Better Collaboration and Communications Means Better Curriculum and Student Scores

Published: November 2001

Solution Overview The Tracy Unified School District (TUSD) of Northern California used the Microsoft Solution for Intranets to fundamentally restructure how its Customer Profile The Tracy Unified School District administrators and teachers collaborate and communicate. TUSD serves the educational needs of implemented an electronic document repository that enabled the Human nearly 15,000 students in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Resources department to more effectively store and retrieve information. Improved access to education materials and better collaboration among Business Situation Convert paper-based archives to teachers and administrators is expected to improve overall effectiveness electronic files, improve staff devel- in curriculum development. Using the Windows Media Broadcast opment, decrease in-person meetings, and improve district-wide component will enable TUSD to decrease the number of in-person communications and collaboration. meetings, thereby allowing teachers to spend more time with students Technology Solution and developing curriculum. TUSD anticipates that the net result of better Establish a district-wide collaboration and communications platform using collaboration and communications will be better student scores on the Microsoft® Solution for Intranets for educational administration, staff California’s standardized exams. development, and management communications.

Value to Education . Improved student learning Executive Summary . More teacher time with students . Improved curriculum development Situated at the southern edge of the San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta in California, Tracy is . Decreased burnout of teachers the gateway between the Central Valley and the San Francisco Bay area. Growing at an annual and administrators . Improved administrator and teacher average of nearly 800 new students for each of the past five years, the Tracy Unified School efficiency and productivity District (TUSD) was an early user and advocate of information technology (IT) to improve student . Reduced administrative costs . Quick time-to-benefit from robust learning, both in topical subject areas and in the use of technology. While student scores on functionality standardized statewide exams were improving, the district’s administrative functions were in need . Direct-to-desktop video broadcast for communications and training of similar technology advancements. TUSD established a goal of improving communications and Microsoft Software collaboration among school administrators and teachers with the intent of enhancing curriculum . Windows ® 2000 Server development and hence student achievement and preparation for their post–high school years. . Office XP . SQL Server ™ “As a school district, our effectiveness is measured by how well we prepare our students to . SharePoint ™ Portal Server . SharePoint Team Services meet the challenges of an ever-demanding world, both in terms of their role in the labor force as . Windows Media ™ technologies well as in their personal development,” says Keith T. Larick, EdD, Superintendent of Schools for Hardware the Tracy Unified School District. “Our students have made great academic strides. Now we need . Compaq ProLiant 8000 with quad Xeon 550-MHz processors, 2 GB of to use technology to facilitate professional development of our teachers and administrators. RAM, and 300 GB of storage . ProLiant 530 with dual 1.0-GHz “Utilizing the Microsoft Solution for Intranets, we have made a significant shift in the way we processors, 2 GB of RAM, and 300 GB of storage collaborate and share information. We have improved efficiency and productivity, and in the process reduced teacher burnout and attrition. The Microsoft Solution for Intranets allows us to Solution Provider Design and deployment assistance push broadcast media to the teacher’s desktop and in so doing will enable them to spend more provided by Compaq Global Services. time with students and in developing lesson plans. This represents a major change in the way we consume and share information, which we believe will reap tremendous benefits for our “Utilizing the Microsoft students.” Solution for Intranets, we have made a significant shift TUSD looked to the Microsoft Solution for Intranets to help it create a single uniform intranet that in the way we collaborate and enabled administrative functions to take place in an electronic, rather than paper-based, share information. We have environment. The Microsoft solution also will enable administrators and teachers to spend less improved efficiency and productivity, and in the time in meetings and more time developing curriculum and attending to students. The Windows process reduced teacher Media Broadcast component of the Microsoft Solution for Intranets will enable cross-district burnout and attrition.” messaging from the superintendent’s office as well as that of the school board and other key Keith T. Larick, EdD Superintendent administrators. A portable video production studio will enable live broadcasts of special events of Schools from locations throughout the district. Tracy Unified School District

The Microsoft Solution for Intranets distinguishes itself as the most recent advance in intranet technology that offers a complete solution with immediate robust functionality. Comprehensive in scope, the solution empowers the knowledge workplace by providing Web-based collaborative team services, a gateway for information management and discovery, and broadcast communications direct to each desktop.

Critical Technology Enabler Value to Education and Administration Success Factor Return on people District-wide search, . Improved student learning organization process integration, . More teacher time with students live and on-demand broadcasts, . More time for curriculum development seamless integration with . Fewer in-person meetings Microsoft Office, and self-service . Decreased burnout of teachers and team sites for rapid collaboration administrators on ad hoc projects Return on Industry-standard Web access, . Reduced direct administrative costs knowledge integrated application access, . Improved teacher productivity secure approval routing, and . Flexible configuration that enables use in centralized broadcast any environment by nontechnical personnel capabilities Return on Document categorization, . Improved administrative efficiency from process profiling and management tools getting work done faster and at less cost with subscriptions for proactive financially and organizationally notification, and broadcast for . More-effective and lower-cost training and real-time knowledge sharing communications from direct-to-desktop video broadcast capability . Reduced inter-district and intra-district travel costs Return on Standard Web-based interfaces . Quick time-to-benefit enabled by robust information and broadcasts over the existing functionality with some customization technology network . Easy integration and customization that keeps deployment and operational costs low

Says Larick, “In implementing the Microsoft Solution for Intranets, we are simply following the motto of our school district, ‘The future belongs to the educated.’ We interpret this literally and think that our students will directly benefit if their teachers and the administrators who make up the educational backbone of our schools are also using the same technologies that enable improved learning in the classroom. The Microsoft Solution for Intranets is the culmination of a vision for educational administration that started over seven years ago and which today we are on the verge of fulfilling.” With 1,500 total employees, TUSD already has implemented the document repository of more “We used Microsoft than 60,000 hard-copy records for its Human Resources (HR) department and is in process of SharePoint Portal Server as the foundation upon which we scanning these records and inserting them in a living electronic archive of more than 17 could build a comprehensive gigabytes (GB). Expansion of the document repository structure into a collaboration and knowledge Infrastructure, communications portal for administrators and teachers is in process, as is the capability for live based on the Microsoft and on-demand broadcast video direct to the desktop. Implementation of the communications Solution for Intranets, portal and the broadcast capability is anticipated to be complete by the close of calendar year because it was simple to 2001. implement yet offered a flexible and extensible

st architecture that could be Digitizing HR: Document Management for the 21 Century readily adapted to a more With an educational history spanning more than 80 years, the Human Resources department of sophisticated site as our the Tracy Unified School District has accumulated a hard-copy archive of more than 60,000 needs and capabilities expanded.” records that were in continuous use. Recognizing that constant hand-processing, search, and retrieval of these paper-based documents was an inefficient use of human resources and used Kerry Johnson Director of Information Services and an inordinate amount of file storage in limited office space, TUSD’s Information Services and Education Technology Education Technology (ISET) group embarked on an ambitious program to digitize all the records Tracy Unified School District and put them on compact discs that could be easily retrieved through network access to a CD storage device.

“Implementing a document management solution for the department of Human Resources was a part of the first stage of implementing a single point of access to records that would eventually become the basis for a district-wide communication and collaboration portal for all administrators and teachers,” notes Kerry Johnson, Director of Information Services and Education Technology for the Tracy Unified School District.

With more than 70 servers spread across 20 sites providing a variety of district functions including file and print, tracking school schedules, and meeting the ever-increasing requirements of state and federal school authorities, it was increasingly difficult for users to find the information they required. Although the network was centrally administered, the content was not. Because content existed on personal servers and network file shares, a user often had to review multiple versions of the same document with the same file name but different content before he or she was able to locate the file needed. As a result, a great deal of time was spent searching through multiple domains and servers to locate the correct file. Not only was this inefficient in terms of time and resources, it also inhibited the full professional development of the users.

“This problem was compounded by a district-wide policy of enabling remote access to all teachers and administrators,” says Johnson. “We needed a solution that could work on a dial-up connection, could easily scale, and would be secure no matter who tried to access the site through the Tracy Education Network. We also required search capability that would span the entire district and the numerous stores of content that were constantly being revised and updated. We used Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server as the foundation upon which we could build a comprehensive knowledge infrastructure, based on the Microsoft Solution for Intranets, because it was simple to implement yet offered a flexible and extensible architecture that could be readily adapted to a more sophisticated site as our needs and capabilities expanded.”

As a result of initiating the district’s new intranet with SharePoint Portal Server, TUSD positioned itself to take advantage of the complete Microsoft intranet solution as it progressed to its next level of developing an all-inclusive communications and collaboration portal. “We needed to be sure that Collaboration and Enhanced Communication Yields Improved the collaboration platform we Professional Development implemented would integrate with and complement our new With 99 percent of classrooms in the Tracy Unified School District wired and connected to the HR document management Internet, and 75 percent of the teachers doing student attendance on network computers, it was a system. The logical next step natural evolution to bring the efficiencies of a comprehensive intranet solution to the more than was to use SharePoint Team 1,500 staff members who support nearly 15,000 students. Further, hiring more than 180 new Services as a component within teachers in each of the past several years and bringing them up to speed in educational the Microsoft Solution for technology and curriculum specific to their classes was a daunting task using conventional tools. Intranets to facilitate professional development “Professional development usually takes place in multiple meetings and over a long period,” through improved collaboration says Michael Lau, Technology Training Manager for the Tracy Unified School District. “This is and better communication.” neither an efficient use of time nor professional resources. We needed a new way to share Sara Windsor information and enable a dialog to take place no matter where people were located or what Senior Network Engineer Information Services and Education schedule they were on. We wanted everyone to have access to the same information so that they Technology could make more-informed decisions when developing curriculum, discussing student Tracy Unified School District performance, or mentoring new teachers on state and federal accountabilities.”

The district did not have a consistent method for document collaboration and versioning nor was there an effective search capability across the entire network. It needed a more effective way to disseminate and share critical information, as well as to conserve time and valuable professional resources.

“We were already in the process of implementing the document repository of over 17 GB of scanned data for the Human Resources department, so we were familiar with what SharePoint Portal Server could provide in context of a complete intranet solution,” says Sara Windsor, Senior Network Engineer with ISET for the Tracy Unified School District. “We needed to be sure that the collaboration platform we implemented would integrate with and complement our new HR document management system. The logical next step was to use SharePoint Team Services as a component within the Microsoft Solution for Intranets to facilitate professional development through improved collaboration and better communication.”

With the assistance of Compaq Global Services, TUSD designed a comprehensive intranet solution on the district’s Microsoft Windows 2000 Server–based network. The solution can provide a full range of communications and collaboration services TUSD Intranet Solution Architecture that will enable the district to decrease the SPS4 – Central Portal and Index Server amount of time that CLI – OfficeXP/IE ~ 2000 users teachers and staff spent in in-person meetings. The diagram shows the WMA logical architecture for Future WM1, WM2 the intranet solution for the district.

SQL1 - Team Server and other BC1/SPS2 Broadcast Portal Server and content sources: SharePoint Team Master WM Server Services, file shares, MS Exchange Selected features of the Microsoft Solution for Intranets that are in process of being implemented at TUSD include: "The Windows Media Broadcast component enables us to . Seamless, secure access to documents and information through a common interface from effortlessly set up a team both the intranet and extranet services function for collaborative efforts that cross . Comprehensive district-wide document search and retrieval site boundaries—for example, groups of teachers working on a . Document versioning, check-in, check-out, and subscriptions collaborative curriculum project . Customizable digital dashboard interface with the ability to integrate with other key district —and stream the video in real information sources such as the student information system time so that everyone can participate. This is educational By implementing a comprehensive intranet solution, TUSD now has the ability to host forms and technology at its best.” track and approve documents. A digital dashboard, developed as a custom application, will Michael Lau integrate with student information systems and dynamically update and present key student data Technology Training Manager (such as attendance, enrollment, and grades) to staff and administrators. The subscription Tracy Unified School District feature of the Microsoft Solution for Intranets enables teachers and administrators to subscribe to a range of time-sensitive e-mail notices, bulletins, progress reports, and other topic-specific updates that otherwise would come to them in paper-based memos or newsletters, often arriving past the effective date.

The new intranet will provide a complete platform for the quick and seamless exchange of student, curriculum, and administration-related data. The district anticipates that this will decrease the amount of time that teachers and administrators need to spend in meetings, and in turn will enable them to spend more time developing curricula and in face-to-face meetings with students.

Broadcasting to the Desktop: Improving Productivity in Real Time Using technology to provide today’s learners with the knowledge and skills of tomorrow is nowhere more evident than with the Tracy Unified School District’s initiative to create a video broadcast capability direct to the desktop of every teacher and administrator. The combination of video and personal computer technologies broadcast over the intranet is expected to help eliminate meetings, decrease inter-district and intra-district travel (and attendant costs), and improve the productivity of teachers and administrators by enabling them to remain at their desks and multitask. The need for ongoing curriculum development meetings could be reduced due to the ability to log on from within the intranet or externally through remote access, and view a broadcast.

“Providing a portable [video] production station for use throughout the district will enable everyone to view live broadcasts in real time,” says Technology Training Manager Lau. “This will enable each person to be current with the latest information wherever they are located. And, by installing a production station adjacent to our superintendent’s office, we can watch the latest developments in curriculum development and educational administration unfold before us.”

The Windows Media Broadcast component of the Microsoft Solution for Intranets has several unique features that enable even a developing network administrator to effectively set up and use the tool. Selected features include:

. Event scheduling and management, which can be offloaded to teachers or administrative assistants, enabling the IT group to remain focused on its core activities. All event information entered is automatically logged in SharePoint Portal Server and displayed on the intranet portal or integrated into the Microsoft Outlook® messaging and collaboration client for easy "The ease with which the district can customize its portal and end-user access. tailor it specifically to reflect its . Turnkey production and delivery using Windows Media technologies with a four-step wizard needs, even if those needs to validate server availability, connect to audio and video devices, launch the broadcast, and change on a relatively frequent basis, is one of the great automatic archive on the SharePoint Server portal at the conclusion of the event. attributes of the Microsoft “Most important for professional development is the ability to easily access archived programs solution. Nothing is written in in the comfort of a school or home office,” says Lau. “The Windows Media Broadcast component stone; everything can be modified to reflect the way any enables each of us to effortlessly set up a team services function for collaborative efforts that business works.” cross site boundaries—for example, groups of teachers working on a collaborative curriculum project—and stream the video in real time so that everyone can participate. This is educational Helen McNeal Solution Architect technology at its best.” Compaq Global Services

Immediate Functionality and Low Maintenance Eases Job of IT Says Senior Network Engineer Windsor, “IT groups in most K–12 educational environments operate in a patchwork of technology with limited technical resources. We’ve been exceedingly fortunate to have the skill and expertise of Compaq Global Services, in whom we could entrust our needs and feel assured that they would deliver what was required on time and within budget. They helped us identify the ways in which the Microsoft Solution for Intranets could assist the district, and then they helped design and implement the solution using Compaq hardware. The absolute reliability of the ProLiant servers and the immediate access to support resources— engineers who have cut their teeth on bigger enterprise intranet engagements—was invaluable to getting the design and structure of the document library and HR solution completed and implemented. Compaq’s huge base of Anticipated IT Benefits experience with Microsoft’s products and Time savings due to a single standard interface for network operating systems provides an document and information access invaluable technical resource from the No need to support multiple file shares and mapped perspective of an organization [that] has client drives; allows IT to concentrate on actually implemented the solutions being development of a single centralized solution supported.” Reduced time and network bandwidth due to single centralized repository of documents and information “Customizing the portal to the specific No need to provide backup and support for many information and collaboration needs of the remote file shares across the wide area network TUSD was a critical decision point,” says Information security and fault tolerance Helen McNeal, Solution Architect with Easy operations and maintenance Lower costs than managing current network file Compaq Global Services. “Although the shares Microsoft Solution for Intranets has very robust out-of-the-box functionality, we needed to orient it to meet the specialized educational needs of the TUSD. We expect that the district will continue to customize its portal, with the plan to eventually offer role-specific digital dashboards designed to meet the needs of specific user groups.

“For example, principals might get a dashboard that includes WebParts [that] dynamically present their school’s attendance and enrollment data, GPA [grade point average] information, and site administrative announcements. School board members might get a dashboard that includes WebParts [that] dynamically present summary attendance/enrollment/GPA data for the entire district, as well as subscriptions to board meeting agendas with links to the supporting "The Microsoft Solution for Intranets is impacting the way documents. we do our work every day. In “The ease with which the district can customize its portal and tailor it specifically to reflect its fact, it is even helping us needs, even if those needs change on a relatively frequent basis, is one of the great attributes of redefine our jobs as we move to more value-added activities as the Microsoft solution. Nothing is written in stone; everything can be modified to reflect the way a result of being more efficient any business works. The built-in flexibility and extensibility makes this a very powerful tool for with our assigned tasks.” organizations of any scope or size.” Michael Lau Technology Training Manager Changing the Way TUSD Does Business: From the Ground Up and Tracy Unified School District the Top Down “As a direct result of using the new intranet, I’m spending less time with paperwork and more time evangelizing the use of technology with teachers and administrators throughout the district,” says Technology Training Manager Lau. “I help teachers develop curricula, and I assist site administrators to understand the power of this technology in helping them improve their own efficiency as well as that of their staff and teachers. Plus, I get to see how it has changed the daily work patterns of clerks, teachers, managers, and site administrators throughout the district. No longer are people caught in meetings or racing to catch up with their daily tasks. Now they get information pushed to them through subscriptions, can configure a digital dashboard specific to their own needs, or can watch the superintendent’s latest executive briefing in real time with the ability to replay the archive if there is something important they need to review.

“The Microsoft Solution for Intranets is impacting the way we do our work every day. In fact, it is even helping us redefine our jobs as we move to more value-added activities as a result of being more efficient with our assigned tasks.”

The objective of the Microsoft Solution for Intranets is to provide a comprehensive intranet solution for organizations that enables the knowledge workplace by delivering effortless Web- based collaborative team services, a portal for information management and discovery, and broadcast communication to employee desktops.

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