Microsoft Technology Blueprint for Primary and Secondary Schools
The Microsoft Technology Blueprint for Primary and Secondary Schools aligns educational objectives to the core technology infrastructure that schools require to support these objectives. Supporting documentation is located in the Microsoft Download Center.
Schools at the Basic level of the Infrastructure Optimization Model typically have some technology, but the network applications tend not to be integrated. This lack of integration limits automation, thus substantial manual activities are required both to extract information and to maintain the IT infrastructure.
The Basic IT infrastructure is characterized by manual, localized processes; minimal central control; and nonexistent or unenforced IT policies and standards for security, backup, image management and deployment, compliance, and other common IT practices. Overall health of applications and services is unknown due to a lack of tools and resources. Generally, all patches, software deployments, and services are provided manually.
School Challenges
At the Basic level, schools rely primarily on manual processes to address technical challenges.
Raising academic standards/lack of visibility into student progress
Teachers perform a substantial amount of manual analysis of data because the tools that they have are not completely integrated. These tools can include spreadsheets, word processing programs, and stand-alone applications that help to facilitate instructional support as well as track student performance
Business management: Inefficient operations and a lack of insight into where money is spent
Schools perform a substantial amount of manual work using stand-alone accounting software or specialized Enterprise Management Systems. These schools use stand-alone systems for manual work and analysis and then download the reports into spreadsheets for further analysis, which typically includes combining and segmenting data using tools such as rollup reports and pivot tables. Financial officers can provide several perspectives on the financial conditions of the schools. Office staff use stand-alone word processing programs for inter-office communications and compatible spreadsheets to assist in tracking school and office funds.
Communication and access to information for parents and students
Schools perform a substantial amount of manual work to communicate with parents; however some technology efficiencies are frequently used. By using student information databases, mailing lists can be maintained for sending notices and announcements to parents. Word processing and publishing software provide templates for newsletters. These utilities generally provide Web site templates that schools can use to create Web sites. Many schools use direct e-mail to send announcements to parents and also provide individual staff addresses and/or monitored department e-mail aliases to allow parents and the community to communicate with one another all of the time.
Curriculum and lesson sharing among educators
Schools participate in education conferences and subscribe to education newsletters. Many also participate in online user groups and newsgroups that facilitate detailed educational discussions. Many of these schools leverage support information from government-run Web sites (even beyond their region) as well as access the Web sites of other organizations.
Moving to Standardized
Organizations benefit substantially by moving from this Basic level of infrastructure to a Standardized infrastructure, helping them to dramatically reduce work effort by:
| • | Developing standards, policies, and controls with an enforcement strategy. |
| • | Mitigating security risks by developing a "defense in depth" posture: a layered approach to security at the perimeter, server, desktop, and application levels. |
| • | Automating many manual and time-consuming tasks. |
| • | Adopting best practices, such as those of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL); the SysAdmin, Audit, Network, and Security Institute (SANS); and so on. |
The Standardized infrastructure introduces controls through the use of standards and policies to manage desktops and servers; by the way computers are introduced to the network; and use of the Active Directory directory service to manage resources, security policies, and access control. Customers in a Standardized state have realized the value of basic standards and some policies, yet still have room to improve. Generally, all software updates, software deployments, and desktop service are provided through medium touch with medium to high cost. However, these customers have a reasonable inventory of hardware and software and are beginning to manage licenses. Security measures are improved with a locked-down perimeter, but internal security may still be a risk.
Overview
Basic
