Here's an interesting report from Doug Adams, our Network Administrator,
regarding the LAN hardware upgrades that he and Tim Tillman
did at Lakeview Elementary School:
"Yesterday afternoon and evening Tim and
I managed the upgrade on the infrastructure at Lakeview. We removed
all of the old switches and other items, cleaned up the rack,
did some straightening of the cables in the rack, installed the
new switches and cleaned up the mess. Many thanks to Tim for being
the strong man! It turns out that when the rack was installed,
whoever did the work used anything from sheet metal screws to
wood screws to hold the devices in the rack and apparently used
an air wrench to tighten them. They were a bear to get out but
have now been replaced with
appropriate screws. We also installed a UPS on the rack that was
not there before and removed two power strips and close to 10
power cables that were in the rack but are now unused. We left
about 7:00 last night."
Kudos to Doug Adams and Tim Tillman for their
hard work!
New Technology Work
Order System
January 2005: The Office of Technology and
Learning has implemented a new online Technology WorkOrder System
to keep track of technical support issues and needs in our schools.
that our small technical support staff must handle throughout
the school division. It is an ASP system that utilizes the SQL
Server database that was implemented with our new database driven
website last summer.
The original underpinnings of this new system
were a gift from Hanover County Public Schools. However, Tim Tillman,
our Technology Field Technician has provided leadership in essentially
reprogramming this application in order to customize it for our
school system, and also to significantly improve it. The Technology
Paraprofessionals assigned to each school can login to the web-based
Intranet system in order to enter support requests.
Mark Webster, the Director of Technology and
Learning, is particularly excited about the new work order
system's Backup Reports feature, which allows our staff to monitor
server backup processes and procedures at all schools. Because
of Mr. Tillman's hard work in customizing the system, Mr. Webster
has dubbed this new system the Tillman Optimum Precision WorkOrder
System, or "Top System" for short. We are utilizing
the database capabilities of this system for a central computer
equipment inventory.
New Server Deployed
for Our Student Information System
"Just in the nick of time!"
November 12, 2004: Previously our StarBase student
information system was running on fairly old server hardware,
and technology staff decided to be proactive by replacing
this old server with a new one. We purchased a brand new,
very robust and high powered HP server with multiple RAID 5 level hard
drives for redundancy and fault tolerance. After the hardware
was setup, it took longer than we expected to arrange to have
Century Consulting visit the school division to setup StarBase
and the Oracle database system. Century visited us on November
11 - 12 to setup these applications related to the student information
system. The new server was deployed on Friday, November 12.
Guess what else happened the same day. . .
the old StarBase server completely died and will no longer boot
up! However, everything related to StarBase is now running
smoothly on our new server, and Doug Adams our Technology Network
Administrator reports that we're starting to get some positive
feedback about how much faster it is.
Internet Capacity and
Wide Area Network Upgraded
October 2004: The Office of Technology and
Learning is pleased to report that the school division's WAN improvement
project has been completed at all locations in the school division.
Our central Internet connection at the high school, which serves
the whole division, has been upgraded to a DS3. This significantly
enhances our Internet bandwidth capabilities for online SOL testing,
and other instructional applications of the Internet. New routers
were installed and configured at each school, and the ISDN lines
that existed at all elementary schools and the School Administration
Office were upgraded to T-1 lines. Our new and improved Wide Area
Network (WAN) capacity will significantly improve our electronic
communications and data operations. Colonial Heights Middle School
already had a T-1 in place, but the installation of new network
switches this summer, and the new DS3 will better equip the middle
school for the online SOL testing that will take place this school
year.
Goals and objectives related to improving our
network infrastructure were key components of the educational
technology plan for Colonial Heights. Achieving these objectives
related to connectivity will greatly enhance our capacity to reach
other goals related to using technology to improve teaching and
learning.
A New Dynamic, Database
Driven Website
September 28, 2004: The new dynamic, database
driven website is designed to provide us with a more effective
means of communicating with the community. We used the consulting
services of Mr. David Ross, with Dynamic Media Solutions. From
a technical standpoint, the technology behind the website has
undergone the proverbial paradigm shift. Instead of having simply
static documents linked together, the site is a dynamic database
driven website that uses a technology from Macromedia called ColdFusion,
which interfaces with a Microsoft SQL Server database.
One of the major advantages of the new website
is the capacity for faculty and staff to easily post updates and
content to the site. Teachers will have a user friendly tool for
posting homework for their students, and other information related
to classroom instruction. The Office of Technology and Learning
will be doing trainings sessions for faculty and staff at each
of the schools in the division to assist them with learning to
post updates and content to the website.
New Web-based Email
System for Colonial Heights Public Schools
2004-2005 school year: We're excited about
a new web-based email system that has been implemented, called
WorldClient, which essentially provides email access that is anytime,
anywhere, from any computer, no configuration required. Faculty
and staff interested in switching over to the new system are invited
to contact someone from Technology and Learning to get setup for
web-based email.
A step-by-step document and email tutorial
has been created to assist faculty and staff with using this new
web-based email system:
How to Use the Colonial Heights Public Schools Web-based Email
System (Acrobat PDF format)
The WorldClient web-based email system is included with the MDaemon
email server solution. We also deployed the spam filter and email
anti-virus system components that are available for MDaemon, meaning
that we now are running two spam filters and two email anti-virus
systems! (We had previously deployed a new Barracuda
Spam Firewall in our ongoing efforts in the battle against unsolicited
junk email.)
Implement Our New Educational
Technology Plan
The new City of Colonial
Heights Public Schools Three-Year Technology Plan for 2004 - 2007 was approved by the School Board on June 22, 2004. It was also
reviewed by the Virginia Department of Education and found to
be in full alignment with the Educational Technology Plan for
Virginia.
Our technology plan is designed to serve as
a blueprint to guide our school division in constructing an effective
division-wide educational technology program. Most of the projects
and initiatives in the Office of Technology and Learning relate
directly to goals and objectives in our technology plan.
Purchasing, Installing,
and Configuring New Computers for Computer Labs
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