There is no box

thinking out loud about technology, education and life

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K-12 Superintendent, reformed IT guy, educator, 1:1 evangelist, life long learner, father, husband, geek, ex self-propelled field artillery turret mechanic, GCT, CCTO, INFP

  • Google Apps for Education and Scaling Down for Small Schools

    I cannot begin to express just how great Google Apps for Education has been for our organization and for me in particular. We are a small school with just 550 students and 75 staff. We did not have student email until Google Apps for Education came along. Cost and management had always been the main issues preventing it. As the only IT guy for our District I had my hands full managing 75 Exchange accounts. I did not want to have to manage over 600. With Google Apps, a tech savvy teacher setup the domain and imported the students from our SIS system and then told me about it after the fact. And that was fine with me. It was the perfect solution for our small school. Free, easy to manage and thin client friendly.

    When Google announced free message security it was just after I had migrated us from Exchange 2003 to 2007. We had spam issues and I was frustrated with the learning curve on Exchange 2007. I was spending too much time on infrastructure and wanted to spend more time on projects that were closer to the classroom. We had been using Google Apps and Gmail with students for 2 years and had been very happy with it. In one fell swoop I realized I could get rid of Exchange (the one server that kept me up nights), free up a server and greatly improve our spam and anti-virus filtering.  And I could do it all for free.

    Not until midway through the migration did other benefits present themselves. My users were trained on and are now using the web interface so I won’t be supporting Outlook on the desktop anymore. I also won’t be upgrading a significant number of users to Office 2007/10. Google docs with OpenOffice as backup are our new office apps now. My boss discovered chat and how to get instant tech support from me from her gmail account. Now our collaboration platform is constantly being updated and expanded and I don’t have to do anything to make that happen. Our students, staff and teachers are all on the same platform so they can share and help each other use, learn and discover the tools, features and functionality of Google Apps.

    Not that there haven’t been issues. The Google focus for Education is aimed at large organizations. IT specific documentation is written for enterprise IT shops and the education support is geared towards end users. There is no happy middle ground for the mainstream edtech community. We are relegated to Google groups and the CETPA listserv to find our own answers and ask for help from other users while Google points us at Partners if we have any complex questions like migration (who isn’t migrating?) or single sign on (who doesn’t want that?).

    In fact many of the features that I would like to have like Single Sign On (SSO) or Active Directory Password Sync, Domain Contacts management, inter-domain trusts, the mythical gDrive and password reset Google leaves up to Partners to sell. While I have managed to configure some essential functions like AD sync (minus the Password) is is generally accomplished despite sparse documentation and mainly through trial and error. Some things, like Domain Contacts management, do not have free solutions (that I can find) and so I use work arounds. I don’t know about you but I’m getting really good at CSV import/export.

    Again, Google’s solution to most of the core IT management features is third party Partner solutions that charge for features per mailbox. In most instances, these charges quickly negate any costs savings I gained from moving from Exchange (with its very robust management tools) to Goole Apps. The one thing that is sorely lacking in a free tool for small schools is Active Directory Password sync. I know the Directory Sync tool was recently updated to support hashes but in typical Google support fashion, there is no documentation (again, that I can find as of today) that says if this update will sync passwords from AD to Apps. SSO would be nice too and there is a reference implementation for it that I got off the CETPA listserv but again, the documentation is sparse and I have not had time to spend on trial and error config yet. My one hope on this front, aside from money raining down from the sky, is that Google Apps for enterprise documentation did take a major leap forward over the past year and perhaps it will again one day soon. Google is also releasing and updating tools like Directory Sync and Outlook Sync that are making the process much easier on IT.

    The one area I was very excited about even before starting our staff migration was Message Archiving. eDiscovery is becoming more and more of a concern so I am keen to implement Google’s message archiving solution. Originally I had planned to provide tiered archiving levels for users depending on their job classifications however I found out today that I can’t mix and match the 1 and 10 year archiving services within a single domain. This is disappointing from a cost perspective. Even more disappointing from a cost perspective is that while I am eligible for a significant discount to the service, my small user count (75 staff) is apparently insufficient to meet Google’s arbitrary minimum annual charge of $1500. Because of this small school tax, I’ll only see half the education discount that large schools see. To add further insult, there is a $900 one time implementation fee (we get 10% off of that) so my initial annual cost is almost double the recurring charge. Call me cynical, but I am guessing that $900 setup fee is for someone to go in and flip a bit to turn on our service.

    I realize that $1500 for 10 years of message archiving for 75 users is not a bad price. I just hate it that when it comes to the one premium service everyone is going to need in the immediate future, Google doesn’t have fair discount pricing for small organizations (yes, I know message security is free for now, that was the hook, wasn’t it?). Another case in point is the cost of more storage for Google Docs. I am going to be able to add 1GB of storage to my personal Gmail account for a quarter, but as a small school it will cost me $3.50 to add the same amount of storage to my user’s accounts. I understand SLA and uptime and all that, but really for my Students do I really need 5 9’s of uptime on their docs? I would bump every student to 2GB and stop handing out flash drives if Google would take a minute to realize there is a difference between the needs of a 30,000 user organization and a small school.

    There are hundreds of small school districts in California and thousands across the nation and despite my rant I firmly believe that Google Apps for Education presents a compelling, if not magical, value proposition to the small organization. I would not have moved my District to the platform if I thought otherwise. I can’t really argue with free but sometimes I just wish Google would think about scaling down to our size, instead of always scaling up.

  • Browser Confusion

    Ok, so I use Google Chrome for my HTML5 Beta on Youtube and then have to switch over to Firefox so I can edit my blog because wordpress doesn’t always like Chrome and then I jump back to Chrome to check Gmail because everybody knows Google apps are just stupid fast in Chrome but then I jump back over to Firefox for more work stuff that doesn’t run so fast (or at all) in Chrome.  I’m browser challenged at this point.  I remember when Firefox first came out I still had to do certain things in IE until IETab for Firefox was released and I never looked back.  Yes I was basically running IE in a Firefox skin, but I didn’t care.  I had a brief moment of single browser UI bliss.  Now I find myself wanting to be in Chrome but I just can’t.  Maybe I could get a Chrome extension to run Firefox.  That way I could mark certain sites to run in FF while still living in the Chrome interface.  They could call it FFTab.  Now that’s just silly.

  • The Buzz is on

    That goofy quad colored balloon called Buzz was waiting for me under my Inbox when I logged into gmail.  It looks interesting.  Of course the first thing I did was figure out how to link it with twitter.  After that I wasn’t really sure what to make of it.  Like all most google apps (not search and gmail) the interface demands probing and prodding to illicit discovery.  Gina Trapani came to my rescue with How to do Everything in Google Buzz (including turn it off) and it started to make more sense.   Buzz ties (magically?) into my Google profile services which is nice.  I can post to it using email (it is in gmail after all) and use my favorite friend the @ sign to message my friends and contacts directly.  I can even turn it off (hey, can I turn it back on later?).  And of course because I finally started using foursquare last week, Buzz will even let me broadcast my location to the world direct from my iPhone.

  • Backupify

    My first Backupify email arrived today telling me that my precious cloud data had been successfully backed up; to the cloud.  I suppose this should make me feel more at ease with storing all of my life’s 1’s and zero’s in some ephemeral gaseous state.  What if the entire cloud dissipated?  It wouldn’t really matter where that my email was in two different parts of it, would it?  But I guess the chances of that happening are very small.  I mean my Internet is more likely to go down than to have anything happen to the cloud.  I wonder.  If the internet goes down, is the cloud still the cloud if I am no longer connected to it?

  • Fresh Post

    I think I have been taking this whole blog thing a bit too seriously.  I mean really, who’s going to read this thing anyway.  So rather than be super serious about my posts I think I should keep it fresh by posting less but more often.  looking through my drafts, I have a dozen things I started to write but never finished.  This is not a novel or the New York Times.  It’s a dinky little blog.  Maybe it is time to start treating it like one.

  • Netbooks, netbooks and more netbooks

    In case you haven’t heard (and I doubt you have) we here at Le Grand have embarked on a grand netbook experiment.  Its a funny thing really because up until a year ago we didn’t have any plans to deploy netbooks on campus.  But then something happened.  Something wonderful.  Acer sent us seed units for free.  No POs to sign, no paperwork of any kind.  Just a quick phone call, would you like to try a netbook, yes?  We’ll ship it right out.  No muss, no fuss.  And then, they did it again.  And as if by magic our little district had 4 netbooks to try, for what seemed like forever.  And even better, if we wanted to keep them, we paid 1/2 price and if not, we just shipped them back.  It was so easy, so simple, so impossibly friendly it put a big warm fuzzy feeling in my heart every time I saw one of those little Acers tucked under someone’s arm as they walked around campus.  That warm fuzzy feeling was so great that when it came time to order netbooks for our pilot project, we unanimously decided on Acer.  Afterall we had been using them for several months, hassle free and we didn’t exactly have time to go out and test a whole bunch of different netbooks.  You know how planning goes in School Districts.  We’ve got money, the end of the year is here.  Buy them, NOW!

    Cut to present day and we are considering expanding our pilot into more classes.  This time we do have the time to look at alternatives, after all we know what the Acers can do.  We’ve lived with them for almost a year now.  What we don’t know is what else is out there and given how rapidly Acer changes models it would be nice to settle on something a bit more stable.  But so far there has been no warm fuzzy feeling from any of the other vendors.  In fact it has been the opposite.  Everyone wants a PO and a trial period.  Dell wants their netbook back in 21 days, CDWG is better and will send me anything for a 30 day hands-on.  Lenovo wants me to call them back.  I already sent an email saying I wanted to tryout something similar to an Acer D250, thank you, do we really need to talk?  Can’t you just send something out?

    I want it to be easy.  Easy like Acer.  I don’t have time for POs and keeping track of deadlines on trial periods.  These things are cheap.  Why not just seed them out?  Is one unit really going to hurt you?  Spread some good will and cheer this Holiday season and let us spend a few months getting to know your netbook.  Acer did and those 4 units that we had in hand for months and eventually paid for turned into 60 units purchased at full price and left us with a tendency to buy Acer first.  In fact if Acer could just keep a model number for longer than 3 months, I’d probably not even be looking at alternatives right now.  But I am curious.  I would like to see what else is out there, I mean we are talking potentially hundreds of units moving forward and some hardware consistency would be nice.

    I am not asking for a free handout.  But I am asking for free from hassle, easy, simple, a call or an email and it arrives one day ready to be used and abused.  Willing to stay for a long term commitment.  I’m not going to make a decision based on a few weeks of hand holding.  Given today’s budget, do I spend the few dollars we have looking at alternatives or do I save that money and buy more Acers and just deal with the model changes?  Acer hooked us with their seed program and it seems like no one else is really interested in our business.   So what is a small school district to do?

  • Untangle OpenVPN client stops resolving FQDNs in Windows 7?

    We use the OpenVPN module in the Untangle Open Source Network Gateway for remote access at our school district.   Everything had been working flawlessly for over a year until suddenly right before I was set to leave for a two day conference, I turned on my Windows 7 RC1 Acer Aspire One netbook, fired up the OpenVPN GUI client and then proceeded to fail at connecting to my remote clients using RDP.    I immediately checked my desktop Windows 7 RC1 install and found the same problem.  Long story short, somehow I had lost the ability to resolve my hostnames  to their correct private IP addresses while connected to the VPN.  The work around for my trip was to connect using IP addresses, which I duly noted before leaving.

    Upon my return I decided to troubleshoot the problem.  I was able to rule out a server side issue because 1) no settings had changed since the last time it worked and 2) my Hackintosh OS X desktop system running the OpenVPN client Viscosity worked just fine.  So to rule out my netbook as the culprit, I dusted off my old Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop, which is also running Windows 7 RC1, and tried the OpenVPN GUI client on it.  I got the same frustrating thing, the VPN client connected fine, I just couldn’t resolve my internal DNS names correctly.  I was wondering if this was a problem with the OpenVPN client I was running (2.1rc15) or what else could have possibly changed on both these systems to have this affect.  I decided to try my last instance of Windows 7 RC1 and so fired up Virtual Box on my Hackintosh, started OpenVPN GUI and was pleasantly surprised to connect right away with RDP using my internal hostnames (fully qualified, of course).

    Now I knew it was something with Windows 7 on both my desktop, netbook and laptop.  But what could be affecting all three?  Many moons ago, Windows used to have odd problems associated with NIC binding orders.  I happened to notice in the ipconfig dump on the Virtual Box host that the TAP-Win32 adapter was listed first and as this was the NIC with the correct DNS settings to resolve my internal hostnames it looked like something I should check on the other systems.  Sure enough the desktop, netbook and laptop all had the TAP NIC listed in second place when I ran ipconfig /all.  Ah ha!  A quick google search for how to change Windows 7 NIC bindings (not where it used to be) turned up this gem from dillonator:

    Get to the Network Connections page under the control panel. (If you’re looking at the Network and Sharing Center, click on Change Adapter Settings.) Now hit the “alt” key and you should see the menu pop up. Click on Advanced and you should know where you’re going from there

    I love the fact that you have to press the ALT key to see the advanced settings options.  After moving my TAP-Win32 adapter (Local Area Connection 3) on my desktop to the top of the Connections list I was once again able to RDP into my remote hosts using their fully qualified domain names (FQDN).

    NIC Bindings

    I have no idea why or how the binding orders on three of my four Windows 7 RC1 installations changed or why my Virtual Box host was unaffected but I am happily VPNing with OpenVPN once more.   Any ideas on how this might have happened, please leave a comment.  Thanks.

  • Calling for more change, really?

    U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is calling for a change in how perspective Teachers are taught in our nation’s schools of education.  I am a big fan of change and think it is great that the Secretary is addressing one of the foundations of the American Education System.  Not having gone through one of these schools of education myself however leaves me perhaps missing the point.  Any change in these institutions is not going to have a real effect for several years to come and it will do nothing to address the plight of the current generation of teachers now serving in the nation’s classrooms not to mention their students.

    So let me jump outside the box and offer a more radical prescription for change.  I think everyone agrees that while there are a myriad of factors that can affect student learning, teachers have the potential to have the most impact.  I also know that Duncan is pushing for pay for performance as a means to possibly motivate good teachers and move out “bad” ones.  Watch Dan Pink’s TED talk about the Science of Motivation and tell me you still think pay for performance is a good idea for the 21st Century.

    I don’t think pay is the issue but it makes for good politics.  So how then do you get all teachers to do better?  I think the answer is simple and yes, it will cost money.  What good teachers need is more time to prepare and collaborate with one another.  What struggling teachers need is more help and support (basically more time).  In a world where 50 minutes out of 450 is spent on “prep” and you are lucky to get 5 days of professional development a year, how can anyone be expected to keep their head above water, let alone master their profession and impact students without being an extraordinary person.  I think we’ve built failure into the system at a fundamental level.

    If it takes extraordinary effort to be a great teacher, how can one realistically expect every teacher to be great.  We can’t all be Teacher’s of the Year.  So changing the schools of education won’t make every graduate a great teacher (not that they shouldn’t change for other reasons but lets stay focused here).  I think one of Secretary Duncan’s other ideas, the longer school day/year, does have merit.  Extending the school day and year could address several issues if done right.  Dedicating some of that additional school time for teachers to develop their skills and adjust their instructional strategies and curriculum would help all teachers (and students); both the great and the mediocre.  More time for collaboration would also allow for implementing innovations like Danny Silva’s idea for 20% time in class which are now next to impossible given the lack of planning time in today’s system.  More hours at school would also have the added benefit of addressing pay, because no one should expect teachers to work additional days for free even though to be successful in the current system you absolutely have to.

    But how does extending the school day/year address the problem of the teacher that just won’t put in the effort?  I think just the additional work time would weed out a subset of teachers.  Add to that the requirement of continuous professional and course/curriculum development (a metric less subjective than observation) and you’ll start to see the bulk of the coasters and survivors drop away.  The institution of school has provided cover for under performing teachers (and administrators to be perfectly honest) because it does not promote (as a general rule) the development of teachers as professionals.  It is easier to hide away in a classroom for years teaching the same thing the same way than it is to improve, grow and change.  And everyone knows most of us are predisposed to take the easy route.

    As a second year VocEd teacher that came to the profession in a round about way, I can honestly say that teaching is the hardest job I’ve ever had.  And by hard I mean it tests me in new ways every day.  It forces me to think, to be creative and to challenge my preconceived notions on a daily basis.  I don’t know if this is sustainable in the long run, but I sure hope it is.  What I am proposing is a change so radical it calls for taking away the easy option and treating teachers like the professionals they should be.  If we are trying to build an education system for the next century, which I believe we should be doing, according to Dan Pink, the focus should be on empowering teachers through autonomy, mastery and purpose.  In that kind of environment, mediocrity and apathy cannot survive.  Pay has nothing to do with it.

  • Platform or Service, is Google the next Intel?

    I recently watched the Triumph of the Nerds (again) and was struck by the role Intel played in the development of the PC market.  Intel developed microprocessors and dominated the market but they were not the ones that developed the PC, arguably the most important device ever to utilize their chips.  Intel built a platform (the x86 microprocessor) that enabled Apple and IBM to basically invent the PC market (sorry Ed Roberts).  Of course Intel didn’t do too bad either.  Until AMD came along they were the dominate chip maker, so much so that AMD basically copied their x86 architecture and made Intel compatible microprocessors.

    So what does all this have to do with Google?  Well, as a user of Google services such as gmail, reader and search I think it is easy to mislabel Google as a services company.  While it is true that many of their services do compete directly with Microsoft or Yahoo, Google is more than just a collection of services.  Take a look at their ingenious server rack design or their data center in a box and you can see their vision of platform.  Google’s very own microprocessors if you will.  Google has built a huge platform, a Google OS, on top of which they run search and many other services.

    Just as Intel has influenced the PC industry with their innovative chip designs and allowed for the explosive potential of the desktop computer, so too I believe will Google’s innovative interconnected processing platform have a huge impact on the future of computing for decades to come.  I think we have yet to see the Apples and IBMs emerge that will take advantage of the Google platform in the same way the PC did Intel processors but with the introduction of Google Wave as an open standard, I think it is only a matter of time until we do.

    And what of Microsoft in all this?  They are going to be late to the party as usual.

  • What to teach in Business Apps?

    There is on ongoing discussion at my high school about what we should and should not be teaching in our Business Applications classes.  The same curriculum has been in place for several years (at least six) and consists of typing, Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and very basic computer history, Internet search, hardware and Operating Systems information.  On one side of the discussion is the status quo, open to some minor changes but generally OK with the sequence and overall objectives of the classes.  On the other side are those of us that would like to see the classes transformed into something much more.

    Pretty much all freshmen take Business Apps I and for this reason I believe it to be a critical class to student’s future success.  This is the one opportunity we have to give them the knowledge and skills they need to effectively use technology over the next four years as they navigate the challenges of High School.  Right now, we teach them how to use Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.  We teach them how to find images on the Internet and how many bytes a floppy disk holds.  We teach them how to save files to the hard drive and how to print assignments to be turned in.  We teach them how to follow step-by-step instructions in a book with exercises that have no relevance to them whatsoever.  We teach them all the skills they need for the workplace of a decade ago.

    What we don’t teach them in the class is how to compose an email.  We don’t teach them how to find and critically analyze information on the Internet.  We don’t teach them how to collaborate online, how to responsibly share information or how to backup their files to the cloud and access them from home later.  We don’t teach them how to use alternative applications like Google Docs or Open Office.  We don’t teach them about creative commons, open source or building their brand.  We don’t teach them how to live and work in a Web 2.0 world.  And I think we should.  Especially in this class; the only computer class they are required to take to graduate.  These skills are too important to their futures not to.

    It would be nice if these were also the skills student’s needed to succeed in our school but I would be fooling myself if I said they were.  Writing a three page paper in Word, making a PowerPoint with lots of images and animations and wild colors, charting their test scores in Excel and saving files to their network drive are really the only skills they need to get through their four years here.  In most classes anyway.  Some of us are pushing the envelope.  We are teaching our students how to use Google Docs to collaborate.  We are teaching our students how to turn in assignments in Gmail, how to upload files to Moodle, how to search for useful information on the Internet and how to create presentations with tools like Animoto, Xtranormal and Prezi.  We are teaching critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration using the tools available to us through the Internet and Web 2.0.

    I see the updating of the Business Apps classes as a critical step in our school’s journey into the 21st Century.  With an Internet connection, a computer and an idea anyone can start a company, find their voice, write a book, build a community, make a difference and change the world.  These opportunities are what is being left behind in our Business Applications classes as they stand today.  The tools are there, they are free and they are waiting to be used.  Teach the students how to use them and they will do the rest.  Last year I introduced Animoto to the students in my classes and within a month, students were doing Animoto presentations in their English classes too.  Their teacher’s didn’t have to know how to use Animoto to accept them as assignments, they just had to be willing to make a change and decide that it was OK to do an Animoto instead of a PowerPoint.  Change is always a struggle.  But I think it is a struggle worth fighting.