Challenges

After that last lengthy ramble about walking a fine line between the needs of users and the needs of the district, I was challenged on just about every point I made with situations that arose today. I can’t give too many details because some of these will involve personnel and even potentially criminal issues. Let’s just say it wasn’t the best day for me at work.

First was the anonymous voice mail. Someone had overheard something about theft of school property and called as a concerned citizen to let me know. That one immediately got passed up the chain of command, but I’m sure I’ll be called in to do some investigative work.

Then came the wide open network. Apparently when I tightened up our Internet filters to prevent streaming media last week to try to conserve at least a little bandwidth, I committed a major sin. Cutting off all streaming included shutting off streaming audio broadcasts of our nationally-ranked football team’s game on Friday. I arrived at the office this morning to find ALL filters offline, and the network wide open. Our filtering system had simply been powered down for Friday night’s game, regardless of consequences.

And finally, there were the viruses. We eventually found the culprit – an unsanctioned upgrade to a computer that compromised its security. The user involved also violated the Acceptable Use Policy in the process. I’m letting our superintendent and the HR director handle that one, but I’m sure I’ll be called in to give details.

Until we figured out what was going on with the viruses on our network I fielded lots of calls from angry people – people who couldn’t get to the Internet, or who couldn’t get their applications to connect to a server. So they call me to fix things for them. When I can’t fix them as fast as they want, they call back, even angrier. I can tell you, it’s not a lot of fun.

I do believe that the just about the only time anyone calls my office is when they are not happy with something, or they want to sell me something, or they want me to buy them something. I got all three of those types of calls today, and no other type. It used to be that I would get calls to share my expertise on a particular piece of software, to work with a group of students, or to observe what a class is doing with technology. I don’t know when my job morphed into what it is now, and I’m not sure how to get it back to it’s original purpose. I know I should be happy to have a job, but days like this make me wonder if it’s time to start looking elsewhere.