Taste of Tech

As we have moved from our own mail server to Google Apps for Education, everyone’s Outlook Express configuration was automatically changed to access the new server. Some people have reported problems accessing their email with Outlook Express using the new system. This short screencast shows the most common problem we’ve seen so far, along with instructions for fixing it.

If that’s too hard to read, there’s also a larger version available.

Posted on June 21st, 2010 by John Schinker
Filed under: Front Page, bbhcsd, email | No Comments »

In 2005, we decided to bring email in-house. Prior to that, our email was handled by our ITC, a consortium of school districts that provides many technology services like student records, fiscal services, library automation, and Internet access to its member schools. But they were ill-equipped at the time to handle email. Accounts and settings were confusing and inconsistent, there was no usable webmail system, and with a POP-only service, mobility was a problem.

When we were talking about setting up our own system, our network consultant commented, “you know, you’re going to need another person to manage this.” I knew. But I also knew I wasn’t going to get another person. We’d just have to make it work with the resources we had. It’s just email. It’s been around for 30 years. How hard could it be?

Five years later, we have a much better answer to that question. Email falls somewhere between oxygen and water on the basic needs hierarchy of a school. If there’s a problem with the mail server, it rarely takes more than a couple minutes before everyone knows it. If an email outage lasts longer than a few minutes, the incoming messages really start to pile up, and it can take days for the server to catch up.  Scanning for viruses and spam takes a lot of processing resources, and we had to move those functions onto a different server to keep them from overloading the mail server. With more than 90% of incoming messages being classified as spam, we’re sorting through a lot of chaff to get to the few kernels of wheat.

The biggest headache, though, comes from traffic spikes. A well-meaning staff member might send a 10 MB attachment to 500 users, for example. That’s 5 GB of data that has to be processed. Or, sometimes we’ll be flooded by hundreds of connections from spammers performing dictionary attacks against our domain. “No, you don’t have an account called ‘aaa@bbhcsd.org’? Well, then, how about ‘aaB@bbhcsd.org’?” Invariably, these types of things lead to service slowdowns and interruptions, annoyed users, and grumpy tech staff.

This spring, it became clear that something needs to be done. It’s doubtful that we’d be able to get through another year without significant upgrades to our email infrastructure. The growth in email volume alone, which has quadrupled to 20,000 messages a day since we switched to our own server, means we need to replace our mail server. And with that, we need faster, more robust solutions for anti-spam and anti-virus scanning, email archiving, and backups. To add to all of this, we really need to start providing email accounts to students, so they can collaborate with one another using tools like Google Docs. To provide email accounts to all 5-12th graders, we’d be increasing the number of accounts we’re managing five-fold. I don’t have the resources — either hardware or human — to do that.

Wait.

Google.

What was that about Google?

Google will handle our email for us. For free. Through the Google Apps for Education program, they’ll give us as many accounts as we want. We can have 7 gb of email storage space per user. Since I’m looking at about 3500 users, that’s more than 25 TB of data storage, just for email. Plus, we get Google’s spam and virus filtering technologies (which are among the best I’ve seen). Our webmail client (which is currently the functional but none-too-sexy Squirrelmail) becomes Gmail. If we want to (and we do), we can even enable IMAP access, so our staff members can continue to use the same email program they’ve used all along. So from their perspective, very little has to change. And with the API tools, creating and managing accounts can all be tied into our existing user management tools.

If only they did email archiving.

Our first thought was to continue to archive email ourselves. After all, how hard can it be? Basically, we’re talking about saving a copy of every email message. The archive goes on its own server, separated from the rest of the network, over in a dark corner of the data center. It quietly saves all of the data, just waiting for us to need it.

But that means that all email must flow through the archive. So the workflow would look something like this:

1. A staff member composes an email and sends it to another staff member.
2. The message goes to Google, because that’s where the sender’s account is.
3. The message gets forwarded to the archive server, so it can be logged as sent mail.
4. The message is sent out by our local server.
5. The message goes to Google, because that’s where the recipient’s account is.
6. A copy of the message gets forwarded to the archive server, so it can be logged as received mail.
7. The message is delivered to the recipient’s inbox.
8. The recipient’s computer connects to Google to retrieve the message from the inbox.

So that message goes across our Internet connection five times. Plus, we have to maintain our own server to archive it. And, we have to have our own server to send out email, effectively funneling all of our mail through our own mail server. Additionally, we have to have backups of all of this. And there’s no guarantee that all incoming email would be archived. In the event of a problem with our server, the message would still get delivered to the recipient’s Google account, even though it hasn’t been archived yet.

Enter Postini. Google will do the archiving for us. This service isn’t free, but considering the benefits, it’s worth the money. The email’s not bouncing around from server to server. It’s being archived off-site. They’ll keep each message for up to ten years (we only require five). And I don’t have to have any mail servers. Sign me up.

There have been few technology “no-brainer” decisions. I remember finding out in 1996 that we could get Internet access from our cable company at 5 mbps for $5 less per month than a dialup account and dedicated phone line. That was a no-brainer. I also remember finding out in 2005 that we could transfer our home phone number to a cell phone for $5 per month instead of the $20 we were paying, and get free long distance. That was a no-brainer.

This is another one of those situations.

Posted on May 28th, 2010 by John Schinker
Filed under: Front Page | No Comments »

A few years ago, our superintendent scheduled an administrative meeting to discuss potential changes to our health care package. The fifteen-minute meeting was scheduled for late afternoon. There wasn’t a lot of doubt before the meeting that there would be very little “discussion.” The “potential” changes meant that the superintendent was recommending to the board of education that administrators pay a greater portion of their health insurance costs. It was “potential” because the board could have said, “oh, no, that’s all right. We’ll continue to pay those costs for our administrators because we value the team and we think they’re worth every penny.” That didn’t happen. The superintendent wasn’t looking for our input. He didn’t really want to hear about our opinions, or to debate the relative merits of taking or not taking this action. This was a meeting to let us know that this was going to happen. And that’s exactly how it went. Afterward, we weren’t very happy about the effective pay cut, but no one complained about not being able to voice our opinions.

More recently, I’ve been involved with two or three organizations that have felt the need to “take advantage of social networking.” We need to leverage the power of social networking tools to build a community of support around our cause. We can get people to care about the important work we’re doing by posting updates on Twitter, starting a Facebook group, uploading YouTube videos and generally having an online-everywhere presence.

I’m sure that’s what Justin Hamilton and Sandra Abrevaya had in mind when they set up the “official twitter account for Department of Education Press Secretaries.” It was also undoubtedly the goal when the US Department of Education starting using Twitter to report an hour-by-hour account of what Secretary Duncan is doing with the unfortunately named @usedgov account. But despite having more than 15,000 followers and 450 updates since setting up the account last year, the DOE has only managed to find two people worth following. Those are the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the Department of Education and Federal Ed Resources, also at the Department of Education. That’s right. They only follow themselves.

When they talk about leveraging social networks, what they really mean is that they no longer have to issue press releases to the news agencies, and hope that the newspapers and nightly news reports contain favorable stories based on those press releases. Now, they can issue the press releases directly to the public. They can control the spin. They can lead the “conversation” in a way that shows them in the best possible light.

But they forgot that, in the online world, “conversation” is not in quotes. So when Bud Hunt, a very well-respected teacher, blogger, podcaster, and member of the online educational community, used the social network that the Department of Education is embracing to ask a simple question, they didn’t know what to do. Here’s what he wanted to know:

I continue to ask of everyone I can speak with in Washington and in Congressional and government offices alike: What is the rationale for eliminating funding for the National Writing Project? It is a simple question, or it seems to be. But I can’t get anyone to answer it beyond broad strokes of “local and state redundancy” and “no significant impact” on students. Since I don’t understand how a national network can exist at the local or state level, and I have evidence to the contrary on impact on students and teachers, I’ll keep asking. It just doesn’t make sense.

In the old world, when you had a question like this, you would write a letter to the Department of Education and ask. Or, maybe you would call them. Leave a message. Someone will get back to you. If no one responds, you might get upset. Maybe you write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper. Maybe you write to your congressperson. But there’s no real recourse.

But in Bud’s case, he used the social network to ask the question. That means that the question was asked in a public forum. A lot of people pay attention to what Bud says. So when he asked, they perked up. “Hey, yeah, what about that?” They anxiously waited for the response, and saw… nothing. So they asked Bud. “Hey, Bud, what did the DOE have to say about your question? That was a good question.” So when the DOE didn’t respond, it hurt them a lot more than just not calling him back in the old days.

Other people started jumping on the bandwagon. Zac Chase posted about the NWP. So did Chris Lehmann. Karl Fisch reposted Zac’s post. Suddenly the community was alive. And everyone was looking at the DOE Press Secretary’s office, waiting for a response. But the response still hasn’t come.

I think they just didn’t get the fact that when you start a conversation, you have to listen more than you talk. If you’re really going to leverage social media tools, you have to participate in the conversation.

The best explanation of this that I’ve seen comes from Marta Kagan’s What is Social Media? She does a great job of explaining all of this, and I highly recommend viewing it (or the somewhat less appropriate original version) if you’re thinking of trying to leverage social media for your cause/organization/government agency.

Posted on March 18th, 2010 by John Schinker
Filed under: Front Page, Opinions | No Comments »