Click here for a link to my site dedicated to my Enterprise Architecture Plan (EAP) and thank you for following me on this journey through EA!
In the process of organizing this plan together, it kind of hit me that after 16 weeks of this stuff I had finally *sort of* gotten it. I am by no means ready to go build one, but as a future leader I see it's importance and I feel like I would have good questions to ask if I was ever in a position to have to lead.
Click here for a link to my site dedicated to my Enterprise Architecture Plan (EAP) and thank you for following me on this journey through EA!
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My three most critical discoveries were:1. EA exists! I'll be honest that the first few weeks of this course I was a little lost and confused. Like most teachers, I had never heard of Enterprise Architecture and had a hard time wrapping my head around what it all meant. Our book used allusions to architecture of a home, which were very helpful, and eventually I understood it as a way to approach education organizations from a structured perspective. Instead of departments working in isolation, departments work together for efficiency of the whole organization. Rather than creating new systems and connections as they come, EA aims to set up standards and protocols for how things operate, in order to keep things organized. This kind of system can truly help a school or district save time and money, and work at the highest efficiency. This video still really helps me understand the question "Why EA?" 2. Education as a business, or “enterprise” One of my most critical discoveries was seeing education from a business perspective. My experience in education has always been within the classroom as a TA and then a teacher. The first few years are all lesson plans, teaching and learning strategies, and making the classroom efficient. In recent years I have started to deal with district leadership more, on committees and such, and seen the massive effort that goes on behind the scenes of schools, to make sure everything runs smoothly. Trying to relate this “enterprise” language to education was challenging at first, but many of the same departments and relationships exists, so it became obvious the education is definitely a business and Enterprise Architecture is absolutely useful. 3. EA provides structure and flexibility The video above provides a great visual to how EA provides structure and organizes that “hairball” operation that districts and schools experience, into a cleaner, more structured operation. With the development of Big Data, schools can easily fall into a disorganized state. especially with transitions like moving to digital records, cloud storage, and/or approaching online learning. Enterprise Architecture forces a close study of the district or school, and most importantly documentation of the current state, and through that process a structure is built from which to operate under. Although it is a “structure”, and Enterprise Architecture is not rigid. By including in the EA process a definition of the “Future State”, education organizations can continue to work towards goals and adjust for any changes in the expectations of education, such as this new Common Core approach. Frequent reviewing and updating of the EA is vital to its efficacy, and in that sense it also provides flexibility to education. How will the learning you have gained serve you in your role as an educational technology leader? Knowing that things don't have to function like "hairball architecture" leads to viewing the operations in education organizations through a different lens, giving me a new layer of understanding about education systems. Through the EA lens, everything from IT to Maintenance and Operations should have a defined structure and defined connections to other departments. When changes need to be made, impacts can be traced and measured through the architecture, to soften those impacts and address concerns ahead of time. By defining an Enterprise Architecture, it allows schools and districts to relate everything to their vision and mission.
From my Ed Tech leader lens, EA can help streamline processes and applications. THe relationships defined by EA help applications and devices work together with multiple departments and stakeholders. EA can help Ed Tech leaders provide the best services to their schools and districts. From my teacher lens I see it as the ultimate collaborative process. With the adoption of Common Core, collaboration has been a huge push in education. Enterprise Architecture provides that collaboration at an organizational level, and allows leaders to set up systems and set procedures for operating together, rather than in isolation. Provide an example of a successful (or unsuccessful) implementation due to strong (or weak) executive and stakeholder involvement. What occurred? One example of a successful project implementation occurred with the roll out of our 1-1 Chromebook program. This was a process years in the making, as our district wanted to make an effort to spread more technology throughout the entire district rather than a few sites with teachers that requested it. Slowly netbooks of a sort had existed at some sites, but our vision has always been equal access and closing the academic gap, which meant all students needed access to these 21st century tools. The EEA Guidebook states that the first step to a future EEA is not a technical effort, but rather a business effort,” so our tech decisions were really driven by our vision and mission statement, and had to be looked at from an organizational level.
One of the very first steps of project management, according to the EEA Guidebook, is to identify the key player, both primary players and contributors. Not only was the tech department making technical decisions, but teachers and administrators were consulted about their needs and student needs, as well as our unique site-based needs. The Attendance and Records Department was included as a contributor that could help with the creation of student accounts, among other things. Maintenance was involved in the refresh process and infrastructure concerns. Stakeholders outside of our agency were included to meet security needs. Our Leadership set up a structure of professional development that ensured teachers didn’t receive Chromebooks until they were properly trained, but also offered flexible classes and covered the cost, and the percentage of teachers and classrooms with 1-1 access is rising rapidly. This project has had to be adjusted in the process as well, and probably will continue to do so. As new challenges arise and new successes shared, the input from all stakeholders working in an organized effort will continue to contribute to this project’s success. My school district is actually pretty well organized, and I think many of these areas would be relatively easy to organize, document and implement. Easy might not be the right word because it certainly is a lot of work, and detailed work, but I think my district is in good shape to take something like this on. I think the biggest challenge for my district might be steps 13 and 14 within Phase III, which involves planning and documenting the future state. When you work with partner agencies as closely as we do, there are times when visions don’t necessarily line up, or laws and policies change and affect us in unforeseen ways. I’ve talked about my district’s partnership with probation because that is who I work with most, but other sites have partnerships with non-profit organizations (Monarch School) and other social services (San Pasqual Academy: residential facility for foster youth). Balancing not one but several partnerships, very different ones at that, makes planning a future state of an EA challenging but not impossible.
Steps that can be taken to meet that challenge include having a strong, working relationship with those agencies with clear communication channels in place. Having a role within the EA to monitor potential changes to the operation or relationship with these partners, and some sort of liaison between your district and their management, would also improve the chance of success of your EA. I think it is a good decision to have a separate and more specific technology plan, because technology is one major facet of business that is just too in depth to include with education goals. Just like there is some sort of separate budgeting plan or strategic business plan, that operates within an education plan, technology needs its own plan. That being said, I don’t think that it should be created in isolation without regard to an overall education plan. From my understanding, a district’s education plan would include goals for student learning, methods of reaching those goals, and details of those plans. It may include some plans for paying for all of it (that would come out of an organizational budget plan) and probably details how to use technology to meet educational goals. A technology plan should focus on educational goals in relation to infrastructure, resources, and what needs to be purchased, retired, recycled, or expanded. I think an Enterprise Framework Architecture provides room for both plans, within an architecture that centers around the school or distict’s overall vision.
Bricks serve as a way to plan out the future of certain tools. In my own capacity as a teacher right now, it is hard to plan months or years into the future because of the high turnover with my students, however I see bricks as a great tool to plan my own resources. I would use a much shorter timeline, closer to a school year format, but I always have a running list of tools I’d like to try.
Usually the tools need a little scaffolding, which can be plotted out by using the brick. What is the baseline skill set of my students? What can they use after a few lessons? A few units? Bricks provide a really clear format for planning ahead on any timeline, and a way to recycle old techniques and keep things fresh. One thing that stood out to me was SDUSD’s ample bandwidth and bandwidth plans. In 2008, San Diego voters passed Proposition S which funded updating classroom facilities and technology. As a result, SDUSD rolled out their “i21 Classroom” plan which detailed a 5-year endeavour to go 1-1 for students, update networking, and update teacher devices. According to their 2010 plan, “Elementary schools will be increased from 15 MB to 100 MB per site; middle schools and high schools will be increased from 20 MB to 500 MB at each site.” SBAC suggests capabilities for “a minimum of 20 Kbps available per student to be tested simultaneously” which should be more than enough to test large groups of students if not whole sites.
Another key finding was that the iPad is much more of an issue with compatibility than basically any netbook. Although I found multiple models of netbooks, all of them met the recommended requirements without any supplemental products. With iPads this was not the case. The lack of keyboard and mouse, and lack of easily used accessories, creates hindrances to testing. Many iPad keyboard and mouse options are wireless, which could interfere with networks, or other wireless devices if whole classes and/or sites are using them. The screen size could also be problematic at 9.7” rather than the required 10”. I was not surprised by this finding however, after iPads have been in the news lately for this very reason. They were the early device of choice for the first 2 years of SDUSD’s roll out, but then in 2012 they switched to various netbooks. http://www.sandi.net/cms/lib/CA01001235/Centricity/Domain/102/DTSP2010-15WEBBUDSUM.pdf http://www.smarterbalanced.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Executive_Summary_Tech_Framework.pdf In this Module you displayed your collected data to help inform the decision making process. |
AuthorJessica Billeci is an educator for Juvenile Court and Community Schools, and a student in SDSU's M.A. of Ed Leadership w/ Technology Emphasis. This is a blog for EDL680- Intro to Enterprise Architecture. Archive
May 2015
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