I have been working the better part of the day putting together the outline for the documentation project we are undertaking at GTPS. I will start with the easiest of items first and that will be the hardware installed in the current compliment throughout the district. I am starting at Reeds Road and once that building is completed I will move on to Arthur Rann. This will accomplish some additional tasks that need doing at present. First, I need to develop a cable relocation strategy. I have a good idea in my head as to how I am going to put this together but it needs to unfold from my head to paper. The admin help I am getting will assist the process but I still have to do it. In addition, I will be able to judge much better after visiting every classroom, admin, and specialty room in the district the extent of what our current situation looks like with regard to our obsolensce plan requirements off the district's tech plan. Last but not least I will be taking some photographs of classrooms throughout the district, a sort of before and after look at the movement necessitated by our electrical upgrade project. The first two weeks will be spent collecting the evidence (data) to compile the results and start to put the data in readable fashion. The point of this exercise is to have in writing and layout form a blueprint of the GTPS Digital Network.
The second part of the plan will be to put together the diagrams of the "inside" network. That would be the infrastructure mapping. From every MDF to IDF within the district, from every primary and secondary connection and everything in between. A complete layout of the system. I think I know where most everything is connected but even I have lost count of the actual physical connections throughout the enterprise. I am hoping that with this collection process we will be able to diagnose connectivity problems on a much faster basis. Once the inside is completed we will then move toward the WAN and its components. We will document the current and what the plans are for the next three years. As I have written in the past, we are in the process of moving both Smithville and Rann toward a new connection system from Verizon known as Transparent LAN Services or TLS. This system will give us a clean 10Mbps connection which will more that quadruple the current bandwidth requirements. It will also give us the ability to utilize a wayside T-1 to continue to provide phone service on the WAN instead of through a Verizon Central Office account.
The third part of the plan is to document the projects completed over the last two years and complete a maintenance plan to review and either upgrade or replace the existing project as the needs are better known. I need to do the review on each of the projects to determine whether they met the anticipated goal or they have failed to complete the intended results. I will give you an example, the mobile projection units were at first a very good idea. What I didn't count on is their extreme use in the first year. As I have been getting to each school I am finding that about twenty percent of the carts are not operational. This is due to a variety of reasons. In some cases the wheels have simply broken off and need to be repaired. Actually the wheels need to be replaced with better rubber wheels that I will get to sometime this fall. Each of the carts needs to be reviewed and looked at. No time this month or next and with the electrical project taking precedent I will get to it as soon as possible. That is just one of thirty projects that were completed over the last two years that needs to be reviewed and possible changes made. The idea will be to go back and either do away with or fix the fallout from each one. Change is tough but in order for the staff to accept change they need to have the equipment working as it was intended to.
The last part will be the presentation to the BOE Tech Committee with regard to the present state of the state and what the future will hold as far as equipment purchases due to retirement of old gear and what other avenues we may explore in order to keep the technology movement alive at GTPS. Till next post.
8:51:32 PM 
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