This article features a major statewide initiative in North Carolina that is showing how a consortium model can minimize risks for districts and help them exploit the advantages of cloud computing. Edgecombe County Public Schools in Tarboro, North Carolina, intends to exploit a major cloud initiative being refined in the state and involving every…

Setting up a wireless network is easy enough. Place a few access points in strategic areas, then watch the network traffic fly! That approach may hold up reasonably well for a few dozen users, but there's no way it would support a schoolwide 1-to-1 program. Once students take to it with their wireless devices, "they're going to kill it,"…

Hiring substitute teachers used to be an early-morning calling burden for staff members at schools in Oregon's Coos Bay School District. Now that work has been passed off to Aesop, a service from Frontline Placement Technologies, which springs into action upon receiving a notification, either by call or log-in, from a teacher reporting an absence.…

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…

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…

On Dec. 1, 2006, the once ambiguous role of e-mails in court cases became much more clear. On that day, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), which govern federal civil litigation, were amended to establish standards for the discovery of electronically stored information, now known as e-discovery. Many corporations began moving quickly to…

Information technology (IT) departments are ruled by a kind of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: The big-tech stuff--the operating systems, the networks, the data centers--gets the priority, food-and-shelter attention, while upgrading the backup power supplies, evaluating new projector mounts, and taming that rat's nest of classroom cords fall…

This article provides a quick start guide to provide educators with the basic points to consider before installing a wireless network in the school. Since many school districts have already implemented wireless networks, there is a lot of information available online to assist in the process.

Internet Protocol (IP) Telephony, or voice-over IP (VoIP), has proved to be a wise decision for many organizations. This technology crosses the boundaries of public and private networks, enterprise and residential markets, voice and data technologies, as well as local and long-distance services. The convergence of voice and data into a single,…

Emerging technologies are quickly becoming part of daily learning and teaching endeavors in academia. Due to the access to certain high-tech tools educators must learn how to integrate these tools in educational settings. However, many also encounter problems and weaknesses in the same high-tech environment that uses and delivers information…

Wireless Local Area Networks are the most widely adopted networking technology to hit the market in the last three years. They have the potential to make network applications and the Internet available anywhere on a campus so that students and faculty are no longer tethered to their offices or shared computer laboratories in order to connect to a…

Discusses the redesign of a calculus course at Stevens Institute of Technology to take advantage of the requirement that all students have laptop computers. Highlights include the use of computer technology; Web site development; computer technology as an enhancement to learning and teaching; and the use of networked laptop classrooms. (LRW)

Offers insights about online conferences from a participant's perspective. Topics include the development of computer-network technology that has improved online conferences; advantages, including early access to conference papers, participants' degree of control, increased interaction, convenience, and cost effectiveness; and suggestions for…

Bringing the Dallas Independent School District (Dallas ISD) up to speed (as well as to a computer-to-student ratio of 3:1, up from its current respectable 4:1) requires, before additional desktops can be contemplated, a massive commitment to upgrading the network. Though HP has been a long-time partner with the Dallas ISD, the bidding for the…