Improving the ACCESS Experience

Problem:

Students are required to go to certain websites that have been blocked by the LEA.

Students are required to use software (Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop Winzip, etc.) that the LEA is unable to provide.

Students are required to perform actions on the machines (install software, access files, host services) that are prohibited by the LEA's user policy.

The vision of the ACCESS program is to "provide equal access to high quality instruction to improve student achievement through distance learning." In providing the distance learning opportunities to Alabama students, a single teacher can teach students that are located anywhere in the state. Because each LEA manages it's computer network differently, an ACCESS teacher is going to encounter computers managed as many different ways as there are schools systems in the state. The differences span from what software is installed on a computer all the way up to where students are allowed to go on the internet. Each of these different approaches seeks the same goal of having a stable computing environment to insure that every student can learn. However, these differences can lead to radically different computing environments. We would not expect a classroom teacher to teach in a computer lab that had 30 different computers with 30 different configurations and 30 different sets of rules controlling what the students can and cannot do. Why do we expect an ACCESS teacher to do this?

Solution Overview:

Technology Initiatives take a more active role in managing the ACCESS computers to ensure that there is a common computing environment shared by all ACCESS students and teachers. This does not translate into more spending. It can be accomplished with relatively ...

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...ide and stability on the other. The easiest way to do this would be to pick a school system's current setup and try to duplicate the setup on the ACCESS computers. Then, step back and take a good look at what is and isn't working, and make adjustments as necessary.

Conclusion:

The ideas presented here are not radical changes. Across the state everyone one of the ideas is being used by a school system somewhere. It is just that no one has brought all of these ideas together in one place to be used across a distributed system such as ACCESS. Technology Initiatives has already taken the first steps towards this with the effort to standardize the hardware that is purchased for the ACCESS labs. These ideas are just a continuation of that same effort with the application of standardized system management applied on a large scale across the entire ACCESS program.