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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
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.
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?
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.
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
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?
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.
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).
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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.