Work Projects

I know I say this frequently so why not again…WOW!!! What an amazing three days, and I didn’t realize how exhausted one person can be. As I am coming off the high of the first STEAM Carnival at ESC Region 11, it still has my head spinning from the electric atmosphere that was created by over 3,700 students, 100+ teachers, and 100+ ESC support staff.

I have a personal rule not to post video or photos on this so the impact of my words will not be near that of the visuals that were present the past three days. From battle robots to students flying across the world (compliments of the green screen) to the 3-time national champion solar car team, the students and teachers minds were blown by the learning. AND THEN…I got the pleasure of meeting them at the corner to proceed to Zone 2 and Zone 3. The kids thought their experience was complete when really they were just getting started. Talk about excitement!

Partnering with some great entities like Two Bit Circus, Trash 4 Teachers, Perot Museum, Frontiers of Flight Museum, Merge VR and so many more that I apologize for not calling out by name, we were able to bring the students their “Best field trip ever!” They built rockets and race cars, experienced a dome planetarium, played on the button wall, traveled through the body by Virtual Reality and never really slowed down for just under 3 hours. 

I don’t know how to thank everyone who took a part of this giant puzzle and put it together for our students. This is why we are in the business of education. When students have the opportunity to learn like this, it will be a day that they will not forget for a long time.

In November of this past year, I introduced the idea of forming a committee to discuss the possibility of creating a VERY large fiber network to join all of the ESC 11 districts into a WAN type environment. The idea was tossed out to the TAC members and within less than two weeks, we were not forming a committee as much as we were pursuing the project for this year!

After several months of RFPs, planning meetings, discussions, board presentations and LOTS of paperwork, we are submitting our forms to USAC to seek funding for a multi-million dollar project that will span 43 of our districts with 51 connections during Phase 1. This is one of the largest projects ever tackled by the ESC and has garnered attention from across the state. Hopefully our hours upon hours of planning will be put into action to create an environment across our region that breaks down any barriers for student and teacher connectivity. 

Oh yeah…AND we will have 200Gb of Internet Access coming into our building to serve our districts. Plenty of bandwidth for all!

More to come I am sure…