Higher Education

 Last week brought sunshine and beautiful weather to Denver… Along with more than 3700 Higher Education IT professionals, in Denver to attend the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference. 

The conference buzzed with people talking about a few key topics:

- Cloud Computing: How will Higher Education leverage the trend towards Cloud Computing?  Can Cloud Computing change the cost structure and mitigate complexity for Hi Ed IT?  How do institutions manage thorny issues related to Cloud Computing- such as security, access, privacy, data ownership, and others?  With Dell’s recent acquisition of Perot Systems, we’ll be looking for a compelling solution to meet Hi Ed customer needs for Cloud Computing and help answer some of these questions. Read the article in the November/December, 2009, edition of EDUCAUSE Review by Brad Wheeler, Vice President for Information Technology, Chief Information Officer for Indiana University, and professor of information systems in IU’s Kelly School of Business; and Shelton Waggener, Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer at the University of California, Berkley: Above-Campus Services: Shaping the Promise of Cloud Computing for Higher Education.     

- The extension of the Dell and SunGard Higher Education partnership: We announced that we’ll be extending our partnership with SunGard, and even setting up a remote test center on-site at Dell headquarters in Round Rock, Texas.  This test center will allow the two companies to expand upon the great work already underway at SunGard’s Open Digital Campus Test center, and accelerate the testing of Dell products, including EqualLogic storage, with SunGard’s Banner and PowerCampus software suites.  

- The emergence of the Learning Management System as a mission critical application on campuses: How can colleges and universities make the best choice between the commercial and open source options for LMS?  Dell partners extensively with Blackboard, and our partnership continues to grow, offering customers a scalable, reliable platform to run their LMS.  In fact, Dell PowerEdge™ blade servers allowed Blackboard’s Managed Hosting™ service to provide 99.7% availability to more than 630 campuses worldwide.   We’re also working with MoodleRooms to offer choices to our customers who are interested in deploying Moodle’s open source offering. 

- Virtualizing the Desktop: The next big wave of virtualization in Hi Ed will take place in the desktop environment, as colleges and universities wrangle with the right way to share information and resources and information with their student population.  Dell’s Flexible Computing solutions continue to emerge to help customers to help tackle this problem.  It’s another great example of how we’ll be able to use our expertise to help solve the challenges facing our Hi Ed customers.

It was a productive week in Denver.  I personally enjoyed the opportunity to meet with so many customers in such a short period of time.  The EDUCAUSE conference never fails to deliver on its promise of insight, thought leadership and interaction with the Hi Ed IT community. 

Ooohs, ahhhhs, and a few WOWs!   Those were the reactions that met the Dell team the last week of July in Boston at the annual Campus Technology conference.  Customers who visited the Dell booth had the opportunity to pull up a chair, sit down in a mini-Cyber Café, and go online on a Latitude 2100, a Latitude XT2, a Latitude XFR, or one of several E-Family models.  Visitors enjoyed the opportunity to experience the full range of Latitude laptops, to touch them, to feel the weight, to see the size and the screen, and to get their hands on the keyboard and touch screens.  And, thanks to Extreme Networks, all of the laptops were online via a private wireless network set up just for our booth. 

Even though the Cyber Café was huge highlight of the show, it was not the cause of the ooohs, ahhhhs, and WOWs… Those reactions were saved for the brand new product, so super secret that it was hidden behind the closed doors of a Whisper Tent inside the booth.  Customers had to sign an NDA on-site to see it.  What were we showing you ask?  Well, we really can’t tell you!  But suffice it to say that it’s an exciting product.  You’ll see it sometime this fall!

The Latitude 2100s were also a big draw in the booth.  We talked to quite a few people who are piloting programs with the Latitude 2100 in schools like Nursing, where students need constant online interactivity, but they don’t need extreme computing power.  We were also excited to see quite a few conference attendees walking around with their own Latitude 2100s. 

Last but not least, the Campus Technology conference was yet another great example of Dell collaborating with partners to offer the right solutions for Higher Education.  Extreme’s network was critical to the success of the Cyber Café.   Ergotron was there, showing off their Neo-Flex™ Combo Lift Stand, which offers a compelling way for students to collaborate on campus.  And some of the notebooks featured embedded mobile wireless Gobi cards by QualComm.

Tolu Odunuga, a student pursuing a masters degree in HR from Texas A&M University, shares her thoughts about her summer internship at Dell.

“Good Morning” or “Good Evening”—what do I start my conversation with this time? I typically ask myself tons of questions, from the basic to the complex, but this is one question that I’ve never imagined I would need to actually take time to “contemplate”. Then I started my internship at Dell.

India’s time zone is 10.5 hours ahead of Austin’s, Singapore’s 13 hours ahead—this little bit of trivia I know firsthand because my internship at Dell has had me involved in projects with team members across the globe.

One of the things I love about Dell is the opportunity to be global in both talk and walk. I’ve had the opportunity to help craft talent management strategies that are relevant not just in the U.S. but also in other global locations where Dell operates.  The scope of projects I’ve been exposed to have given me an opportunity to learn in an engaging and innovative environment.  Furthermore, it has also given me an opportunity to translate and apply concepts from the classroom, learnt in my MS Human Resource Management program at the Mays Business School of Texas A&M, to solve real life business questions.

My internship at Dell has brought to life the practicality of the words of Walt Disney Corporation when they encouraged people to “always mix business with pleasure” as they introduced their suite of conference rooms in Disneyworld. I have seen first hand a breed of people that can seamlessly blend high energy fun with high quality product and service delivery. As a firm believer in work-life balance, I particularly enjoy the exciting activities planned for the interns all summer long, ranging from boat barge rides to baseball games to community service cookouts, while also keeping an eye on the big-picture and business needs.

Overall, imagine a wealth of meaningful interactions unconstrained by language, time or the Atlantic Ocean--this is what my Dell experience has offered.

Good Morning, Good Evening, Good Night!!!

I’m delighted to follow the discussions of the past several weeks. By way of introduction, I coach education and other leaders on "how to" or "what to" or "why to" infuse technology in classrooms and schools. I am astounded by how limited these conversations often are when “we” predominately discuss the technology that is assumed needed to engage digital natives and leverage how differently these kids learn. Discussing a vision or the educational goals and objectives for learning are, in many cases, after thoughts. For me, the conversation becomes NOT about the “stuff” but about expecting nothing more than what “we” (the stake-holders) believe is possible inside our classrooms. It is the vision that really counts. It is clear to me that kids today:

• Do not derive meaning and importance through lecture style teaching methods
• Process information multi-dimensionally and at a very fast pace
• Derive relevancy through interactivity and scaffold information into their actualized knowledge through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic constructs

That is why as a coach, I spend time with leaders building a strategy on how to effect enduring organizational change. I believe “change” is the only strategy to accomplish the requirement to advance the existing pedagogy and transform it into a more germane art. Having worked with many intersecting often times dysfunctional departments within educational organizations, the real work, for me, becomes "coaching" towards the skills needed to manage change and organizational transformation.

I’ve believed, for some time now, that the lack of leadership skills is the crux of many educational issues. It seems to me that school administrators often fail at organizational transformation because they or their organizations simply cannot tolerate the sense of “loss” that is accompanied by the required changes. When teachers are asked to embrace/accept the need to breakout or grow beyond their conventional practices resistance ensues. Clearly, what is really being asked of teachers is to relinquish their values, beliefs, habits, and identities in their classrooms. People do not resist change, per se – people resist loss. Losing something tangible/intangible, a way of life, a sense of oneself, etc., all of which may be experienced when introducing the reform needed for shifting into a new educational paradigm will cause the avoidance of painful yet necessary adjustments.  Organizational transformations require the tearing of an organization's/person's world apart and then reconstructing it.

If left unguided, challenging how teachers and administrators define themselves, more often than not, becomes an insurmountable task. The boldest statement I'll throw out there is that many school administrators lack the leadership skills needed to guide the necessary transformational adjustments in their organization’s values, beliefs, attitudes and habits.  Consequently, any infusion of technology, paradigm, curriculum, etc. will unlikely by itself affect the organization’s teaching and learning if school leaders cannot tolerate and/or lead through the work necessary to adapt and overcome the discomfort of change and loss.  "It is time that education leaders step it up!" Their ability to deal and adjust to organizational ambiguity will set the tone for success or disaster. Wouldn't you agree?

Cathie: In the world of technology, the past is not a predictor of the future.

Elliot: You mean the sun isn’t going to rise tomorrow?

Cathie: You wouldn’t know if it didn’t; you don’t get any sun in Michigan, anyway.

Elliot: Ohhh.. one of these days, ONE OF THESE DAYS…. (ok, bloggers, WHO said that? The first one to get the right answer wins a neon USB cable.)

Cathie: A group of top ed tech organizations (e.g., EDUCAUSE, CoSN), funded by Microsoft, just issued the Horizon Report: 2009 K-12 Edition. The report identifies six emerging technologies that will impact K-12 education.

Elliot: Hold on; let me peruse the Cliff Notes version on eSchool News http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=57910

Cathie: Cliff Notes, Elliot! Professors need to set a good example.

Elliot: So don’t tell anyone. (And, Bri, please NO TWITTERING MY SECRET)

Cathie: Back on Planet Earth…. The six technologies are: Collaborative Environments, Online Communications Tools, Mobiles, Cloud Computing, Smart Objects, and The Personal Web.

Elliot: The focus is on small, low-cost, connected, easy to use technologies. The focus is not on “immersive environments” that are media rich, computationally demanding, and costly to develop? You know, the elaborate instructional environments that academics – and some companies – are so fond of?

Cathie: Say more, please.

Elliot: The issue is this: the academics are focusing on learning while the real issues are all about schooling. Learning is not the same thing as schooling. The emerging technologies are directed at making schooling more effective.

Cathie: Good point! Learning emphasizes knowledge acquisition while schooling is a bigger idea that includes learning, but also includes all the social, financial, logistical, physical issues involved in children attending the institution called “school.” By comparison, addressing learning is easy; the real challenge is addressing learning in the context of schooling.

Elliot: The emerging mobile technologies are all enabling us to remove complexity from schooling. Teaching is complex enough; we techies don’t need to make a teacher’s job harder by dropping in a complex, sophisticated piece of learning apparatus.

Cathie: The classroom is a rich, complex social situation; we need to keep the technology simple.

Elliot: The real challenge for educational designers is using technology to create learning opportunities that complement the classroom situation. Up until now, frankly, we academics haven’t worried about the classroom situation in which our learning technologies must live. We create a lovely learning environment and throw it over the wall to the instructional folks to implement in the classroom -- and move on to design the next lovely, and complex, learning environment.

Cathie: I appoint you, Elliot, as the person to go tell the academics that their work is going the way of the dinosaur.

Elliot: But those folks are our friends; I can’t do that.

Cathie: Someone should have told CDC that mini-computers were coming, and DEC that personal computers were coming, and Polaroid that digital cameras were coming. They might be around today if they had a little help from their friends.

Elliot: But, as Clayton Christensen pointed out, CDC, DEC, and Polaroid just couldn’t hear that a disruption was coming their way even if someone had pointed out the coming disruption. They were too successful with the pre-disruption technologies.

Cathie: So, what should we do?

Elliot: Let’s worry about the sun not rising – in Michigan.

Cathie: Good idea, Elliot.