Bud the Teacher

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

Today’s podcast is a continuation of some thinking that came out of a roundtable conversation that I had at Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation.  Karl reminds me that I’ve been forgetting to share here on the blog lately.  I’ll try to do better.

As always, I’m interested in your thoughts.

Link to the Audio

Saturday marks the second time that we’ve been fortunate enough to bring together colleagues from around the state for the little event that we’re calling “Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation.”  I’ve grown quite fond of the idea of the event, and of the event itself. What’s not to love about a chance to connect with folks and to foster conversation?

We’re out of room for this year’s conversation at the physical event, but there’s plenty of room online, if you’d care to join us from your computer screen on Saturday.  I hope you do, and I hope that you find the conversation good and thought-provoking.  Then i hope you do something to foster conversation back at your place, in your community.  After all, that’s what Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation’s all about.

See you there?

I had the opportunity on Friday to spend some time with our enterprise systems manager thinking about something that certainly isn’t glamo(u)rous, but is nothing shy of essential.  That something?

Storage.

Sure, there’s plenty of “free” storage out there for the taking, but I’m interested in making sure that we can offer students and staff in our district a reliable environment that will be there today and tomorrow, and won’t disappear, or fill up, in the middle of the night.  As we see more and more growth of our district’s Virtual Campus (a Moodle installation), as well as the beginnings of the use of in-district blogging tools, we’ve got to make sure that we’re planning for enough space so that we can meet the needs of teachers and students both today and down the road.

That sounds easy – but it’s certainly not.  Hence our conversation.  I actually find fascinating all the bits and pieces of infrastructure that go into making sure that, when you turn on your computer or launch a browser, the stuff that you want is there for your use.  And I know, too, that the infrastructure that we build ultimately affects what can and cannot be done with students, so there’s a direct impact on education with every technology decision made.  I take opportunities to think and learn about the district’s infrastructure very seriously.

And now, I need your help.  I’m wondering, and have been asked to make a guess (well more like an attempt at making a semi-intelligent shot in the dark) about what the storage needs of a teacher and a student are today here in the dawn of the 21st Century.  How much space does a teacher need to teach and a student to learn and to archive his or her learning over the life of public schooling?  What’s a decent ballpark?  How much space should we have available just for the digital learning and online storage needs of a district of approximately 25,000 students and 1300 teachers?  Can you defend your answer?

We’re going to be making some plans around these numbers, and we’d like to at least get close.   Any ideas you have are much appreciated.