Category: Technology

A Story About Enterprise Systems

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

Tech for Educators: Planning and Installing Networks

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

Tech for Educators: Three Classes of Networks

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

Elevating EdTech Professional Development: Training, Planning, and Design

I had AI create this post based on a chapter I wrote a few years ago. 188: Elevating EdTech Professional Development: Training, Planning, and Design If you have ever sat through a school professional development (PD) day focused on “technology integration,” you might be familiar with the following scenario: A room full of educators with Read More

Google and Schools

I recently had a series of conversations with educators about Google. I was anable to point these folks to the specific artcile I read a few years ago in which scholars challenged some of the assumptions we made how Google uses student data. I promised a blog post pointing to it. Here it is! In Read More

IT Working Conditions in Schools

One of the biggest differences between working in schools and working in business and industry is the lack of a clear and unambiguous measure of success; in the vernacular, we can say, “schools lack a clear bottom line.” In education, they attempt to use test scores as a bottom line comparable to financial measures in business, but many educators find those to Read More

History of Operating Systems

a post created by AI using my notes for my course in operating systems as source 1. Introduction: The OS as the “Beautiful” Interface To the contemporary systems architect, a computer is a staggeringly complex assembly of processors, main memory, disks, network interfaces, and diverse I/O devices. From an application programmer’s perspective, the raw hardware Read More

Contingencies and Technology Planning

174: Contingencies and Technology Planning The decisions that past technology teams made and the hardware, software, and network infrastructure they installed affect the decisions that can be made in the future. Especially in schools, the IT system tends to be a kluge; new features and functions were added piecemeal, and each was made to operate with extant systems. In many cases those integrations depended on custom programming and configurations.  School budgets rarely allow for wholesale replacement of technology. The total cost of Read More

School Leaders & Technology

175: School Leaders & Technology In most aspects of school function, school leaders have experience and preparation. A leader probably started their career as a faculty member, then studied school administration and progressed through positions that gave them more experience and in which they gained increasing knowledge of school operations.  Most school leaders freely admit they are not “technology Read More