District Status
District Technology Status
One of the driving factors behind the Net56 proposal is the current status of the district’s IT. The best reference for this status can be found in the RLAS Technology Plan. This document is the current 3-year plan and includes the following vision statement:
The community is committed to providing a quality learning infrastructure and education to all students. Through the involvemnt of community and the dedication of our BOE members, adminstrators, and staff, our students will use technology in addressing learning opportunities utilizing a variety of age, ability, and interest-based groupings, employing the best features fo advanced technology, to the fullest extent possible to enhance and improve learning. With easy access to technology and new avenues of communication, parents, teachers, students, and community members will increase awareness, promote discussion, and identifiy solutions to problems affecting our community. Technology will improve the level of learning and will produce students who are better able to face the challenges of a technological society and enable students and community members to be technologically prepared for employment, lifelong learning, and leisure activities in the next century.”
That’s a mouthful. Personally, I’m a fan of brief vision statements because who could ever remember this? Most of our current issues, however, center around our Technology Deployment and Sustainability (page 10 of the plan). From that section of the plan:
A) CURRENT REALITY - By using our hardware and networking inventories, as well as looking at the tech support logs and information, it was determined that our current desktop infrastructure is composed of a majority of 4+ year old computers, with many being 6 years old or older. These computers are incapable of running the current software and operating systems required for effective use of technology in the District, and as all maintenance of hardware occurs by in-house staff, creates an unwieldy work-load to manage for already overburdened staff.
Essentially this assessment boils down to two issues: 1) our current infrastructure is old and unable to meet our needs and 2) our current staff is overburdened with the numerous issues created by our current infrastructure. This is a great starting point, and the plan went on to discuss the main issues and goals. I will break these issues down on the following pages and we will look at the issue, consider the stated goal, and discuss possible solutions.
Next Section: Network Infrastructure