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Christopher Dawson
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It's OK to outsource

By | September 16, 2008, 10:14am PDT

DNS is not my friend. For some reason, I never get my zone’s right, I’m forwarding when I should be reversing, etc. Anytime I set up DNS or try to troubleshoot, I just end up making things worse. I’m not to proud to admit it…there are plenty of things I do well, but this isn’t one of them.

Those of us in Ed Tech, with our shoestring budgets and skeletal staff, are expected to be jacks of all trades. Sometimes, however, spending some of our modest budgets on a bit of outside help can go a long ways towards maintaining our sanity. For a grand, I can have an engineer with certifications up the wazoo spend two days with me, spiff up my DNS, clean up my Active Directory, and troubleshoot some roaming profile issues I’m having, all while I continue to work. While $1000 ends up being two computers I can’t buy, my users stay happy with improved network performance and reliability.

Could I figure all of this out myself? Sure, but my time is better spent planning, training, and meeting plenty of other user needs. Being a jack of all trades is important if I’d like to have intelligent conversations with vendors and technicians. I should even be a “master of some”. However, no matter how tempted we are to keep operations in house to save money, careful use of experts in given areas will save us time and hassle. If time is money, in fact, one could argue that using an outside expert could save money long term.

What do you think?

Poll

Do you use vendors and contractors to supplement what you do at your school?

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Jack, DNS, Outsource, Domain Names, Networking, Internet, Christopher Dawson

Chris Dawson is a freelance writer and consultant with years of experience in educational technology and web-based systems. In 2011, he became the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network SaaS provider.

Disclosure

Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson is the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., by day and a freelance writer and educational technology consultant by night. Well, most of his colleagues at WizIQ are based in India, so really he's working with them whenever he can stay awake. He has worked for his local school district as a teacher and technology director, for the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and for Biogen, Inc. (now Biogen-IDEC, Inc.). He has also consulted with STATNet and Cytyc Corporation and retains close ties with X2 Development Corporation (now owned by Follett Software, the supplier of the student information system he administered for several years). Follett is paying him a monthly honorarium to act as a presenter for their "SIS Voices for Student Achievement" community (he produces occasional blog posts and hosts a monthly webinar on the use of student information systems to inform data-driven instruction and school-wide change. He regularly purchases and/or recommends Dell hardware. This is because Dell makes good hardware and has truly committed itself to education in innovative ways, particularly with their "Connected Classroom" initiative. It isn't because he has dealings with the company through his role at WizIQ (which he does) or because they have provided him with long-term loans of a variety of equipment for in-depth testing (which they have). Intel (reference designer for the Classmate PCs he has implemented in his local schools) has provided him with long-term loans of Classmate PCs for testing, as have Dell and Lenovo with their educational offerings. He may report on any of these companies as his experiences with them have direct bearing on educational technology; positive reports are not necessarily an endorsement and he receives no direct financial compensation from these companies or any others. Intel paid all expenses for his attendance at the 2009 Intel Classmate PC Ecosystem Summit which he attended as the sole representative of the technology press. He was invited to attend in 2010 but his wife would have killed him if he spent 3 days in Vegas geeking out and left her home alone with a new baby. Acer provided him with a 50% discount on an Aspire One netbook in early 2009 after he tested it for 30 days through their educational seed program. He liked the netbook at the time but it has since broken and sits unused in his office. Canonical sent him Ubuntu lanyards, t-shirts, and mousepads for his kids. He stole one of the lanyards and proudly hangs his keys from it and occasionally features his 8-year old wearing an oversized Ubuntu t-shirt on his Facebook profile. Gunnar Optiks sent him a pair of computer glasses to evaluate for a holiday gift guide. He is wearing them now as he types this because they never asked for them back and they rock out loud. Seriously - they work brilliantly and make it much easier to spend 20 hours a day staring at an LCD. If they ever asked for them back, he would fork over the $99 and buy a pair. Microsoft gave him 2 free copies of Office 2010 professional, a desktop clock, and a useless book on Office 2010 when he attended the launch of Office/Sharepoint 2010. He occasionally uses the SharePoint lanyard they gave him instead of the Ubuntu lanyard for his keys, but feels dirty afterwards. Adobe provided him with a pre-release version of the CS5 Master Collection for evaluation and ultimately provided a full, licensed copy for ongoing testing of educational applications of this admittedly expensive software. Like the Gunnars, if the license expires or they come out with CS6, he'd actually go out and buy it himself. Which is saying something, because he's actually pretty cheap. Any other companies wishing to send him cool things to evaluate, wear, or otherwise adorn his kids are more than welcome to; he promises to disclose it here if he keeps any of the stuff. Finally, because WizIQ is a virtual classroom and learning network provider, Chris, as VP of Marketing, frequently interacts with, seeks out deals with, and directly or indirectly competes with a whole lot of LMS, SIS, and other Education 2.0 companies. In general, he'll limit his reporting about these companies to news that does not impact his relationship with them or with WizIQ. If he reports on them, it's because what they are doing is newsworthy or worth the attention of his readers and not because he's trying to broker some deal, damage competition, or otherwise advance his position in his day job. LMS and SIS companies, along with other online learning communities, are a pretty important part of Ed Tech. If he stops reporting on them completely, there won't be a whole lot left. He'll be sure to call out any overt conflicts of interest if they are unavoidable. Finally, Follett Software Company pays him a little tiny honorarium every month to present on their SIS Voices webinars and to write the occasional blog or discussion thread for them. Since Follett recently bought X2 (maker of an awesome web-based SIS that Chris just happened to have used, served in advisory groups for, and frequently reported on), this is probably also worth disclosing.

Biography

Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson grew up in Seattle, back in the days of pre-antitrust Microsoft, coffeeshops owned by something other than Starbucks, and really loud, inarticulate music. He escaped to the right coast in the early 90's and received a degree in Information Systems from Johns Hopkins University. While there, he began a career in health and educational information systems, with a focus on clinical trials and related statistical programming and database modeling. This focus led him to several positions at Johns Hopkins, a couple-year stint in private industry, teaching high school math and technology, and 2 years as the technology director for his local school district. Most recently, he started his own consulting business and is now the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network provider. He lives with his wife, five kids (yes, 5), 2 dogs, and a hateful cat in a small town in north-central Massachusetts. Although he is no longer teaching, his roles with WizIQ and ZDNet allow him to continue helping students and teachers add value to education with technology rather than merely adding to the bottom line.
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Need one more option in the vote.
ajole 16th Sep 2008
No we don't use outsourcing, instead we spend more money taking longer to do it ourselves, and then fix the mess we made, while the students and staff suffer as a result.
View in thread
0 Votes
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Im going to make a suggestion here...
JT82 Updated - 16th Sep 2008
but why not use OpenDNS? Its free and requires virtually zero maintence. www.opendns.com - I use it on my home connection and it makes surfing the internet much better and more reliable.
0 Votes
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OpenDNS is GREAT but not for ActiveDirectory
wonsil@... 16th Sep 2008
ActiveDirectory REQUIRES MS-DNS.
0 Votes
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Well, that's comforting
Yagotta B. Kidding 16th Sep 2008
I suck at DNS too. Fortunately there are relatively idiot-proof tools for the purpose.
0 Votes
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Of course it's okay
ridingthewind 16th Sep 2008
As long as you understand what you are and are NOT getting, have no fancy, complex needs, well then, it wouldn't just be a good idea, it would be foolish not too, eh?

But you may want to understand better what it is you may be giving up - if you get get a few minutes of free time with someone who does know DNS well, you make a better informed decision. Like do you want things like dynamic dns to work but work well and safely... and where they might go astray. Do you want SPF for your MX records? What if any are the downsides? And so on...
0 Votes
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It's VERY!! OK to outsource
Caggles 16th Sep 2008
my first experiences in the wonderful field of being a
jack-of-all-techno-trades came while I was in high
school, acting as said outsourcing happy Now, naturally,
I was no expert at anything at the time (and really,
I'm not one now either) but having an extra set of
hands around to do all the little things (like aiding
a teacher whose network connection isn't working
because they haven't plugged in their ethernet cable,
etc) is totally worthwhile. In fact, with that little
bit of extra time afforded to you by a little helper,
you may be able to spend some more time becoming
acquainted with DNS. Plus, your little helper will
work for school credit (read: for free!!).

And so, the moral of the story is: get yourself a co-
op student!!
0 Votes
+ -
Need one more option in the vote.
ajole 16th Sep 2008
No we don't use outsourcing, instead we spend more money taking longer to do it ourselves, and then fix the mess we made, while the students and staff suffer as a result.

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