Leadership Matters December 2013

IlliniCloud: The silver lining in  technology for Illinois schools  Technology in the classroom

By Michael Chamness IASA Director of Communications

With reform groups and government entities all trying to “fix” public education, a project called IlliniCloud provides an interesting juxtaposition: a self-driven solution that relies on collaboration and the sharing of resources and ideas. “It’s an Illinois-based initiative that’s by K12 schools for K12 schools,” summarized Jim Peterson, the technology director for Bloomington District, who doubles as the chief technology officer for IlliniCloud, a consortium of more than 400 school districts from seven states, including more than 200 Illinois school districts. “Our goal is to provide resources for school districts at scale. By leveraging shared resources to meet common K12 technology demands we can do it cheaper, faster and better than districts are able to do by themselves” Simply put, IlliniCloud facilitates school districts to share hardware, applications, services and IT support. Throw in built-in security features, ongoing upgrades and a never-ending search for more efficient ways for schools to do business and it is evident that the benefits to school districts go beyond the estimated 30 percent to 60 percent savings for the above-mentioned items. IlliniCloud is non-profit and Peterson and other Illinois technology leaders have volunteered their time and excess capacity within their own districts to bootstrap its development. “Now that we have critical mass of member districts, and a series of grants and state projects that provided a catalyst to expand our services, we have built a sustainable cost recovery model that charges districts only for what they use -- a model that responsibly expands what the cooperative has built, and one that districts can count on year after year,” Peterson said. The group for the most part utilizes existing resources, such as using the state’s Illinois Century Network for bandwidth and school districts’ data centers across the state. They don’t spend money on research and development or buy the newest gizmo. Instead, they wait for a product or service that is used by peer groups or developed within a school district. Then they try to deliver it to all of their members. “It’s kind of like Walmart,” Peterson said. “We

fight for new licensing models with vendors as a whole, versus the 800 plus districts divided, trying to get CPS prices that rarely happen. Quite simply, if they want to be on our shelves, they have to change their pricing models that are more education friendly. “We don’t really need to create or buy new things. I cringe sometimes when I hear about somebody going out and spending a lot of money on the newest technology promised to boost achievement or another state or federal program that rarely has adoption in K12. It is our feeling that there are many highly effective individuals, organizations, and institutions throughout our state. Using cloud services is simply a tool to help them efficiently expand their reach to students and staff they are trying to serve regardless of school size, geography and tax base. We see great projects that take root out of the places like the Illinois Math and Science Academy, our state universities, state agencies and regional centers, or organizations like the Illinois Computing Educators. Our goal is to leverage those efforts, find the best ways to integrate tried and true K12 technologies, and invest our dollars wisely.” IlliniCloud has been able to access federal E- Rate funds and also received a $5 million grant from the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) for school (Continued on page 7)

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