I find it funny how much time bloggers in Educational Technology spend talking about philosophies of education and technology, when it’s the practical things that matter to teachers.  Sure we can talk about constructivism in a lab setting all day long, but having a server in our school, pushing policies to all our computers is transformative and useful.

Today, I managed to figure out how to download an administrative template for Internet Explorer 7.  Our district is ridiculous, and encourages us to not install Internet Explorer 7 even though it is more secure and efficient.  Their solution to avoid technical issues is to keep everything outdated, instead of having to resolve more issues.  I upgraded all our machines to IE7 and as a result, our server needed to be updated, so it could push policies to the new browser version.

Pushing Policies. What is this?  Simply, I can configure one computer with settings that will push out settings like “You cannot change the home page” or “You can not change the screen saver” or “You will always start on the School Website.”  Anytime a student logs into a computer in one of three labs or any computer in the school attached to the server, these policies will be applied.  Simple!  And useful.  My IE7 patch allows me to customize the brower’s policies for all computers.

Another great thing about server technology is that a student can log into any computer and find his/her files.  If a teacher is having trouble with two students talking, just ask one to move over to another seat and log in, and the files are there too.  These are the types of technologies that matter to the teachers.  We can discuss the ramifications all day about which technologies support ELL students, but without the convenience and ease of pushing policies and using a server, everything else is irrelevant.