Episode 4: Looking Beyond the Content Filter to Secure K-12 Remote Learning
In the remote learning environments K-12 school districts are in, IT admins are working tirelessly to secure their perimeter as students and staff access school applications from anywhere, at any time. With more school activity outside of school buildings, it’s worth looking at an IT team’s security tools and how they fit into the K-12 tech stack today.
In this episode of The K-12 Tech Experience podcast, we are joined by Tim Miles, the director of technology at Steamboat Springs School District, to revisit the topic of looking beyond the content filter for cybersecurity and safety in schools. We look at how these tools play an important role in securing remote learning environments and how cloud security works with both to ensure districts are better protected.
Read more about the conversation with Tim Miles in the preview (edited for brevity) available below. Make sure to subscribe to The K-12 Tech Experience to listen to the rest of the conversation on your favorite podcast platform.
JK: Let’s start with having you share more about Steamboat Springs School District. Is it a smaller school district? Or is it more of a larger school district here in Colorado?
TM: I would say Steamboat Springs School District is small. There are 176 school districts in Colorado, and I believe 75% of those districts are 5,000 students and under. There aren’t that many districts that are more than 5,000. We’re around roughly 2,500 students.
With that said, we are one of the leading districts in the state as far as educational outcomes on the measurement scale. At any given day, we’re in the top 5 — sometimes we’re at the top, sometimes we’re at the bottom. We have the same needs as the larger districts, just at a smaller scale.
JK: How has the transition to remote learning been for Steamboat Springs since the start of this school year?
TM: Teaching remote isn’t new for Steamboat. We’ve always had a high number of winter sports athletes—and other athletes—that travel abroad and have to do their education remote. At one point, we were the largest educational Citrix customer west of the Mississippi, so we had a lot of remote desktops and did a lot of things that way for a number of years.
We’ve been used to teaching remotely, but not for our entire population. We were not a 1:1 school district and were that way on purpose, but this pandemic changed that, and we had to go 100% online. It was difficult because we have a small IT team, but we were able to make it work. Now we’re 1:1, as of this summer, and have computers deployed to all our students.
Listen to the rest of our conversation with Tim below, and make sure to subscribe to The K-12 Tech Experience wherever you listen to your podcasts, so you never miss an episode!
