Opinion : Letter to the Editor: V-S wasted $500,000

TL;DR: V-S superintendent, by eliminating the full-time technology director position, causes district to waste $500,000 on laptop 1:1 Initiative. We need to make some serious changes to keep from making this mistake again. If you owned a business where your day to day manager, hired by your board of directors, wasted a half-million dollars of your money, what would you do?

The backstory:

When I was hired by the Vinton-Shellsburg CSD in 2001, I was fortunate to work for 2 weeks with David Canaday, the outgoing V-S Director of Technology. David is now the Executive Director of Technology at the Marion CSD. Having been a network administrator and an educational technology consultant for the Indiana Department of Education, I was impressed with how well Mr. Canaday managed V-S technology.

So, I asked him the obvious question – why are you leaving Vinton-Shellsburg?

David told me he had tried to negotiate an increase in salary. He showed me spreadsheets of data listing current equivalent job descriptions / current salaries of other tech directors in Iowa. He illustrated, in his data that, based on the number of computers he had to manage, he was under compensated compared to other districts. V-S turned down his proposal, so he applied and was hired at Marion for considerably more than he had been asking at V-S.

Then, Vinton-Shellsburg hired me for considerably more than David had been asking! Go figure.

Shortly thereafter, a V-S School Board position opened up in the Shellsburg precinct, and David won the election. His technology expertise was an enormous advantage for the School Board, especially when building the new High School.

The V-S School Board needs that kind of technology expertise now. The current V-S superintendent eliminated the full time position of technology director in 2011. The actual hands-on management of V-S technology was outsourced to the Monticello Geeks, and the superintendent and school board patted themselves on the back for their good ideas and actions.

Not so fast.

That superintendent / school board action was the main reason V-S completely missed the huge opportunity offered by Google Chromebooks. This year, V-S could have initiated a district wide Chromebook 1 to 1 from 3rd grade to 12th grade for half the money spent on the MacBooks. When you read about the overwhelmingly positive impact these devices have had in the schools that have deployed them, it’s so discouraging that no one at V-S was paying attention to all the available 1 to 1 choices. A half-million dollar mistake was made, all for the lack of an adequate comparison of currently available solutions.

A part-time technology director for Vinton-Shellsburg CSD, in this age of rapidly accelerating technological change, is a very bad idea. The Director of Technology position should be restored to full-time status immediately and the school board should take pains to insure the superintendent doesn’t “micro-manage” the job. This person should have experience as a network administrator, extensive

experience purchasing and dealing with vendors and keeping mindfully current with the latest educational technology.

The Monticello Geeks have a serious conflict of interest where the choice is between Macbooks and Chromebooks, because the MacBooks need to be imaged, and this is a hefty revenue stream for them.

In the absence of a full-time technology director, for future technology purchases, the V-S School Board should get an unbiased opinion from a certified educational technology consultant with heavy experience in both technology purchases and implementation. No more School Board rubber stamp affirmations!

You should be very disappointed with the V-S 1 to 1 Laptop Initiative because the selection process was flawed and incomplete:

* There is no evidence that Chromebooks were seriously considered even though many other K-12 districts were deploying them.

* The “research” behind the MacBook Air selection consisted mainly of attending Apple marketing events and listening to Apple Education Reps.

* No one thought to google search on “intext:Chromebooks site:k12.ia.us”

* No one thought to google search on “intext:Chromebook 1 to 1”

* No one thought to call or consult with the tech staff at a school deploying a Chromebook 1:1 Laptop Initiative.

* Even though the district uses Google Apps for Education, no one looked on the “http://www.google.com/edu/” website for information about Chromebooks in K-12 environments and the numerous case studies of schools using them in a 1 to 1 Initiative. * No one looked at https://sites.google.com/site/eduonair/virtualization-for-chromebooks for how Chromebooks can be used as a thin client for any Virtually Delivered Desktop (Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux).

This deeply flawed process needs to be addressed and corrected before any other technology purchases are made. We have to live with this mistake, but let’s not make the same mistake over and over again. I suggest an independent technology audit ( not by Grant Wood, but by an accredited, experienced K-12 Technology Audit Team). In comparison to the amount of technology dollars just wasted, this expense would be minor and well worth it, and the recommendations resulting from the audit would help to fix the current decision making process.

The Apple MacBook Air is an excellent computer. But, by the time K-12 schools apply all the security measures to protect students, adding significantly to overhead costs, that once excellent MacBook Air is something considerably less. OSX has to be meticulously configured and then imaged, and that image pushed out to all other machines. The Chrome OS is transparent, requires no administration, updates itself, and users only log in to their Google Apps for Education account.

The Google Chromebook is not only “cheaper”, for K-12 School Districts, its better. If there is any money left over in PPEL, V-S should roll out Chromebooks for the Middle School ( or at the very least, do a pilot program with a couple of classes). They really are simple to deploy and manage.

The Chromebook represents a paradigm shift for K-12 School Districts for the following reasons:

* The Chromebook is not a Mac or a PC. The war between OSX and Windows is mostly over. The battles now are between Web Services, Web Applications from “App” stores, powerful browser extensions. Microsoft Office has become “Office365”; Adobe Creative Suite has become “Creative Cloud”.

* Usability: It runs the full modern web, in which you will likely find solutions to most any problem you face in the classroom, including all of the most popular adaptive online content. Managed Chromebooks may be the easiest to use when it comes to administering the new online Common Core Smarter Balanced assessments.

* Deployability: You unbox, enroll, and get them into students’ hands in two minutes. (Kids can even do it themselves!) Mac OSX and Windows don’t even come close. By a wide, wide margin, they are the easiest device yet to deploy and manage in schools. Chromebooks never need to be imaged / re-imaged (this is huge! The Monticello Geeks take a lot of V-S tech dollars out of Vinton just pushing images to computers)

* An April 2013 IDC white paper quantifies the economic value of Chromebooks for K-12 education and concludes: “… when compared with traditional PCs, Chromebooks reduce deployment costs by 69% and labor costs by 92%, and increase actual teaching and educational administration time by reducing the time lost in managing desktop PCs, notebook PCs or netbooks by 82%”.

* Multiple logins allow you to securely share your Chromebook. Each user gets their own experience when they log-in. Perfect for sharing - Easily switch between users in seconds. Everyone has their own files, apps and settings. You never have to worry about anything getting messed up by someone else. When it’s your turn again, pick up where you left off. Everything will be right where you left it.

* Affordability: Samsung’s $249 Chromebook (plus a one-time $30 cost for the management console license).

* The Chrome OS has virus, malware and spyware protection built into the system and is automatically updated. Because of the nature of the Chrome OS (not being Windows nor Mac), it is not as open to virus attacks.

* Create documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings with apps like Google Drive, Zoho or SlideRocket. With Chrome Remote Desktop, you can access and run software stored on any of your other computers, securely over the Internet. HTML5 clients like VMWare View or Ericom AccessNOW allow Servers to push virtual Windows desktops to Chromebooks (the most cost-efficient way to deploy Windows applications).

* Edit beautiful photos with apps like Pixlr Editor and organize them on your favorite photo sharing site. You can also create home videos with Stupeflix or YouTube Video Editor.

It’s critical that school board members take the time to understand what went wrong with the process of selecting MacBooks as the 1 to 1 device for Vinton-Shellsburg. Information and links provided in this letter and the previous letter will help with that eventual understanding.

Please forward this letter to your School Board representative or candidate. It’s extremely important that we stop the wasteful spending mistakes and start getting the best technology into the hands of our children.

Mark Hancock

Director of Technology V-S CSD 2001 thru 2011

Microsoft Certified Professional

Certified Cisco Networking Academy Instructor

Former Indiana Department of Education Consultant (Indiana Clearinghouse for Educational Technology)