K-12 School Computer Networking/Introduction

Introduction
Welcome to the K-12 School Computer Network wiki book!

Who is this book for?
This book is specifically targeted for the average K-12 school technical coordinator. The book is also useful for any educator interested in understanding the technology that envelops the school environment. Just as you do not need to be an auto mechanic to drive a car, it does help to understand the basics of its operation.

Where does this come from?
This book is the effort of a multiple sessions of a course taught at Teachers College, Columbia University titled "Managing Educational Technology Resources". The authors are graduate students at Teachers Colleges and this book is an integral part of their course work.

Many of the students are either practicing technical coordinators in K-12 schools or are training with that goal in mind. This book is intended as a resource for K-12 technical coordinators in the field. Please leave comments and post ideas for new sections -- and of course, add content of your own. The course at Teachers College is password protected, but you can leave comments that you don't feel belong here in the instructor's technology blog: Technology on a Shoestring.

Why this book?
As an instructor with more than twenty years of experience, one of the clearest lessons I've learned is that the closer an assignment comes to meeting a real situation, the better the resulting learning. It's one thing to ask a student to write as if the instructor was a member of the public or to have another student fill that role; it's entirely different when there really is a public – you are that public.

As for why Wiki Books, the answer is that this may be the best possible location to expose this information to the largest number of people.

When will it be done?
The first edition will start in June and complete at the end of July. This will certainly not complete the book, but it should provide enough information as to make it useful. Generally, the course on Managing Educational Technology Resources is taught every other semester and during the summer. The first classes will focus on the basic writing with following classes adding extra materials and multimedia content.

What does it cover?
Yes, there are books here on Wiki Books that cover ICT in education and various aspects of instructional technology. While valuable, they do not address the issues school technical coordinators have in putting all these elements together. Perhaps there is the assumption that technical coordinators are essentially the equivalent of a corporate network administrator. Yes, the firewalls and Ethernet cabling may be the same, but the meager school budgets and the unique environment of the school make the application of networking technology radically different from that experienced by the average corporate network administrator.