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We’ve taken the first step to replace our aging network storage solution by ordering a pair of HP Lefthand Starter SANs. We’re beginning with two of the 12 TB units, using iSCSI.

What we liked about these units is that they appear as one cluster of nodes to other severs, even if one SAN is in our server room, and another is in secondary server room across campus. Files written to the SAN appear in both locations, and there is auto-fall over if one fails.

We also like that the SANs are designed to be user installed, and come with a day of training. There is also a virtual software version of the Lefthand SAN solution that can be used on regular servers and older storage systems.

I’ll post later about how our installation goes. Here’s a link to more info:

HP Lefthand Storage SANs

We’re now in the closing weeks of school, and the events and deadlines and reporting needs are fast and furious. I feel a bit in a time shift, since this is also the time to finalize ordering of gear for the summer, so that it will arrive shortly after students and faculty leave.

One item on the list this year is ten tablets from Lenovo– X200T models. I’ve been disappointed more than once in the past with tablets (mostly because of software glitches and flaky hardware construction), but it’s time for a second run. Two will go to HS Science Faculty, and eight will be for HS science student use (a ratio that I approve of). In the past, I’ve ordered eight and given only to faculty (maybe thinking the students would be too rough on them), but now it’s time for the students to be full partners in the test run.

This should be fun. More posts coming soon.

It’s slow, but my 3G Vodaphone USB stick is working on our boat with the Samsung NC20. Fun.

Maybe we need a term for slow change technology.

A chair or table is a good example. They’re not likely to change quickly for some time, other than variations on a theme.

One might say the same about pens and pencils, but I am tempted by Livescribe technology.

One could say the same about books, but I’m also interested in Kindle 2 and similar devices. (If for environmental reasons, if nothing else.)

Other technology has cultural roots that slow down evolution. On my walk in the Heath today, I passed a carnival setting up shop. I was amazed by how many of the rides are quick similar to those I rode back in a small town in Oregon as a child. I was also amazed by the life-style of the carnival crew, and their lives in caravans as the show was on the road:

One other thing you can depend on at an English travelling carnival– remarkable copyright infringements, especially of Disney characters in somewhat warped forms. I didn’t see any up yet, but check out this Budweiser image. Why on earth is she riding a paintbrush, and I doubt this was a Bud-approved ad sign….

Before I forget, I should mention that the President of the United States visited our school last night.

As much as I’d like to say that I was there to shake his hand, and his wife’s hand, I will have to admit that I was with the White House press corps, making sure they had power, wireless Internet, and power adapters for US to UK outlets.

Still, it was really educational to see the school prepped for the visit, and also to see the press corps at work. We had a press room set up for them, with food and refreshments, but they were in full work mode and were instantly on the wireless sending out data, checking online sources, and getting their jobs done. Very little was eaten, and 15 minutes later they were on the run to the next location.

The president was on site for about 20 minutes, gave a short talk, and then was off to prep for the G20 Summit today. I bicycled home in the dark about 10 p.m., through the quiet city streets of London. Another day at work done.

Okay, so I’m sitting here after dinner, listening to an iPod Touch I bought for the school library. Yup, it’s in at-home testing for a few days.

First of all, I synched with my full iTunes library, tunes and video. Second, I was surprised that it has a built-in speaker. Thus, I pull up Steely Dan’s Katy Lied and let it play. Tinny little speaker. “Throw out your gold teeth and see how they roll.”

The funny thing is this: all I can think about is a very dusty, old rusty school bus taking me down a gravel road to pick strawberries. Back when I was ten or eleven, I got my first transitor radio, complete with 9V battery. A hand-me-down from an older brother. Riding the old bus to pick strawberries, I had the little transitor radio to my ear. Tinny speaker, just like the iPod Touch, and I’d hear songs like Steely Dan’s Katy Lied.

It’s funny where state-of-the-art technology can take you.

When I was in fourth grade, I’d tag along with my older brother and sister to the dark room at JFK high school, where they would develop B&W photos for the yearbook. Even before that, I had bought an Instamatic at a Goodwill store, and use the cartridge film for B&W photography of my Hot Wheels having horrible accidents.

Before too long, I was doing pinhole cameras, and then B&W with my dad’s failing 35 mm camera. (He had upgraded to a Pentax K1000, but I wasn’t allowed to use that.) I developed B&W images of train tracks, cats, nice cars, etc. I even learned to mount them.

In college, not long before I was married, I splurged on a Nikon N2000 35 mm (1986 or so), and it lasted about 7 years before the shutter was cutting images in half. It wasn’t worth repairing, and we changed to a searies of Point and Shoots for for the last 13 years or so.

For many years, I’ve preferred the point and shoots to an SLR, because it’s easy to carry and use more. Lately, however, we’ve been doing hundreds of shots on the boat and around London, and the lack of image quality has begin to bother me. Also, over a year ago my young daughter started a B&W class, and we bought her a used Canon EOS 1000 to shoot 35 mm with, and I was bit jealous. She’s done a great job with the camera for over a year. Two weeks ago we bought her an Olympus 850SW as her first digital camera:

Buying a digital SLR is no easy business. Canon or Nikon? Live view or not? HD movies? Vibration Reduction or Image Stabilization? Weather-sealed Pentax? VR or regular lenses? G10 instead of SLR? What about a Lumix instead?

Yeah, it was pretty headache producing. In the end, I didn’t like the feel of the Canon’s as much as the Nikons (or maybe it was tradition). I wanted two lenses to start with that wouldn’t go immediately out of date. Instead, I wanted a cheaper body but better lenses that I could use on a better body in the future.

So, we ended up with a Nikon D60 and an 18-55 mm VR lens, and a 55-200 VR lens. The lenses aren’t terribly compatible with the F series Nikons, but they’re fine for the D series, and I didn’t want to spring for the D90 at this point:

Since we’ve picked it up this morning, and charged the battery, I’ve actually taken fewer pictures than my wife and son. My wife took about 65 shots in Hampstead Heath, and my son made his first stop motion LEGO movies tonight using the integrated stop motion software and wireless remote we picked up for it. My wife is thinking about walking the Heath once a week with the camera to photography the wildlife, and both of us plan to take photography courses in London for wildlife and travel photography.

Fun stuff. Deep roots. I was particularly happy to see my son make his movies. I’ll see if I can post his first efforts online.

Back in September 2007 I bought a Birdy Light bike for bike commuting to work. I’ve been riding it pretty much every week, five days a week, back and forth to work (about 25 minutes each way, with a fair amount of uphill and down hill). I ride rain or shine, hot or cold, icy or hot.

Quick report: I’m on my third pair of brake shoes, which wear out pretty fast on this stop and go commute. I’ve had a lot of flats in the last three months, in part because my rear tire is gone. My rear derailleur cable was jammed in the last cable housing, so lately I’ve been down to one or two speeds (instead of eight). I was tired of the platform pedals. I never fit a rear blinker to the back. My gloves were shot.

Ergo, it was bike upgrade weekend. First, new Shimano SPD clipless pedals. I put them on yesterday, and immediately I appreciated in the increased pedaling efficiency. In fact, I did a 12 hour shift yesterday and biked home at 2 a.m. through the dark, quiet steets of London.

This morning, the original rear derailleur was the first to go, replaced with a Shimano XT derailleur. New shift cable, greased, and new rear cable housing. I even installed two lube ports in the shift cable housing, to make it easier to lube and keep from seizing again.

Next was a new chain, and then a rear flasher. After that, two new brake cables and tuning of the brakes. Next will be two new tires, 18 inch, which I have sitting in my office ready to come home.

So, riding to work should be more than a one speed experience again.

I was thinking that we might be able to catch a breath after the ECIS tech conference. I was wrong.

We just finished up the HS Tech course offerings for next year, we’re deep in the demo systems of several student information systems, we have the school auction this Friday and Saturday with important technology requirements, we’re weeding out stubborn DNS issues, and we’re fighting pesky issues on several fronts.

Our Zimbra trial is still going well. Our next step is to build a test Microsoft AX database on our test network, and see if it can talk to Zimbra as if it were an Exchange server. I like the web interface, and tests with Outlook and MacMail have gone well so far.

I had fun diving on my boat last week in a new wet suit (45 degree water):

I cleaned the knot meter paddle wheel and the prop and shaft. I rather like working on and sailing boats…

Now, time to parent a little bit for the rest of the evening.

Throughout this week I’ve been hearing positive comments about Ewan McIntosh’s keynote at the ECIS Tech conference we held last week.

To be honest, I thought the keynote was exceptional as well, but also challenging. He had a strong and detailed set of examples of how students and adults are using social media tools to re-invent how they use media.

In my opinion, his best slide showed a new taxonomy of media spaces: watching space (television or sage on stage), demonstration space, sharing space, group space, publishing space, and private spaces. I don’t have that list correct yet, so I’m hoping I can find the slide again on his site.

In all, for many in the audience, it was a challenging presentation because he pretty much suggested that students learn as much or more outside of school than in school. Relationships with faculty and certain learning experiences are critical, but the “institution” of school itself may be receiving defensive protections that are unwarranted. One of his favorite examples is blocking websites on school networks for no discernible reason (other than, perhaps, protecting the institution at the cost of learning).

Still, his reviews were stellar, even if everyone said there were things they may not have agreed on. They said “he made his think” about things they hadn’t considered before, or took the time to try and understand.

It also crossed my mind, however, that his message as also essentially positive. Kids are learning, in all sorts of new ways. They are doing amazing things. They can be more creative and involve in ways that they care about their communities, friends and even the planet.

Given all the recent gloom and doom about the world economic and ongoing process, it’s hard not to cheer a presentation that suggests the future could be more interesting and exciting and rewarding that market numbers would suggest. Thanks, Ewan!

I’m glad I’m not keeping a list of small tech problems lately. Just today, I must of had five, right down to our firewall goofing up and cutting off Internet services, our DNS servers being “picky” and a host of other little things I’d rather not mention.

It would be great if there was an easier way to simplify all this– or better still, set it and forget it. Today were we’re targeting big changes, but things cropped up all the same.

In the end, maybe I need to cherish the boring days more.

More materials from the ECIS Tech conference to come!

The following 2 meg PDF contains the slides from “What’s Next? Technology and Schools in Five Years.” It was the third keynote of the ECIS Technology 2009 conference that John Mikton and I presented. John Mikton is Director of IT at International School of Prague.

ECIS Tech 2009 Third Keynote Slides

I had a fantastic time working with John– collaborating on this project was a great experience.

I thought I’d share the closing video that we used at the end of our ECIS 2009 keynote. It’s John Cleese doing a presentation at a Creativity Conference:

There are several things I find fascinating about this presentation. First, much of the advice and even examples he gives are exactly what I taught to college students 17 years ago. Second, he rightly highlights the independent importance of the human creativity process that may best flourish entirely separately from technology and interruptions. Finally, he closes with a statement about how creativity can be seen as a threat, especially by leaders who are themselves very poor at creative thought and appreciating the creative process. Cool stuff.

I just took the family to breakfast in South End Green, and now we’re relaxing in the Starbucks after the ECIS Tech Conference finished up yesterday.

It was an impressive event– 31 of us spent a full day together at the Tech Summit, running through discussion after discussion of about 30 tech topics of interest to Technology Directors. Then we all joined the two day main conference, with Keynotes from the 2012 Olympics Committee, Ewan McIntosh, and myself and John Mikton from the International School of Prague.

The keynote and sessions by Ewan McIntosh were especially impressive, and I was motivated by him to open a Twitter account (my account name is jheynder).

I’ve been slow to update this blog since moving to London for many reason (gigantic piles of work being the main ones), but I feel energized after the talks at the conference, and I’m back to blogging for now. Over the next several days, I plan to post as many resources from the conference here as possible, including the keynote John and I did.

A modest proposal: I’d like to encourage as many of the ECIS attendees to consider going to the annual NAIS conference next year in San Francisco. If possible, it would be fun to have three objectives: spend a day talking on leadership issues, enjoy the conference, and have a meet up with our NAIS counterparts for a dinner, a meeting or both.

Let me know if you are interested!

For the fourth time in my career, I worked on the launch of a new school website this week:

www.asl.org

I looked back at some of my similar sites, and I had a thought. It’s not uncommon for these sites to have 1500 visitors a day and 10,000 page views a day, day after day, for five to seven years before the next renewal.

It crossed my mind that we can put a lot of effort into a play or speakers series event, but it is over in a few nights. Same for a monthly newsletter– read for a few days and then tossed. Same for a graduation– big event, good memories, over in a day.

A web page is used and used and used. It’s also a living document– we have literally made tens of thousands of little changes in just three days after it’s launch, and we have tens of thousands to go before I can rest about it’s launch. There is no other school document that clearly compares to it– a viewbook may be done every five years, but it doesn’t change and it isn’t viewed every day by so many different people.

Anyway, this is all about the long haul. A friend once told me that all technology decisions should be based on what is in the long-term interests of the school. That is what a web page is about. It’s not about a big one night event, that’s over the next day. It’s a long-range investment, needing lots of care and feeding, but it serves the school 24×7, day in and day out.