CETPA Databus Fall 2009

Fall 2009 Volume 2009 • Issue 4

THEME FOR THIS ISSUE: Network Traffic Taming the Internet Through Traffic Control The Demand of Network Bandwidth Making No-Cost Student Laptops a Reality

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California Educational Technology Professionals Association

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Fall 2009 Volume 2009 • Issue 4

President’s Message..................................................................................6

By Russ Brawn

CONTENTS

Best Practices...........................................................................................8

By Phil Scrivano Taming the Internet Through Traffic Control........................................10

By Eric Wallers Caution: Network Traffic Ahead............................................................14

By Kevin Fuller

The Demands of Network Bandwidth.......................... 16

By Jeff Enz Essential Infrastructure to Support 21st-Century Literacy...................................... 18

By Tim Landeck Making No-Cost Student Laptops a Reality.................. 20

By Rick Otto Value Without the Price................................................. 22

By Steve Thornton My CTAP: Your Source for Educational Technology Support...................................................... 24

By Burt Lo

The Change Writers Project...................................................................26

By Gail Desler E-rate Update.........................................................................................28

By Fred Brakeman Just Wearing Tweed Won’t Make You a Star..........................................32

By Mark Heydon

Databus is the official publication of the California Educational Technology Professionals Association (CETPA). Databus is published four times a year as a service to our members and information technology managers for California’s K-12 school system.

The CETPA and the Databus assume no responsibility for the statements or opinions appearing in articles under an author’s name.

The services of an attorney or accountant should be sought in legal and tax matters.

All rights to the materials and editorial content of Databus are reserved. All copyrights and trademarks are property of their respective owners. Reproduction or use in whole or part without the permission by CETPA is prohibited.

Legislative Update..................................................................................34

By Dr. Jeffrey Frost Member Profile......................................................................................36 A Chat with Jim Klein Resource Guide and Ad Index................................................................38

Publisher California Educational Technology Professionals Association Managing Editor Wade Williams wwilliams@stancoe.org

Advertising Manager Cici Trino Association Outsource Services Tel: (916) 990-9999 Fax: (916) 990-9991 cicit@aosinc.biz

Editor Lisa Kopochinski (916) 481-0265 Fax: (916) 481-1181 lisakop@sbcglobal.net

Layout and Design Lori Mattas Printing and Mailing Copeland Printing

Fall 2009 • DataBus 5

president’s MESSAGE

By Russ Brawn, CETPA President

Board of Directors PRESIDENT

L. Russ Brawn, Chief Operations Officer FCMAT/CSIS 770 L Street, Suite 1120 Sacramento, CA 95814 PRESIDENT ELECT

Dr. Kelly Calhoun, Chief Technology Officer Santa Clara County Office of Education 1290 Ridder Park Drive San Jose, CA 95131 PAST PRESIDENT

Warren Williams, Assistant Superintedent, Retired Grossmont Union High School District 1100 Murray Drive El Cajon, CA 92020 TREASURER

Terrell Tucker, Director Information & Technology Services

Panama-Buena Vista Union School District 4200 Ashe Road Bakersfield, CA 93313 SECRETARY

Gregory W. Lindner, Technology Services Director Elk Grove Unified School District 9510 Elk Grove-Florin Road Elk Grove, CA 95624 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Andrea Bennett

915 L Street #C424 Sacramento, CA 95814 Director of publications

Wade Williams, Director of Network Services Stanislaus County Office of Education 1100 H Street Modesto, CA 95354 DIRECTORS AT LARGE

Stephen Carr, Executive Director Technology Services Ventura County Office of Education 5189 Verdugo Way Camarillo, CA 93012

Sandra Ching, Director of Information Services Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District 1301 Orangethorpe Avenue Placentia, CA 92870

Todd Finnell, Chief Executive Officer, CA K-12 High Speed Network

Imperial County Office of Education 1398 Sperber Road El Centro, CA 92243

Dr. Carl Fong, Information Technology Executive Director

Orange County Department of Education 200 Kalmus Drive Costa Mesa, CA 92626

Oswaldo A. Galarza, Director, Technology Services San Juan Unified School District 3738 Walnut Ave. Carmichael, CA 95608

Tim Goree, Director of Technology Services Norris School District 6940 Calloway Drive Bakersfield, CA 93312

Achievement and Opportunity

H

ow often have we worked from a concept to its realization, ready to enjoy the benefits that the project’s completion was intended to accrue, only to be faced with further demand from our clients, as well as our own realization that the surface has just been scratched?

In my experience—as is likely in the majority of our community of educational technology professionals—this is the prevalent outcome. So much so that it is the rule rather than the exception that whatever our accomplishments, we find we have more to do. And this is a good thing.

This is my last president’s message for DataBus, and it seems nnn that the first one was written something like a week ago. Time Value akin to gold is charges on. The thoughts, dreams, plans and aspirations held as I began this tenure as CETPA president are fresh in my found in colleagues mind. Some are completed, others are underway, and a few sharing of successes still relevant items will be finished subsequent to my term. In each case, none are at an end. Emanating from all that was and failures, achieved in part or in whole is opportunity to correct, hone, expand, leverage, modify and/or perfect what is already done and in moments to the continued betterment of CETPA, our membership and of discovery our clients. that are made The most obvious concentration of efforts and (some still pending) achievements of the CETPA board and its memberpossible through ship center around: the presentation • Meeting the challenge of conducting the 2009 conference in a time of uncertainty and constrained fiscal resources. Our and exchange of members expressed concern, provided counsel and expressed ideas, services and their resolve to find ways to participate in person for exchange of experiences and ideas. The board will capture some content products. for post-conference sharing, has negotiated the lowest hotel rates in years, offers one-day registrations and has broadened nnn the scope and depth of the conference so that it may be deemed “mission critical” to practitioners responsible for both administrative functions and support of teaching and learning.

• CETPA is answering the call to work shoulder to shoulder with Glen Thomas, the California Secretary for Education, in support of our governor’s initiative to provide free textbooks in a digital format within California schools. The August 11 CETPA Digital Textbook Symposium was the first step in a still-emerging sequence of events designed to firmly establish a Digital Learning Imperative.

That inaugural event and the “One Classroom at Every High School” Initiative build toward an in-depth One Day Digital Learning Symposium on the opening day of the CETPA conference.

• The launch of a highly interactive and enabling Web site worthy of our CETPA community’s penchant and wont to share knowledge, ideas and artifacts via multiple means. Wikis, blogs, news items, resource library and directory information are some features adding to the listserv, soft copy library of DataBus issues. Improved accommodation of the conference registration process provides a much improved user experience.

Perhaps less obvious, but significant, are evolutionary steps in CETPA’s conceptualization and structuring of: • Increased focus upon teaching and learning so that students and instructors adopt and adapt to new 21st-century skills to transform into environments that engage today’s students.

• Relationships with institutions as well as other organizations crucial to successes of our students, schools, districts and county offices of education.

Among these are ACSA, CCSESA, the CDE, CETC, CLRN, CoSN, CUE, FCMAT and the OSE. continued on page 12

6 DataBus • Fall 2009

best PRACTICES

By Phil Scrivano

Finding the Balance

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By Phil Scrivano nnn

In these financially strapped times for education, the most important thing is to be able to show a cost savings in a short period of time. nnn

anaging network traffic is part art and part science. The art is finding the balance between a highly secured network that is virtually useless to the classroom teacher and a network that is open to viruses and other issues that make it unreliable. At each extreme your professionalism is called into question by administration, teachers and students. To support their claims, each of these groups will quickly recall any network down time in the last year including the time of day and how long the network was down.

At the same time it has never been more exciting to be involved in education technology.

Recently I gave up my trusted BlackBerry and started using an iPhone. After just a few days with the iPhone, I discovered the same excitement with the possibilities in the curriculum as I had when I first started teaching and was given an Apple IIe with Lego Writer. The difference is now it’s the IT department that must be ready to deliver content to devices both securely and reliably—in addition to all the other functions of the department. It is not much of a reach to figure out that if we do not adapt our education technology along with students and teachers, these new devices will be used to bypass our networks, policies and filters.

As an IT professional, there are some basic areas of concern when it comes to the network.

Some of the main issues that seem to cause instability are users having local administrative rights, open-network shares, lack of Windows updates, and liberal filtering rules for certain groups. Each of these issues individually come about for good reasons such as having legacy Windows 98 operating systems and teacher demands for resources and IT being overruled when concerns were expressed. Even more basic is conducting an audit once a year to see which of your students have network admin privileges.

If you are experiencing these types of issues, it is best to start calculating the costs to support a virus-infected network versus fixing the issues and possibly becoming stricter with network administration. Working with viruses and instability requires costly human resources which in today’s economy are hard to allocate. Upgrading operating systems, managing central stores for updates, and controlling network resources are generally onetime expenses and require much fewer resources over the school year.

Resources that take place beyond the network control of IT always are going to be a risk.

The question becomes with all the responsibilities of keeping a business and student information system working while addressing education software and Internet content filtering policies, why would a reasonable-minded IT professional think about opening up social networking sites such as Facebook and Google applications? Two responses are worthy of consideration. The first is the important role of network-traffic monitoring to see and deal with concerns and abuses by users. No matter how much technology security we develop and deploy there will always be a human element we will not be able to control. Network reporting and accountability are more important today than ever before for no other reason than the growing complexity of technology and the common knowledgebase of our users.

The second answer is to clearly state to vendors what will be needed in order for the IT professional to be comfortable deploying any “latest and greatest” technology. As an example, school boards are starting to address issues such as students sending text messages in order to cheat on tests. I can see current technology that routes 911 calls from a campus to a district police department also being used to deploy policies that bring network traffic through the district filter and restrict text messages during testing times.

Network traffic is at the core of what we are responsible for. The classroom with a phone line and a 56k modem connected to the Internet for Gopher searches is ancient history. Controlling all the traffic from the school district to the Internet may someday soon seem to be as old as the modem. For today, we must make it work and keep our children safe from content that has no place in school curriculum. This is truly an art in leadership, practice and development.  Phil Scrivano is Vice President of Customer Services for Lightspeed Systems. He can be reached at (661) 716-7600 or phil@lighspeedsystems.com.

8 DataBus • Fall 2009

C Innovation, Inc. develops Zangle, a student information system that helps K-12 school districts to quickly and efficiently manage all aspects of student data. Zangle covers all aspects of student management including enrollment, scheduling, attendance, mark reporting, transcripts, behavior, health, and virtually all other student related data. Our staff consists of a team of educators and technologists who share a passion for creating sound products that truly meet our customers’ needs.

Zangle is built with Microsoft technologies and is proven, stable, and fast. Zangle has successfully implemented in over 350 districts nationwide, ranging from 250 students to 380,000 students.

Phone: 800.230.2533

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Web: www.zangle.com

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Email: sales@zangle.com

Taming the Internet through

Traffic Control A

By Eric Wallers

s network professionals, we are handed a network with amazing capabilities, designed to handle the support of educating the youth of our communities. Then the wild beast gets a hold of it. Some refer to the wild beast as the Internet; some call them users.

Either way, the wonderful network that we had is now clogged with “stuff” and much of it is unwanted or unintended causing the network to not perform the way we know it can and all we hear from the users is, “The network is slow.” One of the ways to tame the wild beast is to use Web-filtering products. In this article, I will look at how Web filtering will improve network traffic over WAN links, what some of the strengths and weaknesses of Web filtering are and what future issues we will be facing.

As one of the network engineers for the Stanislaus County Office of Education, I have been managing the network for 10 years. We not only support our own office and all the connected programs, but we also support about 20 school districts with Internet access and other various technical issues. I have more than 30 years of experience in the computer industry including the Department of Defense and private adult computer education. I worked for the Hughson Unified School District before moving to the county level. I have used Websense for Web filtering and am currently using 8e6.

How does Web filtering improve traffic over a WAN link?

We know that our WAN links are often the weak links because they are the smallest and most expensive links. With limited bandwidth, they are often the choke points and the biggest cause for “the network is slow” comments.

By controlling what content passes through these critical links, we can reserve the bandwidth for what we want and block what we don’t want. Deciding what we want and what should be blocked is a huge debate that goes far beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that when we compare the need for the business office to use the WAN link for what they need, which includes payroll, or the need for students 10 DataBus • Fall 2009

to watch the latest Metallica video, we all know that Metallica is going to lose out.

Three general categories that are big bandwidth hogs are video streaming, Internet music or radio and internet games.

When you think of all the data that goes with a clear moving video, and then think of pushing that down a T-1 line or DSL link, you can quickly see that some control needs to be exercised. For example, when a major world event occurred, we had so much video streaming occurring at our main site that even our local network resources were excruciatingly slow. Last month our total page count for video streaming topped out at over 500,000 pages. By preventing bandwidth-hogging applications from clogging up the network, the applications that you do want will be able to run better because the bandwidth will be available.

Another benefit of Web filtering is being able to reduce the impact of harmful applications like spyware, malware and adware. These not only use up bandwidth, but workstation RAM, processing time and extra manhours to clean them up. Web filtering can block many of these unwanted programs, preventing much loss of productivity. Our current Web filter has blocked more than 60,000 spyware hits this year and almost as many malware and viruses.

Not only does this reduce bandwidth waste on the WAN links, but it has prevented numerous computers from being infected and bogged down with the unwanted programs. Our technicians noticed a dramatic decrease in help desk calls when we were first able to block the “yuckware.” With fewer spyware issues, technicians can get to the remaining issues more quickly and the staff does not suffer the workstation the associated slowness.

Last, but not least, are Web pages that are just plain time wasters. Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, to name a few, consume lots of time and pull people away from doing their jobs and students from their studies.

Don’t get me wrong, these sites have a useful place, but are more often misused at the wrong time and place. This also consumes bandwidth as well as e-mail resources.

I’m not a social Web site kind of person.

I prefer e-mail, but when I had to create a Facebook account, I was amazed at how many e-mails it generates and how much time people spend updating minute information. If Facebook or one of the other social Web sites are left open on your desktop, there is a constant stream of background communication keeping everyone up to date on whether Jane finished lunch and is now watching television. Multiply that by a few hundred users and students and once again our WAN links are getting choked with unnecessary data. By using a Web filter to block these sites or limiting them to specific times (before work, lunch, after work, etc.)

we can free up the bandwidth for more important traffic.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Web filters are not the answer to all issues. I haven’t even mentioned SPAM filtering, which is a similar but separate issue.

There are things the Web filters do well and there are things they do poorly.

Web filters are good at blocking the majority of harmful content. Without the debate of what harmful content is, they block the majority of adult sites, gang sites as well as all the sites that I have previously mentioned. If you just want to block everyone from getting to a general category of Web sites, then Web filtering fits the need.

The more specialized or individualized your requirements get, the more likely you will experience problems.

The problems are generally categorized as false positives or false negatives. Sites that should be blocked aren’t, and sites that should not be blocked are. We hear more about the false negatives than the false positives.

One big weakness Web filters have is the amount of new sites created daily. According to domaintools.com, Internet Statistics, more than 125,000 domains were created in the last 24 hours. That’s 30,000 more than the stats showed yesterday! With this many changes, it is impossible for a Web filter to have all the pages categorized. We have used both Websense and 8e6 Web filters and both have methods to send uncategorized content to be categorized. You would think that after a while, access to uncategorized content would drop to a relatively small amount. What we have experienced is that even after a few years, we are still finding about 40 percent of our traffic is uncategorized. The nature of education seems to draw staff and students to new uncategorized content.

Web filters strive to fit the filtering needs of their customers and some of the flexibilities are a two-edged sword. Keyword filtering is a great example of this. If you use keyword filtering to block major groups of Web pages, you will increase your number of false positives. I had the keyword “sex” blocking sites until my division administrator, who has a seaworthy boat, couldn’t get to sextants. Block the word “proxy” to reduce the number of kids going to proxy Web sites to circumvent the Web filtering and you quickly discover how many pages use the word proxy in their programming.

Some believe that we should do away with keyword blocking because of the false positives, whereas others believe that the benefit outweighs the negatives.

I mentioned using keyword blocking to reduce the access to proxies that bypass the Web filter. Proxies are another point of weakness because there are so many pop-

ping up and changing names, IP addresses, and such that the categorizing agents cannot keep up. One proxy process allows a student to set up a proxy generator on their computer at home and then they can use it from school since it is not categorized. As soon as it gets blocked, they just re-run the program at home and they have created a new one for tomorrow. Often, lab teachers will not even bother reporting the student’s access to proxies because they don’t feel it would do any good, and to a certain degree they are right.

We can attempt to block proxies and other traffic based on protocols, but this gets into a traffic choke point. It takes some serious processing power to break apart every IP packet and analyze what protocol it is using, then evaluate whether it should be blocked or not without inducing some of the latency that we are trying to prevent. Smaller districts might be able to get away with evaluating protocols without the latency, but larger districts and county offices find it more challenging. Not all Web filters do the protocol blocking and some might include the protocol blocking at the expense of quality in other areas. Blocking by patterns works fairly well, but once again we are increasing the amount of false positives.

I think you can see that Web filters are not the perfect answer, but they cover the majority of issues that they should without introducing too many problems.

Future Concerns

As we look into the future, the first issue that is already popping up is the change of using Adobe Flash from cute games and “elf bowling” (for those of you who remember that going around) to incorporating it into business Web pages for a more active content.

Web filters that do pattern blocking cannot distinguish between a flash game and flash business content. In August, the flash video category was my top category by more than one million pages. For the future, Web filters are going to need to decipher what the flash content is rather than just outright block it.

Proxies are getting better at circumventing Web filters with continuously changing IP addresses and domain names which keeps them ahead of the categorizing. Proxies are a particular challenge because once a student of staff member gains access to the proxy server, they have completely bypassed your Web filter and all the damage that you have been trying to prevent now comes crashing through unrestricted.

Legal issues are something that network administrators will have to keep on top of.

There is a tug of war between the privacy advocates and freedom of speech advocates on the side of no filtering and the family focused and child protection groups on the side of strict filtering. Regardless of where continued on page 12 Fall 2009 • DataBus 11

Taming the Internet continued from page 11

your personal views rest, the legal boxing match will be a major concern. Web filters are a tool that needs to be wielded carefully with clear policies and procedures with everyone signing off in the right place.

Web filters are much like water filters.

Too much filtering and you take out some of the good stuff; too little filtering and you let too much of the harmful stuff get through.

Either way, they are just a filter. There will never be a substitute for personal responsibility and close supervision of the students.

President’s Message continued from page 6

Web filters are useful tools for reducing the amount of bandwidth wasting Web applications, reducing malware and harmful programs and limiting the bandwidth and time wasting programs that users are drawn to. By using a Web filter to control the traffic over your network, you take a big step toward taming the wild beast.  Eric Wallers is a Network Engineer for the Stanislaus County Office of Education.

He can be reached at ewallers@stancoe.org.

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A new Corporate Affiliate Program by which CETPA and its membership can benefit even further from the support long extended by the K12 technologies vendor community.

Re cog n it ion of a nd i ncre as ed monetary awards for student accomplishment via CETPA’s “Student Bridge to the Future” scholarship program.

Enriching leadership resources to K12 through the Chief Technology Officer Mentor program.

Giving voice to significant trends such as the Green initiative within K12 technology.

Refining our organization’s definitions and uses of various members, to be presented as revisions to bylaws.

Personally satisfying is the recognition, by any number of those reading this, of the significance of our community achievement in this ever fleeting year. Thanks have been expressed to me personally or given to the whole of the CETPA board. Increasingly, that gratitude for progress made has extended beyond that small group, recognizing the importance of the extended CETPA family and its close collaborators. That was and has long been the plan—to weave together the talents, foresight and sometimes less laudable traits of individuals into a generally cohesive whole that moves things forward. By plan, we benefit both from the inherited stature of the organization and from the harnessed energies of the day-today developing future. As I sometimes am the focal point of present group accomplishment, the embodiment of the continuing past excellence of CETPA is in the form of Past President Warren Williams, and the initiative and moxie of our future is reflected by your president for CETPA’s 50th year in the form of Dr. Kelly Calhoun. The loom of Executive Director Andrea Bennett yields a complex weave of innovation, stability, structure and spontaneity from board, member and partnering organizations’ proficiencies.

That highly textured and resilient fabric is the very essence of our organization and is what provides pattern from which we are able to fashion questions and find answers furthering our capacity to meet opportunity as we tend to the needs of others.

Respectfully, I give my thanks and convey that of the CETPA board for your unmatched, bordering on legendary willingness to share without condition your perspective, proficiency and prowess. I am honored to be witness to your achievements in projects past and to your embrace of opportunity present and future. 

12 DataBus • Fall 2009

O

By Kevin Fuller

Caution: Network Traffic Ahead 14 DataBus • Fall 2009

n my way into work this morning, while stuck in freeway traffic, I had an epiphany. The highway where I am moving at a snail’s pace is a direct representation of the digital superhighway I managed as an IT director for a local school district.

No matter how many lanes get added to either highway, users will figure out a way to congest it.

But with direct fiber links connecting school sites becoming more common in districts across the United States, do we really need to worry about network traffic? Nowadays, it isn’t unheard of that a single school district can have multiple 10-Gig links throughout its network. With this much bandwidth, aren’t we finally able to relax and be assured that we will never run out?

Of course, I remember a time, not too long ago, that my colleagues and I thought a point-to-point T1 connection would be “more than enough bandwidth” to carry the needs of students, teachers and administrators. So what’s changed? What is driving this need for larger pipes? Curriculum, video distribution, IP-based video surveillance, peer-to-peer networking, ubiquitous computing, Web 2.0? It could be any one of these technologies, but the real answer is all of the above and more.

We know that no matter how much bandwidth we provide, students, faculty and staff will find a way to use it all and demand more. With this knowledge, we need to then prepare ourselves and our networks to manage the traffic on our newly expanded digital highways.

Here are a few of the concerns that we need to address as we construct our “congestion-free” highways: • Bottlenecks on WAN: What causes them? Bottlenecks can be caused by having inadequate bandwidth to your Internet service provider. It is critical to evaluate the resources required by curriculum and administrative staff. Determine what resources are required, how much bandwidth they require, how often they’re used, and the amount people using them.

• Centralization of Network Resources: Centralizing commonly used resources will improve the efficiency of them. Centralizing your servers will allow your technical support staff to manage them more effectively, and in a timely manner. Reducing the number of servers on your network will reduce maintenance time, and reduce the amount of bandwidth the services require.

The time freed up by centralizing servers and other network resources will allow your technicians to interact more closely with the end users, by providing a quicker response time with desktop support, and the many other peripherals teachers are using in the classroom.

• Optimization: Is it necessary? Again, it’s important to keep in mind that, at one point, we all thought our T1 lines would be “more than enough bandwidth” to carry the needs of students, teachers and administration. It would be an understatement to say that a T1 line between your remote locations are no longer sufficient. Believe it or not, there will come a time when your gigabit WAN links are no longer sufficient for the demands imposed on your network. Many of you are familiar with bandwidth management appliances (i.e. Packet shapers, Internet caching servers, etc.) most commonly used for throttling services over T1 lines, frame-relay, or other types of circuits. Soon we’ll be faced with the challenge of optimizing our 10GbE links.

• Determining WAN traffic/Prioritization: Upon your evaluation of what is running across your WAN, you’ll need to build a list of priorities between voice, video, curriculum related apps, administrative apps, etc.

• Coordination between departments discussing priority: Although discussing the priority of WAN traffic between departments can be a sensitive subject, it is vital to do so. I believe it comes down to safety and curriculum. Your voice services need to be functional and reliable at all times as a matter of safety. Providing reliable access to your student infor-

A DV E RT O R I A L

mation system is a vital component when it comes to the safety of your students.

Your curriculum related apps need to available and functional at times during the hours of instruction. Our job is not simply supporting IT, it’s supporting the curriculum and the educators we entrust with our children. Our job is to “help teachers teach”! The time allocated for each subject matter is already short. If teachers are not able to access applications that are tied to lesson plans, we’re only taking time away from learning.

• Curriculum—driving WAN traffic: Curriculum should be the first priority aside from safety. Listen to the stakeholders in the curriculum department as they are usually pretty clear on what their needs are. I’ve learned over the years that if IT is conscious in supporting curriculum, curriculum will support IT return. Curriculum has access to funding and special grant programs that IT wouldn’t ordinarily have access to. Working closely with curriculum is vital to success of the IT department. It’s always a better sale when curriculum drives the technical decision, as opposed to coming purely from IT. • What technologies will be using the WAN? Voice, video distribution, video surveillance and other security-related systems, curriculum applications, administrative applications, etc.

• Student engagement: Many students say that “school is boring.” Having access to computers and the Internet helps engage those who otherwise wouldn’t be. Many would rather access information using a technical resource. Technical/online resources have become the “conventional way” of researching information. Students will typically have more interaction with computers/Internet at home than they do at school. They have a common and constant desire to interact. If the technology is made available, they are likely to use it! Their creativity is often enhanced, which furthers their engagement, and stimulates their thought process. This ultimately raises them to be better “learners for life.” Having convenient and intuitive access to technical resources is a key component to the success of today’s learners. As opposed to “what do we need to block access to,” let’s focus on “what we need to ensure they have access to!”

While we may never be able to build a congestion-proof network, I believe that with the proper design and management tools, we can build a network that will be able to service all of our end-users at a speed that would make even the Autobahn jealous.  Kevin Fuller is an Account Manager with Spectrum Communications. He can be reached at kfuller@spectrumccsi.com.

Best Practices Spotlight:

Technology and Business Teams Unite to Overcome District’s Performance Challenges Written by: Gary Smith, Windsor Management Group Exclusively for DataBus

S

cott Buxbaum, assistant superintendent of business services for South Bay Union School District (SBUSD), knew it was time for a technology upgrade. His district of 8,000 students on 13 campuses spanning Imperial Beach, San Ysidro and southeastern San Diego had been relying for years on an MS-DOS–based legacy software system. The system’s usefulness was sunsetting as a number of issues emerged.

“It was really outdated. We didn’t have position control between human resources (HR) and our business and financial office,” Buxbaum noted as an example of the lack of departmental coordination with the legacy software, which resulted in HR occasionally hiring staff without a funded vacancy in the position inventory—a potential budgetary issue.

Second, not all of the 1,000-member faculty and staff had access inside or outside the district.

“You had to be here internally on the network to access the system,” said Janet Wraight, director of information and technology services at SBUSD. Another factor was weighing heavily in their decision-making process: SBUSD has experienced extensive budget cuts due to the state’s massive budget deficit. This meant the new system would have to process a higher workload performed by fewer people.

It was time to make a change.

Buxbaum and Wraight assembled a team of representatives from IT, human resources, purchasing and the fiscal office to determine the type of technology that could meet the district’s current and future needs. The team started by evaluating a system that offered position control, but determined it lacked the capability to grow with the district’s needs. What finally captured their interest was Infinite Visions®, K-12’s leading financial and Human Resources Management ERP system from Windsor Management Group, which offers a modern solution including userfriendly integrated workflow, efficient reporting, and the ability to grow with the district. The team conducted customer site visits at California and Arizona districts–a move that ultimately made the difference in their decision to select Infinite Visions.

Improving Efficiency South Bay Union’s Infinite Visions ERP system and iVisions Web Portal recently went live and the team is enthusiastic about its efficiency. Position Control and automated workflow are increasing

In the first row, from left to right: Kim Phifer, Assistant Superintendent Human Resources & Organizational Development; Arlene Mitchell, Director, Fiscal Services; Janet Wraight, Director, Information and Technology Services The second row from left to right: Scott Buxbaum, Assistant Superintendent, Business Services; Carol Mulhern, Information Systems Analyst; Jon Hansen, Director, Purchasing/Supplies Department

interdepartmental efficiencies. Users who previously had to manually create spreadsheets can import and export data into EXCEL with Infinite Visions’ powerful SmartGirds tool. In addition, the entire staff has access through the web portal, and “power users” (HR, Finance, and Purchasing and Payables staff) can access the enterprise functions. The district hopes to further cut costs by using the platform to transition to a paperless workflow.

The assistant superintendent and the IT director say their experience can help other, similar-sized districts considering upgrading to a modern ERP solution. In addition to encouraging site visits, a team approach, establishing criteria and assuring that the system is user-friendly, they also emphasize the importance of choosing a vendor that offers customization to the district’s needs and, most important, reliable services and support.

“It’s nice to have a system where it’s all together,” Buxbaum said. “We’ll have it grow with us.”

About the Author Gary Smith is Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Windsor Management Group, a leading provider of financial and human resource management solutions for K-12 school districts.

WMG is the creator of Infinite Visions® enterprise suite used by more than 750 school districts. For more information, please call (888) 654-3293, or visit www.infinitevisions.com.

Fall 2009 • DataBus 15

The Demands of Network Bandwidth

A

By Jeff Enz

16 DataBus • Fall 2009

stronomic. That’s the word for how the demands for network bandwidth have changed in the last eight years. As I revisit where it all started, I can’t help but remember when I thought that a 56k dial-up connection was blazing fast. Using that connection, I just knew I could download that music file in an hour.

It also doesn’t seem like it was that long ago that the higher education network in California was expanded to include K-12. Here at Imperial County Office of Education, a DS3 connection to CalREN was installed and I didn’t see how we would ever use that much bandwidth. However, it wasn’t very long before our traffic was calling for an OC3 circuit, which was installed in time to meet the need. Now we have a Gigabit connection.

As someone who is involved with the K12HSN circuits, I have seen this same process occur over and over again at many counties throughout the state. There are now approximately 68 gigabit circuits connecting our nodes sites to the CalREN Network with more on the way. Growth has occurred so quickly in the heavily populated areas of Southern California that 10 Gigabit connections are being ordered.

The need for greater circuit capacity is further illustrated in the fact that metered ISP usage from 2005 to 2008 increased 92 percent. Over this same period, CENIC worked hard to establish peering relationships with other service networks to grow the “on network” traffic and minimize the offnetwork (paid-for) ISP. These peering relationships divert a significant volume of bandwidth usage from the commodity internet. CENIC reports that in 2005, 60 percent of overall traffic was to the commodity ISP and 40 percent was to peering partners. In 2008, around 40 percent of the overall traffic is commodity ISP and 60 percent is to peering partners. So, even with the shift of 20 percent of the traffic going from commodity ISP to peering partners, the metered ISP has still grown by 92 percent.

The inauguration of President Barack Obama brought to light a possible change in how people get their news and how they view historic events.

Millions of people flocked—not to their televisions, but to their computers—to stream the video of this historic event. CNN.com reported that they generated more than 136 million page views, more than 21.3 million live video streams, and at the peak, they were serving 1.3 million concurrent live streams.

The educational community is also doing their part to fuel the growth. We are seeing an increased use of the video-conferencing services, not only for meeting purposes, but also to actually deliver instruction. There are many districts using video conferencing to provide course offerings to school sites and even other districts that do not have the master teachers on staff who excel in specific course offerings. We are seeing collaboration start to occur between educational entities for things such as back-up/disaster recovery and sharing of common services. I also believe that we are beginning to see a new generation of teachers. They have grown up using technology and are more open and enthusiastic about using it in their lesson plans.

In this time of shrinking budgets, the K12HSN is working together with CENIC to find creative ways to meet the growing bandwidth needs of the K-12 community. Over the last few years there have been numerous network redesigns. These have provided greater bandwidth to the node sites and reduced circuit costs. Not willing to let an opportunity go untapped, CENIC recently submitted a grant application requesting stimulus funds to bring fiber infrastructure into many northern California rural counties. We are always looking for ways to improve service to schools, districts and county offices of education. If you are aware of opportunities in your areas that might address connectivity needs using innovative approaches—cases of investing now to save future ongoing costs—please contact us to investigate the possibilities.  Jeff Enz is the Network Operations Manager for CA K-12 High Speed Network. He can be reached at jenz@icoe.org.

CUE VIEW

Essential Infrastructure to Support

21st Century Literacy

By Tim Landeck

18 DataBus • Fall 2009

“If we succeed in actually getting all the teachers to truly implement all the educational technology tools that we are encouraging them to use, then you know we will be in a load of trouble!” stated Dan Weiser, a technology coordinator responsible for staff development in his school district. Weiser’s intentions are good as he makes efforts to support the integration of technology in the classroom, but he also sees the limitations of the district infrastructure and the potential for a catastrophic network collapse if, in fact, all teachers were to implement all the resourceintensive applications and activities that teachers are being trained to use.

Supporting 21st-century literacy includes making sure that all the essential conditions are covered before the implementation of 21st-century tools. It is commonly understood that if the technology is not reliable, then people will not use it. So for example, if you are about to roll out a new podcasting server and you have not accounted for the necessary additional bandwidth, the first impression that your users will have is that the new system is flawed—which will hinder the present and future use of this and other excellent 21st-century tools.

So how does the technology leader prepare for the increased use of resource-intensive applications as the curriculum focuses on more Web 2.0 applications? There is not a simple answer to this question and frequently the solution will involve additional resources, including funding and personnel. However, approaching the challenge with the following four guiding principles will help.

The technology infrastructure of a school district is there for one basic purpose: to support student learning. The district network administrator is responsible for the secure and reliable operation of the district’s servers and network, and therefore must be careful about the applications and user rights that are permitted on the network. However, this can easily create the “no admin” where nothing is implemented and no resources are provided to educators because the network administrator can only say “no” to the ever-expanding requests for less secure and more resource-intensive applications. The most secure server is one that is locked behind a door and

turned off, but of course this would eliminate user access and the purpose of the server in the first place.

With every step in the direction of increasing end-user access, the resource becomes less secure. A careful balance between usability and security is required to successfully manage a 21st-century network.

Plan for growth and then build even bigger! It is impossible to know exactly what technology tools will be used five years from now, so when planning for this unclear future, it is important to anticipate the inevitable increased need for bandwidth, RAM, processor speed and hard disk space. Build your infrastructure as robustly as is practical for your budget while simultaneously preparing for being underresourced as new and innovative tools are needed.

Don’t purchase the bleeding edge of technology, but don’t implement the bare minimum either. The latest and greatest technologies come with a steep price tag, so it is more practical to focus on tools that have a proven record and may be more cost effective.

It is also important to not purchase the least expensive, end-of-life solutions because this will ultimately increase your total cost of ownership.

Work with curriculum and staff development personnel to ensure that new tools will be able to be supported by the infrastructure before it is rolled out. Communication is critical to the functioning of any organization, yet often we see the technology department not consulted prior to the district’s implementation of a new technology-intensive tool.

Keeping the paths of communication open and active will help to prevent inappropriate purchases and disappointed teachers.

There are many intricacies to preparing the infrastructure for the 21st-century learner, but using the above guiding principles will help the whole organization support this critical initiative.  Tim Landeck is Director of Technology Services of the Pajaro Valley Unified School District in Watsonville, CA., a national conference presenter, a regular columnist for OnCUE, and a consultant with various school districts nationwide. He can be reached at tim_landeck@pvusd.net. This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of OnCUE, Volume 30, No. 4.

Making No-Cost Student Laptops a Reality B

By Rick Otto

y now, it’s a well known fact that even the youngest students benefit from getting their small hands on a computer as part of their instruction. The only real question that remains is the hardest to answer: How can public school districts afford to purchase enough computers to meet the needs of all of their students?

I recently viewed a Web site for an electronics retailer and discovered a mini-laptop that costs just about $240. This is a phenomenal price if you want to buy a laptop for personal use, but it still adds up to a daunting total dollar amount when you think about purchasing enough of them to dole out to all of the students in your district. However, this Web site gave me an idea: I think we could bring this price down to zero and place these laptops in the hands of the students who truly need them.

Auctioning Empty Space

Even though mini-laptops (aka netbooks) are smaller than regular laptops, there’s still a lot of empty space on their plastic case. What if the State of California were to sell or auction the space on the back of the laptop’s lid, around the keyboard and on the bottom?

For just $50 per laptop, a company such as Safeway, could purchase—or acquire through donation—the open area to the right of the keyboard and place their logo there. This addition could easily be done by a computer manufacturer,

20 DataBus • Fall 2009

similar to the Intel or AMD stickers often affixed to new computers. Or for $75 a unit, perhaps a company like Chevron could secure the flashing of their logo and Web site address on each screen during computer start up. We could raise further funds by allowing organizations to pay to have their URLs included in the default links of each laptop’s Web browser.

This concept of integrating company sponsorship into an educationally-based delivery vehicle is not new. Since 1990, Channel One has been transmitting daily news via satellite to classrooms across the nation, and two of their 12 minutes of programming are sponsored segments, which enables the content to be delivered to schools free of charge. If we extend this idea to selling various sponsorships on small laptops, we should be able to purchase enough units to provide computers to those students who don’t already have a laptop at home.

Answering the Governor’s Call to Action

If all students had access to a computer, then we could move much more cost effectively to incorporating digital books, digital files and additional digital resources into the daily curriculum. This could also help school districts across California meet Governor Schwarzenegger’s call to make the state the first in the nation to offer schools free, open-source digital textbooks for high school stu-

dents. Furthermore, when all students can use their own computers, their teachers are now fully enabled to utilize free online tools like Google Docs, which allows users to create documents and share them over the Internet, and Microsoft’s Live@edu communication and collaboration service.

For this to really work—and to benefit the greatest number of students—this endeavor should be pursued at the state level, rather than locally through individual school districts. Consider the return on investment and the economies of scale that need to be in place for organizations to be interested in investing in advertising on mini-laptops. Computer companies would need the same wideranging incentives to want to participate in a program like this. Ideally, the computer vendor would secure the mini-laptop advertisers via their established corporate, nonprofit or government agency connections.

Win Win Win Win

If we can interest companies and nonprofit organizations in paying to “logo-ize” mini-laptops for students across the state, and if we can convince computer companies to help with this effort, we create a win-winwin-win situation for everyone.

First, students win by having access to tools that they may normally not be able to access.

Second, computer companies win by providing a product that dramatically shortens the time and reduces the cost involved in the sales process. Ideally, the advertising to “logo-ize” mini-laptops for students would cover the costs for the vendor, which provides them to the school districts for free. A computer company would only need to find the financial sponsors to purchase an open “for rent” location on the mini-laptop, instead of finding a district that actually has the funding to purchase the laptops outright.

Third, local school districts and the state win by removing a large expenditure (student computers and potentially recurring textbook costs) from the system.

And, fourth, the organizations (businesses, foundations, nonprofits and government agencies) that reserve a location on the computers benefit from low cost advertising and goodwill among their target audience within the local community.

It’s no secret that the state of California is in financial crisis. To meet the challenges we all face—as educators, as employees who work in the state, and as parents of schoolage children—we need to get creative. If we can join together and apply new ideas, such as this to our state’s educational system, we may help California become an educational leader in this environment of great turmoil.

And I think that we can bring about great positive change in the lives of our students. 

Rick Otto most recently served as the Director of Information Technology for the Sequoia Union High School District (SUHSD) in San Mateo County. SUHSD serves students from eight feeder school districts. Previously, he was a manager at Hewlett-Packard where he held management responsibility for the successful delivery of IT Services and Support to Hewlett-Packard employees in HP’s Western U.S. sites and of IT Consulting and Support Services to Hewlett-Packard Executives, including the office of the CEO. This article was first published in OnCUE, Fall, 2009, Volume 31. Number 3. Additional editing of this article for DataBus was provided by Leslie O’Neill. Rick can be reached at ottorick@hotmail.com.

Fall 2009 • DataBus 21

Value Without The Price

T

By Steve Thornton

ough times! We’ve always looked for ways to stretch the IT buck to return all possible value to the classroom but we never worried about money like today.

Gone for now are sufficient funds for equipment refreshes, expensive software license renewals, additional support from consultants, fully-staffed operations, and a thirst to pilot the newest technologies in the quest for better learning outcomes for our kids.

Today’s mindset must be one where creative solutions are the mark of the day. Loss of service to the customer— whether the food services department, the personnel office, the superintendent or the venerable teacher whose pressure for student success remains—is not an option. Nor is the loss of momentum that can happen when our existing technology initiatives are threatened by a loss of funds.

We are an urban K-8 district of nearly 9,000 students, eight elementary and three middle schools. We don’t have the affluence to support a private foundation and we aren’t poor enough to qualify for most available public grants (e.g. EETT Competitive, E-rate internal connections, etc.) In our search for creative solutions that will help us weather the current economic crisis, we’ve turned to free solutions that provide value without the price.

Following are a few of the resources we’ve found to help us stay the course.

GLPI (Gestion Libre de Parc Informatique: Literally, “free management of your IT”)

A free Web-based IT and helpdesk management solution. A simple form allows any user to submit a helpdesk ticket. The ticket is auto-assigned to the appropriate tech and who can then solve or escalate the ticket until resolution occurs. Automatically informs the user as resolution progresses and tracks both public notes for the user and private technical notes among techs. Has an integrated KB (knowledgebase) system that we use to maintain a public FAQ for users and a private store of technical procedures for the techs. (www.glpi-project.org)

RealVNC (Free Edition)

VNC (Virtual Network Computing) is a free desktopsharing system that can be used for remote desktop support across the network. Developed by Olivetti Research Laboratory in the UK, it is now open source with many derivatives available. Simple installation of both the server and viewer on all workstations allows our techs to provide remote assistance from anywhere to anywhere in the network. We have found it invaluable in providing phone-based instruction and troubleshooting. (www.realvnc.com/products/free/4.1)

iTALC (Intelligent Teaching And Learning with Computers)

iTALC is a free computer lab-management system built on VNC. Teacher sees a thumbnail view of all student computers, can take over individual computers, lock out all computers to direct student attention and push her screen to all computers at once. This summer we will convert all our computer labs from commercial 22 DataBus • Fall 2009

lab management software to iTALC to save on licensing fees. (italc.sourceforge.net)

Edubuntu (Free Ubuntu LINUX Distribution for Education)

Ubuntu is an open-source, Linux-based operating system for laptops, desktops and servers. It includes a Web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging and more. Edubuntu is a special distribution of Ubuntu that includes educational applications, tools, content and themes. We’ve had success loading Edubuntu on older classroom computers that we would have otherwise obsoleted. (edubuntu.org)

Moodle (Free Web-based Course Management System)

Moodle is a virtual learning environment that teachers use to create a dynamic online Web site for their students. It can be used to conduct fully online courses but our teachers have found it useful for blended learning in their regular program. While you can host and maintain Moodle on your own servers, life recently got much simpler with the inclusion of Moodle on the Calaxy site mentioned below. (moodle.org)

More Free Resources:

CutePDF: A free PDF file creator that works from any printable document. (www.CutePDF.com ) Paint.net: A terrific free image and photo editing application. (www.getpaint.net) 7Zip: A free file archiver compatible with PKZip and Winzip with a high compression ratio nearly two to 10 percent higher than similar archivers. (www.7zip.org) YuuGuu: A free screensharing and web conferencing application. (www.yuuguu.com) OpenOffice.org: The venerable free alternative to commercially available office application suites. (www. openoffice.org) Calaxy: A ton of free resources and tools for California educators available through the CA K12 High Speed Network. (www.calaxy.org) SchoolForge: A repository for open source solutions for educators. (www.schoolforge.net) Textbook Adoption Software: Check with your textbook reps. Many districts underutilize the curriculum support software materials included with their textbook adoptions. You may be surprised at what’s available.

Loss of service is not an option! In these tight times, get creative and see what you can do for your district with the many FREE solutions out there.  Steve Thornton, CCTO is with the Menifee Union School District. As Director of Technology, he is responsible for all aspects of district technology including technology-enriched curriculum development, administrative, student, and assessment systems, technology infrastructure, security, retrofitting, new facilities planning, policies, and procedures.

He can be reached at sthornton@menifeeusd.org.

MyCTAP

Your Source for Educational Technology Support

T

By Burt Lo

24 DataBus • Fall 2009

he California Technology Assistance Project (CTAP) is a statewide educational technology assistance program provided by the California Department of Education. CTAP has traditionally offered its services on a regional basis. Now, in addition to offering assistance through county offices of education, CTAP is consolidating many resources at the new state K-12 Educational Technology Portal, MyCTAP (www.myctap.org). This Web site provides a variety of professional development opportunites for teachers, quality instructional resources, technology planning resources for stakeholders, links to the CTAP regional Web sites and the CTAP SETS projects. As a part of MyCTAP, the CTAP community was started as an online network for discussing and sharing resources and ideas about effective teaching and learning with technology.

One of CTAP’s missions is to provide professional development and support for using electronic resources in teaching and learning. Through the MyCTAP Web site, teachers and administrators can participate in free, live online workshops. All that is required to participate in these workshops is a high-speed Internet connection and a computer. The workshops last two hours and are held after school hours. Many of the courses offer certificates verifying professional development hours.

If you are looking for a way to offer technology professional development during these lean budget times, there are a few different ways to take advantage of this professional development opportunity. One option is to bring a group of teachers to a computer lab or multimedia center and project a CTAP live session. In this setting, teachers will have the benefit of a live facilitator as well as the support of their colleagues.

Many of the workshops are recorded and made available in an archived format. This provides teachers with a chance to view a workshop at a later time if their schedule did not permit them to attend live. In addition, teachers who did attend a live workshop are able to view selected sections of the recorded workshops to help them review and clarify their understanding of the workshop materials.

For teachers who are looking for just-in-time training, MyCTAP also has a number of technology tutorials. These tutorials provide narrated screencasts that demonstrate how to use software such as Inspiration and Excel. The video screencasts are indexed and are generally one to two minutes long. This is a perfect professional development resource for the teacher who needs some assistance to finish a technology-enhanced lesson.

In addition to workshops and video tutorials, MyCTAP contains many printable technology quick

guides. These guides to popular software titles such as PowerPoint, OS X Tiger, and Photoshop Elements are very handy for staff to keep near their computers.

The guides offer quick refreshers for locating specific features within a program’s menus.

With one location for resources to support K-12 educational technology, MyCTAP features materials developed by all of the CTAP regions. Some of the most popular resources are the CyberSafety materials that teachers, administrators and parents can use to inform students about staying safe online. MyCTAP also links to electronic learning resources and free Web information links that have been selected for their quality by trained library media teachers. Access to customized professional development and resources from each CTAP regional office is also available through MyCTAP. In addition to CTAP-created resources, the MyCTAP Community section provides a place for educators to develop a Personal Learning Community and engage in online discussions, resource sharing and more. With a social networking approach, the MyCTAP Community invites educators to create their own profile and join online groups to stay informed about educational technology topics of interest. MyCTAP Community members are encouraged to share documents, images and even videos that are best practices and examples of effective implementation of technology in the classroom.

An additional component of the MyCTAP is the Online Technology Plan Builder. This resource provides school districts and CTAP staff with an online tool for collaborating on the writing or revising of a technology plan. This tool is currently being implemented with several districts that are revising their technology plans.

More details about the Online Technology Plan Builder will be shared at the annual CETPA conference and in future DataBus articles.

MyCTAP is pleased to offer a wide collection of resources to support the effective integration of technology into teaching and learning by California educators.

Please bookmark www.myctap.org or add it to your RSS Reader. The MyCTAP collection of instructional resources and assistance for teachers using technology in their classroom continues to grow every day. CTAP looks forward to seeing you soon in an online workshop or in the MyCTAP Community.  Burt Lo is a Professional Development Coordinator with CTAP Region 6, a project administered by the Stanislaus County Office of Education. He is also a member of the CUE Conference Planning Committee and a board member with the Central California CUE Affiliate. He can be reached at blo@ctap6.k12.ca.us.

The Change Writers Project G

By Gail Desler

26 DataBus • Fall 2009

iven the pressures to raise student test scores, to meet yearly AYP goals, and to cover a daunting list of content standards, how can teachers weave the teaching of tolerance and the ethical use of the Internet into the curriculum?

But at the same time, they are joining parent groups and legislators across the nation in examining some alarming statistics: “Studies have found that nearly onethird of all students are bullied at least once a month and that one out of every 10 high school drop-outs left school because of repeated bullying.” (Safe Schools Improvement Act).

As school administrators scramble to find funding and training programs to combat growing issues of intolerance, espcially cyberbullying, a group of teachers involved in the Elk Grove Unified School District’s EETT grant are using writing and technology as a strategy for reversing the bullying trend. The fourth-grade team at Prairie Elementary School turned to the Internet as a tool for promoting tolerance and resiliency in their young students. Using district-adopted curriculum already in place, they have taken themes such the Open Court Reading Program’s Survival beyond the textbook and accompanying worksheets. As students read about Anne Frank in their textbook, for instance, they made connections from “then and there” to “here and now” by watching Heroes in the Hallway, the online video produced by the Spirit Desk, and began discussing the many ways one can take a stand against intolerance.

They invited Marielle Tsukamoto, an educator, community activist and former child internee at the Jerome internment camp in Arkansas, to come share her story and her perspective on how people maintain hope for a better world despite great challenges. During her visit, she introduced words and concepts such as survival, tolerance, resiliency and constitutional rights.

The students soon took ownership of the above words, integrating them into their reading and writing— first via pencil and paper, accompanied by artwork, which was then displayed on bulletin boards around their classrooms. But the ideas, words and images on the walls begged for a larger audience. The teachers brought out the staple removers and began exploring Web 2.0 tools to transform these pieces of “off-thewalls writing” into more interactive compositions. And the Change Writers project was born!

Lesley Mckillop created a classroom blog initially to teacher her students about Internet safety. The blog soon evolved into deeper conversations, such as ways to

be an upstander (as opposed to a bystander). Thanks to the enhanced bandwidth supported by the Sacramento Education Cable Consortium’s BESTNet and California K12 High Speed Network, the students were able to move from asynchronous conversations via blogging to an interactive videoconference that allowed them to connect in real time for a Change Writers meet-up.

Lutricia Hardaway, Elisabeth Goossens, and Halie Ferrier used VoiceThread to take their students’ writing—and their voices—to an audience that extended beyond the confines of the school site and surrounding community. Hardaway’s students were the first to explore VoiceThread, taking their exuberance over the election of our nation’s first African-American president to a national audience by posting Barack Obama Rocks.

Goossens’ young writers went public with their message of tolerance through their Poems in Two Voices. Ferrier’s students stepped back in time and assumed the role of children, who like Marielle Tsukamoto, had overnight lost their rights as citizens and were now confined to a government camp. Within weeks of the students’ uploading their Letters from the Internment Camps, the project began to take on a life of its own, with Marielle and other internees responding on the VoiceThread, thus merging historical fiction with autobiographical incident—a genre which the human voice makes even more compelling. VoiceThread developers Steve Muth and Ben Pappel refer to the Letters project as a standout, deserving of national recognition.

“As Change Writers, our students realized very quickly the opportunities technology-enhanced writing provides for connecting to an authentic audience—and for making a difference,” said McKillop. “As for our fourth-grade team, the Change Writers project is just the beginning of our journey into new ways of teaching writing.”

Adds Goossens: “Writing is at the heart of our projects, but the technology takes writing to new levels, engaging, connecting and empowering our students in ways not possible when limited to paper and pencil.”

Note: The Change Writers project stems from the EETT partnership between the EGUSD Technology Services, the Area 3 Writing Project, the Sacramento Educational Cable Consortium, and the California k12 High Speed Network.  Gail Desler is with Technology Services for the Elk Grove USD and can be reached at (916) 686-7710, ext. 2055.

continued on page 29

E-rate Update

Using E-rate To Fund High Speed Data Networks

F

By Fred Brakeman

or those of us that have been involved with education for more years than we care to admit, we can remember 16mm projectors, intercoms only in the classroom (no telephones), and new-fangled tools such as televisions and Mac 64s. Years after businesses started “networking” computers in the workplace, schools started doing the same. That didn’t mean running computer wire to the classrooms though, just to computer labs, remember. We took the kids to the computers, not the computers to the kids.

At best, classrooms had stand-alone computers and we used floppy discs to transmit information from the classroom to the office or from classroom to classroom. Many of our “technology directors” at the time were teachers that had been elevated because they were the ones that weren’t afraid to touch a computer. Ah, the good old days!

Advance forward 20 years to today. Governor Schwarzenegger recently announced his digital textbook initiative. Districts are required to have standardized student information systems; teachers are taking attendance in the classroom and transmitting the data electronically to the district office; many teachers are accessing teaching programs via browser based programs off of the Internet or the district’s Intranet; video conferencing is becoming a reality in the

classroom; wireless networks abound; and all of this is happening in the classroom, oftentimes off of T1 (1.54 Mbps) telephone lines between school sites to the district office.

As we have more teachers embrace technology and integrate Web-based teaching programs into their lesson plans, school administrators are going to be faced with significantly increasing their data connections from their school sites to the district office and their data connection to their Internet service provider. The good news is E-rate and the California Teleconnect Fund (CTF) can help reduce the cost of these data circuits. For many of our districts and libraries, E-rate and CTF will fund 95 percent of the cost of these data circuits. Even for our most affluent schools, E-rate and CTF will pay 70 percent!

Before you start the process of receiving bids from service providers for high-speed data circuits, here are some tips: Start first with a visit to your business office to find out what process you will need to follow to receive bids for new data circuits.

Since many of these projects will involve long-term contracts, the total cost of these contracts may be hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of dollars. Given the cost, your business office and/or attorney may Continued on page 30

28 DataBus • Fall 2009

E-Rate Update continued from page 28

require that you put out a formal bid, run newspaper ads, etc.

Since many service providers will wrap up the cost of the installation into their monthly cost of the service, you may find that increasing the length of the multi-year contract to something more than three years will significantly reduce the monthly cost of the data circuits. You may want to check with your business office to see if they will allow a five-year contract or something even longer.

Before you put out your bid or RFP/RFQ, decide what types and speed of data circuits you will need. What are your minimum requirements including data speeds, technical requirements, service level agreements, billing requirements, growth and any other functions or features you determine that must be included with the service provider’s bid response? You may want to also consider if you will only receive quotes for traditional “wired” service providers or will accept other services such as wireless microwave or new advanced services that telecom companies are now offering. More options mean more and lower bids.

Will the district be supplying the contract for the service provider to sign or will the district be signing a contract that the service

provider will be supplying? If the district is supplying the contract, it is suggested you supply a copy of the contract with the bid.

If you are going to sign the service provider’s contract, require that the service provider supply a copy of the contract with their bid and make sure your business office and attorney approve the contract before it is signed. It is suggested you also include a growth clause in the contract so additional schools or bandwidth can be added as the need arises so new bids are not required in the future.

Since not all service providers will offer E-rate and/or CTF discounts, include a place in their bid response: (1) indicating they will be supplying both E-rate and CTF discounts; (2) how much those discounts will be each month; and (3) have them describe how and when the discounts will be applied to your monthly bills. Some service providers require the district to pay each bill in full each month even when E-rate or CTF discounts have not yet been applied to the bill and others will only bill the district the “net” cost of the service after E-rate and CTF discounts. This is an important point as many districts in California have found out the hard way the financial hardships that arise when discounts don’t start flow-

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30 DataBus • Fall 2009

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ing for many months after the service has been installed and bills sent. Establish the evaluation criteria before the bids go out and make sure the service providers know what the evaluation criteria are. Per E-rate rules, price must be the highest weighted factor, but you can include any other evaluation criteria that meet your specific needs such as if they will be offering both E-rate and CTF discounts, technical qualifications and how they will bill for services, etc.

If a bid or RFP/RFQ is going to be supplied, make sure you prepare the bid documents prior to filing your E-rate form 470 and have them ready the day the Form 470 is filed. If you intend to write a bid, make sure form 470 identifies that a bid was written and how service providers can access the bid. Supply the bid documents to all service providers who request copies of the bid. Keep the bid open at 28 days after form 470 has been posted and bids made available to the service providers. To prepare for a future E-rate audit, keep all communications with all bidders during the 28-day bidding period, not just the low bidder. The contract must be signed and dated by all parties prior to filing form 471. The form 471 filing window will probably start about December 1, 2009 and end approximately February 15, 2010.

Since these new data circuits may take months to install after E-rate funds the project, which may be months after the start of the fiscal year, we suggest you also continue to request E-rate funding for your old data circuits as well. After the new data circuits are installed, cancel the old data circuits.

Last item. Check with your service provider who will be supplying the new data circuits to see if they have any paperwork requirements they need you to do in order to get the E-rate and CTF discounts flowing. Most of the major companies do have paperwork requirements that the district must complete: no paperwork and no E-rate/ CTF discounts even though you have gone through all of the above processes and received notification that E-rate and CTF have funded the project.  Fred Brakeman is President of Infinity Communications & Consulting, Inc, a full-service consulting firm including E-rate/CTF and Microsoft Ed Tech K-12 consulting, technology design services, and low-voltage construction management and inspection services serving approximately 15 percent of all the school districts and county offices of education in California.

Infinity Communications & Consulting is located in Bakersfield, CA. He can be reached at fbrakeman@infinitycomm.com, office phone (661) 716-1840, or via mail at P.O. Box 6069, Bakersfield, California 93386. Please visit www.infinitycomm.com.

“We will either find a way, or make one.”

—Hannibal

Just Wearing Tweed Won’t Make You A Star

T

By Mark Heydon

32 DataBus • Fall 2009

here seems to be more than just of smidgen of animosity between the tech side and the academic side of our house.

Without putting too fine an edge on it, it seems that the tech-side sees the academic side as arrogant, privileged, technically stubborn and wholly lacking in appreciation for technology and what technologists do.

And for reasons inexplicable to us on the tech side, technology is the first to go from the classroom in times of financial panic— such as now.

First goes teacher interest. Then goes teacher equipment.

Then back come teacher books and paper and the, “If the 20th century was good enough for my mother, it’s good enough for me,” sort of complaints. After that, things just get grouchy.

No shy adjective-slingers themselves, the academic side looks on the tech-side as intrusive and overbearing with its jargon-laden inability to either communicate without showing off or to see with any kind of pedagogical vision. The tech side, to the academic side, seems ignorant to learning, a fumbling and insecure team of sneaker-wearing wannabes whose only claim to necessity is access control. “No, you can’t that’s restricted you don’t have those privileges.” Usually said just like that, but without pauses for breath.

Most of all—and this is absolutely unforgivable to the academic mind—the tech side

has an unfathomable disregard for mortality.

“So, why are you alive?” This is a pretty brutal question, and, of course, teachers aren’t openly asking this. They probably aren’t even conscious of the question. But it’s there, lurking like the grim reaper over all their discussions with the tech side. “What’s your eternal educational reward?” they ask.

“What’s the legacy pay-off in wire-pulling?

Is anyone going to remember you after you’re gone? Will anyone care?”

Or, to put it simply: “If what you do has no relation to solving the eternal human question of how to live forever, why are you wasting our air?”

It’s a fair question. Teachers live in a world of heroic salvation, though they’ll never tell you that. It’s a kind of talisman they keep for warding off their own death. Teach a kid and that kid will teach another and another and pretty soon the whole world’s educated.

With any luck and a layer-four tailwind, their teaching DNA will spread across the universe and earth will be saved.

That’s pretty presumptuous on their part, but it’s the way teachers think. If teachers don’t subconsciously believe they can save the world singlehandedly, they’re in the wrong profession and should return to professional bowling. It’s a heroism thing, a fixation. They’ve all got it. They seriously think they can change the world.

And that their work will lead to (their own)

immortality.

And right there is the nub. Right there is the separation between them and us, between the academic and the tech. We think in terms of systems and completion and flow. They think in terms of cognitive insight and pedagogic salvation. It’s all ice cream and pickles. Yin and yang. CETPA and CUE. In a way, the relationship between us is a tale of tolerance, not respect. They tolerate us, but that does not lead directly to respect. In their terms, we may have made life easier for them, but we have not made the ignorance of our students unavoidable.

So, what do we say back to them? We know that any nanny-nanny-nu-nu answer like “Well, try doing what you’re doing without us” isn’t going to get us anywhere.

Remember, we’ve got, say, 30 or 40 years doing what we’re doing. They’ve got a couple of millennium. And saying we’re in education for the same reason they are will get us only a confused stare. They’ve got kids.

We’ve got wires. Those are two different beasts in their mind.

Truth is, most of us who are into this tech gig just like things that run smoothly, effectively, and that contribute to the whole of the enterprise. We like a challenge, sure, the sort that lets us trace patterns, solve puzzles, and discover solutions. We love it when things go completely awry and we jump in, figure a fix, and—with a set of brilliant, off- the-cuff, flying-by-the-seat of our consoles and offering just the right insightful tweaks—we get it all up and running again without the loss of a LED. Of course, if we can do all this while saying things like “…if the capacity and average flow are known, it is possible to compute the mean packet delay on that line from queuing theory…” Sweet.

Talk like that is just putting the cherry on the whipped cream.

But how do we fit in among our teaching brethren? We know that just wearing Birkenstocks and tweed won’t make us a star. There’s got to be something else that will make the credentialed respect the certificated.

So, we come back to that most central of central questions: Can’t we all give up our territoriality and realize that we have a common goal—if not ground—and that common goal is the education of our students?

No. There is no common goal and the reason is simple. It is the central phenomenon of the 21st century: Students don’t need the teachers. And they certainly don’t need us.

Imagination, curiosity and learning are products of students, not of the teacher and not of us, and the whizzing of their imaginations towards infinity is far beyond any of our poor powers to control. This isn’t to say they don’t need a place and the gizmos

to do all that, a place to attain discipline, knowledge, critical thinking, and a whole lot more skills of the Ideal Person, but it is to say that the center of gravity of learning is shifting, from obligatory testing and mandatory attendance to a desire to communicate and participate. Instead of each side of the educational house looking at each other and shouting, we should be asserting ourselves as liberators. Change is so easy and quick and global, both of us, techie and academicie alike, should be asking how we fit in.

Legacy this: Cringe when you speak of CIPA. Offer passwords with training. Call to account anyone who suggests that you should test because you can test, not that you need to test. Delete as much as you retain.

Trust no one. Trust everyone. Let the kids fly. Live forever. And we’ll all get along.  Mark Heydon, CCTO, is the Technology Coordinator for the Shoreline USD and can be reached at (707) 878-2286 or mheydon@ marin.k12.ca.us.

Fall 2009 • DataBus 33

California State Budget Crisis: Where Do We Go From Here?

A

By Jeff Frost, CETPA Legislative Advocate

fter weeks of trying to bridge the nagging budget gap, the Legislature has finally approved and the Governor has signed a complicated series of cuts, deferrals, accounting gimmicks and borrowing in an effort to narrow the $26-billion shortfall. The final package approved by both houses does include all education proposals that will reduce or defer an additional $5.7 billion from California K-14 schools through the end of the 2009-10 fiscal year.

Specific Budget Solutions

This budget agreement culminates a series of cuts to Proposition 98 of approximately $20 billion over two years. Between the 2008-09 and 2009-10 fiscal years, a total of $20.6 billion has been reduced from the statutorily required budget levels for school districts and community college budgets. This includes the elimination of COLAs, categorical program cuts and funding deferrals into future fiscal years.

Critical Issues from the 2009-10 Budget

Because of the severe budget cuts implemented in this budget, there were several important policy issues that were implemented as a way to grant greater flexibility for school districts to better handle the shortfalls. These include: Instructional materials flexibility: In a big win for school districts, the final agreement includes a threeyear extension of the current suspension of instructional materials purchase requirements (through 2012-13).

Additionally, language was included to prohibit the State Board of Education from approving any textbook adoptions during that same time period. The budget language is silent on the issue of corrective action district access to the purchase delay and is silent on what 34 DataBus • Fall 2009

happens at the end of the 2012-13 suspension period.

There is no language specifically exempting corrective action districts from this delay, so it can be assumed that corrective action districts are relieved of the purchase requirements during this window period. Additionally, with three years to go until the end of the suspension window, there is still time to have the legislature address what purchase requirements will or will not be in place after 2012-13.

CAHSEE: The final deal rejects the earlier legislative proposal to repeal CAHSEE as a requirement for high school graduation and limit its administration to only once per year. But the final agreement does include language exempting special education students from the requirement to pass the exam until the State Board of Education has approved an exemption process.

Flexibility: No additional local flexibility is provided in this budget agreement, beyond the lowering of district reserve requirements and the extended instructional materials purchase suspension. However, there will still be an effort to try to address the issue of additional CSR flexibility and/or penalty relief in separate legislation once the budget is resolved.

Corrective Action Districts and Flexibility: Clarifies that school districts in corrective action are entitled to the flexibility afforded on the Tier III categorical programs established in SB 3x 4 in February.

What Happens Now?

Now that the 2009-10 budget has been passed, and already amended to reflect a continued downturn in the economy, are we likely to see additional cuts in this fiscal year and the next?

Further Cuts Are Likely: While the July budget agreement solves many of the immediate cash flow problems,

it alone will not fully balance a budget that is beset with a nagging shortfall. State revenues continue to drop. It is very possible that another round of mid-year cuts could be made in 2009-10. There is a small amount of room within the Proposition 98 guarantee and still remain above the federal maintenance of effort level. Additionally, federal ARRA funding will diminish in 2010-11 and the $12 billion in annual taxes imposed in April 2009, will end in April 2011—midway through the next fiscal year.

Districts need to remain cautious about spending and realize that 2010-11 will be another difficult year.

Perma nent Budget Cor rection: A n analysis of the current economic environment of California indicates that the loss of both state-level revenue drop and job loss will remain through 2011-12. California’s unemployment rate hit 12.9 percent in the third quarter of 2009. That rate is projected to increase to 14.4 percent in the first quarter of 2010 and remain at 13.0 percent into 2011. Additionally, job growth in California bottomed out in the third quarter of 2009 and our job growth is projected to remain stagnant into 2011. In short, these economic forecasts indicate that the current level of state revenue is likely to remain flat for several years to come. The August revenue forecast from the Department of Finance shows the only bit of good news in recent months. August revenues actually exceeded the projection for the first time in over a year. School districts will need to realize that as the state’s revenues stop dropping, they will more than likely remain flat and not grow significantly for the next two years. When growth does occur, it is likely to grow at a very modest rate over the next several years.

Proposition 98 Maintenance Factor: One of the most important aspects of the recent budget agreement is the inclusion of an agreement to repay past funds owed to the Proposition 98 account. These funds, known as the “Maintenance Factor” will be repaid to K-14 schools over a period of years and total $11.2 billion.

Use of Restoration Funds: Now that the Maintenance Factor funds are required to be repaid, the question is how these funds will be allocated in future years? Will these funds be used to restore categorical programmatic reductions or will these new funds become bargainable locally? The debate on establishing priorities will be enormous.

On-Going Categorical Flexibility: The legislation establishing the categorical flexibility options, SB 3x 4, grants districts “maximum flexibility” for all Tier III programs through the 2011-12 fiscal year. Presumably, this statute would then sunset and all of the statutory requirements for these programs would be re-imposed.

However, there is strong support from man-

agement groups and Republican members of the legislature. It is not clear how strongly these forces will work to extend the flexibility provisions beyond 2012. Given that the state’s budget requires a two-thirds vote to pass, there is strong leverage for extending these provisions if this remains a priority for Republican members.

Dr. Jeffrey W. Frost is CETPA’s Legislative Consultant. The addition of his services is part of CETPA board initiatives intended to improve the delivery of critical information related to California technology initiatives to the CETPA membership.

Dr. Frost has a wide-ranging background in academia, legislative advocacy, and public policy development and more than 20 years of experience lobbying the California State Legislature on behalf of school districts and education associations.

Fall 2009 • DataBus 35

Member Profile

Member Profile

By Lisa Kopochinski, DataBus Editor

DataBus Chats with Jim

Klein

DataBus: What is your title and responsibilities at the Saugus Union School District? How long have you been there?

JK: I have been the director of information services and technology for nearly 14 years at SUSD, where I oversee all things technology related within the school district. I am also the chair of the CoSN K12 Open Technologies Initiative, an advisory panelist for the CoSN/MacArthur Web 2.0 and Participatory Culture in Schools project, and a technology implementation team member for the CDE Brokers of Expertise project, among other affiliations.

DataBus: How long have you been in the computer industry?

JK: 22 years.

DataBus: What do you like most about this industry?

JK: The best thing about the technology industry is the endless opportunity for creativity and innovation. The pace of change and potential lasting impact of technology, especially in education, creates a continuously challenging and rewarding environment that is second to none.

DataBus: When did you join CETPA and why?

JK: I honestly don’t remember; it was a number of years ago, but the primary reason was to discover and connect with visionary leaders in education technology throughout the state, and to participate in the conversation about the future of education and technology.

DataBus: What is the greatest challenge this industry faces and how can it be overcome?

JK: The greatest challenge to education technologists today is the free flow of information and the rise of participatory culture. While the 20th-century educational paradigm revolved around information scarcity—I have it and you don’t, therefore I will dictate how and when you will receive it—the 21st century has evolved to state-of-information abundance and continuous availability, causing a dramatic shift in the very nature of intelligence. Success in life is no longer measured merely by “what I know” but by “what I can do with what I don’t know.” Unfortunately, many technologists are still wedded to the 20th-century approach to technology and information access. Those who view technology and content as something to limit and control will find technology “management” an increasingly futile exercise. Those who adapt and strive to create environments where technology-enabled creativity, innovation, and participation thrive will see success unlike any educational program or initiative ever attempted.

DataBus: How is the current economy affecting your district?

DataBus: What is CETPA’s greatest strength?

JK: Historically, resource constraints have always driven innovation, and this crisis is no different. While we are sadly suffering losses in staff and resources across the district, we are also pulling together to seek new efficiencies and support structures as we continue the drive toward excellence in education. Technology will play a key role in those new efficiencies, so we will certainly have our work cut out for us in the coming year.

DataBus: Where does CETPA need to grow?

DataBus: Where do you live and what do you like to do in your spare time?

JK: CETPA’s greatest strength is and always shall be its membership and the communities of practice they create. The learning and mentoring opportunities that are facilitated through various meetings and other events provide excellent opportunities for members from even the smallest, most rural school district to learn and grow as state technology leaders.

JK: CETPA does a great job connecting its members and facilitating meetings, but has yet to step into the much-needed role of consolidating resources and providing leadership in key areas that affect the modern technology leader. CETPA needs to actively engage its membership by collecting and disseminating best practices, example policies, tools and resources necessary to be a successful 21st-century educa-

36 DataBus • Fall 2009

tion technology leader. The list serve is a great resource, but when the same question gets asked a dozen times, its time for leaders within CETPA to organize, collect and provide information, resources, and discussion around the topic in a consistent and persistent way. In addition, CETPA could and should be much more active and engaged in legislative advocacy in Sacramento.

JK: I actually live in Lancaster, about a 45-minute drive from the district. I don’t mind, though, as I get to tackle twisty canyon roads to work every day in my Mini Cooper, which is fun, but burns through tires like you wouldn’t believe. I enjoy spending time with my family, playing tennis, traveling, and hanging out by the pool.

I used to do quite a bit of rock climbing, but alas, my climbing buddies have all suffered unfortunate shifts in their centers of gravity, which has left me without a partner. Any takers? 

Resource Guide & Advertiser’s Index Audio Visual Equipment

Servers and PC Solutions

Troxell Communications (800) 578-8858 www.trox.com Please see our ad on page..............................31

Sehi Computer Products (800) 346-6315 www.sehi.com Please see our ad on page..............................33

C Innovation/Zangle

Software Networking

Zangle (800) 230-2533 www.zangle.com Please see our ad on page................................9

Lightspeed Systems (877) 447-6244 www.lightspeedsystems.com Please see our ad on page..............................35

Data Integration

Solutions Provider

CPSI LTD (800) 659-8240 www.cpsiltd.com Please see our ad on page..............................21

Decotech (800) 597-0757 www.decotech.com Please see our ad on page................. Back Cover

Erate/CTF Consultant Technology Design Services

Western Blue (800) 660-0430 www.westernblue.com Please see our ad on page..............................25

Infinity Communications & Consulting (661) 716-1840 www.infinitycomm.com Please see our ad on page..............................30 Facilities Planning, Design & Construction

Logic Domain (877) 768-3334 www.logicdomain.com Please see our ad on page..............................31 Information Transport Systems

BICSI (813) 979-1991 www.bicsi.org Please see our ad on page..............................17 K-12 Financial & Human Resources Enterprise Resources Planning Software

Windsor Management Group (888) 654-3293 www.InfiniteVisions.com/CETPA Please see our ad on page................................3 Network Management and Integration Solutions

CPSI LTD (800) 659-8240 www.cpsiltd.com Please see our ad on page..............................21 Sehi Computer Products (800) 346-6315 www.sehi.com Please see our ad on page..............................33 Spectrum Communications (800) 319-8711 www.spectrumccsi.com Please see our ad on page..............................39 Remote Access & Support

PJ Technology (888) 330-4188 www.GoverLAN.com Please see our ad on page..............................37 38 DataBus • Fall 2009

Turnkey Technology Solutions and Curriculum Integration

IVS Computer Technology (877) 945-3900 or (661) 831-3900 www.ivsct.net Please see our ad on page..............................23 User Account Management

Advanced Toolware (888) 770-4242 www.advtoolware.com Please see our ad on page..............................13 Web Design Hosting

Interactive Educational Services, Inc. (661) 859-1900 www.cyberschool.com Please see our ad on page................................4 AD INDEX

XIT Solutions 661-635-0365 www.xitsolutions.com Please see our ad on page..............................12

Advanced Toolware..................................... 13

Student Assessment Systems

Decotech.......................................Back Cover

Pearson School Systems (877) 873-1550 www.pearsonschoolsystems.com Please see our ad on page................................7 Student Information Systems

Eagle Software (888) 487-7555 www.aeries.com Please see our ad on page................................2 IST, Inc. (866) 266-6364 www.ist.com Please see our ad on page..............................27 Pearson School Systems (877) 873-1550 www.pearsonschoolsystems.com Please see our ad on page................................7 Sungard Public Sector (866) 905-8989 www.sungardps.com Please see our ad on page..............................29 Tyler Technologies (800) 772-2260 www.tylertech.com Please see our ad on page..............................37 Edupoint Educational Systems (800) 338-7646 www.edupoint.com Please see our ad on page..............................19

BICSI............................................................ 17 CPSI LTD..................................................... 21 Eagle Software............................................... 2 Edupoint Educational Systems..................... 19 Infinity Communications & Consulting........ 30 Interactive Educational Services, Inc............. 4 IST, Inc......................................................... 27 IVS Computer Technology........................... 23 Lightspeed Systems..................................... 35 Logic Domain.............................................. 31 Pearson School Systems................................ 7 PJ Technology.............................................. 37 Sehi Computer Products............................. 33 Spectrum Communications......................... 39 Sungard Public Sector.................................. 29 Troxell Communications.............................. 31 Tyler Technologies....................................... 37 Western Blue............................................... 25 Windsor Management Group........................ 3 XIT Solutions............................................... 12 Zangle............................................................ 9

INTHEACT

www.cetpa-k12.org