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Advice for the K12 Tech Guy?
small fish asks: "I am a newly dubbed 'Technology Coordinator' for a K-12 school district. Things here technology-wise are not well. People here are ignorant technology-wise--which is fine, as being tech-savvy is my job. However, they do not seem to trust my judgment on anything except changing printer cartridges. I'm being measured against a former teacher who filled the role for a while and was VERY comfortable with using Microsoft products. Are there any other Slashdot readers out there in similar straits? If so, what advice do you have for me?"
"For starters, there is no firewall, all IPs are exposed to the public, they are relying on Windows NT 4 boxes to sustain operations, and they seem to love their Exchange for doing email and address books, although I have only one user who migrates between two different computers. The Exchange server died due to a spam overload and will not restart, so I set up a BSD box for handling mail and DNS. To make things worse, there is no real disaster recovery here and virtually no backup power. As I type my carpets are still wet from last night's rains that poured through the machine room wall - and this happens every time it downpours I'm told.
My coworkers do not want anything to do with Macintosh computers, they have never heard of Firefox, and Unix was a strange foreign word I had to explain to some before I gave up entirely. What tips do you have for surviving (even thriving) in this type of environment?"
My coworkers do not want anything to do with Macintosh computers, they have never heard of Firefox, and Unix was a strange foreign word I had to explain to some before I gave up entirely. What tips do you have for surviving (even thriving) in this type of environment?"
Don't make another Kutztown 13. I'm serious. If there's a hole or flaw in one the system you coordinate, work with students and faculty, but don't try to get students thrown in jail for an error that's been made below you.
Kids are gonna push their technical limits, but don't be a nazi. They'll learn with time.
And get rid of the NT 4 boxes. Well, that's what I'd do, anyway.
- dshaw
When it fucks-up, ask your "windows happy" to help you fix it. After 10 minutes, say "fuck it, let's go Linux" and plug-in the Linux backup.
Laugh.
Since the last paragraph mentions not to mention Macintosh, I assume by answering "Apple" you either didn't read carefully, or, being teachers that he's working for, he should curry favour by bribing them with the traditional red apple, like students from a previous century used to.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
The last guy was a friend of the staff and just filled in. No real policy or leadership there (my guess) before. Now a new guy has come in and wants to change things. You're not going to be liked initially.
As another poster suggested, Macs are great. I'd try to force a change to them, but good luck. If you stay, you will be servicing old Windows boxes forever, and trying to get Linux to cover everything the old NT boxes did without anyone noticing (because they'll complain you changed something "for no reason").
Run.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Are you "The Guy" or are you a pawn of someone bigger. If your say-so carrys weight, use what you know. Put it though some pilots first (if it's in your budget), then say, "This is how it's going to be."
(If Linux) When faced with budgeting concerns, show them how much you'll save by using, say, Debian w/firefox, openoffice.org, etc. Even better, use the NX client/Server and terminal serve everyone with Knoppix CD's.
Some people are like slinkys. They're useless, but it puts a smile on your face to push them down the stairs.
At any rate- try to be a teacher, not just a tech guy. You can do a lot by contacting FreeGeek in your area and getting a donation of a few linux boxen. In addition, NEVER refuse a donation, no matter how outdated you think it is- there's always a student living in poverty who could use a computer. Some of my most interesting high school computer experinces were spent learning ISIS II, the operating system of an old Intel Chip burning computer that was given to the high school that they didn't know what to do with.
Also, remember to think age-appropriate- nothing beats old TI-99 4/As (20 years old!) with speech synthesizers for kindergarteners- they're easy to maintain because the OS is in Rom, and the kid does not need to know how to read to learn how to type.
In other words, think outside the box- and don't limit yourself to one platform or operating system. Apples, IBMs, old 8-bit computers that might have been sitting in the closet for 20 years, all are usefull for kids.
OTOH, when it comes to the teachers- internet connected systems that are all alike but have Firefox, a standard IM program, and a floppy or R/W CD based e-mail program are the way to go. And don't forget Open Office for teachers- spreadsheets and word processors are the most usefull programs for their line of work.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Disclaimer: I'm not in your situation, nor have I ever been, I'm still in high school. I do believe that these methods could work.
Try to show them visually. People can get confused if they are simply told about something. Also, maybe prepare a persentation and show why the new ways are better than the old, especially showing the benefits.
In fact, one of my teachers had no clue about Firefox. Trying to explain the extensions system among other things didn't seem to help. After showing him visually, he immediately looked into it.
If they liked the previous guy, don't try too hard to dissociate yourself from his policies. If they believed in him and considered his advice good, don't oppose his policies publicly. Work on winning people over first, then proceed to force your religious beliefs (Free Software) on them :)
In the end, you'll be just as highly considered as your predecessor was, and more-so with the money you save the district.
I'd guess he was in too much of a hurry to get the first post karma to RTFA, formulate a decent answer, or even type out more than one word.
RUN FOR THE HILLS!
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
Check this project .. www.tuxlab.org.za
Information should be free!
Get them a box with the best stuff you've got. You know, responsive, boots quickly and has the goodies they're interested in (Email, Internet and wordprocessing, spreadsheet etc.) but use your selections for the goodies, even cheat by ripping off icons, look-alike skins for the desktop and apps-- even each icon's position on the desktop is important.
Bend over backwards to keep the teacher you select happy with their new box. Even if it means undeleting a file from the hard drive that they fat-fingered or rearranging the desktop icons.
Once this teacher's satisfaction increases, word will get around and teachers will be approaching you to "fix" their computer just like you did for Teacher A.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
Exchange is very popular with users. What are you wanting to replace it with? Postfix? Good luck. You will quickly find out that only 5% of the users use the shared calendars, and that those 5% make up 95% of the complaining when you take them away...
the key thing is that as you upgrade equipment, add neat new features and reliabilty, they will start to respect you, and feel that you understand what you are doing. I know it sounds silly, but teachers hate to have to learn outside of their area. I have never figured this out, but a teacher gets very, very stuck in their ways. They have something that "works" and will almost never, ever change. So you need to move slowly at first, and make damn sure that they have only positive experiences. Make sure to point out the benefits, and most importantly, the time savings.
Oh, and congratulations.. this is one of those jobs that takes a lot of patience, but becomes very, very rewarding after time.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Build a firewall, Smoothwall is a great solution and it's free and you can use some old boxes.... if you migrate will they know?
Continue to improve the spam filtering for the mail, DO the filtering your own way inbetween the internet and the exchange server.
Find ways to build an foundation below everything they have so it remains ultimatly protected.
Assess the damage of the rain. Show them that the building can burn down due to sparks and shorts because of water seaping in.
Other then that if you want to change other things like purchases... then build a game plan for power, and backups solutions. Lay it on a table. Show that if this isn't done there is a chance the school will loose a lot of valueble information.
When i was in that same situation i did things that was invisable to users but covered my ass and protected the security of the job and data. I hope that helps :)
Andy
useful!!! useful!!! !usefull!!!
One of the most iportant things I've picked up from my aunt who worked in a K-12 schoolboard.
The tech's there, made a magic-marking system so that the creation of comments and maintaining of a permanent record. Sounds like a good idea, it is. Implementation of technology in moderation can increase productivity, but only with certian precautions.
Anyways, tis marking system was in its first year of operation, the teachers grudgingly entered in their marks (It was a webapp, in the sense that things can be done simpeler and from anywhere). On the second day of the designated marking-weekend for the teachers the system died and they had to revert to a 12 hour backup. If you go by something like this, be sure to backup. Any information that it is entered over a rapid period of time needs to be backed up at least every hour.
UPS-Wise, K-12 systems aren't that mission critical. If you can configure the bios and everything on the systems to boot up silently without any human intervention. Make it so that once the power gets back on, everything gets back up.
Warming teachers up for technology is very hard. It is easier to talk to the tech-teacher, and get him/her to migrate first if he already hasn't. To warm them up to firefox start talking about how annoying popups and ads are, then explain to him that firefox with adblock can stop them. No use catching them on the compliancy/usability, catch them on the annoyances.
The most important thing I see is to avoid CMS's integrated accross the system. My school started using FirstClass which which is marketed towards the K-12. Teachers will probably love this. In the end, students and teachers will end up hating it. (A freind of mine's in HS and his tech only knows two words; FirstClass and IBM). He dosen't get much email from his teachers or any contact because he can't have any email forwarded.
If you want to use something like this for assignment tracking/calendars, use a system that can integrate it with email. And offer the teachers the posibility of forwarding email to their home address.
If you can come up with enough old boxen suitable for linux, you can do what a freind of mine in the K-12 tech position did. He started some labs which cluster together for use with Firefox/OpenOffice. This only works for the kids, but it still makes a low cost environment.
Again, if you find that some kid gets into your system. Don't get all high and mighty on him, let him audit your network and school and *work for you*. It makes it better for the student as he dosen't get into trouble and still is nutrured for technology.
What tips do you have for surviving (even thriving) in this type of environment?"
Quit - if the machine room leaks and they won't even fix that then you're never going to be able to get them to move to better computing solutions...
I drink to make other people interesting!
build trust, I agree the current setup sounds like shit, but they won't trust your decision making until they've seen you in action for a bit.
If his coworkers are so tech illiterate that they've never heard of FireFox, or Firewalls even, maybe they won't recongnize the fact that Apple = Macintosh? Would they really notice that much if you gave them "Apple" computers with MS products loaded on?
Tea and kung-fu. Life is good. Rising Phoenix
Using the word "boxen" in your post totally invalidates it.
Sounds like you've stepped into the education sector's equivelant of dilbertland. I do not envy you.
Sorry, no useful advice to offer.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
...before you can start thinking about replacing everything with BSD or Macs.
It sounds like there are lots of problems, and you aren't going to be able to fix them all at once. Try and point out, in as professional a way as possible, what the risks are. What exactly would be lost if machine X, for which there is no backup, failed?
From a functional standpoint in a teaching environment, there may well be very valid reasons to keep using Microsoft products. Like it or not, that's what people will probably end up using in the outside world, assuming that their job is a little more fulfilling then "do you want fries with that?
There are also very valid reasons for NOT using Microsoft servers as infrastructure (cost of sale being an obvious one) but you aren't going to be able to get close to influencing any decisions if you're just seen as some sort of zealot.
So be helpful, be "a team player" and try and change the world a bit at a time, not all at once.
Oh, and the very best of luck. With water coming through the wall it sounds like you might need it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is good advice. If you walk in and dump everything for a concept that is totally unknown and alien to them, it does not matter if it's well thought out, they will oppose it and find fault with it even if there is none. And, as a post above suggests, don't roll out some huge untested plan, run a test program and build on its success.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Explain your situation in as no-nonsense of a way possible: Your predecessor clearly got by in your role on a huntch and some stupid luck, and that luck happened to run out on your watch because of the lousy infrastructure he built. NT wasn't built to take the abuse a school will put it through: My school district learned that the brutal way around the time I took over at my school.
If your paid, you have a lot more time to work on this than I did: Imagine being the only guy doing that job, training your replacement, and still maintaining a full high school course load and getting decent grades, without pay. My life, 1998-2000...
Help us build a better map!
You write a proposal, explain it to your boss, get a budget and "just" do it.
:)
Your proposal should list the current setup, proposed changes, risks in doing the change, risks in not doing it as well as costs/savings.
It's your job, now get going.
I work as a consultant for a systems integration firm. We have a large number of customers who are K-12 schools. Many of the technology coordinators were the technology dude from last school year and need a lot of assistance. This might be a bit of rambling, because I don't have time to make it shorter.
First of all, your budget is going to be limited, while you might be able to get E-rate money to pay for a lot of network gear, and possibly some servers, you can't use erate for staff. You need to standardize so you get work done centrally. This allows you to hire 1 or 2 smart network admins, vs a horde of drones. Hardware, software, processes, etc... all need to be standardized. Get a good handle on what software you own and where it's installed. Put some policies in place to keep teachers from pirating software; which they will do in massive amounts. Make a business case to the administration that you need to have tight control on software and hardware. You can have every l33t tech teacher running around being their own little network admin for their cluster of 30 PCs only for so long, this will fail really, really badly. This isn't just about control, it's about establising a consistent learning environment for students who will switch between classrooms and schools; as well as teachers, some of whom will have little or no technology experience and will be befuddled by 2000 computers that all act a bit different.
If you don't have a centralized imaging system, get one. Altiris is nice, Ghost is nice. CA makes a very nice (but pricy) product that will do scripted Windows installs as well as packaged or scripted app installs. Their best feature is that it will keep track of all your app installs and where they're supposed to be, reinstalling them automatically when you reimage PCs; basically handling all your license tracking for you.
Do you have network monitoring for when an errant broom handle takes out the power to a wiring closet? HP Insight manager will monitor your stuff and is reasonably easy to setup (also free). Obviously there are tons of other options, but you'll probably never find the time to devote a week to setting something (anything, anyplace) up.
Chances are you'll have people from 4 corners writing and being awarded grants that use technology. Get in on the ground floor with these folks, make sure they understand that computers need desks, network ports, AV licensing, etc... Establish an approved hardware list, and make sure people only buy stuff on the list. This reduces the number of types of printer carts you need to stock and PC images to build. Figure out a per PC cost for network support, make sure they build it into their grant.
Realize that the point of the network is to teach, not to push an idealology. Most business use windows, you'll probably be using it too.
Again, centralize. Use login scripts, group policies (time to upgrade from NT to 2003), network based apps, etc... If you don't have some remote control software, at least on all the teacher and admin machines, get some - VNC is great.
Avoid peer-to-peer apps like the plague. One of my customers has a very nice (from a teaching standpoint) app called CCC. From a technology standpoint, it's a total nightmere. It even has a hardcoded backdoor password. To function at all, everyone has to have full control over all the files; guess how often a student nukes the database... Firefox is good, but chances are, you'll run into at least one app that only works in IE. Do you want to support 2 different browsers? A lot of educational software is poorly written. Your users won't be logging in as local admins, which will break a lot of apps. Make sure you test any apps before you buy them. Again, this goes to making the policies, users shouldn't be buying software until you look over it.
Make sure the department heads are with you and can enforce rules with their staff. You don't want each librarian at each school buying different card catalog software.
Obviously you h
Set up a demo system. Ask for the oldest, slowest, trashiest piece of hardware currently in use, and transform it via Linux or BSD into a minimal desktop.
There will be three very important things to demo: speed, functionality, and looks.
Speed - install few programs. Only what is necessary.
Functionality - Make sure you survey the current uses of the computers and chose a set of applications which cover these uses.
Looks - As much as it might chafe you, general users seem to judge the operating system and applications by their appearance. Go find a nice, juicy, lickable theme for your window manager and apps.
Then demo the system for them. Show them how much you can do with even the lowliest of their equipment. If they are unsure, let someone important use the system for a while and notice the stability improvement.
Hopefully that will win you some converts and some trust. If not, I hate to say it, but you are screwed: just do what they want and try to make the "I told you so!"s obvious without actually saying them when bad things happen.
Oh, and for God's sake, hide the bootup slew of text. It freaks technophobes out...
You need to start with a concrete list of services that you are responsible for providing (email, web access, applications). Then, start with the services that are not currently up to par. Identify specific problems and issues, and plan upgrades from there. That way, when the complaints about "Why do we have to change" and "What's wrong with how we did it before" start, you will have an answer ready.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If it is broke, point out exactly how its broke and what will happen if it doesn't get fixed.
I am not your blowing wind, I am the lightning.
Don't even think about trying to switch people to Macs or introduce folks to firefox. If you have any success at all, you'll only be increasing the entropy in the environment making it even harder to manage. If you don't have success, you'll probably just end up with a bunch of suspicious users.
If the office is comfortable with Microsoft products and the old IT guy was comfortable with Microsoft products then you better get comfortable with Microsoft products asap. I'm not just talking about IIS/Exchange/Active Directory/SQL Server, but Outlook, Access, Word, Excel and Windows... the kinds of programs people use every day. It's a lot easier to change yourself than it is to change everyone and everything else.
That said, use what you know when you can.
- Project 1: Create a reliable backup strategy for any systems that are not going to be completely rehauled in the next month. If you have funds, consider buying something like a buffalo terastation or scraping together a single system with massive storage and raid5.
- Project 2: Add a nix based firewall or whatever you are comfortable with. If for whatever reason you can't do this, turn the firewalls on in the clients (assuming xp).
- Project 3: Fix Email. If people use exchange features, use exchange but protect it from spam by running a nix based host with spam filters in front of it.
Focus on one thing at a time. Once you get these three things done, then start looking at the little things you can do to improve things. Do you have servers to monitor? Install nagios. Are there any trouble systems? Take care of them. Do you have problems pushing patches and auditing machines, solve it with SUS or other tools.Once all of the critical systems are under control, start looking for low hanging fruit, not for yourself, but for your clients. Is the grade reporting system a piece of crap that everyone hates? Find something better. Is there a teacher somewhere teaching intro programming using notepad as an editor, set them up with something better and free whether it's sharp develop or jedit or whatever. Change things to improve people's lives, things that no one is going to fight to prevent you from changing.
Once you have built a track record of success, once people trust your judgement, then you can start exploring whatever preference based changes you think are best. When you suggest using XYZ, they will listen. Do you think your office should make a strategic commitment to Macs? Propose a pilot program using a single computer lab or a group of willing participants. Do you think people will benefit from using firefox? Pitch it to people and let viral marketting due its work. Maybe the foreign language teachers will be impressed by the translation extensions. Maybe the english teachers will fall in love with a form spell check extension.
Lastly, learn to work within your constraints. Eg... Do you really need backup power or will a couple of UPS's do?
The fastest way to gain the respect of others is to start writing grants. Once you are bringing in new equipment and monies from grants, people will start to trust you.
No matter how stable and secure the network and computers are, staff will still believe they are unstable. It's just something you have to shrug off.
What, me worry?
You will never produce an efficient and secure IT system with the financial and political problems it looks like you're stuck with. However, you have the opportunity to make a real difference to a lot of young people. Hopefully the district has some students who's natural intelligence and curiosity hasn't been beaten out of them by the school system. You should be able to make friends with them by giving them freedom. Let them use the net uncensored. Let them boot Linux, Solaris, or BSD based live CDs. Let them bring laptops in and play doom3 over the LAN. If the faculty insists on using cleartext based authentication methods for networked services, teach the students how to sniff! Stay after school to help kids build a cluster from old hardware. Better yet....go dumpster diving with your students to help them find cool old hardware. Experimentation and free exchange of information allow anyone to learn just about anything faster then they can in a top down classroom setting.
You are working for the people! Your job is not to serve some moronic bureaucrat or tenure complacent teacher; your job is to provide useful services for the students. Set up a mail system that is only accessible by sshing to the mail server and running pine or mutt. If the faculty are too stupid to figure it out, then they can do without email. If the server room leaks, request renovation to your one up. If they don't fix things, petition the school board. If things still don't get fixed, re-locate the servers to the gym...athletics are so well funded in most districts, you can be pretty sure that the gym's roof won't leak. Make life a little different for everyone. Don't be afraid of conflict. Students are forced to endure the monotony of school, at least give them a chance to have some fun and real education before you get fired. "Just doing your job" will result in students growing up to be obedient conformist Microserfs like so many of today's workforce. You can set them free!
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
First don't use words like boxen or else no one will take you serious. Second don't say things like "think outside the box" you will sound like a corp crony trying to cover up their ineptitude.
Ok what I would do if I where in your shoes
1) Firewalls good(public IPs bad) I inherited the same thing. The user should see no change. Unless they where using now blocked port which they should be working with you on why they would need to use these.
2)I have a hard time believing you can not get the exchange server back up. While a BSD bind/ server was a snap. I think YOU want to have the BSD box (which is fine) but remember you are there to SERVE the USERS not yourself.
3)Exchange is a huge USER satisfier when setup properly
4)disaster recovery should be on the top of your budget.(your a payed admin you should know this stuff)
5) this is your Job do what the users want. I can not figure out why admins think they are any better then the kid who servers burgers at McDonalds. welcome to the service economy do your JOB and smile
Collect your check and go home. Microsoft products aren't that bad. If that is what the users want, it's your job to get it for them. If it saves the district money do you get a bonus? Most people are comfortable using MS products because that is what they have at home (to parent, the days of apple in schools is over). Familiarity is important to people who don't want to learn any more than they have to about operating a computer.
Not to mention if he leaves the next guy will undoubtedly know MS. He may not know Apple or linux or bsd or solaris or SkyOS or Sky vodka for that matter.
Personally I think all schools should use macs. However Apple's stupid ass overpriced hardware (yes even at the academic prices) has doomed that market.
If you march in and tell them everything they know is wrong, of course they're not going to trust you. Trust is something you earn. And you don't earn it by belittling the knowledge and skills of the people you're working with.
Which is not to say that you shouldn't try to re-educate them. You're quite right to want to move away from Microsoft products. But you have to do it without screwing up their lives. That's a gradual process they they have to be active participants in.
You've got no money, no staff, no power, and a hazardous environment.
You are adept at unix/linux/bsd.
You are capable of writing scripts.
Forget expensive machines, you'll never get them.
If I were you:
Let the users run windows, it's good enough for the desktop, and you already have licenses for it (came with the machines, no?)
On the servers:
A firewall, pix ($350 on ebay)
A spam filter (repurposed pc)
An email server. Looks like you have that covered.
Try to get 1 windows 2003 server for active directory, stick the teachers on the same domain and play with the policies to get permissions right.
You will be setting up 2 networks: one for the school to get work done, one for students to play with: firewall them from each other.
Build your infrastructure on non-windows stuff. Keep exchange down.
Document everything.
Remember that you cannot secure the machines students have access to. Some will boot from CDs. Some will reformat and put linux on them.
Spend most of your money on hardware. You can code software from scratch, but you can't get "make" hardware.
Try to get graduates who have moved on to local colleges talking IT courses to help out. Offer internships for college students. Nothing like running a high school network on a shoestring budget to get your feet wet.
Use what little money you have left to buy a good library of books. I would stick with O'Reilly, Wiley and Sons, and Addison Wesley. Remember, the admin after you should be able to learn on the job.
For the teachers, they just want the stuff to work with minimal effort. Find out how many use hotmail or yahoo at home. You might be surprised. ask them if they would be ok with a web-based email program.
The only thing that matters is that you deliver stable service. Doesn't have to be fancy, doesn't have to be fast. It has to be reliable.
Finally, a word of advice: document absolutely everything. Make copies of everything, and make memos of all conversations, and print them, and keep them in file folders. In a high-school, you have to be extra careful. But you knew that.
"Piter, too, is dead."
really, about the best. It's an "us versus them" situation for his case, he needs more allies, and that will happen one ally at a time.
And it's certainly better than what I was thinking, which had a 12 guage and a case of beer in the solution....
When you say you were "dubbed" the Technology Coordinator, does that mean you were already working at the school? In what capacity? If not, what is your background in education?
How large is the school? How big are your labs? What's your bandwidth to the internet? What is your tech budget?
My background: Programmer and IT manager during the '80s, HS teacher and technology coordinator during the '90s, graduate work in ed tech from '99 to '02, and since then back to just being a teacher. (The job opened up close to home and we weren't in a position to move.) So I speak with some authority.
First, it sounds like you need to figure out what they hired you to accomplish. Who hired you? How did they describe what they wanted you to do? Do they have your back? K12 means that you are working with multiple principals. Do they understand the nature of your job? My experience has been that while principals may not be tech-savvy, they are aware of the potential benefits of technology and are results-driven. They won't get in your way if you are even half-competent. Which leaves the "coworkers"; who the heck are they anyway? Is your department large enough to have multiple techs? Or are you referring to teachers? Teachers are not your coworkers! They _are_ your customers! They may have liked the old guy, but it sounds like they also ended up with very low expectations of what he could do for them. "Just give us computers and change our ink occasionally!"
Once you've figured out what they hired you to accomplish, you've got to make sure you do that at the least, but you should do more than just that. Its the vision thing... and sorry it has nothing to do with Linux or Apple or M$. Do you understand the teaching/learning process so well that you fairly burst with ideas of how to use technology in curriculum/instruction? I've been in "computerized" classrooms where the technology actually hindered learning! Don't be the tail wagging the dog! Don't make people jump through so many hoops that they get tired and quit jumping.
Once you've established your vision, its time to start looking at applications which will allow you to begin implementing it. Go to Ed Tech conferences, invite company reps to come demo their offerings, talk to Technology Coordinators from other schools, shoulder tap some bright students to work with you. As I write this I realize I envy you! It sounds like you are basically starting from scratch, so about anything new you implement will be a big improvement over the old system. There's lots of good stuff out there, so don't reinvent the wheel. But don't overwhelm your customers.
For the record: here's the current state of technology at my small High School (135 students 9-12).
Network
Novell servers, Windows XP work stations
Teacher Productivity
Microsoft Office, PowerSchool/PowerGrade, MyLearningPlan and GroupWise.
Curriculum/InstructionStudents all issued Palm Tungsten E with keyboard and web-synch using PAAM from goknow. Also the HTE suite from goknow and PowerOne Graph from Infinity Software.
Student labs: 2 labs, 35 computers running driveshield and of course behind Border Manager on the network. Software includes MS Office, Inspiration, and Cognitive Tutor Algebra.
If very few of the teachers are technologically aware, take an inventory of students. Find one or two that have good grades and know their way around a computer or show promise AND interest. These one or two students can help A LOT and can help their teachers so that you can focus on other things, like getting your network into the 21st century.
This works. I was the student.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Recently she's been bringing home assertions from the chief techie techer which are manifestly wrong: "We've got to teach microsoft products because that's what kids are exposed to in the work force"(it's very easy to demolish that one). "Viruses exist on other platforms but they're most common on windows because it's the most popular" (and Windows security systems have been designed by the marketing department) etc. etc.
It's difficult to change these entrenched attitudes, as the're mainly based on superstition. You've just got to
My best advice is start fishing computers out of skips / identify under utilised assets and start doing useful things with them. This way, you start subverting any windows/microsoft only policies that exist. Start carting around an iBook and do all your work from that. Preferably from transparent terminals. Then you can see who is more engaged with your viewpoint.
And replace the NT server by stealth. Preferably with a recycled machine.
"...we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that." B.Spears 2003
It's education. So you'll get paid like crap, and nothing will ever change.
Run.
+5 Insightful, really!
yeh, this is minus 1 redundant, but IMHO it's the fastest, easiest way to prevent systems from getting trashed. Kid puts a porno on the desktop? teacher just has to reboot and it's gone.
To stretch both dollars and the limited classroom electric power, you could set up systems using BeTwin from thinsoftinc.com.
You can have e up to 5 monitors connected to a single system, each appearing as an individual computer.
I did this in a small NYC high school, outfiting 9 classrooms this way saved about $13K (4 "computers" per room)
As I type my carpets are still wet from last night's rains that poured through the machine room wall - and this happens every time it downpours I'm told.
Jeebus! Tell them to fix that immediately, and if they say no, ask the local fire marshall to take a look at it. That would probably motivate them to fix it.
In general, I'd say you're in for a class-A headache. As I learned in high school, most teachers know jack shit about technology. Even basic terminology is a problem. (I heard all about this from my AP Comp Sci teacher.)
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
5 & 7: At my school we just rolled out images with DeepFreeze on them. Best thing ever. A lot of our boxes have <10Gb hard disks and the students roaming profiles get huge after a year- having 50 of them on one harddisk (in a lab) will fill the disk up right quick- DeepFreeze prevents the profiles from sticking around after a reboot.
2: The one thing keeping us on exchange (OK, two things) is calendaring (and its cousin, scheduling meetings). We have an exchange calendar for everything. I know there are alternatives, but I cant justify the cost of switching since a parent donated our Exchange 2k3 licences for free.
Someone above said that a UPS isn't important. Bull shit. Maintaining your SIS records is one of your top priorities, next to the financial records. If those go down (expecially in a disaster) your school (district) will have a harder time getting back on its feet.
When I first got where I am, my predicessor had spent the last 6-8 months doing nothing but putting out fires. The first thing I did was get the backend up to specs, and everyone (well, almost =P ) was happy about it- the servers were more reliable and people had fewer problems. Then I got all the computers running 2k or XP (also donated to the school) and most of the problems went away.
Good luck!
What you do need to do is to prepare a list of issues, graded in order of system and network critical prioriy. Make up your own rating system 1 to 10 or A to F, and assign each item a rating, timeframe and resources required. This doesn't mean a quote for new equipment. For example, Linux or BSD firewall, internal, DMZ and external segments. Reconfigure IP addressing. Priority 2, need to repurpose a Pentium III and added NICs. This is a to do list that could span out 3 years or so. The budget cycle probably means you won't be able to just go out and buy what you need, although having this list will make it easier to jump on funds that come up for re-allocation. Don't try to do everything all at once. Set priorites and leave time for crisis control.
Go to town and prepare a power point or just write down your list, but sit down with who ever is "grading" your performance and work out what they think with your input. You need to have the job defined, do you make everybody happy and don't rock the boat or do you get the job done and set policy? Setting policy is best done by writing your draft and having it approved by someone in administration. Speaking of which you need to find out if any district and state guidelines apply. You could find addtional support and resources at the next level up.
Don't try to wing changes, if you're going to be effective you need backing. That means getting admin on board and having a defined role. If you don't get backing then you should set up a wireless access point and get a laptop for Slashdot and porn until things fall apart. If you're lucky you can point the finger at lack of administrative support and burn your boss. That's where documentation of issues comes in handy.
My manager says if I don't p*ss off at least one person each week he knows I'm skating. We're pretty relaxed but there are rules, including corporate guidlines that my little address space has to follow.
It sounds like the job is still very vague. This can be a curse or chance to write your own job description. Take advantage. Look at the pay scale descriptions and assign yourself the responsibilities to justify a raise and prompotion.
Take some hints of this guy. He seems to have it all worked out :)
My workplace has a dozen people, very little turnover, and *must* use Windows because of a Windows-only primary application. However, security is very important in our industry. I hammered at them for weeks that IE and Outlook were the hackers primary targets, and had countless holes in them. The transition to Firefox went fairly smoothly-- I told them to use it for everything expect business-critical sites that required IE. I set up Adblock on Firefox and weeded out ads from the common sites.
Every week I send out a list of new security holes, and the impact. If it's an IE 0wn-u bug, I warn them not to open IE until the patch comes out. Every week, even if there are no new bugs, I warn them not to use IE, because there are still unpatched vulnerabilities.
I point out other businesses in our industry which have made the 5 o'clock news because they were hacked. And remind them not to open attachments or use IE, everytime. Or we could be next.
After a few months, everybody is using Firefox all the time, and they don't think anything of it. They do not open email attachments, they install patches when I ask them (I check).
---
Go to each computer and clean each one for viruses, spyware, bad cookies. Log the results. Post the results, but don't use names. You are not trying to embarrass anyone, just trying to show them how their systems have been obeying some other masters. Tear down their SEP fields. Discredit the "don't ask, don't tell" security policy. ("If I don't know my system is hacked, then it doesn't affect me.")
Put in a firewall. Log everything. Open up every legitimate outgoing port, for AIM, Folding@Home, whatever. Show them the attacks.
Show them logs from trojans phoning home. Chances are nobody is running a legitimate chat server, or is doing ftp or heavy traffic late at night.
Get them to *pay* for their software. (This may be the hardest.) As long as they are stealing software, Windows is an obvious, though short-sighted win. But when you point out the increase in piracy lawsuits, and get them to use only legal software, $3000 for Exchange (Exchange/CALS/OS) seems pretty pricy.
Switch out a couple systems (from volunteers) for Macs. They can coexist. I use my Powerbook 50% of the time at work.
Insist on installing OpenOffice on all systems, but that either MS or OO can be used. Insist that all Microsoft Office software be paid for. Ask them for reports or forms in PDF format, then act astounded that MS Office can't handle such a simple task. Insist that all software be paid for. Include 0wned bugs for Office in your weekly report. Mention at the cooler that the only viruses that exist on the Mac are Microsoft Office viruses. Point out new vulnerabilities found in Office apps, and what they allow into their systems.
Insist that all software be legit. Not pirated. After all, it's a lawsuit-happy world out there, and Microsoft is getting more willing to go after those pirates.
Expect the whole process to take a full year.
* Hammer home the security risks. Don't let them hide behind their lack of knowledge.
* Firewall-- first thing. Close off everything they don't use. Then tighten the worst holes.
* Firefox-- second thing. Your spyware scans should back you up. Mandatory install on every system, and lock down the settings in IE (using group policies on xp/2k workstations) every time you touch someone's system.
* Use the MSBA to scan all the systems weekly. It fairly automatic, but you get to see who's refusing to keep up with patches.
* Mandatory OpenOffice install, but optional to use. Request PDFs for the school website and forms.
* Hammer home the piracy idea. Lawsuits. Lawsuits. Lawsuits. Bad publicity. They are sending a message of lawlessness to the students.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.
I've started reading this book and it seems to cover quite a few topics that I think would help you out.n quiry.asp?userid=QR3ELP4CM8&isbn=1931836396&itm=1
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Migrate in stages. Put in a firewall! Do the things you think you should do. It's going to take time but maybe you can get some help from students.
Make sure they know the consequences of their enforced choices and make them take responsibility for it.
I.e.: If they insist on not fixing the water leakages, make them sign a paper saying they take full responsibility for any problems arrising from the water leakages.
If they don't want to have firewalls, make them sign a paper saying the take full responsibility for any problems which a firewall would have blocked.
If they're making the choices, make sure they're taking responsibility as well.
It may sound a bit threatening but simply provide a proposal form for fixing the leakage and make sure they put an "approved" or "declined" stamp on it. That would be a perfectly nice way to make them take responsibility for their actions.
I understand you'd like to have a perfect operation, but that does not mean everything should be technically stable, just that every risk is understood (including the risk of not knowing all risks).
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
At my college I've been told that teachers are not allowed to email students (or generally keep in contact with them) due to LEA (Local Education Authority) rules and regulations.. not even to post-compulsary ("sixth form") students.
One of your biggest problems is going to be spyware, do yourself a favor and setup a DNS blackhole. We've set this up here at the Iberia Parish school district in Louisiana and love it.
Get some kind of imaging software like Symantec Ghost, try to keep your software installations as identical as possible.
Give each user a share on the server and make them save their documents there instead of on their hard drive (you can redirect My Documents to a share with Group Policies). Makes recovery much easier when you need to replace a hard drive, or re-image a Windows install that's overridden with viruses/spyware/etc.
Leave Windows on the workstations, but install Linux on old servers to be used for DNS/web caching/samba/whatever.
When you setup your firewall be sure to block the ports of AIM/Yahoo/MSN/IRC/Kazaa/Gnutella/and whatever else you can think of. If you don't, I can promise you the students will do nothing but chat and download music all day.
Take some time and examine your goals here. What are you personally looking to get out of this assignment?
The facts are:
#1. Any changes you make will be "wrong" compared to what the last guy did.
#2. Unless something is done about the water, your systems will eventually fail (and you will be blamed because the last guy never had that problem).
#3. You'll be spending a lot of time and effort on making friends just to accomplish your technical goals.
#4. No matter how great you are, there will always be someone on staff who talks to a friend who uses Windows and will tell everyone that no one else is having the problems you have with Windows.
If you're going to put yourself through all that stress, be sure you understand why you are doing that to yourself. And it is you doing it to yourself.
Too many times we tend to see the people who use the systems as the problem. Maybe they don't agree with your goals, but is that really a problem? Instead, examine your goals and see if you really want to fight that fight, under those conditions to achieve your goals.
And be realistic in your goals. They will not worship you for bringing them to the promised land of a firewalled sub-net. They don't even know anything is wrong. The best you can do is to be respected by a bunch of people who can't remember their own username/password's.
Sometimes not getting involved in a disaster is the best option.
I was a tech in a secondary school so this may not completely apply...
1. Log everything.
2. Review your logs.
Logs are what allowed me to discover a student logging in to a restricted teacher area, a number of weird log entries (logins at 4AM) which lead me to a number of compromized machines, etc.
3. Imaging software is your friend. Ghost, Acronis, even dd if you have to. Machines will be compromized, messed up, or even residual files will be left over summer. I went as far as building the image to automatically ask for the machine name and I could reimage a lab of 30 workstations in under 30 minutes.
4. Disable downloads.
This is the only thing that kept me on IE - you can choose to disable downloads. We had to tweak it a bit by adding a number of sites to one of the zones (to allow downloads from intranet, etc) but it really cut down the support calls.
5. Ticketing system. This may or may not work (it didn't for me as problems were always phone calls or walk ins), but if you need to justify additional spending/resources, it's great to be able to say "I handle X calls a month. Give me $Y and I can reduce calls from X to Z". If you do a lot of site visits, write down what you do.
6. Each student signs an AUP. No AUP, no account. Most students won't be a problem, but a few will decide to "test" your network security and you need to be able to keep them off the computers.
7. Watch how your resources are used. Every friday I'd run a scan for files in home directories over 1MB. This caught most of the MP3's, games, etc while filtering out the word documents. My AUP (also posted in each lab) stated academic use only, so anyone with MP3's had to explain themselves.
8. Get the staff on your side. You can't be everywhere and they're the ones who will be in the labs - picking weak passwords, allowing locked-out students to "borrow" another account, etc. Administration will be dealing with problem students and they need to know why things are a problem. They're not techs.
At the end of the day, you're a support service. You exist to support staff and students. There might be better ways, but non-techs need to use it. Don't bore people with details (they don't need to know that you've migrated from NT4 domains to a samba server. It's just an upgrade) - but, samba needs to work if you do this. Gradual transitions - don't take word away and replace it with OpenOffice. Install both for the year.
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
I'd say in a school more than almost any other organization you need to be concerned with intranet security. At least a couple of students will try and crack your systems and, as any /.er will tell you, you should not underestimate their competence. They have not signed employement agreements and will not pay attention to "rules". Sure, you might be able to bring disciplinary action to bear, but wouldn't it be better for all parties if you were proactive?
Therefore, I'd strongly recommend you Tear Down the Firewall if you can. Of course if all your workstations are Windows, that might not be practical, but you should at least consider it. (And just because all the boxes have their own firewalls doesn't mean you can't have a redundant one for the subnet.)
Please, think of the children.
I kind of doubt that you'll have time to give even the most basic instruction in something like ISIS II, so any "teaching" you do will be taken advantage of by only the most determined and brightest*. If you've got such kids around, why waste the resource on playing with stuff you don't "know what to do with"? Instead, put them to work!
I homeschooled part of highschool and therefore had the time to get way in over my head in a part-time technical position. I learned tonnes while working for peanuts.
See if you can get students to get credit working for you (in BC students are required to do h hours of work experience for graduation and some special programs are designed to give them lots more). If not, then at least set it up as an official extracurricular. There's a small chance they might actually make your job easier and they'll learn more than doing anything else you could think of.
Is not the hardware they are using it, but how they are using it. Patch the roof, get a decent hardware router, setup a proxy server and upgrade them.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
And I can say this is very typical. Most of the teachers I knew had a very very hard time logging in and opening a program. IE was called the "interweb" and they'd usually cry and stop teaching out of their text books when their teacher computers went down. It's absolutly amazing how sad it was. I'm so very very glad not to work there anymore.
Vista:XPSP2::ME:98SE
Sounds like they aren't securing it at all. Linux may be more secure than Windows, but if the district wants Windows only, use Windows. Upgrade those NT 4 servers to 2003. Secure the network. Sounds like there is still plenty that can be down with the windows architechture to make it more secure.
The more you know!
In my state in Australia k12 in the state school system is run on heterogenous windose systems. There are occassionally cock-ups with the configurations, but on the whole the system works nicely. We've NEVER had any problems security wise. We run windows versions ranging from win2000-pro-server(2000/3). We are moving more of the roles into schools (upwards of 100 000 users) and windose is THE choice as sys admins in schools are more likely to know windows.
1. Make the system heterogenous
2. Buy site liscences and include upgrades
3. Do it now, not slowly or incrementally.
4. Lock those babies up tight as a dolphins arse.
5. Screw outlook. Make all teachers (and students if you do that) acess email via a web interface. Don't have them try to dick around at home.
6. Cat 5 and optical are king, wireless sucks.
7. Internet can never have too much bandwidth.
8. Don't buy HP printers. Canon and Xerox are easiest to remote administer.
9. THROW OUT EVERYTHING AND GO CITRIX METAFRAME>
You don't need carte blanche, but you do need explicit approval for all the things you do. Preferably in writing and/or email.
First, write a letter to your boss.
List everything horrible going on clearly describe how your organization is standing in a minefield of security concerns and how the vulnerabilities present in IE, Windows, patching, firewalls etc. Point out how this will cause sudden unwarranted emergency problems. You can predict these problems, but you can't predict WHEN they will happen.
It is up to your boss, not you, to decide whether you should make unpopular decisions that prevent problems or you should just let things ride. Preferably publicly.
But if they decide to let it ride make sure they feel the pain of the problems when they do happen. If you are too good at cleaning up the mess they'll never see the point of fixing anything.
(Generally you don't want your boss to be making prioritization decisions about which stuff you should do first - you just want to paint it in simple terms: The teachers like some things, but they are going to blow up. I can fix it and make them unhappy now or it can blow up later and nothing will work.)
Second, get used to incremental changes and ride the wave of any problems. Basically, if a computer has any kind of problems it should get fixed with whatever else it needs and a firewall and Firefox renamed "Internet" "WWW" or "Interweb" - and IE should be missing from the desktop and all easy places in the start menu.
Don't ever publicize that you're making something a "mandate" - mandates are very unpopular and clearly they won't understand the rationale. Just make it part of fixing whatever problems someone had as you go along... If you showed up because THEY called YOU they have are less likely to be upset that you had to change things, because it isn't "for no reason".
Other points:
Try to get a student assistant. There's probably some very talented free labor available.
Samba is great for your servers; OSX is overkill on the basic fileserver side and is more expensive. But OSX workstations and Samba servers work great together. OSX is NOT easier to use for someone used to Windows, but it IS easier to use for someone not used to computers at all.
I disagree with one of the other posters - the machines won't fail from water on the floor if it isn't on the machines; for even extreme seepage just put a bunch of wood under the machines. Similarly, backup power isn't your biggest concern (although redundant HDs should be) - you likely don't need to keep operating computers when the power is out.
These days with reasonable settings outlook isn't usually as dangerous as IE and the free alternatives to outlook aren't as superior as Firefox; I'd definitely start there.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
...only, I am in charge of instructional technology (multimedia and such) for a 14-school district in South Carolina. My lot in life at the moment is to run around the district helping teachers to take United Streaming video clips and the like and integrate those into their instruction...anyway...
My suggestion is find ways to show what you want to do works with what you have on-hand. If it takes a lot of money up-front, forget about it for now. You need to show RESULTS with what you have now. If you want to go to Linux for some use, build a box of of crap laying around the office and make it work, and SHOW them what it can do! I also agree with another poster about selecting a few people to work with initially...chances are, you dont have the resources to make everybody happy anyway, so you figure out who is the best handful of people to model what you want to do, and help them, and they will show others. The secret to implementing change it to NOT change very much...at least as far as the end user goes. Again, find ways to DEMONSTRATE the advantages, and make sure there are hardly any downsides, at least at first. Anyway, I hope this is of some help.
The question was from a person in a consulting role. I think that job means you know more than the customer and it is up to you to guide their thinking past the misperceptions that limit their understanding of their own problems. So what if the school board all bring their wintel laptops to the meeting and have some fear of anything different? The students and some poor, half-trained slob on the faculty are going to have to live with the decision more than the administrators and bean counters. There is WAY too much evidence that Mac's are easier to use and easier to network in a school setting...at my kid's school, the music teacher was able to put the whole network together with little outside help. My question to the poster would be "If they already know what they want inspite of better technical options, do you HAVE to work there?" There a probably places where people pay for your expertise so they could actually listen to your advice. [I swear, I have heard there are such places ;]
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.