Ubiquity

I realized this evening that I'm not sure I can remember what life was like in the days before I had constant access to a digital communications device.

For me, that happened somewhere in the '96 timeframe. Until then, I had held out on getting a cell phone, really just to avoid adding to my family's bills. It was also about then that I switched to a laptop as my sole computing device, which meant that I could compute just about anywhere and anytime. Internet access wasn't exactly "always on" yet; I suffered dial-up speeds at home, which meant that I often didn't bother to connect at home. In August of '02 is when I got DSL and wireless at home. In many ways, that was a turning point.

With DSL, a wireless router, and a laptop, connecting to the Internet no longer required a trek to the desk, something that requires more effort than one might imagine. After a typical workday seated before a computer, couching it with a laptop seemed like a break.

So, here I am blogging on the couch, with email, a web browser, a cell phone, and just about any digital file that I might need. This is now how I operate. While one might expect someone who works as a tech director to work this way, you might be surprised to learn that my wife, who is less enamored with technology, has come to think this way, too. An example.

Recently, she was driving while I was tapping out something on the laptop from the passenger seat. She casually said, "Would you look up something for me on the web?" While I know people who have paid for cellular connections for the laptop, I have not yet. I reminded her of that fact.

Ray Kurzweil, in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, predicts a future in which we will be ever connected to an ever-present global, wireless network. Tonight I saw additional signs that such a network is on its way.

PBS' NOW program covered the city of Philadelphia's efforts to provide wireless access to the whole city. Mayor John F. Street sees such a rollout as a basic service for his citizens. Scottsburg, Indiana's mayor, concerned that businesses would leave his small town due to the lack of access to broadband Internet speeds, succeeded in installing a wireless network that covers all the citizens there. Besides reducing costs for the local schools, this access allowed at least one area business to secure a defense contract and to stay put.

So, I've thought some more, and I can't really remember what it was like before I had ubiquitous access. It may be, soon, that none of us will be able to.

What I Did Today: 12/10/2004

Sometimes, after hearing that I'm a school technology director, people ask me what I do.

Sometimes, at the end of the day, I ask myself a similar question: What did I do today?

The following may answer this question, both for myself and others. The times listed are approximate.

6:45--Breakfast at the local greasy spoon. Read the paper and saw an article about a report to be delivered at the board meeting next week. Made a note to call the principal about AV needs.
7:30--Arrived at our grades 11-12 campus and checked in with one of our deans about a meeting planned later with a student about a suspected hacking incident.
7:40--Began processing email. Deleted about 20 SPAMS.
8:00--Network admin stopped in my office. We discussed questions I should ask the suspected hacker; I asked lots of questions about what the server printouts meant to determine what approach to take with the student. Given that our indicators were inconclusive, we decided to take a gentle approach.
8:30--Back to email.
8:50--Waited in the dean's office for the student. Joined the dean for the interview. The student cooperated and sounded credible
9:15--Updated network admin, technicians, and librarian on status of hacking research. Technician played a voice mail from a parent who couldn't get an email through to a teacher. Gave info' to network admin to check.
9:30--Sent email to parent asking her to try sending message again. Got an email from a parent who said that when she was viewing her daughter's grades online in one class, an image of a person mooning came up instead of the assignment. She was bringing in a printout for us to view.
9:45--Got on the Student Information System (SIS) server and searched for files altered in past two days, image files, and any evidence of tampering. None found. Discussed with network admin. Our hunch is spyware or adware on the parent's computer.
10:00--Drove to grade 9-10 campus
10:15--Visited the clerk who had received the printout. Helped her clean and complete an Excel file containing download of next year's 9th graders from our sender districts. Used filters, functions, flat file saves to complete the file. Imported this file into our SIS and verified a successful import. Helped her create an email with directions for other staff.
11:00--Booted up my laptop in my other office. Got an email asking if faculty could see their class rosters for next semester in their electronic gradebook program.
11:10--Sent out directions for viewing next semester's rosters. Got 3 messages back that some teachers couldn't see the rosters. Sent a message to our Teacher Tech's (faculty who are adept and willing to help) and got confirmation that some could and others couldn't see.
11:25--Went to three teachers' location to see what they were seeing.
11:40--Back in the office, I sent out a message to stop the email responses from continuing. Call our SIS tech support. Learned there was a way to see the rosters but that it was a known problem.
Noon--Emailed all staff with the status of the issue and directions for a workaround.
12:15--Went to lunch. Saw our English as a 2nd Language coordinator. Discussed with him the data we need for the data file we'll have to create for our spring state tests.
12:30--A couple of Teacher Techs laughed about the number of messages that flew around during the search for the missing rosters.
1:10--Back in the office. I began researching the mysterious "moon" image that the parent had seen while viewing her daughter's grades. Armed with the printout, I now had a web address, which I used to look at the specific folder on our SIS server. The correct file was in the correct place.
1:20--Called our SIS Tech Support for 2nd time today. Shared my hunch that the problem was spyware on the parent's machine, but asked the person to look at our server. He verified that I had looked in the correct places and concurred with my hunch. Also gave me a couple of questions to ask the parent.
1:45--Called the parent, talked to her about the issue while she booted up her computer. The URL on her computer was correct, but she was still seeing the "moon" image instead of the grades. She accepted my suggestion that they might have adware or spyware on their machine.
2:15--Took a call from a vendor responding to a request for pricing for recycling of some of our aging equipment.
2:45--Received responses to an email on a list serve about accounting software. Found the software on the web and emailed links to business office staff who wanted the info'.
3:30--Called our long distance vendor about a phone line that was being billed by AT&T. Got a fax to change it back. Filled out the fax and faxed it back.

I know there were a couple more transactions in there, but these were the basics. I'm still not sure how to answer the question of what I do.

Maybe I should be asking myself how I did today, instead of what.

How did I handle the hacking research? Did I keep the students' interests in mind as I was protecting the school's network? Did I communicate the right priorities to my staff? Did I communicate to the parent with the "moon" image that we cared about the issue?

So, how did I do today?

Speaking a Common Language

Hosting a delegation of Japanese educational technologists this past week was one of the highlights of my work this school year. Representing Britannica Japan, a Japanese web content development firm, and JAPET, the Japanese Association for Promotion of Educational Technology, five men and their translator visited classrooms, labs, offices, and networking closets in our school. The photoes, video, and notes they gathered will become part of their report to the Japanese Ministry of Education upon their return.

While they and I both relied on the translator to flesh out our responses to questions of each other, I was surprised by how much the language of technology allowed us to communicate without the translator's help. To a question about how we connect our two schools, I replied that we lease two T-1 lines, connected to Cisco switches, and that we established our infrastructure in 1997. As I spoke the italicized words, the "techie" members of the delegation immediately nodded their understanding. They also knew DreamWeaver, FrontPage, and Microsoft Office; and the translator pronounced these words just as we do in English, but with an additional o-sounding vowel after Front and Page, as in Front-oPage-0.

I understand how the translator feels, as it's a role I play all the time, albeit a more subtle role. When my network administrator says that we're "hitting the ceiling of our T-1's" or the network has "forgotten which machine is the primary domain controller", I translate this information into language for my supervisors, the Board of Ed, and teaching staff. And when a teacher explains that he needs more room in his network folder so he can simplify the task of assessing computer-generated assignments, I find language that helps our technical staff understand what the teacher wants to do with his students.

Here's a real doosy of a translation challenge: explaining to community members why they should increase their taxes to provide learning technologies for students.

Sadly, I'm afraid that it is easier for Japanese and American educational technologists to understand each other than it is to cut through the suspicion and resentment of a citizen who is frustrated about school taxation.

I think the answer lies within this experience: It's time to bring in delegations of tax-payers to view our schools, because the experience is bound to allow us all to develop a common language.

Does anyone have the name of a good translator who's fluent in taxese?

Falling Leaves and School Funding

I was noticing today that leaves from one of my trees were littering my neighbor's yard. He has no maple trees, so I knew the leaves were from my tree. This probably happens every year, but I've never heard my neighbor complain.

I'm guessing that some of the leaves that I raked today were from one of my neighbor's trees. I raked them up and plopped them by the street. They'll get vacuumed and toted to some huge composting site.

One disturbing message we've been seeing in the rhetoric related to school funding here in Illinois is that people with children in the schools should be the ones to pay for their children's education. Those without children, or those who send their children to private schools, this argument goes, should not have to bear the tax burden to educate the students in the system today.

There are certainly many aspects to our school funding problems, and in Illinois support seems to be growing for an overhaul of how we fund education. But while we're waiting for our political leaders to take action, we need to address this troubling reluctance to share responsibility for the education of our youth, whoever they are at the moment.

I'll rake your leaves if they end up in my yard. Will you rake mine?

4 More Years

4 more years! 4 more years!

That was the chant supporters repeated at President Bush’s victory speech today at the celebration of his election to a 2nd term of his presidency. I am not one of the many who voted for Bush. I understood our decision to attack Afghanistan, but not Iraq. I understand Bush's desire to improve education and the intent of No Child Left Behind, but not his decision to under fund it. I understand confidence, but I'll never support someone who can't ever admit mistakes. Bush's victory speech was dripping with hubris, so I don't expect him to change his course during the next four years.

So when I hear "4 more years," I'm thinking about what they mean for school technology programs.

We’ll be continuing with NCLB, without, I'm sure, adequate funding. My school has done pretty well so far in meeting the requirements of Adequate Yearly Progress, but each annual, required 10% improvement means that all schools will eventually fail AYP at some level. Technology will play a role in this process.

One of the biggest roles in quenching a school's thirst for data. Tracking and documenting AYP and providing technology to support improvement initiatives are just a couple of new uses for technology. That's on top of data needed for grant applications, testing, and test interpretation. In general, we now have to become proficient at importing, exporting, storing, retrieving, and displaying data. The hardware side is affected also, as we now need permanent, redundant storage for data. We're data jockeys now; that's what we are.

I also don't see any funding relief in the next four years. Nationally, our taxes will be going to Iraq, Afghanistan, and homeland security. I don't see how schools are going to make it to the surface in any budget battles that include discussions of our "nation-building" efforts, which could easily spread to additional countries. You could see that in our cowboy chief's smirk right after he talked about working together with "anyone who shares his goals."

Our state budget will be no help either; ISBE is in turmoil as the governor takes it over, and the technology division there has been reduced to two staff members--this in a state with over 2.3 million students--this in a state that ranks 46th in education spending.

Local funding trends are even worse. , tax watchdog groups attend our board meetings and snatch phrases, expenditures, and Board actions to hammer away at mercilessly. It's become partisan politics at its worst, with the "spin" favoring one's own billfold or purse.

In light of these very real challenges, what equipment should we purchase? What software tools will do the most to advance student learning? What database tools will go the farthest in helping us track and pinpoint effective ways to meet our academic yearly progress goals? How long can we keep our existing equipment running?

4 more years. Sigh.

Rebooting Myself

Occasionally, roughly once every 3 months, my internal server goes down. And I have to leave it down for a bit before trying to reboot it.

It's like the advice I got from a systems analyst friend when I got my first PC back in the 80's. Although I had used a computer at my school, I had never had to bring one back to life on my own. So one morning my new PC came up with a black startup screen where it sat frozen. My friend, when I reached him at work, suggested that I should shut down the PC, count to 10, and then reboot. I asked him the sort of question many novice computer users have asked me over the years. "What could have caused this?"

His response: "Just a hiccup."

This morning, my server was down. My brain and my body were frozen. I don't have the hiccups, but the day is like a spasmodic contraction. I've got cold symptoms, but I'm guessing that those are just...symptoms. The real, underlying issue is a reduction of processing power, overloaded circuits, fragmentation.

Working in schools is intense. Directing a program is intense. Putting one's faith in digital devices, software code, and global networks of wires and devices adds strain to a person's ability to continue to operate at an optimum level.

Add to that the modern layers of communications devices, frequent interruptions, and demands for optimum productivity--it's not surprising that a person needs time to recharge now and then.

I think I've got a mild case of NEDS--New Economy Depression Syndrome. Yahoo! executive Tim Sanders has shared this phrase, coined by one of his readers, to describe the symptoms I'm feeling.

So I'm taking today to count to 10 before I reboot. The process will help me restore my correct system settings. It will reconnect me to files my system database has lost track of. It will allow me to rest my overworked CPU, weary from two much multi-tasking. It will restore my random access to the resources I need to complete a given day of work. I'll be defragged.

So what will cure my case of NEDS? Some quiet. Slowly reading one newspaper. Listening to the rain. Reflecting quietly. Not turning on my phone. I'm reminding myself that I'll be back at work tomorrow; remembering the many days that I've worked long and late; recognizing how much I multi-task, work from home, email, voice mail, web publish, face-to-face--all this helps me rest today.

Later, I'll reboot. For now...

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Introduction

In the midst of the chaos and intensity of my work as a school technologist, thoughts often bubble up into my mind. Here are my reflections on technology's role in learning, the challenges of providing technology services in a school setting, and my hopes and fears for learning in a wired world.