Gary’s Blog

Compared to IT users in business, IT users in schools are much different. They bring different skills to the IT they use, they need more flexibility more often than business users, and their needs change over time (only to return to the original need). These characteristics arise from the facts that students have emerging literacies; Read More

In education, problems are not so easy to isolate and fix. Students and teachers are vastly more complicated than IT and their lives are affected by far more variables than even the most sophisticated IT systems. When looking carefully at problems in education, we discover they cannot be isolated; and solutions may resolve symptoms but Read More

Prior to the wide-spread adoption of one-to-one initiatives, most computing resources in schools were shared. As a result, it was necessary to adopt a strategy for scheduling time in the computer room, presentation spaces with high-quality projectors, and similar resources that existed in small numbers. Since one-to-one computing has become the norm in schools, the Read More

Because Google Workspaces and cloud-based data systems are used for all aspects of teaching and learning as well as school operations; secure, robust, and reliable network infrastructure is vital to schools. For many decisions about what to install and how to configure it, school IT professionals must engage educators and others who are affected by Read More

Since it was introduced in 2005, then made available to schools at no cost a few years later, “Google Docs” has changed the educational technology landscape. Since then, the platform has undergone nearly continuous upgrading and updating, and renaming. In 2023, it is called Google Workspaces and the basic level of service which includes productivity Read More

Cell phones have been arriving in schools in the packets of students for the entirety of the 21st century. For most of this century, the cell phones they have been bringing into schools are smartphones which can distract students with a myriad of channels for communications and apps. Those channels for communication and apps can Read More