The Cloud's Effect on School Tech Departments

Focus: TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT

Before the cloud era in educational technology, if you had told me that moving from a handful of computer labs to a one-to-one student laptop model would make my job easier, I would have dismissed the notion as fantasy.

Yet in 2015, when I was the technology director for a 1,600-student school system in New Hampshire, we began our one-to-one rollout of cloud-based Chromebooks to students in grades 3-12, and I witnessed firsthand fantasy become reality. The cloud completely transformed how our IT department maintained the school system’s technology — and not just limited to student devices.

Budgeting, long-term planning, staffing and accessibility of technology in the classroom were significantly affected.