Wade Gibson

On Target

The Crazy Switch

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Every year there is a magical time toward the end of July or beginning of August during which the phenomenon occurs I like to call, “The Crazy Switch” day. While not an officially recognized holiday due to its inherent fluctuation from year to year, it’s one most of us in educational technology experience. It’s that one particular day when enough teachers and staff are back in the district(s) and it seems like a tidal wave of emails, phone calls, and other random requests come flooding in.

No matter how valiant the effort or advanced preparations taken, we all become engulfed by this wave and feel overcome with angst and sometimes frustration. For ESU technology staff our crazy switch is usually flipped a week or two earlier than our school-based counterparts. At ESU 11 I called it as being July 19 this year, which always seems to creep up by a few days each year.

But we work in education, so we have summers off, right? I have often said that we spend nine months planning so we can cram an entire year’s worth of projects in over the summer!

The Changing Role of CTOs

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shifterI recently attended the ISTE Conference in Denver. There was somewhere north of 14,000 educators from across the globe who made the trek to the mile-high city for this behemoth ed tech conference. Generally speaking, this conference is intended for teachers and other educational technology leaders to come learn, share ideas, and network with their peers. There’s also scads of vendors in the expo hall that are happy to bend your ear in exchange for some swag.

One session in particular that I found intriguing was titled The Changing Role of the Chief Technology Officer. It was a panel discussion featuring a who’s who list of speakers from around the ed tech world. This session resonated with me as I have made the transition from a very IT centric background into a position of leadership more focused on the core mission of our organization.

The modern CTO should be focused on the instructional needs of the district. ~Jeremy Shorr

The above quote from Jeremy came in the opening remarks of the session, but stuck with me throughout. Regardless of what vertical you work within, the same holds true. The person in charge of Technology should understand and relate to the core business. Too often we make technology the central focus, instead of applying it most effectively to our everyday operation. We must never lose sight of why we are using the technology. It is simply a tool we use to achieve our goals and move the organization forward.

It was helpful for me to be reminded of this principal. Having come from the “wires and pliers” world of IT it’s too easy to jump back into the technical side of things when the situation warrants. It reminds me of the 2006 film Firewall with Harrison Ford, where he plays the role of a CTO at a major bank. In one particular scene he jumps on the command line and crafts a firewall rule to thwart would-be be hackers, all while a rookie engineer watches in amazement. IT is never that glamorous, but with Harrison Ford at the keyboard there had to be some panache.

Create a School Boundaries Map Using Google Earth

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Did you know that in a matter of minutes you can have a slick looking school district boundaries map? Yep, that’s right! In this screencast I’ll walk you through how to do just that using Google Earth Pro (now free) and readily available TIGER/Line Shapefiles from the US Census Bureau. You’ll learn how to build regional maps, calculate land area, and see exactly what parcels of land are in your district. You will be shocked how easy this is!

Curious what your state FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) code is? Wikipedia has a full listing here.

Pico de Mayo

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picostation Today I’m going to highlight a nifty little radio from Ubiquiti appropriately named the PicoStation. This versatile little guy is an outdoor rated Airmax device sporting an 802.11b/g/n radio capable of 100 Mbps throughput.

I recently bought a PicoStation PICOM2HP at home, which is the 2.4 GHz (2) High Power (HP) model. The best part – it only costs about $70, and comes with the 5 dBi omni antenna!

So what the heck am I going to use this for? Well, mostly for some R&D right now. I’ve got some crazy ideas on how this could be used for a mobile WiFi setup in rural farm areas, so I thought I would pick one up to see how viable an option it would be.

But before I get off on that tangent, let’s cover some of the more typical uses for this unit. Firstly, this makes a great, low-cost outdoor access point. Need better WiFi coverage on the patio or in the backyard? Bingo! Looking for a low-cost point-to-point bridge? Grab a pair of these. Obviously Ubiquiti also has purpose built radios for each of the previous scenarios (UAP-Outdoor for the former, Nanostation for the latter), but the cost, size, and versatility of the PicoStation is what I find attractive.

So I got my new Pico in and immediately updated its firmware to the latest version of AirOS. I noodled with all of the familiar settings and did some basic testing with the unit. After about thirty minutes I decided to go rogue and flash it with a UniFi firmware build. That’s right! You can convert a PicoStation to run UniFi! Without a hassle I had this device joined to my home UniFi network lickety split. Once there I decided to configure the Pico to use a wireless uplink so it could connect itself through the UAP-Outdoor outside on my tower.

Do you see where I’m going with this yet? Yep, you guessed it – I’m basically running the Pico as a repeater. Before you scoff, yes, I’m aware of the 50% throughput penalty for running devices in repeater mode. Despite the industry’s overall distaste for this mode of operation, it does have some positive use cases.

So here’s the setup. You’ve got the PicoStation for around $70, coupled with a Laird 2.4 GHz antenna and magnetic base, plus an inexpensive Tycon PoE injector adapted to 12V cigarette lighter plug, and BAM! – you’ve got yourself a $100 mobile WiFi hotspot that connects back to your home outdoor access point.

To see how this would work I did some testing this past weekend. I don’t have the external rooftop magnetic antenna yet, so I just sort of wedged the Pico in the window of my pickup so the antenna would be outside of the cab. I was able to connect from over 2 miles away and still had less than 5 ms ping time back to my home router!

The big thing here is line of sight and antennae on both ends. My UAP-Outdoor at home has the stock 5 dBi antenna pair, but I could beef it up with one of Ubiquiti’s 10 or 13dBi Airmax antenna models. That coupled with a 7 dBi mobile antenna on the Pico would make this a much more viable option. But you can’t argue with how cool it would be to have WiFi in the cab of your tractor if you’re working in a nearby field. Especially with GPS taking the wheel I can just picture someone kicked back watching Netflix as they’re chugging along!

Leadership vs. Management

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Brass scales with cupped traysIt’s been just over a year now since I have taken on my new role as the Media & Technology Coordinator at ESU 11. During the past year I have gained invaluable experience in both leadership and management. I have come to learn that there are vast differences between these two seemingly similar monikers.

At the NETA conference last week I attended a session titled “The Art of Change Leadership”. Presenter Bob Dillon compared and contrasted first order change with second order change. He noted how first order change is rather minor and only a slight modification to existing practice. It’s much easier to execute and generally more accepted. Conversely, second order change is more transformational, a distinct deviation from the status quo, and is often met with resistance. During an interactive part of the session one of the audience members remarked “Leadership is messy”, to which I agree whole-heartedly.

Later at the conference I was visiting with a colleague (who was in the same session) about staffing changes for the upcoming year. I noted how personnel changes always have a high element of emotion involved, even when the outcome is clearly best for the organization. He added that many are not accustom to seeing true leadership, so change can be more difficult for them to understand.

I believe Dan Rockwell summarizes it best in his recent blog post titled “Over-led and Under-managed“:

Leaders disrupt. Managers stabilize.

The real test is how to recognize when each style needs employed. When do we lead vs. manage, dream vs. do, think strategically vs. operationally? Ultimately being able to easily shift between these dynamics makes us more effective as leaders.