The Wolf Creek Way

Safe-NAC and the Use of Personal Devices in a K-12 Learning Environment

Interop 2011 ALU Presentation

Creating Success For All Learners

Wolf Creek Public Schools

Edmonton

Wolf Creek Public Schools

Calgary

~7000 Students (55% Rural)~1000 Staff~5944 km2

26 Schools Minimum meshed 100/20Mb Alberta SuperNetQoS End-to-End (VoIP and VC in gold)Minimum 4:1 student:computer ratio (Actual <3:1)4 year life cycle – 3000 PCs90 VC endpoints900 IP ALU phones (4068 and DECT 6.0)Pervasive, high-density wireless5 &2.4 Ghz (802.11a/b/g/n) 100% large-screen projection~80% SmartBoards9 technical support staff

Our Partnership and Investment in ALU Products

Network Switches: OS6850-P48, OS6400-P48, OS6400-24, OS6600-P24, BOS6250-P48, BOS6250-48, OS6248P, OS6148

Wireless Access Points: OAW-AP105, OAW-AP125

Wireless Controllers: OAW-4504, OAW-4302, OAW-4304, OAW-SC-1

VoIP Equipment: OmniPCX Enterprise, IPTouch 4068, DECT handsets and base stations, Remote Shelves with the following boards: GA, GD, PRA-T1, PCS, UAI16, UAI8, APA4, SLI8

Software/Servers: OmniVista 4760, OmniVista 2500, SafeNAC Appliance (2), SafeNAC Policy Manager, SafeNAC Authentication Server, SafeNAC Reporting and Management Server

Insights Into Our World

Our Driver for Everything: Shared vision of Excellent Learning Environments

Our Purpose: Meeting the learning needs of all 21st Century Learners

Our Approach: IT governance (congruent with concepts found in the CoBIT framework)

An Example: SSDZ - how we ensure we are delivering the right IT services

Unique K-12 Challenges

Post secondary and corporate environments are very different than the K-12 world

The principle of “in loco parentis” applies - Legally we are acting in the place of the parent

Twelve Research-Based Elements of ELEs

1. Outcomes are clear to the student.

3. Where are students relative to the outcome…a pre-assessment phase?

10. Final evaluation on authentic compilation of assessment devices

5. Revisit outcomes to think about Instructional design. (Learning styles, complexity)

2. What evidence will show that students have met the outcomes?

11. Plan to assist students when the outcome is not being met… a new course of action

4. What does good learning look like? (Rubrics and exemplars)

6. Selection of input structure. (Strategy tool A)

7. Student opportunity to interact with new knowledge. (Strategy tool B)

8. Student opportunity to experiment or use new knowledge. (Strategy tool C)

9. Constant assessment feedback so students can modify learning efforts.

12. Classroom structure, peer relationships, culture of school and student strategies.

Our Beliefs on the Role of Technology

Jim Collins – “Good to Great”: “An accelerator”Prewitt in CIO: “The best leaders are those who

focus on a handful of useful technologies and ignore the rest, no matter how exciting the bandwagon looks.” October 2002

In Wolf Creek, we believe that the ongoing use and integration of technology is very much a component of basic literacy

Connected Kids

For 21st Century Kids, technology is more than a tool… it is an essential component of everyday life that frames their social world view

For them, being digitally connected is as natural as speaking is to us

But…

The Disconnect

Young people lack an adult perspective on safety, responsibility and general citizenship

Consequently they have an underdeveloped sense of risk and responsibility

Unfortunately those in the best position to guide them, adult mentors, often find themselves to be strangers in a strange land

School 2.0

As Educators We Have Three Choices:

• we can try to ignore the shift• we can be reactive and try our

best to accommodate the shift• or we can be proactive by

embracing and harness the shift In reality we only have one choice

The Missing Piece

While many laud the advantages of increased connectivity, few seem to take a full 3600

approach that addresses Digital Citizenship

Enabling Technologies

How do we ensure we are deploying the right technologies?

In a Word – GovernanceFive-year vision: how will decisions made today

look in five years?

Effective Project Planning

Focus GroupPl

an D

own

Bui

ld U

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Avoiding Isolated Planning

SSDZ – Enabling Personally Owned Devices

Pedagogy Design Goals:• Ensure digital citizenship concepts and expectations

are well understood by staff, students, and parents• Embed digital citizenship behaviours as a natural

part of school culture• Enable pedagogy and learning environments that

foster 21st century skills including collaboration, communication, knowledge creation, global awareness and reach, creative problem posing and solving, critical thinking…

• Leverage and embrace the tools that students already have and the environments that students already understand and populate

SSDZ – Enabling Personally Owned Devices

ALU Safe-NAC Technical Design Goals:• 100% availability for any device/platform (OS) anytime

(reliability, AP density, 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz, infrastructure capacity, other…)

• Authenticated, logged/monitored access• Simple authenticated guest access (Captive Portal)• Auto-connect for regularly connected wireless devices• Dual layer access for personal devices (basic filtered

ISP then direct access to core resources after HIC check)

• Protect non-HIC personal devices from each other • Non-filtered access for special occasions• Same parameters for both wired and wireless access• Make experience as seamless as possible with minimal

loss of instructional time

ALU Safe-NAC Advantages

Provides the ability to:

•provide detailed audit of endpoint configuration•classify endpoints at the MAC layer•restrict or enable access based upon ACLs•utilize and leverage existing infastructure

Network 1.0Network 2.0

Internet

External Services

MailWebsitePortal

FireWall

Existing Wolf Creek

network

ServersWorkstations Payroll

CISS

Videoconference

VoIP

Labs

SmartBoards

EXfiles

Printers

Servers

Payroll

SIS

VoIP

EXfiles

Corenetwork

Blogs

Printers

Wikis

Ning

Twitter Face

Book

Wireless SSIDs

1. WC-SecureWireless domain member devices only802.1x device authenticationsame log-on experience as wired domain devices

2. WC-GuestFiltered Internet access onlyCaptive portal authenticationAD guest ID required No device to device visibility

Wireless SSIDs

3. WC-SSDZ (Student - Staff Device Zone)pre-configured for auto connection to stage 1Stage 1 access same services as Guest accessStage 2 full access to core resources (printers, file servers, etc) after successful HIC check

4. WC-PresenterAuthenticated raw Internet access extended to any AP upon specific request

SSDZ Readiness Tour

Met one-on-one with every school admin team to:• Explain how all four SSIDs work, particularly SSDZ• Identify support structures (school and district)• Review school approach to DC (students, staff,

parents)• Discuss the pedagogical changes that teaching in a

connected environment necessitates• Re-think current cell phone policies• Contemplate decommissioning the content filter• Encourage participation in a community of practice

within Wolf Creek

Cost Considerations

• Some envisioned that enabling student-owned devices would save costs

• SSDZ was not implemented to reduce the need to buy PCs

• Instead the intent is to increase access and embrace the mobile revolution that is likely to supplant the PC as the preferred connectivity device

• Yes, there may be less need to purchase PCs• But, clearly more need for bandwidth and

robust infrastructure

Cost Considerations

Similarly…• Videoconferencing wasn’t implemented to

save costs – it was implemented to serve student needs (and save schools)

• VoIP did save operational costs, but the main driver was increase service levels and opportunities to communicate and collaborate with parents and other staff

What’s Ahead…

• We will witness a significant shift towards increased support for personal devices

• Standards, a long-standing strategy – will sometimes end at the network demark point

• Our focus will be on a robust infrastructure and well-supported services – the 4:1 minimum ratio is under review

• Consumer-oriented devices of personal choice will define the end-point (and the support structure)

• Cloud applications such as GoogleDocs may (eventually) supplant locally installed applications (Wolf Creek Google domain is in the works)

• Bandwidth demand will grow exponentially

On The Horizon

• User agreements will have to morph into something that is actually intended to be read

• Privacy concerns will become an even more significant challenge in the days ahead

• Digital Citizenship is and will be of paramount concern

www.wolfcreek.ab.ca