Technology Services

plan 2.2.2.10 2009-2010

2.2.2.10 Major technoloy projects for the 2010-11 school year include:

Continue the successful Tablet PC Technology Integration Program. A cohort of ten teachers completed the 45 hour professional development program.
Encourage/assist administrative staff to increase applications for information storage/collaboration with each other, building staff and community

The new staff database that has been a useful tool this year with our data reporting and as a communication tool between authorized staff.
New reporting logs have been developed for maintenance and transportation directors.
Administrative Staff meeting agendas and supporting documents are now online.
Additional staff are increasingly competent to input announcements, upload documents and otherwise provide updates to school and department websites.
The MCTC website has come a long way, and continues to provide positive exposure for our programs.
The BCHS Achievement Booster Club has actively used our browser-based resources to communicate.

Consolidate division-wide technology resources located at BCHS to a new technology room in the BCHS library

Room is accessed from the library; has tables for work area, shelves for storage; room stays locked.
Secure “inner” room for servers is accessible to only a few staff members; room is air conditioned 24x7x365.

Guidance Office tech room is clear of all technology except one network rack; wide area network lines are terminated on the north wall; guidance office staff use most of the available space for storage.
Technology staff regularly use the new tech room for ongoing work, and no longer have to use the school conference room and counselors’ offices.

Provide greater structure for the division-wide technology integration program to help enable increased responsibility for implementation by division technology staff

Have had ongoing conversations and meetings with ITRT staff to help them take on greater responsibility for the Tablet PC Technology Integration program. Greater structure will be in place for next year so that ITRTs will be able to plan more independently from me.
ITRTs have led class instruction/discussion to a greater extent in two class sessions, and after class on 3/31/2011, they will have taken on full responsibility for two class sessions (on both of these dates I have had afternoon/evening meetings on other matters.
MES and BCHS technicians are increasingly independent with tech support tasks. The new VES technician is coming along well with her skills—she is certainly far ahead of where our technicians were in their first year.

Successful implementation of a two-day divisionwide inservice program with over 20 technology integration sessions presented by technology staff.

Computers not in the division domain no longer have internet access without authentication.
Guest access and secure access protocols have been developed and implemented on a limited number of wireless access points at BCHS.

Much work has gone into the new Interactive Achievement resources that are now available to staff in grades 2-12. There were more successes with IA at the high school than elementary schools during 2010-11. As Flanagan resources will be discontinued for 2011-12, there will be a gradual strengthening of IA use across grades.

Increased bandwidth needs in 2010-11 required acceleration of plans to upgrade the bandwidth available for schools and the central office. Formal plans began in the fall, and the project should be complete before July 1. The bandwidth upgrades required new firewalls and content filters at the elementary schools, but the new equipment replaces old electronics that were at risk of failure and expensive to replace.
The most expensive data connection in the school division (MES) was taken off line in early May and replaced with 5mb line with VPN routes mapped to the other BCPS buildings. The lower-cost line will pay for the additional electronics necessary to power it within the next year.
The VES T1 data connection remains active to support email and local browser-based services, while internet connectivity is provided by a new 5mb DSL line. Before July 1, a second 5mb DSL line will replace the current T1 line for email and local browser-based services. The less expensive recurring costs will cover new electronics costs within two years, but staff and students will welcome the faster and more stable internet connection.
Accessible bandwidth for BCHS students and staff has increased this spring, since the elementary schools are no longer using the download bandwidth for internet browsing.
The internet connection at SAB was updated in April 2011, providing five times the download speed (15mb), without increasing costs.

Our new email system is now fully functional. Implementation was delayed last summer for a number of reasons, necessitating the fall 2010 deployment. It took a good bit of time to complete, but now that it is in place, the new system is faster, more powerful, and operates more reliably and securely than the old system. Exchange 2010 also integrates more tightly with the increasing number of smartphones that are connected to our corporate email system.

After noticing problems with some of our older servers this fall, tech staff accelerated plans to virtualize some of our server functions and otherwise upgrade server capacity. The result is that our servers are operating at a higher/faster level, and with lowered energy consumption. This is an ongoing project.

Over the past several months, significant progress has been made to strengthen the backup procedures for school servers. This was necessitated by changes with our server structure and our aging tape backup system. Although partially in place at this time, the new system with redundant backups should be fully functional in July.

Technology staff assumed administrative responsibility for division copiers in 2010-11.
The Ricoh contract & installation has pretty well, and the increased functionality is appreciated by many. The “Scan to Folder” option is saving paper, as folks see that they don’t have to actually print copies to distribute to others. The “Scan to Email” functionality is not operational at this time, though should be in place for Fall 2011.

The new library catalog/circulation software installation is complete. The project was put on hold this fall because of changes with server virtualization, and completed in April 2011. The browser-based software resides on a district server at BCHS, and should provide better service to patrons.

Widespread installation of ceiling-mounted projectors was delayed from last school year, but was a significant project for fall 2010. All teachers that have completed or are currently involved in the technology integration project were given opportunity to have their classroom projector mounted in the ceiling. Ceiling mounts remove the general nuisance and trip hazard of projectors on carts. Long extension cables were installed for viewing of video clips when direct connection to the computer is desired.