Fife Schools Technology

Last week, the world’s attention was on the inauguration of President Obama. Many classrooms watch this historic moment either using cable/TV or via the Internet. I was very interested to see how our newly installed fiber optic network would handle the traffic of the streaming video.

While I don’t know how many computers in the district streamed video that day, I know that overall, it was one of the highest Internet traffic days in history.

The great news is that our network handled the traffic very well. I was streaming CNN most of the day to see how it performed and had no problems getting a continuous video stream.

Confused about copyright law and how it applies to education? When does fair use cover the use of copyrighted material in the classroom?

Here is a link to a nice resource that addresses some different fair use scenarios.

http://mediaeducationlab.com/index.php?page=265

Sometimes words get used in certain circles and it can be helpful to know what they mean to those circles. In the tech world, the “enterprise” is such a word.

Techies have a reputation for being geeks and geeks have a reputation for liking Star Trek but this time we aren’t talking about the starship that’s on a mission to boldly go where no one has gone before.

In the business world, ”enterprise” refers to the overall organization and in particular, the overall job of the organization. For us, it refers to the big picture of the role of technology in the Fife School District and is one aspect of our decision-making process.

One of the challenges we have is finding the balance between what an individual computer user may want to do on their computer and how the choices that individuals make impact the group as a whole. We need to weight the potential benefits against the potential problems. Those problems can include:

• Security concerns (i.e. if this free program is installed, will it install a virus too?)
• Bandwidth concerns (i.e. will this program slow down the network because it is sending a lot of data across the network)
• Tech support concerns (i.e. how much technology personnel time will it require to install or fix problems)
• Cost concerns (i.e. free doesn’t always mean free).

While we try to do our best to support the needs of computer users, we always need to filter requests through the lens of the “enterprise” to make sure we can adequately support those requests and all that is entailed. In other words, we like to be able to say “yes” but sometimes we need to say “no”… but we like saying “yes” better.

Live long and prosper!