PROFILE CHANGES PAGE4

NETWORK UPGRADES PAGE5

HIGH SCHOOL DEPLOYMENTPAGE6

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VOLUME 1SUMMER 2013

GOOGLE APPSPAGE12

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VOLUME 1 CONTENTS SUMMER 2013

summer projects4 Profile Changes5 Network Upgrade

6 High School Deployment7 MAC/Apple Network Addition

technician blog8 Eric’s IPEVO Integration9 Sean’s Online Cloud Backup Options10 Brian’s Crazy Fun Facts11 Quick Tips

Sneak Peak12 Google Apps Introduction13 Office 2013 Upgrade

4 Network Upgrades

5 High School Deployment

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MESSAGE FROMRODNEY MACK

When a school district up-grades its network infrastructure, the results often are very dramatic. Sometimes, they can even exceed the expectations of the IT people and ad-ministrators over-seeing the work.

Take Wheaton Warrenville Commu-nity Unit School Dis-trict 200, a 20-school K–12 system in Illinois that serves 13,500 students from Wheaton, War-

renville and parts of Carol Stream, Winfield and West Chicago. Through-out 2011, CUSD 200 officials replaced switches and in-stalled wireless coverage in all of the district’s build-ings and moved its telecom operation from landlines to a Cisco Systems–based Voice over IP solution.

Some of the systems in the older schools were so an-tiquated that when

the IT team installed the new VoIP sys-tem, they found that one elementary school had actually been wired by the principal, recalls Executive Director of Technology Rod-ney Mack. “None of the phones would work,” he says, “and all of the switches were in the ceiling, not in a wiring clos-et. Needless to say, we had to rewire that building.”

Today, all of-fices and classrooms

have IP phones that run unified commu-nications functions such as voicemail in e-mail and deliver caller ID by reading the user’s address book. By eliminat-ing 380 analog telephone lines, the district can reallo-cate $150,000 from its annual phone bill to other technology needs.

The new phones were a major step forward, but Mack says the infrastruc-ture upgrade’s most

EMAIL: rodney.mack@cusd200.org BLOG: http://dotblog.cusd200.org

“we’re focused on deliverying quality customer service and improving communication.”

When a school district up-grades its network infrastructure, the results often are very dramatic. Sometimes, they can even exceed the expectations of the IT people and ad-ministrators over-seeing the work.

Take Wheaton Warrenville Commu-nity Unit School Dis-

trict 200, a 20-school K–12 system in Illinois that serves 13,500 students from Wheaton, War-renville and parts of Carol Stream, Winfield and West Chicago. Through-out 2011, CUSD 200 officials replaced switches and in-stalled wireless coverage in all of the district’s build-ings and moved its

telecom operation from landlines to a Cisco Systems–based Voice over IP solution.

Some of the systems in the older schools were so an-tiquated that when the IT team installed the new VoIP sys-tem, they found that one elementary school had actually been wired by the

principal, recalls Executive Director of Technology Rod-ney Mack. “None of the phones would work,” he says, “and all of the switches were in the ceiling, not in a wiring clos-et. Needless to say, we had to rewire that building.”

Today, all of-fices and classrooms have IP phones that

SUMMER 2013PROFILE CHANGES

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NETWORKUPGRADECOMINGSUMMER 2013

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Profiles are being changed this Summer, and it requires some users to backup files, otherwise they may be lost. We have to reduce profile sizes, and due to the hundreds of different programs on various machines, the consequences of not reduc-ing your profile size may result in lost data that we may not be able to anticipate.

A profile contains your login credentials, as well as any files in specific folders. For example, your documents, pictures folder, desktop files, wallpaper, print-ers, and browser bookmarks/favorites – these are all part of your profile. Teachers/staff dif-fer from students, as they have a “roaming profile”. A roaming profile means that it will follow you to whatever computer you login to. If you jump from room to room or building to building, you will notice these files “roam” with you to the next machine .

Profile sizes have been growing, so the Department of Technology has to lower the size limits to ensure that the network runs smoothly. There are several things that may have happened right after the conversion that could have caused this, such as placing large files on your desk-top, documents folder, or even by syncing your iOS device with your iTunes.

We have a whole detailed article that explains more about this on our blog. Please visit this link to view more information on how to clean up your profile:

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO

what and why

“PROFILE SIzE LIMITS ARE BE-ING REDUCED, AND USERS NEED TO MAKE SURE THEY ARE BELOW THAT LIMIT BY SUM-MER, OR RISK LOSING FILES.”

profiles explained

the problem

find out more

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ISP FACTHome internet speedsare usually 1 to 10mbps. We will be at 1,000mbps after the network upgrade.

NETWORK UPGRADE

NETWORK UPGRADES INCREASE BANDWIDTH 4XWe are going to be doing some major

network overhauls this Summer, which will benefit the whole district. People will be most happy to hear that we are increasing our internet bandwidth from 250mbps to 1Gbps (4x increase). Our network team is going to scale this ac-cordingly so schools will have enough bandwidth without maxing out at 100%, while leaving room for us to grow in the future without the need to upgrade every year.

In addition to the internet upgrade, our network team will be rearranging

our data center to a more centralized and efficient room, and then increasing our back-end local intranet connection to allow for the new internet to be put in place, and for future growth as well. This should help improve file transfers across the district and eliminate any bottle-necks.

Most network upgrades aren’t typi-cally noticed by most users, but we feel that everyone will notice the faster speeds next school year and will be pleased with the results.

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CUSD200 DOT HAS INCREASEDINTERNET BANDWIDTH OVERTHE PAST FEW YEARS AND HASRESULTED IN ONE OF THE FASTEST DISTRICTS IN THE COUNTRY

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The Department of Technology typi-cally refreshes school machine leases every 4 years, and the high schools are next up for new machines. Both high schools will be receiving new Dell Optiplex 3010 models, which are the latest version of what both elementary and middle schools received the past 2 years. For those that are techni-cal, the specs are: Core i3, 4GB RAM, 250GB HDD. Labs will have the same models, but upgraded processors (Core i5). We have tak-en future expansion into thought, and will be able to upgrade memory and other com-ponents in the future should they need it.

High Schools aside, almost every location will be getting additional laptops and carts. Here are the numbers for those interested:

WNHS: 80 WWSHS: 80

Wiesbrook: 20 Wiesbrook: 20 Wiesbrook: 20 Wiesbrook: 20 Wiesbrook: 20 Wiesbrook: 20 Wiesbrook: 20 Wiesbrook: 20

Staff laptops are being taken into con-sideration, pending budget. These will be given out to pilot schools to see how staff will utilize these machines in their class-room and other work. It will be up to the school principals to plan who will use the laptops and what the requirements and goals are for using them.

We believe that upgrading machines and providing more mobile devices every year will allow staff to be more productive in the classroom and increase learning.

NEW MACHINEDEPLOYMENT

HIGH SCHOOLS RECEIVE NEW DESKTOPS AFTER 4 YEARS. ADDITIONAL LAPTOP CARTS BEING DEPLOYED DISTRICT-WIDE

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FACT:DOT will be setting up and configuring over 2,000 machines over approximately 4 weeks this Summer.

UPGRADING MACHINES

WILL INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY IN THE LEARN-ING ENVIRON-

MENT