OK, think about your school days for a sec. Maybe
you remember that sound, you know, the dial -up
modem screeching. Oh, yeah. Or just the clatter
of keyboards in the computer lab. Exactly. Things
are, well, pretty different now, aren't they?
Definitely. Today, we're going to look closely
at something that was kind of working behind
the scenes back then, but is still super important.
Local area networks. Lands. That's right. We're
digging into an article by Gary Ackerman called
Ed Tech for Ed Leaders, Local Area Networks over
on hackscience .education. OK. And the goal here
for this deep dive is really to get a handle
on what lands actually are, why schools first
started using them, how they've changed over
time. And how they fit in with the internet,
which is everywhere now. Exactly. That relationship
is key and maybe a bit surprising sometimes.
All right. Let's get into it. The article points
to the mid -1990s as when lands really started
popping up in schools. What did that look like,
practically speaking? Well, you got to think
about what problem they solved first. Ackerman
talks about servers being introduced, right?
Servers that teachers and students could actually
use regularly. And the first big uses were, well,
pretty straightforward. Sharing printers, a big
one. Ah, yes. The printer bottleneck, I remember
that. Definitely. And also sharing files, you
know, setting up shared folders on that server
so people could access documents. You just picture
the relief, right? No more lining up for the
one printer or running around with floppy disks.
Exactly. That must have been kind of an aha moment
for educators, seeing how connecting things could
actually help. Absolutely. And once they saw
those benefits, things started evolving pretty
quickly. Yeah. Ackerman notes how the connections
got more sophisticated. Sophisticated how? Well,
not just connecting computers within one school
building, but actually linking different school
buildings together. So, wait, connecting whole
campuses? Wow. Like, across a district? Yeah.
Entire districts started linking their separate
school networks into one bigger land, essentially.
Wow. Okay, what did that actually let them do?
Well, think about it. Resources, like teaching
materials made at school A, could suddenly be
used by teachers at school B, instantly. OK,
that's useful. And IT support could manage computers
across different sites from one place. Big efficiency
game there. Plus, it helps streamline all the
district -level admin stuff, the business side
of things. The article brings up this term, MENs,
Metropolitan Area Networks, that you see in textbooks
sometimes. Right. But it sounds like... For the
IT folks actually doing the work in schools,
they often just kept calling the whole interconnected
district thing a LAN, even if it stretched pretty
far, like in rural areas. Yeah, that's a really
good point. Academics might have neat definitions,
but in practice, as Ackerman points out, IT pros
often use LAN more broadly to cover the whole
network connecting their district sites. OK,
so we've got these networks growing inside schools
and then connecting schools together. What's
the fundamental difference between that network,
the LAN, and the internet, the big one that's
sort of out there? The key thing, according to
Ackerman, really comes down to physical access,
physical control. devices on the school's land.
They're physically there, in the building. You
could, theoretically, walk over and touch the
server, the cables, the switches. Right, whereas
internet stuff is... somewhere else entirely,
not in the school building. Exactly. Internet
resources are external, outside that immediate
physical space you control. Makes sense. And
yeah, the article mentions the server rooms,
usually locked up tight. Only IT and maybe the
principal get keys. Precisely. And that physical
control piece, it affects how you handle security,
how you manage the network. day to day. Okay,
but as tech moved on, Ackerman says the lines
between what the land did and what the internet
did started getting fuzzy. Yeah, increasingly
blurry. It became harder to tell where a service
was actually coming from. He uses the library
card catalog as an example, which I mean, I remember
those wooden drawers filled with index cards.
My undergrad finished around 88 just before everything
went digital. Right before the big shift. Yeah,
but when I went back to campus, maybe 1990, they
were gone. replaced by computer terminals. And
what's interesting is why they went digital that
way first. Those library databases were huge,
right? And tons of people needed to search them
all the time. So initially it made sense to host
them locally on a server within the university's
own LAN. When you searched, your computer sent
the request across the campus network to a server
nearby. And there would have been someone, like
the LAN admin, Physically, they're managing the
actual machine, the software, keeping that digital
catalog running. Exactly. Maybe they had to go
into the library basement, into some server room
to fix things. OK, contrast that with now. How
does Ackerman describe the current situation?
Well, now most of those library catalogs are
web -based services. schools or universities
usually pay a company, a vendor, a subscription
fee. Right. And that vendor hosts the catalog
software and the data on their servers connected
to the Internet. The librarians still manage
the content, what books are listed, the descriptions,
but the actual hardware that's managed remotely,
maybe hundreds of miles away. And the article
says this big change was possible because Internet
connections got so much better, right? Faster.
more reliable. Exactly. You could suddenly access
that data over the internet just as fast, maybe
faster, than you could over the old local network.
It's a huge shift when you think about it. Yeah,
it really is. Were there other reasons for that
shift? Like, was it cheaper or easier to scale
up? Oh, absolutely. That's a key part of it.
Running your own servers for everything, like
the library catalog, means hardware costs, software
licenses, stack time. It adds up, outsourcing
it to a vendor who specializes in that one thing,
often much more cost -effective. And they handle
the upgrades, the maintenance. It frees up the
school's IT team. Plus, it's usually easier to
scale. If the library adds thousands of books,
the vendor system can handle it. OK, that makes
a lot of sense. So better internet made it possible,
and cost and scalability made it attractive.
Pretty much. But even... With all these services
moving to the internet, to the cloud, the article
stresses that lands are still really fundamental
in schools. Why is that? If so much is web -based,
why do we still need the local network? That's
crucial. Think about everything inside the school
building that still needs to talk to each other
quickly and reliably. Like what? Well, printers,
for one. Interactive whiteboards in classrooms
often connect locally, maybe internal phone systems,
security cameras, even things controlling heating
or lighting sometimes. Right, stuff that needs
instant response, low latency. Exactly. That
stuff often still depends heavily on the internal
school network, the LAN, to work properly. The
internet's the gateway out. But the land is the
backbone inside. OK, so pulling this together.
Land started pretty simple, sharing printers,
sharing files. Then they grew, connecting whole
districts, making resource sharing and management
way more efficient. Right. And even though the
internet took over hosting a lot of services,
like that library catalog example. Yeah, a big
shift. The land itself didn't disappear. It's
still essential for all that internal communication
and control within the school. That physical,
local aspect is still key. Precisely. That local
control and the need for fast, reliable communication
within the building or campus, that's still the
land's domain. This whole deep dive into Ackerman's
article really shines a light on that hidden
infrastructure, doesn't it? The stuff that just
has to work for everything else to happen. It
really does. And it makes you wonder, OK, as
even more tools move to the cloud, what happens
next for the school land and for the IT folks
managing it? That's the big question, isn't it?
Yeah. Will their job become even more about managing
that connection point, that bridge between the
local network and the wider internet, ensuring
everything flows smoothly and securely between
the two? It's definitely something for you, the
listener, to think about. How does this constant
evolution change things in your world, whether
it's education or another field? And if you want
to explore more, Gary Atterman's written other
books too. Right, things like technology in schools
isn't like this in business. Efficacious technology
management. a guide for school leaders. And technology
rich teaching. They all offer, you know, deeper
perspectives on ed tech leadership and how it
all works in practice.