Q: What have been your greatest
accomplishments at CCPS so far?
A: From an infrastructure perspective,
we have looked very intently at where
we want to be as a school system five
and ten years out, and we have been
systematically putting the infrastructure
in place to reach our goals. For instance,
we made the decision to run fiber to
every school, changing from T-1 service.
Fiber isn’t a luxury. In order to meet
instructional requirements, implement
and maintain effective data warehousing
and distance learning, and plan for future
bandwidth needs, we found we need a
2 GB connection between each school
and the central office. We’ve upgraded
all of our WAN equipment. On the LAN
side, we’re using blade servers and have
deployed a flexible storage area network
for terabytes of voice, data, video, and
other media. We also have new backup
and disaster recovery infrastructure in
place.
Beyond infrastructure improvements,
our biggest success story has been the
building of our data warehouse, which
went live in February 2004. This was
one of those dream projects that we
projected to implement in six months but
actually completed in four. The new warehouse
handles all of the No Child Left
Behind reporting in addition to county
and state assessments and Advanced
Placement and SAT data. The application
is available to our principals and their
administrators and teachers, as well as
central office staff, via desktops, laptops,
and tablet computers.
Q: What have your infrastructure
upgrades made possible, curriculum-wise?
A: We started an interesting project
last summer in which we digitized our
ninth-grade government textbook. We
trained our teachers to map our curriculum
to the textbook and then gave them access
to the textbook in digitized form via a
school-provided laptop. Streaming technology
provides video from the textbook
to each classroom, and LCD projectors
make the technology easily accessible to
all the students. In some cases, the time
it takes to develop classroom material
around the textbook went from days to
hours. Next, we’ll be digitizing our algebra
and biology texts. In rolling out these
kinds of projects, we try to use the technology
and tools to initiate enthusiasm
from teachers and students.
Q:What’s currently hot on your plate?
A:We have a number of projects
in the works. One of the goals of our
new network infrastructure is to increase
network security—deploy effective
firewalls and content and spam filtering
and make sure the internal infrastructure
is standardized and rock-solid. Another
big project is the deployment of IP
telephones. We either have or soon will
have 911 emergency capabilities in each
classroom in the district. Our student
information system feeds the IP telephony
system with information—teachers have
access to student demographics and parent
contact information, and we can easily
and simply activate broadcast messages
in case of an emergency or disaster. The
possibilities are vast.
Q: Any final words of wisdom?
A: The bottom line for all of these
technologies is that if they’re not used
for the purpose of instruction, it’s all a
waste of money. Most small school
systems do not take good care of IT
needs and decisions, and often IT is
not well liked or well respected. We’re
focused on IT here because it is critical
to everything we are doing, and we can
bring up any issues we have for very
quick resolution. IT cannot be pushed
aside, not if you want to make good use
of your technology budget and improve
the ability of your district to provide
effective curriculum delivery now and
in the future.
Richard Hoffman, former Web technologies
coordinator for Fairfax County
Public Schools in Virginia, is a technical
architect based in New Hampshire and
site editor of CMP Media’s Systems
Integration Pipeline.
