The Anoka-Hennepin School District consists of over fifty schools. They have a tradition of excellence built upon a firm foundation with well-developed educational programs and supportive communities. The district strives to provide students with a comprehensive education that enriches their lives and prepares them for their future. Technology plays a big role in preparing students for the future. Dramatic changes in the workplace and in the role technology plays in our lives make it essential that students become competent in using a range of technology in a variety of settings. Teachers are the key to developing technology literacy in students. Therefore, they must have access to up-to-date technology and the appropriate training and technical support to take advantage of it. Technology is equally important to administrative and support staff in the school district. The use of technology links district personnel to each other and to information they need to carry out their work efficiently and effectively.

The student database system in place prior to 1999 was a program called Osiris. There were quite a few problems with this system. It was not compa

Back up is done nightly on this system. Both at each individual school and the district office. District integration also provides for scheduled background operations to upload student data files from school sites to the district office and update the district file on a nightly basis. In addition, it provides the ability to download certain files to the school sites nightly.

The most important thing the new system does is provide for district integration. The software’s functionality provides centralized district processing between the schools and the district office using a wide area network (WAN). One of the most significant features of district integration is the ability to add, drop, and transfer students in real time. It also provides for the ability to download and upload certain files to and from the school sites and the district office. Because you can replicate data at the district office on a nightly basis, the district office staff can view an individual school’s files.

Osiris security was an ongoing issue for the technology departments in each school. To get into the system each user had to enter both a personal password and the user password. Each person had their individual password to log into the system, but the password for users was grouped by departments, depending on each departments need for access to information. Some users in the department needed full access, which meant that the other users in the department who needed only “read only” access had full access. Passwords used were linked to the program, which allowed hackers to break the code. Student workers had “read only” limited access so they could locate students during the day, but somehow they always ended up stumbling into the student database. Also, because the program was often “left open” when users were away from their stations, unauthorized use was possible. All users also had access to the entire student population in the area they were authorized to use. For example, if a counselor served students in grade nine, they could also access students in grade 10-12. Because of this, confidentiality was minimal.

The Osiris program had many uses, which accommodated a multitude of users. The main users of this program included: administration, guidance personnel, TIES support (TIES is the main source used by the district as an information system), office workers, parking lot attendants, teaching staff, attendance secretary’s, and media center staff. Some of the main uses of the program include: maintaining student database, building the master schedule, recording attendance, maintaining student discipline infractions, recording grades and courses taken, preparing grade reports, building room use schedules and teacher schedules, along with many other things.

The way the each school’s network is set up is a lot like that of Anoka-Ramsey Community College. After hearing the speaker, from the technology department at Anoka-Ramsey, I was able to use this knowledge in my interview with the technology head at a middle school. All data is stored on the main Novell server. The main hardware resources are Apple Macintosh and Hewlett Packard. The main software resources are Appleworks, Microsoft, Mathkeys and Hyperstudio. The district uses TCP/IP as their main protocol. There is both a student network and an administ

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