District Technology

Allen ISD prides itself as being second to none when it comes to technology. Every election cycle it seems that there is a bond proposal to add or upgrade technology. Because we have made such a big investment, we make another large investment in resources to maintain and upkeep our technology. This investment means that teachers are suppose to make every attempt to make the best possible use of the technology resources. Since teachers are devoting time and energy using and developing these resources, the district must devote resources to maintain data and computer systems.

We have a variety of systems that need to be protected. We store testing and demographic data on Triand. Previously, attendance and grades were done on two separate programs. This year they will be combined in the Skyward program. For email we use Lotus. We have video content through the Montage system. In addition to these systems, the department maintains the district server.

The technology department works hard protecting our resources. To prevent hacking and viruses network engineers run a variety of programs. As necessary the district up grades the software. The system is backed up daily. Information that has been deleted is available on the backed up files.

At Allen High School, every teacher and student has storage space on the server. Each user creates their own file system within their folder. Teachers also have “the shared drive” where any teacher can place files that other teachers have access to. This is a great place for collaboration. Updates to the system are run on TACO (turn all computers on) Thursday. Teachers and students can access the server from home with the Citrix system.
I think Allen ISD does a wonderful job protecting its resources. In twelve years in the district, I can only remember one time a virus struck our system. A teacher opened an email from an unknown source and everyone’s printer started printing. Similarly, our data has been protected. A few years ago technology redid the server. We were given plenty of notice so we could also backup our files. The shared drive was completely erased. The shared drive had become cluttered with personal files, outdated files (ex. old sports schedules), and files no longer used. In addition folders on the drive are alphabetical so teachers were competing to see who could put the most “A”s for their folder name so theirs would be near the top. To keep this from happening again folders were organized by departments and we are to self-monitor to keep this drive from becoming too cluttered to be useful. This past year when the district switched the Montage server, several teachers, including me, lost our playlists. It took a little more than an hour to rebuild the list. It may not seem like much but it is frustrating when you work to build something then it is gone.

I do have a few recommendations. Since teachers have a shared drive to collaborate, students should as well. Some may think this will lead to cheating since students will have access to other students’ work. However, if a student wants to cheat he or she will cheat. Furthermore, more opportunities for cheating are available on the internet. I would also like one system for our data. The Skyward system combining attendance and grading is a start. It would be even better if testing data was also available through this program. The computer labs do not have monitoring software. If they did this would give teachers a better resource to keep students on task. My final recommendation/complaint is with the spam filter. If I send something from my Yahoo account to my school email it is sent to my spam folder and I can’t remove it. The same thing happens if a student sends me something from a Yahoo email account. This creates a difficult situation when a student is trying to turn in an assignment. This became a problem several years ago, then it seemed that it was fixed. Now the problem has begun occurring again.

Despite a few bumps along the road Allen taxpayers can rest assured that the investment in technology is well taken care of.