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Introduction

The notes on this page reflect my experiences at the Texas CTO Meeting Conference.Podcasts will be shared for each presentation pending editing.

• Slideshows and Materials for the CTO Clinic 2008
• Podcast: A Vision for Education Technology in Texas: Legislative Landscape

Open Source Software Presentation

Steve Hargadon, Panel Facilitator

• Mentioning that there’s been a shift in thinking about open source. Wikipedia is one example of this. Moodle vs Blackboard.
• Capability of connecting and collaborating for open source software.
• “Here comes everybody!” by Clay Shirkey (sp?)
• This is a New World
  • What changes are you seeing?
  • How is your personal learning changing?
  • How is learning changing at your school?
  • What Open Technology are you using?
• Setting the Stage—Your Students
  • Have access to a far greater number of information resources than traditional learning environments provided
  • Understand and expect info to be available and free
  • Discern little difference between virtual and physical worlds.
• New web site - http://k12opentech.org
  • Running on Drupal
  • Run on blog
  • RSS feeds
• Studies and Reports
  1. Enterprise Open Source
  2. Indiana Desktop Linux
  3. Moodle - 5 different case studies of how schools are using it.
  4. Creative Commons and Open Content
  5. Hot Technologies (Moodle/Open Course Management, Open Content, Lower-cost Computers, Linux OS, Virtualization)
  6. Ready for Prime Time Desktop Apps
• What is Linux?
  • Steve is sharing how different distros of GNU/Linux are designed to meet different needs.
• Open Technology - John Alawneh, Plano ISD
  • How are school districts or companies using Open Source? How can you take advantage of this technology?
  • I came from Health Care…we were basically mainframe shops.
  • Quote shared: “Open technology is doing for mass innovation what the assembly line did for mass production. Get ready for the era when collaboration replaces command and control while improving productivity, competitive differention, customer intimacy, and improved business results.”
• By 2010, Global 2000 companies will consider open-source products in 80% of their infrastructure-focused software investments and 25% of their business software investments. (Source: Gartner, June 2005)
• What is Open Technology?
  • Collaboration - developers are making a community around the solution.
  • Innovation
  • Interoperability
  • Transparency
• Why now?
  • Internet
  • Globalization
  • The massive flows of information
  • Transforming economies
• Why use it?
  • Reliable: No blue screen of death, GUI is optional, no disk defragmentation, no Registry, no privacy issues, flexible
  • Service-oriented: Good support, no SIDs, no forced upgrades, access to source code, access to skilled community
  • Cost-savings: Runs on your existing machines, free and requires no costly add-ons, has no or minimum licensing mechanism
  • Heterogeneous: Integrates with NetWare, integrate with Mac networks, multi-platform.
• Why NOT?
  • Hard to initially get going and installed
  • Requires more administration
  • In-house availability of skilled support
  • Migration costs
  • Uncertainty
• Web 2.0 Tools
  • Google for Educators
  • zoho office
  • AP National News and Google Maps
  • Newzingo
• Plano ISD
  • Server Migration - lot of work has to be done…how did this happen? Server side and then focus on desktop side.
    • Collapsing the email servers into data center
    • Collapsing print services to data center
    • Collapsing file services
  • Linux Servers
    • Open Enterprise Server (SUSE Linux Enterprise v10)
    • CentOS
    • DebianOS
  • Applications
    • ERP - Runs on JBOSS
    • Student Portal - student portal running mySQL
    • Apache - runs 95% of web servers
    • SPAM Filter (Proof Point) - Running mySQL
    • PDAS - running mySQL
    • Call management (Avotus - SCO Linux)
    • Blue Coat (proxy)
    • ProofPoint (Spam)
    • HVAC Controls
    • Application Tracking - Running mySQL
    • Alana (POS)
    • Google Search Appliance
  • System Management Tools
    • Real VNC - remote access
    • Putty - remote control-telnet
    • WinSCP - secured FTP from any platform
    • CACTI - system performance monitoring
    • Nagios - system performance monitoring
    • Printing services (iPrint on Linux)
    • Desktop Automation (AutoIT)
    • Asterisk - PBX phone system
  • Desktop
    • Xandros Linux OS on Asus Eee
    • SLED (KDE, Gnome)
  • Lessons Learned
    • Most of cost savings come from the server application licensing (mySQL, DB2)
    • Management tools provide just as good if not better tool sets than paid for services
    • The user community is your support structure.
    • For standard file/print and office automation services, we have concluded that we can use a Linux desktop to fulfill those needs.
  • Challenges
    • Steep learning curve for staff
    • Many diff revisions
    • Flexibility can introduce new complexities
    • There isn’t a traditional call center able to handle your issue
    • 1000+ applications used by curriculum. Did application tracking and find open source equivalents for these products. Replace them with web-based products. Not going to be accomplished in a short period of time.
  • Operational Impact
    • Flexibility to accommodate needs
    • Best fit technology
    • Leverages our vendor negotiations - having open source technologies has helped tremendously.
    • Lowers operational cost
  • Future Considerations
    • Keep an open mind
    • Consider open tech from a good source where they can provide services
    • It gives us a choice…no need to wait on Vista or vendor rleeases to solve problems
    • One size does not fit all
    • Open source does not mean free.
• James Watson, Network Manager, Spring ISD
  • Demographics
    • 34,000 students
    • 32 campuses
    • 31 IT staff
    • Over 13,000 computers
    • Fastest growing economically disadvantaged student population in the Houston metro area over the past 5 years.
    • Superintendent Dr Ralph Draper
  • “It seems every day that more and more information is made available to us, and with much greater ease than ever before. have there been dramatic shifts in teaching methods? No. Adaptation, perhaps, because to utilize these new technologies they have to be implemented into the curriculum, but the core idea of educating students has remained the same. - Alex Hirsch, Converge Magazine
  • Current Open Source Projects
    • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
    • SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop
    • Linux User Apps: Moodle, OpenOffice, WINE
• SLES Conversion
  • 18 SUSE Linux Enterprise Servers
    • Authentication services
    • Cluster- file/print services
    • Identity management (single sign-on)
• Future Services
  • Email cluster
  • Desktop management
  • Remote file access
• SLED Pilot
  • Started March 2008
  • Working with Identity Automation to extnesively test
    • Network services (printing, wireless, etc)
    • Authentication services
    • Driver compatibility
    • Instructional Software
    • Starting out at elementary schools in environments that don’t require Windows specific apps.
• Why consider Linux?
  • Extends life of previous hardware upgrades
  • Allows us to meet our minimum life span requirement of 5 years without upgrades
  • Maximizes value for taxpapyer dollars
  • Reduces costs associated with software licensing, software assurance, and maintenance fees
  • Average yearly savings of $85,000 on the LMS System alone. Blackboard implementation—primarily at the high schools—cost $100K. [Wow!!]
• “By sending the same tech home with students, we ensure that they have access to educational information available at all times.” Alex Hirsch
• Challenges to Using Linux
  • Teacher and staff acceptance: instructing adult users to think in terms of software concepts rather than specific software packages.
  • Standardization: The district will no longer have one standard for operating systems and office suite software as we move toward platform independence. This is currently an issue for users that have Windows Vista or Mac operating systems at home with MS Office
  • Compatibility: Compatibility with specialized software and online testing may need to be addressed in the future.
• Next Steps for SLED PILOT
  • Elementary labs in 4 schools
  • Libraries
  • Teachers (two using Linux laptops over summer)
  • Document Conversion Pilot with Curriculum Dept
  • Testing new low cost laptops (BLTs)
  • IT Support Staff
• Ongoing PR Campaign
  • Pushing for a paradigm shift in computer usage
• Moodle
  • Replacing Blackboard as our Learning Management System
  • Converting our 1 to 1 high school
  • 13 courses for our Virtual School
  • Secondary teacher/student use
  • Administrative collaboration tool (principals)
• WINE
  • Continue to “port” existing instructional applications
  • Open Source alternate software - http://
• PR Campaign
  • Be all you can be for free
  • The price is right
  • Where do you want to go today for free?
  • The software for the rest of us
  • May the open source be with you
• Government/Armed Services uses Linux.

A Vision for Education Technology in Texas: Legislative Landscape

• Listen to Podcast of this event
• Speakers
  • Mark Strama, Appropriations: Select Committee on Education
  • Rep. Rob Eissler, Chair, Public Education Committee
  • Rep. Scott Hochberg, Vice Chair, Higher & Public Education Finance, Select Committee
• Mark Strama: one of the ways we can address unique challenges is by addressing the power of tech, how tech has revolutionized business and empowered end users, one of the critical things we need to do is to unleash the power of tech in classrooms.
• Scott Hochberg: Electrical Engineer, Computer Software developer and legislator.
• Rob Eissler: Live in the Woodlands, degree in architecture, always interested in education (on Conroe ISD Board of Trustees), coached basketball, 13 years as a junior achievement teacher, lot of time in policy business, always intringued with technology.

Scott Hochberg

• Vision for Technology
  • Divide tech into two areas—instructional (classroom) and compliance/accountability technology.
  • Instructional Tech…I think the jury is still out as to what we ought to be doing there. Spent 3 years studying a laptop immersion project. After 3 years and comparing that to other schools without laptop package, the results were similar…lots of smiles, happy teachers and children, but no value added on any metric we use to measure student performance. Either it delivers no additional value or we have a crummy metric. Lots of folks will say the TAKS test is a lousy metric. What we did was take a $1500 laptop package and compare it with 0 classroom packages…so it wasn’t a fair test.
  • I personally am not excited about going forward with that. But there was an interesting finding.Can you make sure kids have Internet access at home…that might mean more than putting 30 laptops in every classroom. That’s a program I’d like to test.
  • The value is that the encyclopedia is the Internet.
  • In the area of materials…meeting at Rice Univ. Open textbook. Meeting with someone with a company that I didn’t know existed…the company that writes the materials for the textbook company. Rice Univ sees a way to deliver content if they have the course materials. How could they be involved in the textbook adoption model? Documents like PDFs would be either open source or low-cost.
  • Supposed to be delivering better education…re-do PEIMS. To the extent we can redesign it to help the teacher in the classroom, then it’s just a big collection of stuff that supports a particular political agenda.
  • Working with E3 Consortium…listening to their stories about helping schools. They have found trying to get data out of TEA to be an impossible job.
  • Spring Branch ISD Superintendent…we provide this data to the State that I pay vendors for, but then I have an Excel spreadsheet that has the data I really need.

Rob Eissler

• PEIMS thread continues…
• HouseBill 2238 - $200 million fiscal note. That’s how much it was going to cost to clean up the data. That should tell you what a “great” job to clean up the data. We could tell they were fighting it. Need cleaner data, timelier data
• You may have heard of end of course exams, TAKS, fairer accountability system…have a strong accessible well-timed data to make data driven decisions and provide tools to school districts.
• Three Rs:
  • Recognize best practices and districts
  • Reward them
  • Repair those that aren’t performing

Mark Strama

• What schools will look like in 5 years…I walk into most classrooms and see a teacher standing in front of 30 kids in different states of preparedness. All kids will learn at different speeds and teacher works to the center of the bell curve, can’t differentiate instruction.
• To measure the effectiveness of pilot programs…not much scientific validity in my method, but I’m visiting Intelligent Classrooms and New Tech classrooms. I see kids learning at their own pace where the teacher is in the center of the classroom. Right now, it’s an article of faith. We will waste a lot of money and get things wrong as we work to find how. I believe we can eventually get it right and it’s the most revolutionary thing we can do…what’s the thin edge of the wedge. What can you build or provide that will make every classroom follow.
• The appropriate role of the State is that we give you all these standards…challenges we face is variability of teaching in each classroom. Why haven’t we put online, putting the best pedagogical practices, instructional content that we say what every kid must learn? Why can’t we provide this for free in 5 years to every child, parent, teacher in the State of Texas?
• Move the teacher from the sage on the stage to guide on the side. Teachers are unavoidably social workers. We need to automate instructional aspects so that teachers become coaches.
• Web-based delivery model to access via thin client, low total cost of ownership, unleash districts to integrate technology.

Challenges to face in next legislative sessions

Rob Eissler

• How many people are thinking money? That is one. We are sitting in a surplus situation…10billion, 17 billion or somewhere in between. Human Services, cost of gas, insurance, all of the inflationary factors.
• Textbook money is now instructional materials money.
• The great transparency battle for government…put your checkbook online.Need a system where the data is useful, use the data to improve yourself…understandable TEKS. You follow SBEC closely and to get to the bottom of English Language and Reading.
• The challenge ahead is obvious…we can get more sophisticated as we get the basics squared away. Texas led the nation about data gathering but researchers complain that our data isn’t available or useful. Need to go faster.

Mark Strama

• Hard to document that spending is going to impact student learning.
• You have to compare tech funding to significant pay raise across teachers, lowering class sizes, extending the school day, all of which would materially improve student learning. This is a huge obstacle—comparing these services.
• The cost is higher than it needs to be. At the Texas Education Reform Foundation, we had a chance to meet with Michael Dell. Why does the school need an expensive computer whose capabilities are not used at 90%?
• It seems to me we have to find lower-cost models for hardware and this extends to the software too.

Scott

• 3 challenges
  • We have the money and have had it to do…zero willingness to spend it aside from writing checks to large corporations. All agencies have been asked to cut their budget by 10%. That’s 10% net, not per kid and regardless of the fact that we’re educating more people in K-16. This is a real attitudinal issue.
  • We are silo’d like you wouldn’t believe. Yet able to find anyone at a high enough level of state government. Example: UT System has finally put on their web site what their expected cost of sending a child to school there. Gives you a rough guess of what it will cost with financial aid. Can we do this for other schools? We finally may have an agreement…other universities didn’t want to give out the financial aid. The techie folks said it’s written in Flash and we can’t use it. Silos get in the way.
  • Technology People in this room do a lousy job about selling how technology is being used. Kids get excited but we’re really hard-pressed about selling technology in schools. When you’re talking to superintendents, etc, and show them what the end result will be.

Mark

• Lot of different sized school districts with different capacities. Every first year teacher faces the challenge of knowing what they’re going to teach tomorrow…if I was a sub tomorrow in a 9th grade English class, what would I have to teach. We reinvent the wheel every day, every classroom. It’s impossible for any one teacher to do this.
• Fear of technology as a home for predators: The controls to prevent predators are so strict in schools…and I watched a group project. Two 5th graders couldn’t get to Craig Bijio(sp?) because of protections/filtering. I know why parents are afraid but we need to err on the size of information.

Scott

• That info may be on the TEA web site but is impossible to find.
• Response to Mark: Fear of predators…significant #s of young men who would go to classes of 14 year olds to see who they could molest. We’re not always making decisions

Rob Eissler

• Read How Do We Transform our Schools - Clayton Christensen

Questions

• What obstacles keep you…
  • Scott: The philosophy of our government is to reduce spending, taxes, let districts fend for themselves. It’s hard to have discussions about new initiatives. Ultimately, the governor signs the budget bill and gets to veto any line of the budget bill. All of these agencies have their own agendas.
• Long Tail Learners - Digitize your resources at the regional state level.
  • Scott: What prevents you from doing this yourself? You have ESCs, etc. What keeps you from doing this?
  • Rob: Scott asked the TEA Commissioner about doing a better job awarding contracts. There were 9 recommendations for the legislature to put in statute. Scott asked the Commissioner, “How many of these have you implemented because you don’t need the legislature to do this for you?” Districts don’t do this because they don’t have to. I want to put these into the accountability, not as a nasty must-have but because that way districts will have the opportunity. Districts know how to do better what you do than we [legislators] do.
  • Scott: I don’t mean to come off as flip. My question to you, is there something we’re doing at the State level that prevents you from engaging in collaboration? Do you have your attorneys saying you can’t? If yes, then bring that to us. I remember going to a textbook coordinators meeting. We collected those things that were preventing them and we took care of it in a bill.
  • Alice Owen: Vision 2020 grant has been put out. Decisions are being made about the finalists for the grant. It’s difficult for them to fund TxVirtual Schools. What can we do at the state level to get funding for online learning (ADA issues)?
  • scott: Chairman Madden was specific about that and if TEA is having problems, then we need to ask the TEA about that. I don’t know much that can’t be done without interlocal agreement. How much is being sustained and how much is not. Who gets accountability for kids? I would argue that’s the last thing we should be worried about…I don’t care who’s TAKS report they get on so long as it’s not on both.
  • Mark: What if we created a wiki that allowed you guys to share this stuff with each other, that had a good way to rate content? Make it easy to search, use, etc….you’re not going to do a lot of things. The practical utility of a wiki that makes lesson planning, reduces workload for a teacher…at a modest investment, the State could create and unleash the thousands of flowers blooming.
  • Scott: If it’s on a TEA sponsored server and it’s not the best stuff and somebody complains, then we’re going to have to make changes…TEA will be responsible for it since it’s on TEA’s site.
  • Mark: That’s an objection they will have but we need to trust the users.
  • Rob: We need to put rule-making on TEA but if we do that, then we realize that the rules—by the time they are developed—don’t look like the Bill we passed.
• Julie Wallace: In 2005, stay alive…we were 6 million in the hole, and we gave raises. Next year, there won’t be a raise and after that we start cutting. . .we’ve been scrubbing the budget and coming up with a plan. We’ve cut as many teachers as we can, increased class sizes. We want to have a vision, but we’re all feeling this doom-n-gloom. In 3 years, we’re going to be broke.
  • Scott: Respond in 2 ways. I’ve talked a couple of times and heard the Speaker of the House say that “Schools don’t need more money.” That’s his philosophical direction. It’s our job to cut taxes, and school board’s job to raise them if you need money. I have come into many rooms and heard the exact thing you’ve said. While at some point, that may be accurate, only 1–2 districts have gone into shutdown because of finances…and in those, it’s been well-documented that there is malfeasance. We’ve heard this complaint before and the sky hasn’t ever fallen in. Performance is falling, using gimmicks to get scores up. That’s very different. Every member of this panel has worked to deal with financial issues and lost…lost those political battles. The case is not well-made. This case doesn’t sound different from Medicaid, Higher Ed…we’re 9 years behind for the parole division. You’re 50% of what we have to spend money on. I’m not telling you to give up but make your case better.
  • Mark: Everything Scott just said is right. I have also observed that the Governor’s Business Council’s messaging on this. These are CEOs that believe public schools are frivolous with their money. The correct response are that there are lessons to be learned in the private sector that applicable to public schools. But students aren’t widgets. The private education marketplace has lessons. The lesson is to spend a lot of money and see improvements. Go to KIPP. $1500 per child. The lesson of a private marketplace is that it takes money to educate kids.
  • Rob: It all comes back to management training for principals. Nieed to provide tools to school districts to run better…you know better than the state knows. You know better where to economize. We want you to optimize so that we can help you do a better job, and you’ll see a better partnership.
  • Scott: When will schools be like Federal Express? Make sure you tell them that FedEx wasn’t already trying to do the job for less money…to improve, they charge a whole lot more.

Successful Bond Campaigns- Making the Case for Technology

• Gray Salada (Austin ISD) -
  • 110 folks working on infrastructure, data side. Run our own network, own our own fiber, configured in a ring concept, 2gigabits to each campus, 6 gigabits connected. 10,000 telephones, 400 servers, wireless at all but 30 campuses.
  • SASI District but will be replacing that because end of life is 2010.
  • In the process of putting in a new gradebook with GradeSpeed.
  • TetraData?
  • Putting in a document managing system this Fall.
  • Done 7 bonds in recent history.
• Karen Fuller (Klein ISD)
  • 42K students
  • Fiber network - leased
  • gigabit backbone with 100 gigabit to desktop
  • 22K machines
  • HS 1 to 1 campus
  • Opening another HS as 1 to 1
  • Technology standard baseline initiative
  • Interactive whiteboards, eInstruction devices in 1–8th grade, document cameras
  • Teacher presentation stations
  • Voice over IP on network
  • Wireless voice over IP in our network - each teacher has a handset
  • 802.11g infrastructure
  • All 38 campuses will be upgraded with wireless
  • Voice runs over v frequency, data over a frequency. Will migrate to N frequency
  • 150 servers
  • All centralized
  • 200sqfoot operations center
  • My dept has 40 staff members - breakit-fixit group. Covers IT, phone, security infrastructure, monitoring videos for security, anything that connects to the network, we have our finger in it. Instructional Dept reports to C&I Assistant Superintendent.
  • Use Finance+ and Student IS. Need to get a data warehouse and working on that.
• Lenny Schad (Katy ISD)
  • 55K kids
  • wireless at all our campuses
  • 3 desktop in every classrooms, deploying smartboards
  • 110 people reporting
  • responsible for everything plugging into the wall
  • responsible for copiers, PEIMS
  • Replaced Student Mgmt System, gradebook
  • Replacing Finance System…our’s is on life-support.
  • Implement latest technologies in our schools but not abandoning old ones.
  • 30,000 computers.
• What are components typically included in a bond package for your district?
  • KatyISD: Biggest issue is that the maj of bond issues are for new campuses. What is the baseline for technology that needs to be a component of the bond issue? That needs to be our replacements cycle. PC, laptop, server replacements and network retrofits. These are standard brick-n-mortar and our community expects it. The horsepower on computers can last 6 years (buying us 7 million dollars) because it’s all moved to the Web. As you add projectors and cabling, you need to allow for it.
    • Our last bond issue failed. Tech needs to have the C&I. Public understands the retrofit, but we have to put C&I in front of that. It gets the public to see this as a C&I requirement/initiative rather than technology focused. When we move away from the brick-n-mortar pieces, we put the C&I dept in front.
  • Austin ISD: what was really driving us is the school funding mechanism. The funding mechanism is pushing us to bonds. M&O is being used for salaries. As a concept….
  • KleinISD: As part of the bond, infrastructure part of tech is a given. We started in 2004 to integrate technology as part of the bond. The most unique part about the bond that passed is a 1to1 initiative with bond funds. we’ve been more public about that, esp with the new bond. The 08 money bond funds…providing a PC type/tablet device for students at the secondary level. ..what separates us is that we’re using it to pay for integrated technology use. This is discussed and presented by our C&I folks. We’re looking at a 5 year life cycle of devices. We have to get them for 10 years. The bonds are helping us get to where we are at and keep our telephone structures up to date.
• Build community awareness and engagement?
  • AustinISD: This is the key to the whole bond. For Austin, they have a very good method to get bonds on the street and passed. it all comes back to 1989 when a bond package was thrown together—$150Million—and put it together in 4 months and then it didn’t pass. They didn’t communicate or work with the community. This failure…every bond since then has passed. Engage key members of the community, the commerce group, form a citizens’ bond committee, get campus people who are very involved. They work with the school board and superintendent and get that committee to address this. With this guidance—including facilities folks and do that then have them recommend what the bond should be about. The School Board will hold hearings and then this goes back to Committee, gets adjusted, then discussed again. Additionally, it doesn’t hurt if there is some specific special interest that is a big community item…in the case of Austin, technology is always a special interest, as are the Arts. In a recent bond, the supporters of the Arts played a key role.
  • Klein ISD: Put a committee together, different depts presented their needs, did assessments of existing facilities, evaluating the buildings, formed a committee of community members, students, every aspect of community we could involve in various meetings. We presented where we needed the money. Our superintendent did not have a free day during the whole bond campaign, including attending bunko games, etc. He was so instrumental in getting the word out, the right type of information, addressing the misnomers…he wanted to get the right, correct information. Need a “bell cow.” It’s one cow that everyone follows…you hear that cow, you know where the herd is. Make sure you put a bell on the right person. Continue meeting, getting information out there even after the bond has passed. You have to brag about how the money is making a difference in what you’re doing. One of the things we’re doing is keeping the info flowing…communication and community involvement are the key factors to help people answer the questions.
  • KatyISD: We have the same committees. Our biggest issue is getting that advocacy beyond the group and addressing voter apathy. Most apathetic voters don’t go out and vote. If you can just get your own staff member to vote—campuses and teachers—then your bond election would pass. We spent time focusing on community. We started Leadership Katy ISD—last 7 years—and it’s a year long commitment. This group goes through every department and learn what it takes to run a school district. The Technology dept does this preso once a month and it’s very well-received. We then take that show on the road. One of the things we have to do is get employees to vote for the bond and to better understand it. It’s not only important to tell what it is, but also to share why it’s important to them. Gotta figure out in your community what the mechanism is for getting information out. This is why you tie in Leadership KatyISD and principals. For us, on our next bond, we’re going to focus on our employees. We’re going to spend time sharing what we expect them to do. We’re going to meet with PTAs…when you “wow the mommies, that’s when you’re getting power.” Once the bond election passes…here’s what we were going to spend money on, the timeline, and evaluation of how money was spent. People need to see how bond dollars have been spent. Our challenge is
• What challenges have you faced, and what kind of opposition have you experienced with your bond campaigns? How did you address and overcome them?
  • KleinISD: By 2011, we’re doing online testing. If you’re going to test online, then you better be teaching online. This is why we’re going this route in our schools. Make videos of technology integration (1to1) with teachers, parents, students talking, and technology baseline standards (document camera, whiteboard, etc). We did the best we could to get the information out to our parents. We were able to show what students need and how it’s impacting what students are doing.
  • KatyISD: Americans for Prosperity—watch out for this group. They are very astute, funded. Your approach to marketing your school district needs to be very aggressive. Get involved or they will scare their community. We knew they were here but underestimated their impact. They convinced folks that bond elections are about building Taj Majals, poor fiscal management of schools. Technology is not a luxury anymore.
    • Be careful how you compare yourself to other districts.
  • AustinISD: Compare how other similarly sized districts are funding technology. Paint a picture that shows how other districts are funding technology. Equity is also another issue. People are really concerned about equity and how we’re going to spend money in an equitable manner across the District. Support is another issue that came up. How are we going to spend money on techs and maintenance? We’re going to build this into the bond? Seat management or on-site management…Northside ISD takes their tech allotment and pay for techs.
• Questions
  • How do you build cost in for technology?
    • We don’t have a separate line item. We have a fundamental blueprint for what the classroom configuration will be. They talk about technology in bond elections. You pay off bonds in increments. We’re paying for a PC in 5 years,not 20 years. You need to come up with a financial forecast…sharing when technology is being paid off.
  • Are you paying for your tech with 5 year bonds?
    • (KatyISD) No, 20 year but our CFO shows how to pay it off in 5 years or less.
    • Our CFO (Austin ISD). Whomever buys the bonds is stuck with the bonds. Whomever owns that bond is getting paid off in 20 years, not 5 years. No other way to buy these computers. Need to reserve M&O budget for pay raises. We’re at $1.11 and we can only go to $1.17. 1 cent is equivalent to a 1% pay raise. We’ve looked at it, presented it differently…we don’t want to spend 20 year money but we need the computers and there is no other way to do it. We have an educational specification…this is how many drops we have in each classroom, how many computers/printers in each classroom. We have this specification for each grade level and size of school.
  • How do you distinguish between M&O and replacements? How do you handle the support for computers with the bond? When you consider document management, when you have to scan previous documents that will take a lot of labor, do you include that cost?
    • (KatyISD) You can pre-purchase maintenance and it doesn’t hit your M&O budget at all. With bond funds, you can purchase all that. This helps you out a lot. You can build in time to implement. It’s all centered around implementation. Once you go live, then you can’t use bond funding. As an implementation cost, and for a doc mgmt system, I’d do all this work to get it ready for production. You run into a grey area with training. They don’t like to use bond funds for training.
    • KleinISD:
  • Is there a percentage of what’s acceptable?
    • KatyISD: Our next bond is simply for adding facilities. We’ll be approaching a billion dollar bond issue…there is no magic percentage. You have to have an awareness in your community in what they value in the education of their kids. When they don’t understand beyond new construction, technology becomes one of those sacrificial lambs. Anything beyond construction then doesn’t get paid for. There are different groups that will oppose you…you have to campaign and market more.
  • Have you split any of your bonds out because one part was controversial?
    • AustinISD: We’ve had separate referendums—technology, facilities and environmental issues, and communities-fine arts. All passed with better than 70%.
    • KatyISD: Oppositional groups are pressing us to divide our’s. If we had a better sense for where our community was, and what they valued, then we could go to a line item. Katy ISD isn’t there yet, so a line item would be disastrous. If you combine them, we can get consensus to pass them. We tie this all back to growth…if we don’t build new campuses, then we keep daisy-chaining portables. People focus on one thing and then sacrifice the rest…[what’s not important to them].Use your web site, your eNews. After every bond committee meeting, we posted information on all web pages [Miguel idea: use RSS feeds here to subscribe to district bond news]. If you have an oppositional group, you cannot be passive…be very aggressive. What you can and can’t say is a big fear for folks. Need to educate folks on what they can and can’t say. During school hours, you can say fact/fiction. When you’re on your own time, you can say whatever you want. You need to have a generic number for retrofits so that the perception isn’t that you’re spending more money on one campus than another.
    • KleinISD: We don’t separate.

CTO 2012 - Critical Trends Impacting the Role of the District Technology Leader

• Five critical areas of expertise
  1. Leadership and management
  2. Fiscal management
  3. Organization and culture skills
  4. Tech Skills
  5. Business skills
• New CIO Leader Ten Priorities
  1. Lead, don’t just manage.
  2. Understand the fundamentals of your environment
  3. Create a vision
  4. Shape and inform expectations
  5. Create clear and appropriate IT governance
  6. Weave business and IT strategy together
  7. Build a new IS organization
  8. Build and nurture a high-performing team
  9. Manage the new enterprise and IT risks
  10. Communicate IT performance in business-relevant language.
• Core Values and Skills
  1. Students and instruction
  2. Continual improvement
  3. Managing for innovation
  4. Data-driven decision making
  5. Flexibility
  6. Results
  7. Creating value
• Nine Essential Skills for School District CTOs
  1. Leadership and vision
  2. Planning and budgeting
  3. Team building and staffing
  4. Systems Management
  5. Info magmt
  6. Business leadership
  7. Education and training
  8. Ethics and policies
  9. Communication systems
  • How do we get there? What does the research tell us?

Technology Leadership in Education 2012 - Bill Rust

• What is our role going to be as tech leaders in education?
  • High level trends
  • Composition of your IT staff
• New Digital Divide
  • Old What you have…
  • New What you do…what are you doing with what you have?
  • Yawning gap of expectations between old and new.
• Telling a story of meeting with superintendent. Anything we need to talk about? Someone raised their hand and said, “We need to stop this email stuff.” Before we send an email, call them up and tell them you’re sending them an email.
• Expectations expose the new digital divide
  1. Accountability
  2. Changing nature of the leader
  3. Accessibility of technology
  4. Internal and external demands for participation
• Ubiquitous but not necessarily homogenous technology. Children have access to tech even more than ever before. The tendency is to outlaw technology that isn’t part of are standards. That’s a train you’re not going to be able to stand in front of.
• Digital natives - different from in some ways. They will have different expectations.
• The Bricks and Mortar paradigm of one off e-learning and work from home projects…
  • Changes to more focused efforts to provide instructional and professional telecomputing.
• Curriculum developed with eLearning- By 2011, 20% of primary and secondary school curriculum will be developed with e-learning and [Bill stood in front of the slideshow…argh!]
• Data locked away and used forensically…made available to teachers and staff.
• Ohio Dept of Education and Schools - DataDriven Decisions for Academic Achievement
  • Roach Motel of Data - Data goes in but never comes out. When they went to change the model, found out it was too expensive. Maybe, school districts might know something and do this themselves. Districts developed themselves, feed achievement records into a data warehouse.
• 1–1 Laptop Computing for K-12
  • Best practices
    • Curricular alignment
    • Implementation fails when you sprinkle technology in like a condiment.
  • Change in form factor (hybrid personal computing device). Example: Nova5000?
  • Less than $400 device
  • Textbook publishers put textbooks on this device and take backpacks off kids’ backs.
• CIOs are being held accountable for IT budget and expenditures.
  • Spend per pupil
  • Governance
  • Enrollment
  • Erate Discount
  • Complexity
• Green IT Issues
  • Bad news: operational use of ICT accounts for conservatively 2%
• It’s not easy being green
  • High accountability/regulation/low tech (vertical)
  • High/low degree of tech intervention (horizontal)
  • Where do you stand?
    • By 2009, more than 1/3 of IT orgs will have one or more environmental criteria in 6 years.
    • [Bill moved too fast on the slide]
  • By 2012, business will need to adopt environmentally sustainable information tech strategies.
• Software as a Service/Shared Service
  • by 2012, more than 50% of local governments and school districts that deploy ERP system will do so by acquiring software as a service or access to a shared-service center owned by someone else.
  • By 2010, the avg total cost of ownership (TCO) of new PCs will fall by 50%.
• When you’re invisible—not part of problem-solving—then your program is going to pot.
• IT Positions are going to shrink. 6 out of 10 will assume business-facing roles around info, process and relationships.
• Through 2010, 30% of top tech performers will migrate to IT vendors and IT service providers
• Less than 10% of new CIOs hired by Global 1000 companies in 2012 will have engineering and/or computer science degrees.
• By 2012 people with business or business/tech hybrid experience will make at least 70% of strategic IT decisions, up from less than 40% in 2006.
• By 2010, avg salaried worker will actively participate in at least 5 diff ad hoc teams simultaneously and 30% of these people will participate in teams with external participants.
• By 2011, social networking and social interaction will be more popular than tam interaction among enterprise users.
• Free SaaS is part of the business model of Web 2.0 and consumerization.
• Google arguably is the leader (or one of the few, true leaders) in global class apps and platforms, and it is a heavy consumer.
• K-12 IT leaders should get in front of DTV conversion
• More technology is coming, becoming more prevalent. We’re looking for a change, an intersection of people and what tech is available. Our job is to close that gap so that people, process and technology is aligned to the business and requirements of the stakeholders. This is the essence of a CTO in 2012. We have to decide what’s important, what the priorities are….
• Provide solutions, not problems.
• Recommendations
  • Seek, use and share best practices
  • Establish effective communication with stakeholders
  • Look ahead to stay in front
  • Provide solutions—not problems
  • Understand the business implications.