Moving from a traditional desktop computing environment to a virtualized solution is a daunting task. In this article, the author presents case histories of three districts that have made the conversion to virtual computing to learn about their experiences: What prompted them to make the move, and what were their objectives? Which obstacles prove…

What would an educator do with $650 million? Better yet, what "should" he/she do with $650 million? No, this is no game show. It's a real-life challenge posed to school districts nationwide in the year since President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. The bill dedicates more than $90 billion to education, with…

It's a riddle faced by virtually every IT director: how to fulfill users' desire for more muscular computing resources while still obliging administrators' commands to keep education spending down. Against long odds, many district technology directors have been fulfilling both counts, optimizing their computing systems with improvements that pay…

The problem with traditional, perimeterbased security methods is twofold: First, they can stifle the educational mission that district networks were created to encourage. Firewalls can thwart hackers, but they can also prevent staff and students from accessing online tools or information. Second, these approaches tend to provide inadequate…

This article stresses that school administrators need to understand the history of education technology in order to introduce new ideas and learning opportunities to students. Pownell and Bailey (2002) described four predominant waves in the history of education technology: In the 1960s, the first phase included mainframe computers, which allowed…