A new school year launches into high gear today as all of our students return to class. Based on our successes and planning last year, I fully anticipate an exciting 2009/2010 school year. Predictably, there will be thousands of things that happen in every IT department from day to day operations, planned projects and dealing with that unexpected situation or challenge that jumps out to push back against even the most thorough plan.

An overview of major projects on deck for our Board includes:

• maintaining and refining our new active directory domain structure
• expanded use of our new enterprise management tool (imaging, software & patch deployment)
• deploying our OSX/XP dual boot Macs with blade server back end
• school network upgrades
• starting our network access control project
• starting our new wireless project
• new library resources and process
• greater use of Adobe Connect
• moving forward with Digital Citizenship initiatives
• iPods in the classroom projects
• hosted web pages for teachers

Of course, this list does cover all of the work, but sets a solid agenda to keep moving major initiatives forward, particularly in the instructional area. I will share updates as we work our way through the project list.

On a more personal note, I will be

• participating in an inter-Board  PLN project with Will Richardson
• further developing my PLN
• completing some course work
• collaborating with education professionals

Best wishes to you for a successful school year.

~ Mark