Systems Designer

Entering the technology field as a music educator with no formal information technology background, establishing a supportive network of technical professionals has been key to my success as a systems designer. I have worked closely with the local Educational Service Unit to plan infrastructure upgrades and redesign systems. As a team, we have stewarded our school through:

• A shift to a fiber optic Internet service provider

• Upgrades to our WLAN to support WiFi 6

• The establishment of robust point-to-point wireless signals to expand our WAN to newly-constructed greenhouses and the athletic complex

• Upgrades to our server infrastructure

• A redesign of our virtual LAN to achieve RADIUS-authenticated network segmentation and resource allocation

This partnership has helped achieve nearly 100% uptime and consistent bandwidth of over 100Mbps network-wide. This also fulfills my philosophy that in order for teachers and students to pursue innovative education, they must first have access to the most innovative technology resources.

When designing systems for technology infrastructure or integration, my mantra is, "We will always add, and never take away." In five years' time, the number of components installed on my school's main distribution frame doubled! Where will we be in the next five years? Will we have enough ports? Will we need to build up intermediate distribution frames elsewhere in the building? How many data drops will we need in a new construction, and what is our plan for scaling up if we need more? All of these questions need to be considered when planning the rollout of new infrastructure.

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But the IT perspective is not the only way to approach competency of this standard. Technology decisions should be made first and foremost from the perspective of curriculum and instruction. It must always be remembered that instructional technology is there to support and innovate student achievement. Adding a new teaching and learning tool to the curriculum will increase demand not only on the network, but on the teachers and students themselves. Do they have the capacity to learn and use something new? Will they have the support they need? After being taught how to use the tool, are teachers expected to simply know how to incorporate it into their pedagogy or adapt it for their content area? Is the current technology staff able to sufficiently meet the needs of these educators? Again, all of these questions must be considered.

In my view, cybersecurity is the next big technology trend in education, and if not, it should be. According to the K-12 Security Information Exchange, cyber attacks on schools remain persistent and costly. My own cybersecurity knowledge has grown profoundly over the course of my career and I have taken steps to bake it into my systems design, daily procedures, and training processes.

• I have performed TrendMicro phishing simulations to identify where training may be needed. These simulations randomly target students and staff with a phishing email and provide me with analytics about how the user engaged with it and whether they shared private data.

• I have implemented multi-factor authentication on all of my devices and accounts, at home and at school. I also utilize multi-factor authentication for high-value users, accounts, and systems where available.

• Security policies are always configured with a bias toward access denial and to operate under the concept of least privileges.

• Staff are trained annually on FERPA and COPPA, and are encouraged to work with me to discover safe ways to handle student data.

• School-owned computing devices and networks are monitored regularly for abnormal traffic and usage and are routinely maintained and updated with security patches. Software sweeps identify any malware and unlicensed software.

As part of a continuous improvement process, making data-based observations about current systems is necessary in order to plan and implement possible improvements. In the TE 800 course, I developed a research proposal for an exploratory case study that partnered with teachers, students, and parents to analyze students' use of iPads after they have been provided with significant personal freedoms on the device. The research question of the case study is, "What are students doing with this freedom?" Ultimately, data from the study could inspire additional research about whether students who have access to games, websites, and music on their school device experience different levels of school engagement or academic achievement from students whose school devices are locked down or highly monitored. Click below to view the research proposal.