Leadership & New Tools

New technology and the tools to help us seem to be developing everyday.  Google, Apple, Adobe, and Microsoft are just a few brands that provide tools to education. Even though these tech giants have tools to assist us implement new technology, logistically speaking, it is a chore. For example all of you may know what IPV4 is - well if you don't here is a wiki - McNeese has recently applied for a block of IPV6 addresses which allow for a greater number IP addresses.  IPV6 wiki - In order for McNeese to migrate from IPV4 to IPV6 certain technology has to be in place first.  Switches, routers, modems, and internet based devices have to support IPV6.  Computer built 15 years ago might not support such technology (yes McNeese still does have 15 year old computers)  This migration has to be managed carefully, or many problems could occur.  As a CIO (chief information officer) this could be just one of many "big picture" technologies that transform the IT department.  It not only affects the IT department, rather the entire university and the network backbone.  The transformation from IPV4 to IPV6 allows for scalability over the entire network which is a great benefit to have for a university.  As I stated before, McNeese has started the process to migrate to the new IPV6 technology which is a huge undertaking for such a small university.  There are other technologies such as blackboard, moodle, banner, email, etc.. that have impacted the role of the IT department at McNeese.  Somethings I agree with something I do not.  Recently I've been asked to help design the new McNeese website - pretty cool huh! - but I don't agree to how its being implemented.

Drupal is an open source (open source definition in text - Solomon and Schrum p.134) content management system that allows for rapid delivery of content.  Click here to read more about it http://drupal.org/ - Drupal is a great tool for any university or business to use as the backend for websites.  Being able to control content without knowing HTML, CSS, and PHP gives any person the power to create rich internet content.  The downside to Drupal is designing the theme for the website.  Drupal offers many "starter" themes based on many modern HTML layouts, in fact web 2.0 / HTML5 themes are available as well.  Theming is tough because of PHP (hypertext preprocessor) which is a scripting language for dynamic content (changing content).  I know a little PHP, just enough to navigate around and troubleshoot problems - but I am no programmer and that is probably the reason why theming is more difficult for me. Given the situation I am happy to support new an updated technologies to make McNeese a better place for digital natives, an environment that has accessible, new, and innovative technology is a great place to learn.  McNeese has the best network infrastructure in the state of Louisiana, and it will continue to grow with the new technologies like IPV6.