Under pressure to keep spending down but also keep pace with rapid technology changes, many districts are future-proofing their schools--trying to get the most out of their tech spending by providing solutions they will be able to use now and in the future without major, expensive infrastructure overhauls. The idea is growing in popularity across…

As higher education budgets tighten in the ongoing recession, colleges and universities have found themselves questioning, lengthening, and even eliminating tech refresh cycles. Yet how deep an institution cuts into its refresh program can compromise its ability to provide an up-to-date and competitive computing environment for students and a…

Twelve high schools in North Carolina piloted a 1:1 learning initiative, where every student and teacher received a laptop computer with wireless Internet access provided throughout the school. The overall goals of the initiative were to improve teaching practices; increase student achievement; and better prepare students for work, citizenship,…

An e-mail scam has hit tens of thousands of users at dozens of colleges over the past few weeks, leaving network administrators scrambling to respond before campus computer accounts are taken over by spammers. Students, professors, and staff members at the affected colleges received e-mail messages that purported to come from the colleges' help…

With money tight, more and more districts are considering remote access as a way to reduce expenses and budget information technology costs more effectively. Remote access allows staff members to work with a hosted software application from any school campus without being tied to a specific physical location. Each school can access critical…

Academic technologists at Lynn University (Florida) learned the hard way just how important a disaster recovery plan can be. Back in 2005, when Hurricane Wilma walloped the region with driving rain and 120 mile-per-hour winds, the storm debilitated Lynn's IT department, causing damage and flooding that thwarted the campus network for nearly two…

We present the topic of graph connectivity along with a famous theorem of Menger in the real-world setting of the national computer network infrastructure of "National LambdaRail". We include a set of exercises where students reinforce their understanding of graph connectivity by analysing the "National LambdaRail" network. Finally, we give…

For the generation of people whose classroom memories consist of chalk squeaking on a blackboard, weather-beaten textbooks and a ready supply of sharpened No. 2 pencils, the resources available to students in many 21st-century American schools may seem unfamiliar, even amazing. Computer networks with access to the Internet--wired or wireless--have…

What would an educator do with $650 million? Better yet, what "should" he/she do with $650 million? No, this is no game show. It's a real-life challenge posed to school districts nationwide in the year since President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. The bill dedicates more than $90 billion to education, with…

The explosion of Web 2.0 into libraries has left many smaller academic libraries (and other libraries with limited computing resources or support) to work in the cloud using free Web applications. The use of commercial Web hosting is an innovative approach to the problem of inadequate local resources. While the idea of insourcing IT will seem…

Web-based applications offer teachers, students, and school districts a convenient way to accomplish a wide range of tasks, from accounting to word processing, for free. Cloud computing has the potential to offer staff and students better services at a lower cost than the technology deployment models they're using now. Saving money and improving…

This article features the new Framework of Essential Skills of the K-12 CTO of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN). This latest, version 2.0 iteration of the skills framework builds upon work the organization did earlier this decade. This time CoSN, a professional association for district technology leaders, reached out to a variety of…

It's a riddle faced by virtually every IT director: how to fulfill users' desire for more muscular computing resources while still obliging administrators' commands to keep education spending down. Against long odds, many district technology directors have been fulfilling both counts, optimizing their computing systems with improvements that pay…

As the ranks of educators on Twitter grow, more and more are heard about the importance of their "PLNs" (a term reportedly coined by educational technology guru David Warlick). A PLN, or Personal Learning Network, is a group of like-minded professionals with whom one can exchange ideas, advice, and resources. So why shouldn't students have PLNs of…

As educational and research needs have changed, libraries have changed as well. They must meet ever-increasing demand for access to online media, subscriptions to archives, video, audio, and other content. The way a user/patron accesses this information has also changed. Gone are the days of a few hardwired desktops or computer carts. While…