National Education Technology Plan - A Quick Look at Changing Infrastructure

I'll dust off the blog for a moment to reflect on one section of the National Education Technology Plan (linking the Executive Summary). It's an interesting document and worth more time than I'm giving it. This morning, I'm reflecting on the recommendations in the 'infrastructure' section and comparing it to past standards we've had in Kentucky over the years. The goal in the infrastructure section of the NETP is stated simply enough:

All students and educators will have access to a comprehensive infrastructure for learning when and where they need it.

One shift we can see over the years is the emphasis on access anywhere and anytime. Our devices are smaller in size and more powerful than those of a few short years ago. Remember when we had processor wars and a race to a higher and higher gigahertz rating? What processor is in your iPhone or Droid? Do you know? Do you care? Our older state technology plans called for standards on student-to-computer ratios, number of data drops and phones in the classrooms. Since that original plan - a visionary document back in 1992, by the way - we've seen wireless access grow, devices change immensely and we're surrounded by projectors, IWBs, document cameras and other teaching tools.

For the sake of time, let's skip to the recommended actions. First:

Ensure students and educators have broadband access to the Internet and adequate wireless connectivity both in and out of school.

Broadband and wireless are the words I'll key on. With "broadband", what does that mean? How fast must it be? The plan goes on to use the word 'adequate' and stresses the need for that speed in the community and at home. What the CIO can fix is the school, so let's focus there. It sounds simple, but one call to action should be that your technical staff should try to do some basic research from a few random workstations and make sure that the performance is adequate. If it isn't, that's a problem. With the word "wireless", my thinking has come around over the past few years. Originally, I would have said to hold off on wireless implementation and invest when you foresee wireless devices that would actually take advantage of the wireless infrastructure. At this point, it seems that virtually all of the growth and development surrounds wireless connectivity. If your school district doesn't have adequate wireless connectivity within its schools, now is the time to act. With the changes that need to take place in education, the mobility of the learner is key and our schools need the wireless infrastructure to support that mobility.

Ensure that every student and educator has at least one Internet access device and appropriate software and resources for research, communication, multimedia content creation, and collaboration for use in and out of school

This one is certain to generate discussion. Years ago, the talk was to get to a 6:1 student-to-computer ratio. In most area schools, we're probably in the neighborhood of 2.5:1. Statewide, we've seen a bit of movement as it pertains to 1:1 initiatives but, even in those districts, it's usually limited to high school students. I've heard nobody speak of a device for EVERY student and I think we can agree that the reasons tend to center around lack of funding, inability to support the environment and, at this point, a teaching environment that isn't ready to take advantage of a device in every K-12 student's hand. In fact, if you'll permit one more copy/paste, I like the follow-up statements to this goal, as they reference several concerns that we rightly recognize and need to address:

Only with 24/7 access to the Internet via devices and technology-based software and resources can we achieve the kind of engagement, student-centered learning, and assessments that can improve learning in the ways this plan proposes. The form of these devices, software, and resources may or may not be standardized and will evolve over time. In addition, these devices may be owned by the student or family, owned by the school, or some combination of the two. The use of devices owned by students will require advances in network filtering and improved support systems.

This paragraph hits several key points. Why a device for all? Engagement, student-centered learning, and online assessments. What type of device? It may not be standard. Who pays? It could be a mix of district-owned and personally-owned. Of course, no standardization of the device and the mention of 24/7 access causes concerns about filtering and network security, and those are mentioned as well.

Maybe I'll come back and address the others, as I'm short on time at the moment.

Change: Inevitable (and fast, it seems!)

I guess anyone can be a prophet if they predict the obvious and wait for it to happen. In a previous post, I had discussed the increasing pressure to implement personal devices in the K-12 environment. Of course, I was only writing based on what I was seeing and reading elsewhere. Fast forward a few months and it seems that the pressure is increasing... and quickly.

I've talked to at least three school districts in the past week that are all getting pressure to implement some type of new device into the environment. For districts that think it's only happening to them or that it's only in our area or state, this isn't true. It's across the country and across various enterprises. Take a look at this Gartner blog post. I'm not as concerned about the market share of a particular company, but note the initial comments about consumerization affecting the enterprise and the "...increasing number of Macs being brought into the enterprise." These are the conversations I've been having, so I suppose I simply wanted to get a few thoughts down to state to the K-12 CIO that "you're not alone."

It feels that way for some, though. Administrators see these new devices (the iPad being the most common example) and demand that their IT staff get these in the classroom. I've seen some of the applications that are out there and I can certainly see the educational benefit. For the things they can do, devices like this have been built for ease of use, fast response and crisp audio/video output. Their cry is "why not?"

The local IT staff has been conditioned to look out for the district. They know that they are most likely the ones that will field the calls when things don't work as well as first imagined. Do you want to print? Does this need to hook to a projector? Do you want to use Flash-based applications? Do you want these apps to go to the web through our required proxy solution? Who's handling the iTunes synchronization? Are these being signed out and in? How are we keeping these charged? If we're in an Active Directory environment, are these devices supposed to communicate with local servers?

You get the idea. By the way, some of these hurdles can be overcome. Right now, though, this seems to be the latest example of one segment of administration pushing for implementation while the IT staff begs for time and resources to better understand and account for the business requirements. As an IT leader, you're right to ask these questions. However, be aware that there are times where the situation dictates that you implement or be viewed as a roadblock to progress.

A quick search will reveals countless articles about consumer devices entering the enterprise and the need for our security models to change. This is one blog entry discussing this trend and it's easy to find others. Without dragging out the crystal ball again, I'll simply state that we're probably all facing major change in the way we've thought about our networks and securing them. For now, take some solace - limited though it may be - in the fact that it isn't "just you". It's all of us. As that blog entry indicates, it could be more about the data than the device moving forward.

The thought of data driving it all made me think of the Web 2.0 video "The Machine is Us/ing Us".

Mission US and educational gaming in general

At a recent regional meeting of integration specialists, we went through a brief tutorial of the Mission US 'game' funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The goal of Mission US is to take several historical events and create an interactive multimedia experience. Students would go through the simulations and experience the event. Lesson plans would be developed around the events to allow students to reflect and, with any luck, learn about the experience in a different way and think through his/her decisions on a higher level. The first of these games, "For Crown or Colony", is available for use right now and is based in 1770 Boston. I've gone through the simulation and I can see where it would be engaging if used in the right way.

One point to note, though, which leads to a broader thought about educational gaming in general. Even during the tutorial, the instructor noted that the pace of this game might be slower than the students would like to take. She mentioned that the temptation would be for the students to fly through the game and proper planning would be needed to be certain that the students grasped the appropriate concepts.

Is that the right approach? I'll let that question sit for a moment. Here's why ask it. I enjoyed the blog post and following comments on Scott McLeod's 'Dangerously Irrelevant' blog regarding educational games. He compared, for example, graphics on a PBS game to that of something like Madden NFL and asked rhetorically which one kids would gravitate toward. It led to a larger discussion of whether it was fair to measure graphics of 'educational' games with these big-budget entertainment games. Like it or not, those games are our competition for the eyeballs of the children. It isn't too far outside the realm to imagine that any educational gaming experience needs to be entertaining enough to be somewhat competitive with whatever else may be out there.

Back to the 'right' approach for Mission US. I don't pretend to say that playing the game straight through without pausing for reflection is the best method to learn. However, I will say that my own attempt to speed through the game left me wanting to speed through it again and purposely answer questions and confront scenarios in a different manner... just to see how my changes would impact the end result. I would contend that I'd learn something, though it may not be via the traditional learning method.

With entertainment games today, you learn by failing. Using the Madden example, I'll assume that a new player would get crushed by the computerized opponent if playing against them on the highest difficulty level. Some kids choose to start at the hardest level and get beaten repeatedly until they are competitive at that level. Others might choose the easiest level and smash the novice opponent until eventually increasing the difficult due to boredom. Some choose their favorite team, while others would try to win with the worst team or choose to play as the best team against the weakest possible opposition. In every case, you're learning something about the game (and, for that matter, those choices might tell you something about the player as well).

I think we'll see the day where self-directed learning will lead itself toward an educational environment where failure isn't seen as a bad test grade but, rather, as a necessary step to a completed objective. It happens all the time in the gaming world. Heck, when I was cramming for an industry certification, I can recall force-feeding myself sample questions from books and CD's. I missed a TON of prep questions and, along the way, memorized answers to many others in order to get certified. Somewhere in the midst of that, I learned a few things about the concepts that the questions were covering. It may not have been the intended or traditional learning style, but some type of education took place.

What are your thoughts on educational games? Do they have a role in today's classroom and will they (or should they) have a role in tomorrow's classroom?

The future of the blogging platform...

While following offshoot links from linked articles (!), I ran across a couple of interesting articles from over a year ago. One is a NY Times article cleverly titled "Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest" and the other, referencing that article, is a Guardian blog entry about the future of blogging. There is some relevant insight in those articles as well as some of the comments that follow those articles.

One comment compares the state of blogging to the Gartner 'hype cycle'. I would agree with the comment that, for various reasons, blogging as a concept may have fallen into the Trough of Disillusionment. With this blog, I certainly never sought book deals or notoriety that some bloggers seem to have been seeking. This is one premise you'll find stated in the linked articles. I do agree, though, that blogging is time-consuming if done well. In some circles, it has likely been replaced with easier and more immediate tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

To me, that comparison is somewhat of an apple-to-orange comparison. When using Twitter, it's difficult to expound on anything too meaningful in 140 characters or less. Granted, when time is of the essence and you simply want to share an article you read, a tweet makes sense (unlike a forwarded email with an entire article attached, which I get my share of). For the Facebook crowd, I'm not sure how the blog comparison works, but I will say that a Facebook status update I make will likely have more readers than this blog post may have. It's apples v. oranges, though, because the purposes are different.

Blogging, to me, is a chance to share thoughts on a given topic. My topic of choice, in this case, happens to be my job. For many, the topic of choice is a hobby of theirs. Your readers - should they happen to exist - are naturally going to be those who share a common interest. Blogs specific to an interest should naturally lead to a group of people using that mechanism to share insight on that interest. It would be difficult to share many details in 140-character bites via tweets and responses. Facebook is more general in nature and, while you could certainly create a Facebook group for a particular interest, it doesn't have the same look and feel as a blog post.

I use Twitter and Facebook on occasion and it's obvious that I haven't been blogging as much lately. However, I think my reasons are due to work and personal obligations eating into my time rather than the blog being replaced by some other medium. Also, as previously stated, it requires some time and effort. I'll turn right around and tweet a link to this and it will certainly take much less time than this post took. If you have to choose between a retweet, a comment on this post or a blog entry of your own, which would you choose and why?

To complete the hype cycle thought, I feel like the blog will remain in some form and that the 'Plateau of Productivity' will be seen as common interests are found and expounded upon by writers who choose to take the time to write about what is important to them.

Pew Report on Cell Phones and American Adults

While browsing around, I ran across one of the many interesting reports from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. This one is entitled "Cell Phones and American Adults" and, as is typically the case, there is quite a bit of interesting data that I can't analyze quickly enough (and isn't THAT what the Internet has become?) Just some random stats of interest from the report:

* 82% of American adults own a cell phone
* Adults who text send/receive about 10/day on average. Teens who text average 50/day
* African-Americans and English-speaking Hispanics are slightly more likely to own a phone than whites and they are also more frequent and intense users of the phone
* About 2/3 (65%) sleep with the phone nearby. It's over 90% for the 18-29 demographic
* (Only) 58% make voice calls on a cell phone for work-related purposes
* 86% think it's rude when someone regularly interrupts a conversation or meeting to check on their cell phone
* 31% of teens send more than 100 texts/day
* 39% of adults use the cell phone to entertain themselves when bored. 69% of teens do
* About 79% reported having a desktop or laptop computer - that's the same or slightly less than the percentage having a cell phone

I guess this is where I should add some level of in-depth analysis of this data. That's tough, because I can only really speak from my own perspective and it differs in a few areas. I can't imagine NOT using my cell phone for work-related purposes. I suppose the number could be artificially low due to the ages or work status of those surveyed. It's also hard for me to imagine that there are as many or more cell phone owners than computer owners, but that simply goes to show how quickly that market has grown and how necessary the cell phone is thought to be.

I confess that I'm quite surprised that a higher percentage of minorities own and use a cell phone (as compared to the white population). I see this as a potential wake-up call to those of us in education. Admittedly, I haven't traditionally been a big fan of cell phone use as part of the educational process. However, if this technology is helping to close the 'digital divide', how can we NOT embrace the use of this technology to help close achievement gaps?! There are some very interesting trends in minority use of technology brought up in this article that mirror these thoughts.

When I see the number of texts that our teens send, I'm reminder of something that David Couch brings up on occasion. I've heard him compare the depth of text conversations to the phenomenon of CB radios when they were first introduced. Many people wanted to talk on the CB but, if you read a transcript of the conversations taking place, most were fairly useless in nature. The cell phone data reveals that many text simply to say hello or chat - particularly with teens - so I can only assume that the nature of a printout of the texting conversations between many teens wouldn't necessarily be groundbreaking thought.

The data shows that most of us have a cell phone. Is there a way to use this device educationally? Should it change the way we teach? If virtually every teacher has a cell phone, is THAT how he/she should communicate with parents (rather than a phone in the school or classroom?)

"The Cloud" and 21st Century Learning

I probably have too many thoughts going on at once to make a sensible blog entry, but I've got to get with the program and keep the cobwebs dusted off of this site. An article was brought to my attention by a teammate. The article concerned student learning and cloud computing and the potential that's out there. Some of that article talks about advantages of students in a university setting creating their own 'cloud' of learning tools rather than relying on school-provided resources. It made me think of the possibilities we have in the K-12 space and, honestly, I took a detour and began to think more broadly about "21st Century Skills" and spent some time looking at the framework established by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

As I look through the details of those framework definitions, I see mention of core content subject knowledge accompanied by a huge number of necessary 'other' skills lumped into "Learning and Innovation", "Life and Career" and "Information, Media and Technology". These are the desired student outcomes and I'll rattle off several of these:

Think Creatively and Work Creatively with Others
Implement Innovations
Reason Effectively
Use Systems Thinking
Make Judgments and Decisions
Solve Problems
Communicate Clearly
Collaborate with Others
Access, Evaluate, Use and Manage Information
Analyze Media and Create Media Products
Apply Technology Effectively
Adapt to Change
Manage Goals and Time
Work Independently and Be Self-Directed Learners
Interact Effectively with Others
Manage Projects
Guide and Lead Others

I tired out and skipped a few here and there, but you get the idea. The design mentions several necessary support systems such as properly integrated standards and assessments, PD, learning environment and curriculum and instruction. Keep in mind that we're just now adopting common core standards for English and math. If we've struggled for years to adopt common standards in a few of the core subjects, how will we ever be able to properly assess how well a student applies technology effectively or reasons effectively. These skills are necessary but are also very subjective and, I think, would be difficult at best to properly assess.

Touching on the cloud-based computing article, I believe there are many readily available tools to help with some of the 21st century tasks noted above. I manage goals and time with a calendar application within my email client which, with any luck, I use to communicate clearly and collaborate with others. I can also collaborate with others using web-based productivity software from any number of providers. I can at least try to guide and lead others with blog posts such as this. And so on...

I could develop a lengthy list of conundrums we find ourselves in, only one of which being "how can teachers allow students to be self-directed learners when they are so hard-pressed to cover a list of content standards within the specified number of days/hours of instruction?" Technology alone isn't the answer, but it is a tool that can help get us there if properly leveraged. Some students are honing their 21st century skills on their own, using modern tools such as smartphones and any number of collaborative web resources. Some are undoubtedly using it for the wrong purposes, but I look forward to the day when we collectively allow more of this collaboration to take place as part of the classroom experience. With any luck, the benefits gained will far outweigh the issues that might arise.

Freeware feature: OldCMP

I recently ran across a freeware tool called OldCMP that's been around for quite some time. OldCMP is a command-line tool that helps you find old user or computer accounts in your Active Directory environment.

To those outside of technology, it doesn't make sense that you could "lose" user or computer objects. However, if you regularly use scripts and imaging software to create, replace update or delete massive numbers of users and computers, then the concept of "lost" objects makes a great deal of sense. In addition, in Kentucky's environment, we leverage ePolicy Orchestrator to keep antivirus software updated and, as you might imagine, it's difficult to gather useful reports on antivirus coverage if your machine counts aren't accurate.

** A quick 'cover yourself' type of note that this is a freeware tool and it is what it is, you get what you pay for, etc. Also, it's a command-line tool that is interfacing with Active Directory, so note that you can really do some damage to your directory if you don't use this tool properly. **

With that out of the way, let's cover a few details. You can download the tool at the link provided above. You can review many of the command-line switches available here. Switches that you'd use in our particular environment would likely be:

-b basedn (to specify the directory location to begin - in our case, you'd use several "DC=" settings to establish a district domain in our forest)

-age x (to specify the minimum age for a password change - we might use 90 days or even longer to increase the likelihood that results are machines/user that are really not being used)

-llts (This allows us to use LastLogonTimeStamp for some of the age stats. Some trust this more than the password change statistic in AD and, between the two, you will likely be able to verify that machines/users are really as dated as they appear)

- format dhtml (For IE, this would allow the report to generate in dynamic HTML format, which would allow you to sort the resorts by clicking on column headings, etc. This is very useful.)

-report (simply to write a report of the objects found)

So, if I run OldCMP from a command prompt with this format:

oldcmp.exe -b DC=adams,DC=kentucky,DC=org -age 90 -llts -format dhtml -report

If I were in the adams.kentucky.org AD domain, I should generate a dynamic HTML file that shows the computers in my domain that have a LastLogonTimeStamp setting of older than 90 days. It could be that some machines haven't logged on in years and you could find that by sorting on the proper column.

Perhaps some of you have used this tool in the past or, for others, perhaps you can use this to some benefit. In our environment, this could be a very useful tool for districts to clean up their AD domain and more easily identify machines that need to be removed.

Energy Savings and Magic Packets

Kentucky schools have embarked on an energy management program. This was required by law and every district is participating at some level. This energy saving initiative deals with all aspects of the school, from lighting to HVAC, food service, transportation, etc.

Technology can and should be involved at some level. As a successful CIO, it's always good to demonstrate leadership by participating and cooperating with high-level district initiatives such as these. Along those lines, I thought I'd take a moment to mention the capability of remotely shutting down and starting computers. This may seem minor but, to a lab manager that touches 30 machines in a lab to power off or power on a lab, this will save time and buy you some goodwill. These remote capabilities also could open the door to scheduled shutdowns and power-ons, which definitely falls in line with the energy management initiatives.

Shutting down computers is easy enough and can be done via command line. As most of you well know, if it can be done via command line, then it can be done via script or GUI-based tool. There are countless tools that allow for remote shutdown and I won't bother to feature one here. The point is simply that it can be done and, if you're not doing it now, you should consider implementing this and doing so as part of an energy-saving initiative.

Most are also aware that computers can be powered on remotely as well. The technology involved concerns Wake-on-LAN and the use of a "magic packet". Wake-on-LAN is available on every machine that's even relatively current. To enable this capability, a BIOS setting may need to be changed.

In addition to getting the machine ready, your switches would need to support the use of the "magic packet". As an aside, the magic packet is a special broadcast that is sent to the LAN or specific machines via the network. You'll want to test this to ensure that your switches and your particular network configuration supports proper transfer of this packet, but that packet is what triggers the machine to power on (and, not coincidentally, this is one reason that a slight amount of power still passes through a networked computer that is powered off).

Assuming your switches and computers are capable of supporting Wake-on-LAN and magic packet transfer, you should be ready to implement remote power-on. As with remote shutdown, there are many tools available to send those packets and automate the process. This post wasn't meant to highlight those tools and a few simple searches will lead you to multiple options. However, I thought it was worth a few minutes to highlight the concept of remote power-on and shutdown and ask you to consider implementing it as part of an overall energy management solution for your district.

The Crystal Ball

As I look ahead to the next school year for our districts, I thought I'd take a moment to mention a few trends that we'll all likely face in the next year or two. We're already seeing some of these topics coming up in some districts, but I feel like these trends will continue and accelerate:

* $$$ and doing more with less (or withOUT) - I mentioned Title IID concerns a year ago and they have come to pass, so there will be less federal money for education technology. Kentucky's budget for 7/1/10 through 6/30/12 called for technology funding cuts and that will have a large impact from the state perspective. And then - THEN - it seems that our state may have a $200-$300M shortfall (after these passed budget cuts, mind you) if we don't receive a federal Medicaid funding match. That could mean that we face further budget cuts during this budget cycle. I don't enjoy hearing about and talking about budget cuts any more than you do, but I emphasize these to point out that the cuts are real and we're going to feel them. I have school districts that are cutting staff and hard decisions will also have to be made regarding replacement of aging technology. As one example, a district is considering replacement of some devices with the NComputing 'virtual' computers. As stated in the title for this section, there's no doubt that districts will be trying to do more with less and, with all of the fat trimmed from budgets, I feel like some will be forced to make the tougher decisions to do without resources, whether those be personnel, new hardware or new software.

* Even MORE controversy as boundaries are crossed - I could link hundreds of articles to make my point, but I'll limit myself to a single link and humbly ask that you make the time to read this New York Times article on school districts being pulled into difficult issues related to technology use and abuse. I have several districts who have noted that they're getting called weekly on Facebook-related issues. I know of staff members who have been questioned about their curious choice of Facebook profile picture and/or status, particularly when some of their 'friends' are students. I know of districts who have had to deal with their users posting very inappropriate content to sites like these. The instinct for district leadership is to call the CIO when something occurs, because it's on the Internet and a computer was used. As the article points out, what do you do when the issue didn't occur on school grounds or with school property? Some parents will demand the district to intervene while others would claim their rights have been violated if the district were to intervene in a personal situation. The lines are blurring and it's making the K-12 CIO's job more difficult.

* More personal devices in the classroom - If you think about it, the first two bullets make this one almost inevitable. In most cases, the money isn't there to buy district-owned devices for everyone. More and more high-schoolers (and younger) are carrying personally-owned devices that have tons of functionality. While we will certainly wrestle with boundaries, inappropriate use, Internet filtering and other issues, I feel like some districts will also look to take advantage of these devices. They are resources that many kids are carrying, that CAN be used in positive ways and that the kids really want to use.

I'm sure there are other things on the horizon (eBooks, for example), but these have been on my mind as of late. Agree, disagree or add topics of your own. Take care!

E-Rate: Funding Year 2011

There's quite a bit going on with the federal E-Rate program this summer. There are a few critical Notices of Proposed Rule-Making (NPRM) out there and there is also a draft of the Eligible Services List for FY2011. This is the earliest I can remember seeing a draft ESL posted. Many of the NPRM suggestions are embedded in this draft ESL, so I'll take a moment and highlight a few of these:

* "Dark Fiber" would become eligible - Applicants and providers have sort of worked around this over the years by proposing that that provider 'light' the fiber by supplying the electronics on each end. In some cases, this has simply led to an additional switch for the district to power and house in their wiring closets. This could be a good development, as schools and districts seeking to connect might often find a vendor with fiber optics available for lease. It would also take away some guesswork with network proposals. Do you need 10Gb between all sites? Well, if you have the electronics to support that, go for it.

* "Web hosting" would become ineligible - This could be a big deal for a few of my districts. Some applicants have taken advantage of third-party hosting sites for the district web presence. It keeps the district from having to maintain a server and web services on that server. We've had districts who have had their web site hacked. At times, this has been due to security updates and patches not being applied. There's some level of security in having this housed by a provider specializing in web hosting.

I do see the other side of the equation, though. The program itself is about connectivity and a web site is not directly related to connectivity (or, perhaps, not as much so as in years past). Also, all parties have sought to take full advantage of what is or isn't eligible and have walked a thin line to gain every advantage possible. Any service that's eligible "to a point" lends itself to applicants or providers seeking to push the proverbial envelope. Removing this certainly prevents that, but it would put districts in a tough spot as they would be forced to consider whether to continue hosting services if forced to pay the full price themselves.

* "Web servers" would become ineligible - See above, as the logic is similar. The program has grown increasingly strict over the years as it pertains to servers eligible for purchase under Internal Connections. If web hosting is deemed ineligible, logic would dictate that web servers would be deemed ineligible as well.

There are other removals for services that were not being purchased by many (if any) applicants. T-2's, Global Service Provider fees and a Network Access Registers (related to Centrex phone service) were all crossed out of the draft ESL.

What do you do in the summer?

That question gets posed from outside the education community, with the general assumption being that everyone vacations all summer long if they work in the K-12 education environment. Not true. Furthermore, I think the assumption is that the K-12 technology coordinators and staff are simply in charge of "keeping the computers running". Sure, there are computers to replace and re-image. That doesn't even scratch the surface of everything these departments are asked to deal with during the summer and throughout the year. Here's my off-the-cuff stab at a list, and I'm sure that this isn't exhaustive:

Printers
Copiers
Web site creation and maintenance
Televisions
DVD
Media distribution servers/solutions
Digital cameras
Camcorders
Handheld computers and smartphones (both district-owned and personal)
Projectors
Wireless slates/pads
Interactive whiteboards
Student response systems
Student Information System
Instructional software of various types
Food service software
Point-of-sale hardware
Asset tracking software and hardware
Library management software
Internal district finance hardware/software
Servers to run all of this and more
Software licensing compliance for all of this
Switches and electronics in the wiring closets
Running and terminating cable for all of this to connect
Wireless environments (ever-growing) to support mobility desires
Security cameras
Badge ID systems for the user base
Building security (so those badges can be used for building entry)
Automatic lighting (in some cases, yep)
A/C needs for the data center(s) (this hardware generates tons of heat)
Support for Student Technology Leadership Program
Assistive and adaptive technology (for special needs cases)
Telephone systems (voicemail, handsets, trunk line configurations, etc)
Video distribution systems (cable TV and other local media)
Wide-area network connecting all schools to one another
Antivirus software for all workstations
Ensuring proper OS updates/patching of all workstations
Web filtering hardware/software, updates and ongoing issues
Facebook and social networking issues (significant enough for separate mention)
Establishing policy on things like personal device use (cellular, computers)
Crafting and updating a district technology plan for all of this
Professional development for staff so THEY understand all of this
Managing maintenance agreements for some/all of this
Having a system to track/manage work orders that might be called in on any of this
Keeping track of grant opportunities to assist with some of this
Dealing with vendors who constantly try to sell some/all of this
Managing the E-Rate program, which ties to critical federal funds

As I said, I'm sure this isn't an exhaustive list, but it's a good start. Some of these items are a job unto themselves. Some can take up a huge amount of time when/if something goes wrong. There's plenty to do throughout the year and, if these folks are taking a bit of time off during the summer, it's well-deserved. More likely, their time away is brief due to the fact that the best time to update/replace most of these components is during the summer while school is not in session. For you IT workers out there, if you're dreaming of having your toes in the sand, I hope you don't read this and awake with a fear that you're in quicksand...

Video distribution vendors...

I'm probably oversimplifying their offerings by titling this entry as simply 'video distribution', but these vendors are worth a mention nonetheless:

VBrick presented their IP video solution. They have presented to my region of school districts as well. I think we'll see the CIO role begin to encompass television and video delivery (if it isn't already for your district). The VBrick platform allows for scheduled delivery of video content and provides its own portal for delivery and searching for content. You can use the solution to capture content in multiple formats, store the content on a server for that purpose and play the video either on the desktop or on a separate dedicated display.

We also learned about Mediacast via a local reseller. This seemed to be a competitor to VBrick in many ways. With both solutions, you can encode selected channels from your cable provider. You can copy other media formats (VHS, DVD, etc) into the solution and manage copyrights more effectively by only allowing a licensed number of concurrent copies to play. With the right modules and equipment (like an "OnLocation cart", one could conduct and stream a live broadcast in HD.

Portions of these solutions (encoders, master control units, etc) are eligible for E-Rate discounts under the Internal Connections category. These solutions aren't for everyone, but these types of solutions may become a requirement as the instructional use of video from a variety of sources continues to grow.

A couple of vendor mentions...

I'm at a CIO conference/retreat and thought I'd take a moment to mention several products and vendors who have presented or attended:

M86 Security - An internet security company that had its basis in web (URL) filtering, they are in several KY school districts. Apparently, their latest product offering performs the web filtering, reporting and monitoring on a single box. They also have a secure web gateway product that is used to protect against so much of the malicious code that can be found on the web today.

CIPAFilter - Interesting name and guess what they do? There's a 90-day evaluation and their pricing structure is online and easy enough to follow. It does some context-sensitive searching rather than pure URL-based filter sets.

I'll mention the video distribution vendors later...

Hosted email and praise for KY tech leaders

I can tell just how buried I've been in my work. Not only have I taken less time of late for personal hobbies, but I've also apparently been very lax about blogging. All of that can be attributed to the KY K-12 education move to Microsoft's Live@edu hosted email solution.

It's difficult to digest everything taking place when you're in the middle of it all. Over the past two weeks, I've conducted several informational sessions and have now participated in some end-user training. There's so much swimming through my brain and I simply wanted to take a moment to think about a couple of things at a very high level.

First, we have many intelligent and dedicated technology leaders in this state. I feel overwhelmed at times when thinking about this project. I've had draft documentation in my hands for a while and have participated in regular conference calls about our plans. Many of our technology leaders are going into this with less information and less time to absorb that information. We've had several opportunities to communicate about the project, but things are really hitting home now that implementation is imminent. I've tried my best to communicate and assure everyone that it will be fine. At times, I'm the one that has to be reassured. Last month, many of our districts massed on a McAfee DAT update that wreaked havoc on networks around the state. Their "can do" attitude got them through the fix before they had time to completely absorb all of the details. To some extent, this project will also test our ability confidently to move forward without knowing all of the answers to every potential "what if" situation. We will get there and it will be largely because of their efforts.

Second, the solution really needed to be a cloud-based solution. There are other choices besides Live@edu. A quick scan of today's technology landscape reveals many hosted options for communication. How do we communicate today? Via mobile phone, Twitter, Facebook, blog entries, texting, Skype and - I almost forgot - email. Very little of that (soon to be none?) is hosted on a local file server. We're an increasingly mobile user base and the applications we use are mirroring that.

Along those lines, one potential concern with Live@edu is the built-in messaging components. Legitimate "what if" scenarios are brought up by districts. However, what successful communications company is developing an "email only" solution for today's users? Yahoo! has an IM client built in and desperately wants to be my collaboration portal. Facebook has the same thing. GMail has built-in chat via text, voice or video. It's where the industry is headed.

It's where we're headed. By IT, I mean "a hosted communication environment that has the potential to positively impact teaching and learning." It's fearful at times to move at this pace, but the need to be flexible and adapt to change is becoming one of the most important qualities of success. We will get there and, though there will likely be some bumps along the way, we'll be better for it.

McAfee and the 'false positive'

Note: Thoughts expressed here are mine alone. They may echo the thoughts of others, but I'm not publishing this on behalf of or in representation of anyone else.

Nearly everyone is aware of the issues of this week surrounding a problematic McAfee update. I could link hundreds of articles and I'm not sure anything else can be said that hasn't already been said. However, I suppose writing is therapeutic to some extent and I've had a few thoughts running through my mind as our school districts work to correct thousands of affected computers.

* Kudos to our school districts. They probably don't get enough credit as it is, but it's amazing to see how districts have massed on this problem and developed plans to touch thousands of machines. Their work is to be commended. These are dedicated workers who have given away countless hours (no overtime pay in a school district) to fix these machines. In addition, many CIOs made a tough spur-of-the-moment call to shut down every machine in their district. I'm not sure I could have made that call that quickly, being fearful that a false alarm would infuriate my user base. It was a courageous call and a correct one given the circumstances. I'm proud to work alongside our area school district technology staff members.

* The Internet records everything. McAfee's initial response was delayed and was out of touch with the difficult realities facing a good portion of their user base.

...a number of customers have incurred a false positive error due to this release. Corporations who kept a feature called “Scan Processes on Enable” in McAfee VirusScan Enterprise disabled, as it is by default, were not affected...

McAfee went out of the way to point out that it was a false positive and not a virus. The end result was the same and no one I talked to was concerned about whether the problem was a virus or a false positive. Also, later reports indicate that the "Scan Processes on Enable" is not disabled by default in all cases. The language here implies that, had a customer not changed the default settings, they wouldn't be in this predicament. There's an implication that it wasn't McAfee's fault.

We are not aware of significant impact on consumers. We believe that this incident has impacted less than one half of one percent of our consumer base and enterprise accounts globally...

There may be some funny math going on here. If I had 199 consumers with a single copy of the software that weren't affected and I also had one corporate account with 1000 machines that were impacted, I suppose one could say that "one half of one percent of customers" were impacted. However, that doesn't accurately state the percentage of machines affected and it certainly downplays the significance. Again, the focus seemed to be that the incident wasn't a major concern. To affected customers, it was. Also, it's worth noting that a machine that constantly reboots and will not function is a "significant impact" and it's very hard to believe that, upon this press release, these symptoms weren't known.

To be fair, subsequent responses have a different tone and the company definitely took the matter seriously. Initial reports indicated that support information was hard to find. At this time, there is a link on the McAfee launch page. I'm not sure when that appeared. The bottom line is that effective crisis management, as exemplified in the Tylenol situation in the 80's, involves swift and wide-reaching action if there's even a chance of devastating impact to users.

* What if it were a virus? - My final thought is that, had SVCHOST.EXE truly been infected, was this the proper response? Should the file have been quarantined, rendering the machine useless and unable to communicate with the network? It's hard to say, but I'm sure this is one of the areas that will be investigated moving forward.

Free books and courseware

I'm continually amazed at everything that can be found on the Internet. We've had discussions in the K-12 environment about shrinking textbook funds and have rhetorically asked if textbooks are needed with the wealth of materials online. Given some of these resources that are available from the higher education community and other free resources, I think it's only a matter of time before we see more K-12 entities work to deliver instruction without traditional textbooks. A list of resources:

Project Gutenberg - One of the early entries in the 'free books' genre. You can find 30,000 free books to download here (free because their copyright has expired).

MIT Open Courseware - Want to take a course at MIT? This may not get you access to the instructor, but many of the materials used in all sorts of undergraduate and graduate MIT courses can be found at this site.

Google Scholar - Ever wished your students would find and reference 'scholarly' resources when searching Google for various projects? How about trying this beta search engine that seeks to limit your searches to scholarly literature?

Good stuff!

OnGuard Online - good educational resources

Just a quick note to make everyone aware of some good material available fron OnGuard Online. This is a partnership between many federal and commercial resources. One of the items that's been viewed very positively by my districts is a pamphlet called "Net Cetera: Chatting With Kids About Being Online". The link takes you to the entire pamphlet and you can order free copies from bulkorder.ftc.com.

The Federal Trade Commission has its own YouTube channel. One of their videos is embedded below:

Zenoss - Open Source IT Management

One things I've told DTC/CIOs at various times is that they need a dashboard. When I reference a "dashboard", I'm thinking of some type of visual that indicates the health of the network and critical resources. At the state level, we have a map that shows every school district and depicts different colors depending on whether the district has lost connectivity or if all services are running.

Using a tool like Zenoss, districts can create their own network dashboard. I've linked to the open source version, though there is an enterprise version as well. This software has several popular open source products behind it, including RRDTool for graphing and MySQL as a database.

Zenoss uses SNMP and WMI to discover and monitor all types of network devices. With it, you can monitor services like HTTP. For critical servers, I could monitor free disk space as well as memory and processor utilization. I could use the WMI piece to allow me to monitor critical errors on servers.

There's a tutorial video on their community page. As with any monitoring tool, I'm sure that this would take some effort upon initial setup to get everything set for your particular devices and thresholds of interest. However, once you have it set up, this could be a very powerful management aid.

Note that it's Linux-based, so the pre-packaged downloads are for various flavors of Linux. If you have to run this via Windows, there is a VMWare virtual appliance that you could use in conjunction with VMWare Player to perhaps make it work for you.

Humorous PSAs on texting, feat. James Lipton

I've been doing some work on Digital Citizenship lately and, along the way, I've been searching online for useful public service announcements related to technology topics. Some are very professionally done, some are created by amateurs and there's a whole subculture of faux PSAs that are humorous for completely different reasons.

Today, I stumbled across this series of PSAs involving James Lipton. He hosts Inside the Actors Studio and I've seen him lampooned on Saturday Night Live. Mr. Lipton is probably most recognizable for his beard and his speech. He has used his most famous qualities in a series of public service announcements asking kids to "give it a ponder" before texting.

You may find these useful and, if not, I'd say you'll get at least one laugh.

Privacy and user rights - a few 'horror stories'

As our group discussed Acceptable Use Policies last week, someone suggested that it might be useful to have a few of the 'horror stories' to share with others. Sadly, they're very easy to find and I thought I'd take a moment to highlight three that I've heard about. Each of these highlight certain 'gray areas' surrounding a staff member's desire to gain some information. Students were put in precarious positions and, in each of these cases, lawsuits resulted. Some (if not all) of these cases are ongoing and any comments are not meant to pass judgment on any parties involved; rather, I'm simply highlighting the circumstances surrounding the situation and pointing out that today's use of technology requires us all to be knowledgeable and respectful of the rights of others...

* Quite recently, the Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania was sued over the remote enabling of a webcam on a district-issued laptop computer. The case alleges that a student was disciplined at school with a webcam-based photograph (taken while the student was at home with the laptop) being used as evidence for the discipline. Privacy issues are being cited and there's some debate over who knew about the potential to remotely activate the webcams, how was this feature used, etc.

* A few years ago, cheerleaders at a high school in Pearl, MS were asked to relinquish their Facebook passwords to their cheering coach. One student did so and her private Facebook email was accessed. This information was shared with others in the district and the student was disciplined for some of the contents found. A lawsuit has been filed and this case will help determine whether school administrators have the right to request access to these private conversations.

* Closer to (my) home, a school district has been sued over the review of contents of a confiscated student cell phone. According to the suit, the phone slipped out of the student's pocket. Administrators read the content of text messages on the phone and the student was expelled. The lawsuit claims that this was an illegal search of private property.

Those are a few examples and I'm sure you can cite others as well. This shows the need we have as technology leaders to become more aware of district policies and lead be learning and educating our own staffs about what can and cannot be done as it pertains to these new technology devices and tools.

Acceptable Use Policies - Broad or Specific

Our regional association of DTC/CIOs had an interesting discussion yesterday regarding Acceptable Use Policies. With the growing popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook and the increasing number of personally owned electronic computing devices (smartphones as well as more traditional computers), many districts feel the need to revisit their acceptable use policies. Let's spend a moment on this and, in particular, focus on the need for a broad policy versus a very specific one.

This is a Kentucky school district example of a broad policy. You won't find specific mentions of Facebook or personal computing devices in this AUP. That doesn't mean that the district doesn't deal with these issues. I suppose that's really the point I want to make - an Acceptable Use Policy is just that... a policy... and this district likely deals with any number of technology-related behavior issues via other behavior policies rather than specific technology policies.

This policy specifically says that there will be other procedures and guidelines. To quote various areas of the linked document:

shall develop and implement appropriate procedures to provide guidance for access to electronic media. Guidelines shall address teacher supervision of student computer use, ethical use of electronic media (including, but not limited to, the Internet, e-mail, and other District technological resources), and issues of privacy versus administrative review of electronic files and communications. In addition, guidelines shall prohibit utilization of networks for prohibited or illegal activities...

In our discussion, it was pointed out that most Kentucky school districts already have policy that addresses disruption of the educational process. One such policy is linked here. There are several areas of note, but students are subject to displinary action in these specific instances:

Conduct that materially or substantially interferes with another student’s access to educational opportunities or programs, including the ability to attend, participate in and benefit from instructional and extracurricular activities; or

Conduct that materially or substantially disrupts the delivery of instructional services or interferes with the orderly administration of the school and school-related activities or district operations.

If someone posts something offensive to a web site and it "materially or substantially interferes" as stated above, the school district has some latitude to deal with it. If a personal phone is "substantially disrupting the delivery of instructional services", then the district would have some latitude to deal with it. Certainly, these are sticky areas and I don't mean to minimize the potential for concern or the proper care that needs to be taken when dealing with issues related to technology-based behavior. My point here is that districts often have existing policy that can be applied to many of these situations. Often, we spend too much time trying to document and label the method of misbehavior when the better course may be to apply existing rules and regulations.

"The Class" - a parody of "The Office"

As a fan of "The Office" and someone who's involved in education technology discussions, the video created by an Innovations in Mass Communications class at the University of Denver caught my eye.

In addition, I noticed Dr. Michael Wesch's blog entry about it and the comments that followed. What strikes me is how various elements of learning are pointed at throughout the video and comments.

It appears that the students made this video as a kick-off project for their class, helping them to bond and also helping set the expectation of technology use during the class. Several of the comments (along the lines of "what was the point") spark further discussion about the role of the video itself and its effectiveness. Regardless of your opinion of the video, there's much to be said about student engagement and its role in effective instruction. Creating a video that makes a larger point doesn't necessarily have to be a technical masterpiece. I do like the concept of the kick-off project or mini-project to generate some interest in a particular topic. Good stuff!

Prezi

A quick mention for Prezi, an online presentation tool that's based on zooming in and out on text and pictures.

Describing it doesn't really do it justice. I've played with this tool for a bit and, although there's an art to it that I don't really have as of yet, these presentations can be very effective. I like this Prezi that discusses the concept of these presentations and how to best deliver them.

There are free and fee-based versions, detailed here. The differences are in the amount of disk space online, privatizing content, removing the Prezi watermark and the use of an offline desktop presentation development tool. As a teacher, you could use start with the free version and could allow students to do the same. I would recommend viewing a few sample presentations, as users are aching for something that catches the eye a bit more than the standard presentation. This tool can be very effective to zoom in on ideas, walk across timelines, create online flowcharts, etc. It's definitely worth a try!

Adobe ConnectNow

If you're looking for a web conferencing solution, it might be worth experimenting with Adobe ConnectNow. I tried out the 'free' version with a co-worker today and was fairly impressed with the results. Most of the details are on the page linked, but a few points of note:

* The free version is for up to 3 users, including the host. There are fee-based options for additional connections

* There's no need for attendees to register or to have any software other than Flash Player

* In a single interface, I can see the presenter's screen, hear the voice, view a webcam and participate in a chat

* Remote desktop capabilities are there as well

I'm sure there are other products available and there may be other features of this product that I didn't experiment with but, for some of the interactions that I have, I could see where this product could be quite useful. It's worth a look!

"Should I Apply for Internal Connections?"

It's early February, which means "E-Rate Form 471 filing" to the K-12 CIO community. I've had several districts ask me or speculate aloud regarding whether to apply for Internal Connections (Priority 2 funding) for their schools. It's a difficult question and I'm never in a position to say "don't apply", but we can certainly look at the data to speculate on the situation.

E-Rate Central does a great job of this in a recent newsletter. In it, there's an interesting graphic that details the past three funding years, the amount of rollover funds and the Priority 2 funding threshold. Their chart states:

Funding Year 2007, $650M rolled over, P2 threshold 81%
Funding Year 2008, $600M rolled over, P2 threshold 87%
Funding Year 2009, $900M rolled over, P2 threshold will likely be 70-78%

I thought I'd look at some of the cumulative USAC data a different way - all data approximated and keep in mind FY 2009 is still being funded:

Funding Year 2007, $1.4B total P1, $482M P2 90%, $463M P2 80-89%
Funding Year 2008, $1.6B total P1, $641M P2 90%, $208M P2 80-89%
Funding Year 2009, $1.4B total P1, $432M P2 90%, $399M P2 80-89%

That same E-Rate Central note above points out that there's only about $500M available to be rolled into FY 2010 at this time. I suppose that could grow slightly, but there are other factors at play. With the economy as it is, discount levels have risen for many districts. There are more 80% and 90% schools, which is going to mean more school districts at a cumulative 81% and above.

My theory (and it's only one person's opinion) is this: School districts see that the FY2009 P2 threshold is going to go below 80%. They also see that they may have a higher discount level for the first time (or first time in years). Those factors will likely combine to produce great demand in the higher discount levels. Add that to the amount of available rollover funds (which will be similar or less than FY2007/FY2008 levels) and we could see an FY2010 P2 threshold above 80%.

This certainly doesn't mean "don't apply", but the historical numbers presented don't support another year of sub-80% P2 funding. We shall see.

Are you creating content or consuming it?

As devices change and prices continue to inch downward, I'm becoming slightly more convinced each day that more and more school districts will attempt to put some type of technological devices in the hands of every student. I've been involved with several school districts as they discuss the pros and cons of such thoughts and novels could be written on the factors that should be considered as this topic is bandied about.

Make no mistake - I think the most important question that could be asked when considering a device for a 1:1 initiative is something along the lines of "what does the end result look like in your vision" or, put a bit more bluntly, "what do you want users to do with it?"

As different devices are being evaluated, that needs to be a focal question. While I may be oversimplifying the topic a bit with this post, one theme to be considered when evaluating devices is whether the device is built to create content or to consume it.

Consider, for a moment, smaller devices. Here are netbooks from Dell, HP and Lenovo. While not having a 'netbook', Apple has an iPod touch and the coming iPad that you may have heard a little about. Are these good or bad for education? Are they good or bad for 1:1 consideration? These aren't the right questions. Depending on what you want to do, these may be great or terrible devices. Apple execs might quibble with me on the iPad and who really knows since the device hasn't been released yet, but I would generally state that these devices mentioned are fine for most consumption of content. Teachers and learners need to consume vast amounts of content. We read books and articles, watch videos, review (and maybe take?) notes. All of this is well and good and, if this is what you envision your students doing with these devices, then items in this category might be worth consideration. **SIDE NOTE** Though this is another topic for another time, districts need to consider warranty and how long they expect users to carry these devices. Most devices in this category do not carry a lengthy warranty as a standard and this is well worth considering.

Your more powerful desktops and notebooks carry a higher price tag, but they are generally considered better for creation of content. I won't bother with all of the links, but devices in this category can contain many of the following features: fast processors, large displays, webcams, high-speed wired and wireless ports, multiple USB, Firewire and SD connectivity options, high-end graphics cards, long battery life, built-in DVD burners, large hard drives and/or solid-state drives and on and on and on. You may need some of this, all of this or none of this. At times, teachers and learners may be asked to create and edit videos. Manipulating large video files and keeping them in memory can be very resource-intensive. Some engineering software like AutoCAD requires powerful specifications for the computers to run the software.

This isn't to argue for or against one category of device. The point here is to ask the right questions when making a large decision like this. Districts need to have that instructional vision and determine ahead of time whether that device being carried around will be used primarily for consumption of content or creation of it.

Electronics in the wiring closet

Just a few thoughts about switches and other electronics in your school wiring closets based on a district discussion I recently had:

* Check your environmental conditions - I know that some of you may not be able to immediately fix some of these problems, but it needs to be in your plans somewhere. If your wiring closet doubles as custodial storage, watch for the trend to use switches as a shelf for chemicals, etc. Some wiring racks double as a coat rack, which kills any hope of adequate ventilation. Switches today are more dense and, while it's a great space-saver, it makes proper ventilation an even more important requirement. In some cases, it isn't a coat covering the vents on a switch or server; rather, it's a thick layer of dust. Much like straightening up your patch cables, cleaning out dust on switching electronics is one of those tasks that always seems to wait until a better time. Too much dust can equal no ventilation and no ventilation can lead to equipment failure, which leads me to...

* Check your temperature - Most of these network electronics prefer a cooler temperature than would a human occupant. Nevertheless, there are countless closets where no dedicated cooling is in place. This is particularly important in data centers where racks full of network components and servers may be installed. This is the time of year where a lack of dedicated cooling can really harm a school district. Why? The school's HVAC system is heating the rest of the building and, in some cases, it's actually heating the wiring closet or data center. In some cases, the effect is seen immediately. Servers today can (and will) shut themselves down if sensors indicate that the environment is too warm. Other components like switches and routers may not fail immediately, but these components will have a shorter lifespan if regularly exposed to excessive heat. Also, don't forget about these electronics that may be left on while a cooling unit is shut down (for summer break, for example).

* Check your battery backup - Honestly, the bigger issue in many cases is that some outlying wiring closets don't even have battery backups for switches and network electronics. For those that do, I've heard many reports on UPS devices failing quite often. The UPS battery is seen as a money pit. Why do they fail so often? If the environment is too hot, the UPS can be significantly degraded. In fact, according to this APC white paper, some batteries experience a 50% reduction in life for every 14.4 degree temperature increase over optimum, which is about 77 degrees. This paper also discusses the number of discharges and the rate of charging as factors in UPS life. There's some good info in the white paper. The bottom line is to understand that proper battery backups are needed but that their life is impacted by the same factors as other network electronics.

At any rate, this was on my mind after meeting with a school district this week. Hope it's of some interest - take care!

ADManager Plus

Just a quick note to mention a product called ADManager Plus. John McMillen shared this product with our regional group today and gives a detailed review of his experiences with the product in his blog.

ADManager Plus is simply a tool for Active Directory management, assisting technicians with template-based user creation and mass creation, editing, etc of accounts. It's a tool to make your technicians' lives easier.

In general, I would state that this is an area where many technology staffs could use some improvement. School districts invest in so many instructional packages for their students and teachers. Ideally, this should increase knowledge and make better use of everyone's time. The same logic needs to be applied to an IT software toolkit. Often, the tech staff is so focused on saving money and living on a shoestring budget that they may not even consider investing in a tool like this.

Products like this are a reminder to occasionally evaluate the tasks that consume the majority of your time and search the landscape for products to make those tasks easier.

Common Craft

I'm not sure if you can make use of this service but, if not, you can at minimum take some of the spirit from Common Craft in your own creation of instructional content.

Common Craft is a simple and interesting concept. They take certain relatively complex subjects and create videos of roughly three minutes to explain this concept. It sounds simple enough, but it's obvious that a good bit of time and effort resulted in each of these productions. You can view their content online and can purchase individual or site licenses to use these videos in your own environment.

Their topics include technology items such as cloud computing and Twitter search. (As an aside, the cloud computing video might be a very good way to explain hosted email and other services to your teachers and staff.) There are also money concepts like borrowing and saving money and social concepts like the process of electing our President.

...and what video library would be complete without knowing how to deal with a zombie attack. :)

Cybersafety for Parents and Kids

A good instructional video posted by the KY Attorney General's office. Some good overall cybersafety tips and facts in this video: