CIO Sidewalk

The start of a new school year is always a hectic time for all school personnel but especially for IT staff. All too often, we get asked, “When you have time, will you blah, blah, blah.”.

This phrase is so funny to The IT folks because it will be sometime in mid-October before we actually do have time. Two months ago in June and July we had time. Now we don’t.

The problem is that we school staff do not communicate their needs UNTIL the start of school even though most of the time the “need” was known weeks prior to the start of school.

For example, each year existing single staff members will get married and have their name changed. However, the wedding is never the week school starts, but it is the time when they contact their IT department to have their name changed on their (1) district ID badge; (2) their webpage; (3) the link to their webpage; (4) their username; (5) their email address; and any other applications that may exist. Why don’t users contact their IT department sooner? Why doesn’t their immediate supervisor let the IT department of the possible name change? The answer is because the IT department is an AFTER thought to everything … unfortunately.
The blame, however, falls to the IT department for not inquiring of users about things that need to be addressed before school starts. IT forget that the average user is a “now” person in that they live in the “here and now” and not in the “future”. Teachers for sure fall into this category. You can’t blame them considering the work load that administrators, state education leaders, and federal regulations have placed on them.
What IT departments must do is to become more proactive to perhaps be able to address some things before school opens. Only then will the phrase “when you have time” result in something other than a laugh under the breath.

What is a simple question can be quite complicated.  Today, in the day of education reform the job has grown exponentially.  Teachers are expected to be curriculum experts, researchers, psychologists, administrators (yes, many have what use to be the “principal’s responsibility), etc.

Despite all of the “extra” issues that teacher’s must face and deal with on a daily basis, the core responsibility has not changed.  They are there to “teach”.

Now, consider the word teacher.?  Does that word simply mean to “present material”?  Is a teacher just a “salaried presenter or lecturer”?  Is the job of a teacher not to just teach a class but to “teach each student”?  If so, what does that word “teach” imply?  Doesn’t it imply that something is LEARNED?  It’s more that just “showing something” as in “here’s how you add”.

If it’s the teacher’s role to ensure learning, then the teacher must be proficient in different ways – engaging ways – to teach content.  After all, isn’t a teacher the “expert” in the classroom in this regard?

However, how does the school or school district prepare the teacher in these different ways?  Wait, before you say that it’s the university’s responsibility to do that, let’s take a reality check.  A teacher learns “teaching” from doing.  That first year of teaching is worth more than a teacher’s entire four or five years in college.  After all, you want a doctor fresh out of med school or one that’s had at least one year of residency?

So, how does the school or school district assist the teacher?  Are they even assisting the teacher in that processt?  How do they spend their after school hours?  Are they using that time with pointless faculty and committee meetings (which do not directly affect student learning), or are they being spent in ways developing various teaching methods?  A teacher’s time, just like any professional, is valuable.  Wasting the teacher’s time on book studies or pointless meetings that resolve nothing are not helpful in the professional development of that teacher – that person in the classroom that is expected to ensure student learning.

Teachers need to be taught (with time to practice) ways to incorporate  into their lessons resources that provide engaging learning opportunities for the student – today’s student.  I’ve recently walked by way too many rooms with way too many students that were “checked out” – heads down or not paying any attention.  Why do teachers allow that?  Remember that word “teacher” implies learning – all students learning.

These students have checked out because they see no value in what material is being presented or how that material is being.  The student is not ENGAGED whatsoever.

Society, state and federal governments, parents, etc. all want schools to increase student proficiency.  Schools and school districts have two choices.   First, they can change what is being taught, who is doing the teaching, or how the teaching is being done.  It’s that last category that I feel schools and school districts need to set their focus.

Too often we think we are good communicators. More often in actuality we are not, though. The following summary I found online at http://www.hodu.com/barriers.shtml.

What makes it complex, difficult, and frustrating are the barriers we put in the way. Here are the 7 top barriers.

1. Physical barriers

Physical barriers in the workplace include:
• marked out territories, empires and fiefdoms into which strangers are not allowed
• closed office doors, barrier screens, separate areas for people of different status
• large working areas or working in one unit that is physically separate from others.

Research shows that one of the most important factors in building cohesive teams is proximity. As long as people still have a personal space that they can call their own, nearness to others aids communication because it helps us get to know one another.

2. Perceptual barriers

The problem with communicating with others is that we all see the world differently. If we didn’t, we would have no need to communicate: something like extrasensory perception would take its place.

The following anecdote is a reminder of how our thoughts, assumptions and perceptions shape our own realities:
A traveller was walking down a road when he met a man from the next town. “Excuse me,” he said. “I am hoping to stay in the next town tonight. Can you tell me what the townspeople are like?”

“Well,” said the townsman, “how did you find the people in the last town you visited?”
“Oh, they were an irascible bunch. Kept to themselves. Took me for a fool. Over-charged me for what I got. Gave me very poor service.”

“Well, then,” said the townsman, “you’ll find them pretty much the same here.”

3. Emotional barriers

One of the chief barriers to open and free communications is the emotional barrier. It is comprised mainly of fear, mistrust and suspicion. The roots of our emotional mistrust of others lie in our childhood and infancy when we were taught to be careful what we said to others.

“Mind your P’s and Q’s”; “Don’t speak until you’re spoken to”; “Children should be seen and not heard”. As a result many people hold back from communicating their thoughts and feelings to others.
They feel vulnerable. While some caution may be wise in certain relationships, excessive fear of what others might think of us can stunt our development as effective communicators and our ability to form meaningful relationships.

4. Cultural barriers
When we join a group and wish to remain in it, sooner or later we need to adopt the behavior patterns of the group. These are the behaviors that the group accept as signs of belonging.

The group rewards such behavior through acts of recognition, approval and inclusion. In groups which are happy to accept you, and where you are happy to conform, there is a mutuality of interest and a high level of win-win contact.

Where, however, there are barriers to your membership of a group, a high level of game-playing replaces good communication.

5. Language barriers

Language that describes what we want to say in our terms may present barriers to others who are not familiar with our expressions, buzz-words and jargon. When we couch our communication in such language, it is a way of excluding others. In a global market place the greatest compliment we can pay another person is to talk in their language.

One of the more chilling memories of the Cold War was the threat by the Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev saying to the Americans at the United Nations: “We will bury you!” This was taken to mean a threat of nuclear annihilation.

However, a more accurate reading of Khruschev’s words would have been: “We will overtake you!” meaning economic superiority. It was not just the language, but the fear and suspicion that the West had of the Soviet Union that led to the more alarmist and sinister interpretation.

6. Gender barriers

There are distinct differences between the speech patterns in a man and those in a woman. A woman speaks between 22,000 and 25,000 words a day whereas a man speaks between 7,000 and 10,000. In childhood, girls speak earlier than boys and at the age of three, have a vocabulary twice that of boys.

The reason for this lies in the wiring of a man’s and woman’s brains. When a man talks, his speech is located in the left side of the brain but in no specific area. When a woman talks, the speech is located in both hemispheres and in two specific locations.

This means that a man talks in a linear, logical and compartmentalized way, features of left-brain thinking; whereas a woman talks more freely mixing logic and emotion, features of both sides of the brain. It also explains why women talk for much longer than men each day.

7. Interpersonal barriers

There are six levels at which people can distance themselves from one another:
1. Withdrawal is an absence of interpersonal contact. It is both refusal to be in touch and time alone.
2. Rituals are meaningless, repetitive routines devoid of real contact.
3. Pastimes fill up time with others in social but superficial activities.
4. Working activities are those tasks which follow the rules and procedures of contact but no more.
5. Games are subtle, manipulative interactions which are about winning and losing. They include “rackets” and “stamps”.
6. Closeness is the aim of interpersonal contact where there is a high level of honesty and acceptance of yourself and others.

Working on improving your communications is a broad-brush activity. You have to change your thoughts, your feelings, and your physical connections.

As the military will attest, any type of “friendly fire” is unacceptable, and this type sure fits that bill.

About 9:30 CST yesterday (04/21/2010), school districts across the state of Kentucky were hit by “friendly fire”.  This bombardment came in the form of a McAfee dat update – something that is meant to protect workstations from virus and Trojan threats, not something that causes harm.

The release of the McAfee dat update (5958) caused McAfee’s AV software to classify a critical Windows XP system file, called svchost.exe, as a malicious program.  As a result, the software was instructed to detect and remove the threat, sending affected PCs into fits of rebooting that made the machines useless.

Customers using Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system with Service Pack 3 were affected by the glitch while Windows Vista or Windows 7 machines were not affected.  Early estimates for our district are that about 15% of our workstations were affected.   Fortunately, most workstations were either not powered on at the time or had not yet received their update to the AV software.  In addition, the quick action each school did in shutting down all workstations as soon as the issue was discovered also helped to contain the problem.

Unfortunately, the only remedy to this problem has been a manual on-site fix.  This is a big problem is that it can’t be done remotely. Someone has to walk up to the affected system, reboot it in safe mode, apply the fix, and reboot it again.  The IT department staff have received assistance from each school’s technology coordinator, some lab teachers, and the student help desk staff to go to each site to fix the affected machines.  The additional help allowed our district to get back up and running in a minimal amount of time.

Phil Colemen, OET Director of System Support Services, stated, “In all my technology years I have never seen something so destructive and widespread.  Some of you remember the “Code Red” and “Nimda” viruses.  Those were bad but more acceptable because it was malicious. Today is what I call “Friendly Fire” and ”Friendly Fire”, under any circumstance, is not acceptable.”

State technology leadership and the CEO of McAfee (Dave Dewalt) had a conference call this morning to discuss the impact this McAfee error caused the K12 environment in Kentucky.  McAfee did fly four senior level engineers into Lexington to work with OET technical staff throughout the week, weekend, and until the problem is 100% resolved.  Hopefully, this incident will cause McAfee to put in place measures that will prevent any such event from ever happening again.

McAfee Probing Bungle That Sparked Global PC Crash

Warning: Windows XP SP3 and McAfee don’t mix

SMART Board Installation

Well, the title sums it up for me today.  Let me first provide some background information.  As I blogged previously, we completed an installation of projectors and SMART Boards in five classrooms at our elementary school.  However, one installation has had an issue since the day we did the install.

The install itself was no different than any of the other thirty or so we’ve done over the past three years.  It was a very typical classroom installation.  However, this particular one  kept having an issue with almost regularity.  After about 15 to 45 minutes, the computer would drop the connection to the SMART Board.  You could disconnect the cable from the computer and reconnect it, but in about 15 to 45 minutes (it varied sometime) the connection would be dropped again.

We began our troubleshooting (almost four weeks ago) as usual.  We checked all the connections, verified computer settings, replaced cables, replaced CAT5 extenders, tried a new computer, etc.  Nothing seemed to get us anywhere.  We even replaced the controller board on the back of the SMART Board.  Nothing would help other than connecting the computer to the SMART Board (actually the SMART speakers) via a long USB cables to bypass the CAT5 extenders altogether.

This “remedy” had us thinking the issue was with the speakers (the board is connected to the speakers which are connected to the computer via the CAT5 extenders).  So, we replaced the speakers.  I did that the day before Thanksgiving.  However, after taking the board down to change the speakers and putting it back up, the connection failed once again after about 45 minutes.  We were back a square one.

Well, yesterday we started considering something which I actually dismissed at in laughter when we first discussed it.  Our district technician was troubleshooting (again for about the hundredth time) the problem when the teacher asked him if her mini refrigerator could be causing the problem.  She noticed it “kicked on” right before her computer lost its connection to the board.  So, we began looking at how the refrigerator was connected.  The fridge was plugged into a power strip which was connected to another power strip which was (yeah, you guessed it) connected to another power strip.  Now, this last power strip is wired directly into the electricity and is mounted on the wall.  It’s one of the long (and I do mean long) power strips that provides about 10 to 15 plugs.

So, we ask the teacher to unplug the refrigerator for a while.  Sure enough, the connection stays active.  Believing the issue to be solved, the teacher reconnects her refrigerator to another power strip (another wall mounted type).  However, sometime yesterday afternoon (after reconnecting the fridge) her connection when out again.

We went back to the teacher and asked her to leave the refrigerator unplugged completely and to also move the pencil sharpener that was connected to the same power strip as the computer.  I am THRILLED to report that everything has stayed connected since.

The power feeding the power strip (mounted on the wall) where she had connected the refrigerator also fed the same power strip where her computer is connected.  So, we have concluded that the refrigerator must be emitting some EMI (electro magnetic interference) that was being picked up through the power strips and causing the computer to drop the USB connection to the SMART Board … or something like that.

Taking what we learned in this situation, I then checked out another room that has had the same type of connection issue for two years now.  This was an install outsourced but had been redone in-house this past summer – all new cables, etc.  We redone the install in an attempt to resolve the issue the teacher was having.  Again, I go to check out her room and what do I find?  Yep, she also had a mini-refrigerator located under her desk and connected to the same power strip as her computer.  I then told her about our almost unbelievable findings in the other classroom and asked her to move the refrigerator to the other side of the room.

Well, I was not really expecting that this would resolve her issue, but this afternoon, after a day of having a fully functional white board, she was packing up her refrigerator and taking it home.  Her board worked ALL DAY LONG!  I could not believe it.  I would have never had thought to consider this solution.

So, the moral of this rather lengthy blog entry is to not ignore all possible causes of a problem.  Sometimes, the most unlikely cause is right in front of your eyes.

Student Help Desk Performs Installations

Last week marked an historic day in our school district  – at least it was one of historic importance to me.   With the installation in the special education room at Murray Elementary,  this school now has all its classrooms outfitted with ceiling mounted projectors and whiteboards!

It was the summer of 200 and MES had no classrooms with this type of teaching and learning equipment.  Beginning with the third grade that year and ending with the Kindergarten this year, we have managed to equip one grade level each year.  With the exception of that first year, all labor has been done by our IT department and student help desk, which haas saved our district approximately $16,000 in labor costs.

Since all classrooms at MES are now equipped, the school and district are gathering data to determine if the equipment that was installed in year1 (summer of 2006) is meeting the needs of the students and teachers.  Based on the district technology committee’s findings, the next technology plan may include plans to replace the year one equipment installed so that all classrooms have identical equipment.

What’s that?  I do believe it’s the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel!

Murray Middle and our school district has worked hard over the past three years to equip each classroom with an interactive whiteboard.  Fortunately, we should have each classroom at MMS outfitted with a SMART Board and projector in the coming two weeks.

We will begin a four-room installation next Monday when we install a SMART Board and project in Mr. Booth’s classroom. Then on Thursday of next week, we will move across the hall to complete the sixth grade classrooms with an install in Ms. Hinton’s room.  The following week we will be completing our install at MMS with installations in the sister and brother combination of Ms. Shown (5th grade) and Mr. Shown (7th grade).

We are all excited to be able to provide our teachers and students access to such engaging learning tools.  I have seen first hand over the past two years how some of our classrooms have been transformed into more engaging and interactive rooms of learning.  Is there any reason that our district continues achieve high scores on state and national tests?  When students are engaged more there is more opportunities for learning.  There is a direct relation between the two.  When you combine such tools with outstanding teachers, you have a recipe for success!

Often I hear some of our users inquire when something is not working by asking me, “Is the server down?”  I always have to chuckle a little on the inside since  we have 25 servers in our district instead of just one.  Most average users of a computer network think in terms of one server – a gigantic machine that controls every aspect of not only the network but every computer itself.  Can’t login?  Must be “the server”.  Can’t access the Internet?  Must be “the server”.  Can’t print?  You guessed it.  It must be “the server”.  Perhaps this concept has its roots in the days of the mainframe when technically there was only one computer – the mainframe.  When the terminal was useless, the issue could be “the server”.  Networks and server architecture have significantly changed since those days in the 60′s.

The mindset in small and mid-size businesses (school districts) of the past 10 to 15 years has been “buy an application, buy a server”.  Need a print server for location, then you need a server.  Need a website, then buy a web server.  Just purchased credit recovery software, then go buy a server.

This “application to server” mentality has led to what is called in the industry as “server sprawl”.  Server sprawl is a term used to describe a situation that can occur in data centers where a disproportionate amount of the physical server machines are running at very low utilization, thus wasting a lot of the data center’s resources like power, cooling and space, as well as the internal resources of each server such as CPU cycles, memory and storage.  It’s like have three people in a family who can drive but having 25 vehicles.  Insurance and taxes must be paid on them all.  You need one huge garage (temperature controlled of course) to store them.  You have to have them all periodically serviced.  So, a person end up having a large total cost of ownership (insurances, taxes, heating and cooling the garage, and service bills) to have 25 vehicles.  It’s just not efficient.

Keep in mind that it’s not like you went out and purchased all those vehicles (or servers) at the same time.  What started out as maybe two or three grew over time to the 15, 20, or more today.  Just like those vehicles, the servers are not well-utilized which leads to this issue of server sprawl.  Fortunately, there is an alternative – server virtualization.

What is server utilization? There’s a 2.5 minute video on YouTube that does a good job of explaining it, but in short it’s a method of running multiple independent virtual operating systems on a single physical computer.  Think of it this way.  Instead of having those 25 physical vehicles to maintain, cool, and store, what if you have only one that had more horsepower, but it allowed you to still drive those other 25 and you (the driver) would never notice the difference?  That’s what server virtualization does … in the simply sense – one physical server running some special virtualization software that allows multiple “virtual” servers to reside on it.

About ten days ago, our district moved into this virtualized server world when we virtulized 14 servers.  There were 25 total phyiscal servers in our district, but five of them we didn’t own and could not virtualize.  The remaining six we chose not to virtualize for various resons (one will go not be used anymore in a month or so) at this point.  Two Dell PowerEdge R710 servers are providing the processing power for VMWare as our virtualization software.  Matt Brannock from ProSys performed our installation, and  I can’t say enough about the positive experience we had with Matt.

We may not have just “one” server, as most users think, but we do have quite a few less than we once did.  Now, if I want to add RAM or a second process to one of my servers (virtual ones), I simply stop it, change a setting, and restart it – all in a matter of about two minutes.  It did not cost me anything since I did not have any physical memory to purchase, and I did not have to open a server.  Living in this virtual world is so much easier!

Many teachers I work with have monthly, sometimes weekly, newsletters they do for their classroom.  Typically, the newsletter is constructed in Microsoft Word or Publisher.  The file is then converted to PDF and posted on their classroom web page using Adobe Contribute (formerly Macromedia Contribute).  About a month ago I started thinking about this process that, again, many teachers undertake.  I thought to myself how this entire process was completely inefficient.  Create it in one program, convert it to another, and finally edit a web page in still another program … and all having to be done from within our network (at least the editing of the web page part).

Just as the saying goes, “it hit me like a ton of bricks” –  well, it hit me like  a ton of bricks.  Why not use a blog to have a classroom newsletter.  A blog is not confined to the constraints of one program or network.  It’s flexible.  It can be added to or edited from any Internet capable device (think iPhone here).  It maintains a archive of past blog entries (newsletters).  And since it is a web page, it can be printed for those who may not have Internet access at home.

I discussed this with some teachers first by asking them about their current process.  See, I wanted to sale this idea and wanted them to realize how their current process was bogged (not blogged) down inefficiency.  Each time I discussed this with a teacher they saw the benefit but were a little hesitant because of never having any experience with blogging. 

So, just like a teacher would do, I demonstrated for them what is involved with blogging.   I showed them both blogger.com and edublogs.org.  I showed them how to setup an account and how easy it is to use the WYSIWYG editor.  Needless to say, afterwards each teacher was sold (unfortunately no commission or tip was given). 

Nothing makes a CIO, technology director, etc. more proud of teachers than to see them embrace technology in a way that not only makes their day-to-day job easier but enhances or improves communication with students and parents.

This summer I attended KySTE Summer Conference in Louisville.  A session I attended was titled “Google Here, Google There, Google Everywhere”.  One of the Google tools that was covered was the use of Google Calendar.  I was aware of this tool and how it could be used as a communication tool for teachers or coaches but wanted to take it “to the next level”.  

Teachers each year want to list activities on their classroom web page  but often are disenchanted with the process of having to edit their page each time they want to add a new event.  It was during this “Google” session at KySTE that I started wondering if the Google calendar could be embedded into a teacher’s web page which would give them an easy and professional looking way to display their classroom activities.  So, when I returned to the district I was thrilled to find out that it could be done and set out to create a step-by-step document with pictures for teachers so that they could do this themselves.

How excited I am that numerous teachers in my district have taken that document and successfully created a Google calendar and embedded it into their classroom web page.  The excitement in the teacher’s eyes when they accomplished this task.  They now have an easy way to keep their students, parents, and community informed.