July 15th, 2009
While I'm away...Your projects
I asked last week what you were doing this summer. In addition to my usual reposts, I wanted to post a summary from one reader of his recent doings. Thanks to Josh Kesecker, Technology Coordinator, Wallowa County ESD - Region 18, for the feedback (keep in mind that I just reprinted his email directly, which was sent to me as a list).
Some things we’ve done this year, that have been beneficial for us:
- Knowledgetree: (open source DMS, used to put all district policies, board minutes, & plans on-line)
- Asterisk: Open source VOIP (a successful, 6 month implementation start to finish for 164 extensions)
- Squid/SquidGuard: Open source web filtering. We’ve been doing our own filtering for 4 years now. A necessary evil, but not one we’re paying for…
- Tech Literacy data: administered our first assessment this year…
- We surveyed the staff as well, very interesting data…
- Joomla/Drupal (most districts have or are converting their sites to these CMS’s already)
- OpenOffice/ThinClients you’ve already covered quite well.
- Virtualization starting to take off…
- Using Wireless WAN…
- We’re going to pilot iTalc this year. It’s an open source Classroom management app utilizing the vnc protocol.
Background:
- 1,000 students across 4 school districts in NE Oregon. Very rural, just got fiber in the county last year.
- Keeping the network running in the winter requires snowmobiles ;-)
- Funding is always an issue, haven’t been able to get netbooks popular yet. Rolling out more WiFi first…
Follow Chris Dawson on Twitter! Christopher Dawson is the technology director for the Athol-Royalston School District in northern Massachusetts and a member of the Internet Press Guild. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations, but always keep in mind that the opinions expressed here are his own and not those of his daytime employer, even if he talks incessantly about his day job.
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