Moving Beyond "Stuff"... an Architectural View

"Stuff" is cool. Projectors, interactive systems, cameras, tablets... it's all cool. Great to play with, very engaging at first, and there is a definite feeling of positive movement with the acquisition and unboxing of new equipment.

Very often though, "stuff" is the goal in and of itself. No one has asked how, or if, it will help learning outcomes. It has not been built into the comprehensive technology curriculum, nor has a year-over-year management plan been considered. When "stuff" is acquired, it is usually done rapidly, and the first professional development opportunity for staff is personal experimentation when it is handed out to them, often mid-year in the midst of teaching.

Let's remove the magic of technology from the equation for a moment, and study a hypotehtical architectural situation instead:

A principal is given a grant for a new, additional building.
The first thing they do is go out and buy really nice, beautiful water coolers, office chairs, and potted plants.

Our hypothetical principal probably wouldn't last the week, if they did that.

They wouldn't even last the week if they started by calling an architect.

They'd need to start by sitting at their desk, and thinking through how many students they expect to use the new building, what the greatest needs are for their school, alongside the greatest demands from their school community. They would have to consider if the grant covered all aspects of construction, from planning to safety inspections and occupancy permits, or if some things were left out and would be up to the school to complete, and to pay for.

Then they'd call an architect, discuss their needs, their wants, and work toward a cohesive plan, involving multiple stakeholders and experts.

Many months later, they'd break ground, and many months after that, they'd open the new building with a blessing.

So why, when it comes to technology, do schools want to skip straight to the end, without all the intervening work and effort that ensures a good result?

Some questions to guide the initial phases of any technology project, and to guard against "stuff" blindness:

1) How, quantifiably and demonstrably, will this improve learner outcomes? If you don't know, don't put it in your school, any more than you'd buy textbooks sight unseen.

2) Would this project exist outside these special circumstances (i.e. a donor)? That is, is the project already something you had planned to do (not thought about once at a conference, actually wrote into your tech plan), and is being accelerated by circumstances? If it isn't, don't do it, any more than you'd add a Greek language class just because someone asked you to.

3) Can you support this project long-term, even if circumstances change (donor disappears, volunteer leaves, etc.)? As a corollary, do you understand all the associated costs of the project, which are not part of the initial purchase? Increased bandwidth cost? Increased support cost? Increased PD requirements and/or costs? Increased time commitments? Ongoing administrative concerns like discipline or billing?

4) The most important item: How will you define your success in concrete terms? If your goal is to "improve technology integration," then you will never prove it, and in fact never be able to reach it. What defines success for the project, and what are the milestones going toward it? If your answer isn't a number, concrete or demonstrated outcome, or artifact, then you need to go back and find something that is both meaningful and provable.

Wireless Coverage vs Wireless Density

In the first years of wireless infrastructure for schools, the goal was to provide coverage, for every part, or at least every important part, of the building.  That need still exists.

Many schools are running into a problem however, as they begin to pilot tablet, laptop, or other wireless-heavy technology programs.  That problem is density.

In the early days, there wasn't much wireless traffic, and it was sufficient just to get access to a few users.

Countryside road, Belarus (Ilya Khamushkin) / CC BY-SA 2.0

Now there are many more users, but the capacity isn't available to serve them. Photo by epSos "Driving cars in a traffic jam" http://www.flickr.com/photos/epsos/5591761716/It is no longer sufficient to simply provide coverage.  Now additional density is required.  This means additional wireless access points, and faster ones.

In addition to adding access point, there is additional expertise needed in the setup of these devices.  Having a few widely spread out access points that did not talk to one another was sufficient for coverage, and relatively easy for schools to implement.

Now that there may be one or even more access points in a given room, these access points need to be managed, and properly configured to communicate not only with laptops and tablets, but with the other access points.

Access points can interfere with one another.  Anyone who has ever pick up a cordless phone call on a baby monitor understands this kind of radio interference.  On the original country road, there wasn't particular need for signage or urban engineering.  In the current high-density scenario, there's tremendous need for intelligent management of wireless deployment, just to keep all the cars on the road.

As with many aspects of technology, wireless has become more complex over time, and existing infrastructure may no longer be sufficient to meet the needs of new evolutionary or revolutionary programs for schools.

Filtering in a Dynamic Environment

The Internet (importantly, not just "the Web") is a fascinating place, full of amazing opportunities for learning and growth.  In like measure, there are real dangers for our students physical, psychological and spiritual well-being.

Filtering is not just a legal requirement, according to the Children's Online Protection Act (COPA) and its follow-up legislation, it is also a moral imperative if we are to create safe, nurturing places online for our students to grow.

A user recently asked if there was "a list" of websites to filter on individual computers.  Once upon a time there were such lists, when the web was composed of thousands, or even tens of thousands of pages, and the ability to create a new website was a technical and financial hurdle.  In the dynamic web  we work with now, that list would have thousands or millions of changes every day.

In addition, not everything is on the web.  Services like Pandora and Spotify, BitTorrent and other P2P applications, and other Internet-centered tools may be apps, services, or otherwise not rely on the traditional web at all.  Thus, they're not necessarily subject to web filtering or blocking lists.

What's needed is an intelligent, dynamic firewall and filtering product.  The web needs to be filtered by this device, not just for a list of known-bad sites (which they provide with millions of listings, updated constantly), but new sites need to be evaluated by analytical software, blocked according to keywords or matching patterns to other examples of bad-sites.

Because these devices sit at the edge of the network, they can look at all of the traffic coming and going.  This givs them the capacity to block services that may not be web-based.  More importantly, they can provide even more granular control, allowing services to be restricted or limited, but not entirely disabled, according to rules the administration decides.  Spotify may be a great tool for music and social science teachers, perhaps others who may have a creative curriculum.  Blocking it entirely eliminates the value of a resource.  Restricting it, perhaps to 5% of the total bandwidth for the school's Internet connection, means it is still available for relevant uses, but will not negatively impact other instructional acitivies online.

Filtering is a complex issue.  Framing is as purely block/don't block doesn't adequately address protecting students, or making the network the school pays for work to its fullest potential.  Every school we work with would like a simple answer, but there isn't one, and it takes education of the administrators, and of the community of staff, students and parents, to fully understand the complexities of filtering.  

From a technical point of view, the problems are already largely solved by the vendors.  But as we'll see over and over, solving the technical problems is usually just the first step in creating a real solution.

Welcome to How IT Works

Welcome, thanks for reading through How IT Works.  This blog is a resource for school and parish administrators, board memebers, and anyone else seeking to better understand the choices for technology in the Archdiocese of Chicago.

I work in the Archdiocese, as the Technology Director for St. Benedict Parish & Schools.  I am also the director for the St. Benedict Technology Consortium, a group that supports many schools and parishes thoughout the Archdiocese.  I've worked in educational IT for 15 years, and seen many changes, and some things remain very much the same.

This blog is intended primarily as the distillation of my experience and that of the very excellent people I've had the good fortune to work with.  I'm a pragmatist, so up front I'm dispensing with the platform wars or biases from the beginning.  The range of schools we now work with at SBTC represents virtually the whole spectrum within the Archdiocese, and no one solution is a perfect fit for all of them.

If you have any question, please feel free to e-mail me at sbell@stbenedict.com