While I'm away...Your projects

I asked last week what you were doing this summer. In addition to my usual reposts, I wanted to post a summary from one reader of his recent doings. Thanks to Josh Kesecker, Technology Coordinator, Wallowa County ESD - Region 18, for the feedback (keep in mind that I just reprinted his email directly, which was sent to me as a list).

Some things we’ve done this year, that have been beneficial for us:

• Knowledgetree: (open source DMS, used to put all district policies, board minutes, & plans on-line)
• Asterisk: Open source VOIP (a successful, 6 month implementation start to finish for 164 extensions)
• Squid/SquidGuard: Open source web filtering. We’ve been doing our own filtering for 4 years now. A necessary evil, but not one we’re paying for…
• Tech Literacy data: administered our first assessment this year…
• We surveyed the staff as well, very interesting data…
• Joomla/Drupal (most districts have or are converting their sites to these CMS’s already)
• OpenOffice/ThinClients you’ve already covered quite well.
• Virtualization starting to take off…
• Using Wireless WAN…
• We’re going to pilot iTalc this year. It’s an open source Classroom management app utilizing the vnc protocol.

Background:

• 1,000 students across 4 school districts in NE Oregon. Very rural, just got fiber in the county last year.
• Keeping the network running in the winter requires snowmobiles ;-)
• Funding is always an issue, haven’t been able to get netbooks popular yet. Rolling out more WiFi first…