CoSN 2015 Texas CTO Clinic Supports K-12 Technology Leadership Growth

Missed the 2015 CoSN Texas CTO Clinic?  Check out some missed highlights at Technology & Learning Magazine's web site at http://www.techlearning.com/blogentry/9469 

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Check out - The Right Connections - how to keep school communities informed

Judson ISD and it's fantastic home grown Parent Center app were featured in Technology & Learning's May 2015 cover story, Now Hear This: The Right Connections - how to keep school communities informed - from @techlearning http://www.techlearning.com/resources/0003/the-right-connections/69286

http://www.techlearning.com/resources/0003/the-right-connections/69286

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Innovation is Not About the Technology

A reporter recently asked me, "Are any of the new technologies being introduced into K-12 education actually causing student test scores to increase?" While the question has been asked a lot, her point was that with all the venture capital being poured into educational technology now, investors and the public may start wanting products to show actual data on how they actually improve test scores. In the case of many products, a lot of which focus on remediating students for particular subjects, this is certainly a valid question. But I think many times we are hoping software, hardware, remediation systems, and other assorted educational technology products will magically transform education, when they will not.  Read the great article at ISTE One of the best pieces I've read this week was written by Grant Lichtman and published by ISTE. The author traveled to tens of schools across the country and visited with teachers and students and observed the learning process at many innovative schools. The author concludes that the innovation is really not about the technology at all, but rather about how learning is structured where the students are the leaders in learning. Of course this does not mean that technology can't play a role in the process, but the critical factors include how classes are structured, how students take charge of their learning and investigation, and how teachers and administrators must release control of learning to students. I urge you to read this great piece and join the conversation by sharing your thoughts.

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From zero to working server in ten minutes – Trying out managed hosting

In an earlier blog I mentioned my requirements for a great help desk for our organization.   After a lengthy search, trial, and selection process, a winner was picked.  As it turned out, while the help desk used standard software that we support, it used a database version that we did not yet have running in our organization.  We were not able to upgrade our current databases, because other vendors’ systems required older database versions.

We talked about options such as starting another database server, and our help desk vendor mentioned that they had a lot of customers starting to run their software in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.  Like many districts, while we have had many cloud based software applications, we had never tried managed hosting, which has gained a huge amount of traction in recent years, with a huge number of players , now increasingly dominated by heavyweights such as Rackspace, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Verizon, and IBM. 

Managed hosting is akin to renting a server, rather than buying it.  The customer gets to choose the operating system and the software stack that goes on top.  The customer typically will pay based on the software chosen, the size of the hardware needed and more.  Other charges may include additional charges for bandwidth, storage, monitoring, support, and security services.  Much like a rental of anything else, the customer has control over how long they want it, from minutes to years.  It is truly a pay as you consume commodity.  The servers are housed in the managed hosting provider’s data center, so the customer never has to worry about the plethora of mundane non-mission critical tasks that have been traditionally associated with the acquisition, installation, maintenance, and decommissioning of servers.

The traditional procurement and setup of servers in schools districts and other institutions can traditionally takes weeks, if not months.  All of the following are tasks that can be eliminated with managed hosting, so time to server spin up can be slashed:

1.       Quoting of hardware.

2.       High up front capital costs.

3.       Data center space.

4.       Air-conditioning.

5.       Power.

6.       UPS and generators.

7.       Racks.

8.       Purchase orders.

9.       Receiving and inventory of equipment.

10.   Physical setup of equipment.

11.   Operating system and software installation.

12.   Switch ports.

13.   SAN space.

I am sure there are many things I left of the list, but the point is we saved a large amount of upfront costs and saved time for our already overburdened staff.

In our case our help desk vendor had an image for us to spin up our server off of in the AWS cloud. We literally went from no server to running application server in about ten minutes.  It was incredible and makes me inclined to think that we will be running many more servers this way in the coming years.  The huge capital costs and efforts required to maintain data centers may not be sustainable when our money could be better spent on projects that benefit student learning.  While our need for servers is not likely to lessen, the cheaper and faster bandwidth becomes, the motivation for districts to move to managed hosting will increase.

This blog entry is cross posted with the great folks at SchoolCIO

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Making 1 to 1 Programs Actually Succeed

There are many schools that have either piloted or implemented one to one student to computer initiatives.  These are nothing new.  The success of these programs, much like other education initiatives, has varied.  Most technology and curriculum leaders now recognize that there is much more to student and school success, than just putting a computer in the hands of a student and getting instant miracle results.   Just as a new hammer will not help a bad carpenter build a better house, a computer in the hands of a student will not turn the tide in the midst of bad teaching or ineffective school leadership.  But there is now fairly convincing evidence that properly implemented one to one computing is a contributing factor to school success, as evidenced in the rather convincing results from the Project Red study.  ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) has published a book about this report called Revolutionizing Education through Technology. A free electronic edition of the book is available at ISTE site.  I highly recommend that any superintendents, curriculum leaders, instructional technology directors or anyone else seriously looking at 1:1 programs read this books and consider all that it takes beyond a device to make one to one really succeed.

This blog was a Tech & Learning Newsletter Intro and is also on the Project Red site at: http://www.projectred.org/latest-news/173-t-l-advisor-guest-post—steve-young,-cto-of-judson-isd,-tx.html 

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