IS/IT News

Catie Bell let me know this morning that free online courses from Alan November Learning are available at no cost to Lab School teachers and administrators through pooled Title II funds. These are high quality, high impact online experiences that will absolutely improve your ability to conduct effective web searches, evaluate the information you find, and share what you’ve learned with your students. Web Literacy for Educators, and an Advanced version of the same course moves on to building learning communities and online safety. There is also a course called Blogging for Educators. These courses each take between 4 and 6 hours and can be done at your own pace any time before the start of the next school year. This is a fabulous opportunity for even the most technophobic people to get some accessible, useful experience in making sense of the web as part of your teaching practice. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much you learn. Alan November is a noted presenter and educator and has been a real leader in bringing sensible technology use to progressive pedagogy for many years. If you are interested in participating, kindly contact Catie Bell for details on how to access this valuable resource.

Posted on April 29th, 2009 by Curt Lieneck
Filed under: Announcements, Instructional links | Comments Off

Could it be that spamming is no longer a viable business model? System Administrator John Krug reports that incoming spam (that is, spam hitting the spam filter in front of the mail server) has declined just about 50 per cent in recent weeks. What a welcome development.

Posted on April 22nd, 2009 by Curt Lieneck
Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off

(…three days later)

Vendor: I’m having trouble getting a response to your concerns from the Level II people since the product is out of warranty.

Me: I don’t understand. There is nothing mechanically or electronically wrong with the products. It’s the software drivers that don’t work. Why is that a warranty issue? Does software have a warranty?

Vendor: I’m just saying that they are used to dealing with warranty repairs at Level II, and these products are out of warranty.

Me: OK, well, as long as we end up getting a solution sometime soon, I guess I don’t really need to understand how the company works.

(…two days later)

Vendor is on site to call Level II with us, pretty much what was suggested to begin with, only with Level 1. Level II walks us through all the things we’ve already tried, and when 90 minutes later, surprisingly, they don’t fix the problem, Level II suggests that we set up a print server for the whole 80+ printer enterprise because maybe that will help. We politely decline. Level II is going to keep looking into this, but with no mention of revisiting the code in the driver software, it’s pretty clear we are going to be stuck with 15 printers less than three years old that won’t work reliably because the driver does not work with a major OS revision from a company that has something like a third of the computer market in education. Also pretty clear the account exec cares about the issue, is frustrated, too,  but is not getting much help up the ladder.

As one of my favorite music teachers here often says, “Are we having fun yet?”

Posted on April 17th, 2009 by Curt Lieneck
Filed under: Uncategorized, Vignettes | Comments Off

(continued from post of April 7)…

Vendor (3 days later) : Oh, I see now that you actually wanted to get the problem fixed. I’ve escalated your problem to Level II since a) I really want to help, and b) you didn’t seem very happy with the Level I response.

Me: That sounds promising.

(…and now we wait…)

Posted on April 14th, 2009 by Curt Lieneck
Filed under: Uncategorized, Vignettes | Comments Off

One of the policies that seems to need frequent repeating is that all school technology purchases need to be cleared with IT Director Curt Lieneck prior to purchase. This applies to hardware, software, hosted services, and all peripheral devices and accessories, regardless of funding source, including donations. I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, but long experience teaches that there’s almost always more to any tech purchase than first meets the eye. It’s in everyone’s best interests to ensure that the proposed purchase is compatible, supportable, and congruent with applicable policies and practices. It’s important post-purchase for IS to inventory items so serial numbers, warranty, service, and licensing records can be properly maintained and are readily available when needed. I also like to have the fullest possible understanding of what school technology needs are out there. Complying with this policy requires minimal time and effort on your part. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Posted on April 1st, 2009 by Curt Lieneck
Filed under: Policy and Practice | Comments Off