Education is highly dependent on technology in modern day; that is why the networking team is one of the most important groups working behind the scenes. The network team is made up of three members: Gregg Koch, Tom Oakes, and Patrick Ross. Koch has been with the district for over 31 years and he is the supervisor of number operations. Oakes has been here 29 years and Ross is going on his 5th year.
“I oversee the data center, all the network operations, the firewall, URL filters, IP phones, and voicemails,” Koch explained.
“I do a lot of account management, server management, and managing the wireless and wired infrastructure” Oakes said.
“I have been working on the networking side and have been learning all the knowledge about phones and the firewall from [Koch and Oakes]” Ross explained.
Not only are they involved in tech they are also heavily involved in the renovations of the high school because as it expands they need to add technology to the new rooms such as Wi-Fi. All the phones in the high school are IP phones (a phone that uses the internet rather than traditional copper telephone wires to make and receive calls).
“We are in the process of upgrading all the phones to IP phones. Every summer is when our big projects happen. This summer we are replacing all of the network gear in all middle and elementary schools. They will all have brand new switches and routers” Koch said.
Another project we are doing is the UPS (uninterrupted power supply). It is basically a giant battery pack that whatever device you plug in maintains power if the power should go out,” Koch said.
“Another thing that is getting replaced is the VM (virtual machine). It acts as a server for certain functions from printing to testing domain controllers. An example are the Cisco phones that teachers have on the desks tie back to what’s called the call manager and that handles all the routing and calling. Then they have Unity, which is all the voicemail that you might hear when you call the high school. All of those messages have to be programmed. Finally the emergency responder box knows where a 911 came from and it notifies a bunch of people automatically” Koch explained.
The team has the ability to see what a student does on their chromebook, searching wise. The URL filter is set up to automatically flag things and send that to the building’s principles. If a student is looking stuff up that is threatening or dangerous the building would be notified not the network team.
The network team is just one of many that reside in the tech suite near F-pod. There is also the admin tech side; they do all the curriculum based things. They find the software to integrate into classrooms and manage the student information system. Next is the TSS’s, they work with helping teachers integrate curriculum into their classroom. There is also desktop support that supports all the Macs, the PC’s that are still in the district. She also regulates and restricts the ability of students to download things. She enables certain apps in the app store to be available.
As technology is being integrated more and more into education the tech department will always be one of the most important roles for the school. Their impact can be seen in every classroom and gives students the opportunity to use tech in school.
