Fife Schools Technology

In an effort to conserve resources (dollars and environmental), we are making steps towards technologies that will help us to reduce costs and to use less energy and materials.

Virtualization is a computer technology that allows multiple computers or servers to run on the same hardware. So, for example, we can take three servers and “virtualize” them, allowing all three servers to run on a single piece of hardware but still act as three separate servers.

Imagine if your family had one car but three family members could use that one car at the same time to go different places. You would spend less than if you purchased three cars, spend less on fuel, etc. That’s a little like what virtualization can do in the computer world.

As a result, we can reduce costs by needing less hardware, less electrical power, less air conditioning to keep server rooms cool, etc. It’s also easier to manage virtual servers in the long run.

We’re also looking at ways to create virtual desktops and virtual applications. This would allow us to use smaller, more efficient, and less expensive computers in classrooms yet still deliver the power students and teachers need for their classwork.

In future posts, I’ll give some specifics about how we are doing this. 

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!

    After posting about ZIP software earlier today, I realized there are those who may not know anything about ZIP files. Here’s a quick explanation.

A ZIP file is a single file that can contain one or more regular computer files. It is usually smaller because the software that creates the ZIP file removes the wasted space in regular files. This process is called file compression.

The two biggest benefits to using ZIP files is that they are smaller (as already stated) and they can make it easier to handle a group of related files. For example, if you wanted to email a folder with several Word documents, it may be simpler to ZIP the whole folder into one file and then email the single ZIP file.

The biggest disadvantages to zipping files is that you can’t use them while zipped and it takes a little work to create and extract the zipped files.