The biggest challenge for Ripon Unified amid the COVID-19 pandemic was implementing the technology to support distance learning.
Edward Ellis, who has been the district's Supervisor of Information Technology for the past four years, said just that in his report at the Feb. 8 school board meeting.
He called it "one of our largest projects" for both students and teachers during 2020.
Early on, he and his staff researched, quoted, and ordered over 1,000 Chromebooks from different vendors to get devices out as quickly as possible.
They developed a hot-spot deployment plan while ordering and distributing 150 cellular hot-spots to students in need.
The IT staff also extended virtual private network or VPN licenses to support administration remote connection to internal network sources and adjusted iPads and Chromebooks for use on a non-school wi-fi network.
All this was done in coordination with the state Department of Education and RUSD being the first school district to hire students for the position of the Information Technology High School Apprentice Program.
"Our apprentices were instrumental in assisting in getting technology out in a timely manner and assisting with the Chromebook repairs." Ellis said.
Thanks to distance learning, many new pilots started up at the various school sites.
Park View Elementary School kicked off the iPevo IW2 Smart Board pilot and Weston Elementary School claimed the start-up of the Mimeo Teach Smart Board pilot.
Ripon High kicked off both the Surface Pro Pilot and MiraCast Pilot, according to Ellis.
He mentioned in his report the four pillars of the IT Department. Those goals consisted of: Helping Desk Assistance; Maintaining, Repairing & Upgrading the Infrastructure; Support Network Services; and Improving Efficiency with Automation.
The help desk handled 1,392 tickets between January 2020 and January 2021. Most of that called for account support (245), hardware support (203) and printing support (157).
Another early problem was with the Zoom.
"When we first started out, Zoom was not as user friendly," Ellis said.
An automatic 'security by default' was needed to assist the teaching environment in the Zoom rooms.
