A Utility
This post is part of an ongoing series of chapters from the book CHOICE. Please view this post for an introduction and table of contents. To keep up with each new chapter published, please subscribe.
Technology is now a utility. Technology should be seen by staff, administrators, school committees, the community and anyone else that has a say in public schools, as a utility. It's a necessity in schools now, not a nice to have.
It's not a should be funded. It's a must be funded. The same as electricity, heat, and water.
It needs to be something that the school is investing in each year. There is a minimum yearly budget for it, and a planned capital expenditure for upgraded to infrastructure.
The computers and technology in the classroom are only going to be as good as the infrastructure that supports it. A network is as fast as its slowest part. Make sure you keep the entire infrastructure up to date. Switches, fiber, servers, building wiring, and power.
It does the school no good to have a 10 Gigabit Fiber internet connection but the switches can only handle one Gigabit. Or a 10 Gigabit wired connection and access points that can only handle a 100 mb.
Maximize the technology by investing in it the same as you do the actually school building.
Author Comments
Providing a peak behind the curtain of the thought and writing process.
If you’ve worked in IT long enough, you’ve seem one of these two situation happen.
The district realizes it can no longer run on the infrastructure it has and has complete sticker shock when they find out how much it will cost to do a full upgrade.
The district continues to spend money to expand and add to the technology platform, but never invest in the core infrastructure supporting the new technology. They get hit with constant bottlenecks.
The only way to avoid with of these situations is to have a constant and consistent investment in your infrastructure. What are your thoughts on technology being a utility in school districts?