During one week when I was managing IT for a small rural school, I encountered two examples of how educators do not understand the nature of enterprise systems. On Monday, a teacher brought me a sale paper for a local box store retailer (it was early in the holiday gift buying season). She told me she had $300 Read More
Enterprise networks are incredibly sophisticated and complex systems. They combine hardware and network software that must be scaled for hundreds or thousands of users on campus. There are three adjectives that describe every network if it is in a school or any other business: Ensuring a network is all three necessitates expertise in network architecture. Decisions must be made about the hardware and software and configuration necessary to meet Read More
“Is Schoolwork Optional Now?” showed up in my feed recently. It is an article by Lila Shroff that appeared in The Atlantic (in the online version) on April 10, 2026. The article should cause concern for educators. They will read how AI has been used to complete schoolwork. The rationale behind the decision by those Read More
Ethernet is the dominant network technology used in schools (and just about every other organization). When connecting computers and other devices to Ethernet, we use the same protocols and the same devices no matter how many nodes are connected. The devices we use to create computer networks are designed to meet three different classes of networks. One Read More
When making decisions about the type of computing devices to install in schools, school and technology leaders must define the capacity of the devcies necesary for their purpose. This post sumarizes the factors that affect capacity. Capacity is determined by several factors. In general, these factors dictate the rate at which a system can access, Read More
195: Generative AI: We Are Getting What We Asked For I just finished reading of a pre-print paper on AI (Shaw & Nave, 2026). It is a paper I expect to be the subject of a longer post in the future, but I was struck by a sentence in the “Societal Implications” section of the Read More
194: Inquiry and Authentic Assessment I have been looking through old papers I wrote as an undergraduate and graduate student years ago… actually decades ago. In 1997, I enrolled in a curriculum development course and a graduate student, and made this observation: An inquiry-based science curriculum that includes authentic assessment is not familiar to most Read More
I don’t often have time to listen to the radio during the afternoon, but today, I caught the last few minutes of “The start of social media’s legal reckoning” on 1A which I listened to on Vermont Public’s radio broadcast. I only caught the tail end of the commentary, but one of the guests made Read More
AI is here, it often does not accomplish what we want, but that is not stopping folks from deploying it. (I am writing this after spending an hour on several phone calls to the IRS trying to schedule an appointment to get a replacement form for my mother’s taxes. Each attempt got me caught in Read More
190: Characterizing Weak Leaders The blogosphere is full of examples of bad leadership. We have all seen the lists of characteristics of those who are bad leaders and we have all experienced them. Some of my favorite examples do not make these lists. “Guess what I am thinking disguised as brainstorming” is one of my Read More