Masters Blog

Infrastructure is the backbone for all technology in any school system. I believe it is the most important area because all other areas of the Texas Long Range Plan for Technology depend on and are limited by the status their infrastructure. I have found out first hand what an infrastructure problem can do to the entire district. 2 years ago at my previous position the school district had a sever lack of bandwidth along with aging network switches. Internet speed was very slow. In fact the network was so slow it impacted several areas through out the district. Teaching and learning was impeded because teachers could not access internet resources in a timely manner. Administrators were bogged down with complaints in addition to slowed access to online resources they needed. Technology staff was even slowed with simple tasks such as installing a printer, driver downloads would take several minutes instead of a few seconds. The level of frustration throughout the district was enormous and in my opinion lead to a serious resistance to future implementation and adoptions of new technologies. The government has been working toward getting standardized services and resources to help equalize resources for all districts. I believe this situation could have been avoided. After the problem occurred the district implemented a tool to measure network usage. If the district had implemented this tool before hand they would have seen the need before it affected daily functions.