is worth pointing out as you consider long-term plans for Title II Part D funding (or lack thereof).

Flip-ping out

Any reader who knows John would not be surprised if I said he "flipped out" at a regional CIO meeting. :) On a few occasions recently, he's mentioned the Flip video recorders, their popularity with teachers and why CIOs should be aware and prepared for their entry into the educational environment. FLIPping out about it, if you will...

From a user's perspective, what's not to like? These recorders are very portable, relatively affordable and can easily capture some very good video. It doesn't take long to imagine educational uses for evaluation of instruction, introduction of video clips to teach a concept or engage discussion, student use as part of an assignment, etc. When finished, you 'flip' the USB connector out and attach to your computer, where automated uploads to sites like YouTube can occur.

There are other brands and products out there, but I'll focus on the Flip brand for now. The Flip product line as of today consists of the Ultra and the Mino, both of which come in a 'standard' and 'HD' version. They retail anywhere from $150 to $230, but you can probably find a better deal and the prices seem to drop regularly as new versions and features are introduced. The Ultra model holds about two hours of video and the Mino holds one hour.

What's the problem, then? From a CIOs perspective, it's the data storage requirements. I feel like the typical user sees all files as equal in terms of size. It's only one spreadsheet or one picture or one slideshow or, in this case, one video. How large is a one-page document, simply text with no special add-ons? Maybe 2 or 3KB. Save hundreds of them and your network staff probably won't say a word. The pictures of the grandchildren and the hundreds of MP3 files cause some heartburn. A single picture can be about 1MB in size, and that number may be (or become) dated with the increasingly detailed digital cameras. Maybe a standard song is 3-4MB in size. Hundreds of these can cause grief from a storage perspective.

Now, mix in the constant audio with 30 frames-per-second (or pictures per second, if you want to think of it that way) and you see why John and others might be very concerned. Check the specs on the Flip family for further evidence. The standard Flip Mino advertises 60 minutes of video on its 2GB of internal memory. The Flip Ultra has twice the capacity and twice the video storage. Let's assume, then, that we can get about 30 minutes of 'standard' video on 1GB (roughly 1,000MB or 1,000,000KB) of storage. High-definition video cuts this in half, with the MinoHD holding 60 minutes on 4GB of storage and the UltraHD holding 120 minutes on 8GB of storage. That's 15 minutes of HD video weighing in at 1 gigabyte! Just for a frame of reference, a CD-ROM typically holds 650-700MB and a DVD is somewhere around 4.7GB.

I could go on about the battery life of the Flip series, etc but it's all in the spec page linked above and I was really focused on the disk storage aspect of all of this. None of this is meant to disparage the Flip or discourage its use - this is strictly meant to point out why CIOs and network admins will have to really do some planning if users intend to store large amounts of video on the local network.

TransACT

I don't normally post anything about a fee-based service, but TransACT was brought up at our regional CIO meeting. They provide standard forms that have been reviewed from a legal perspective. As it turns out, the Kentucky Department of Education has some level of statewide subscription to TransACT services. There's even a case study!

In our meeting, Linda had mentioned that she searched TransACT to find some language related to procedures for Acceptable Use Policy updates. I thought I'd give this a shot until I realized that I needed an account to access the TransACT resources. As it turns out, this isn't a problem. If I choose 'subscribe' and then choose the option to register for access to my personal account, I'm prompted for state, county and district and am allowed to create my own account.

Once the account is created, there are a few databases to search that contain forms. I chose to search for 'acceptable use' in the GenEd database and found the KDE "Electronic Information Systems" Acceptable Use Procedures and Guidelines. I'll link it here, but this link should be invalid until a login is established.

At any rate, I thought I'd make mention of the service in case others were also unaware of KDE's agreement with TransACT.

More on copyrighting

I'll elaborate a bit on Bryan's KySTE presentation I previously mentioned. The session made me think about critical copyright concepts such as 'public performance' and 'derivative work'. Granted, the copyright law linked is a fine cure for insomnia, but not exactly light reading. In general, these two concepts are worth considering when working on a project. Does the project lead to a "public performance" or does the creation result in a "derivative work"?

If I create a video and use copyrighted music in the background (without permission, which is often the case), my video is a derivative work. If I load that video to Youtube or to the district website, wouldn't that also be classified as a public performance of that work? These are the types of issues that were discussed in Bryan's session.

Bryan mentioned freeplaymusic.com, which is known to have a 'student use' agreement. Upon inspection of their terms of use agreement, notice this:

The assignment must be part of student curriculum, must only be viewed or heard within the classroom, campus, on a school’s closed circuit television and/or public announcement system and shall be free from any charge or admission fee. Free Student Educational Use excludes the use by any school in extra-curricular activities including, without limitation, the use in clubs and the use of any kind in performance, non-broadcast multimedia, DVD duplication, distribution and/or broadcast on a public or educational access TV, cable or radio channel, web, blog, and podcast.

Soundzabound was mentioned as well. They proclaim 'royalty-free music for education', which is true if you purchase the music and follow their licensing terms.

This led to a discussion of Creative Commons, along with a great overview of the various types of Creative Commons licenses. He also mentioned several good alternative sources of Creative Commons music, including ccMixter, Jamendo and Jamglue.

Lots of info and links here. Thanks, Bryan Sweasy, for putting it together for an informative KySTE session.