The Steamboat Pilot & Today: Chat with Tim Miles

Chat with Tim Miles

March 16, 2007

Tim Miles is the technology director for the Steamboat Springs School District. He will be available for a chat at 2 p.m. Friday, March 16.

sstanford: Good afternoon, I'm Scott Stanford and I will be moderating today's chat with Tim Miles, technology director for the Steamboat Springs School District. Welcome Tim and thanks for joining us for this chat. Are you ready to go?

Tim Miles: Thanks for having me, I am ready to go.

sstanford: Earlier this month, you asked the Education Fund Board to support a $1.37 million technology plan for the district. That's nearly $500,000 more than the Technology Commission asked for last year. What are the extra funds for?

Tim Miles: The extra funds are to bring both elementary schools online using PC Based software while still keeping their MAC's on the desktop. In addition a significant increase in software and network spending has been requested. A significant increase in Software is just to convert the MAC based software to PC for elementary. In addition I have requested a Point of Sale system for our Food Service Department. Our current Network needs some TLC to handle today's IT demands and prepare us for the Technology which is just around the corner. Our network lines can not handle, voice, video, streaming, consolidated application hosting, etc .. all of these are the direction of Technology. In addtion to all of this an increase in training has been requested because we are introducing a new grading system which will allow Parents to view from the Web. This increase in funds this year is a significant investment to save money starting next year with application delivery from this program called Citrix. This was a lot to digest I know.

sstanford: What is Citrix and why do we need it?

Tim Miles: Remember the old days of Main Frame Computing? There was a giant computer in a back room that stored all the programs and information and the users had these plastic shells (terminals) which were a monitor and keyboard and nothing else. Citrix is this but in todays PC/MAC world. It allows all applications to be loaded on a bank (Farm) of servers. A (Terminal), in our initial phase (our existing Mac's) will connect to this Farm and the applications will be delivered to the end user. The real advantage of this type of application delivery is administrative and hardware costs. Sent to the user are keyboard strokes and screen changes. The application really runs on this server farm. I can push and application out to our 900+ computers in as long as it takes me to install it on the server farm, instead of taking weeks to install on all 900+ computers. The savings in hardware are that you now have to keep a handful of servers up to date and the desktop hardware life is extended because no real smarts or horsepower are needed. We can keep older computers on the desktop because they only receive keyboard strokes and screen changes. This desktop replenishement is very labor intensive and costly and consumes most of our budget. Since we can extend the life of our desktops we can use this money to concentrate in areas of education we currently haven't had the funding or time. Another real plus is with this delivery I can give access to all of our same applications and files to our home users.

sstanford: What is the district's greatest technology need right now?

Tim Miles: A more intelligent WAN, (Wide Area Network) and a solution to stretch our existing technology dollars to serve more areas.

sstanford: Tell us if you are a PC or a Mac guy and then state your case for one versus the other?

Tim Miles: In terms of experience I am a PC guy. I think the MAC is a better product and always has been but IBM did a better jog marketing in the early years. The problem with MAC's and they have dramatically improved in the last two years has been networking them together. You could but it never was easy. This made them more administrative to manage. They have their purpose here in the district. However, for the everyday tasks of word processing, spreadsheets, internet, database, researching, they are not worth the cost. Publishing, web creation, film editing/creation, etc ... They are worth every penny.

sstanford: The possibilities for technological applications to enhance education are seemingly endless. What are some of the things that you see perhaps happening in the next five to 10 years?

Tim Miles: Software is moving to application streaming. We won't buy the software but rent it. It will be delivered via the browser or some form of simple client. Video/Audio is also moving to streaming. I don't remember the date but your paper published an article on the company, NetFlix. The are investing a significant amount in gearing up to deliver movies via the web instead of mail. This is the way they see the future. No longer will a child in education leave Math, for example, to attend a technology class. Technology will taught along with Math, to learn Math. (Substitute Math for any subject area). Technology applications today that are cute and standalone, in education will be replaced with managed applications that can track success and intervention. Technology will allow education to track the success of intervention methods. An example of this would be research shows that 15 minutes with this application should produce these results in a Math assessment This is why I stated earlier as one of our needs, a intelligent WAN. We need the room and speed on our lines between our buildings and to the internet to be able to handle the technology we need to be using. We need to take our schools outside of our schools via technology.

sstanford: Have you tried Vista and is it something that our schools need?

Tim Miles: I have Vista on my laptop and there is a significant learning curve. There are features that are great, but I wouldn't say the need is there. They need applications that run on Vista, that are current and not many versions old.

sstanford: That concludes our chat... Thanks for participating Tim.

Tim Miles: Thank You and I invite any community member to please come talk with me.