Furthering my IT education.

October 7, 2006 6:41 PM

In 5 years, I want to become more desirable to prospective employers as the director of information systems within the education system. What can I do to enhance my profile?

I recently took over as a school's director of information systems which is going well enough. However, I would like to be able to present myself as desirable to take over the same position out west in around 5 years based upon more than work experience. My employer and co-workers love me so that's not a problem (let's assume it will not become a problem for simplicity's sake). However, I have no formal training beyond what I'm learning on the fly for my resume or interviews. Due to the nature of being more than a full-time job and having to work nights on occasions, I'm particularly interested in online-learning.

I already have a BS in biochemistry. While my GRE scores are good enough to go nearly anywhere, I had a 2.87 GPA in college which may limit my choices. Would someplace like Phoenix Online be a good choice, or would a degree from there just be laughed at? What about other online-schools I could get into? If it makes any difference, I'm interested in working in high schools. I know there's certifications out there, though I'm not even sure what to look at. Note that my formal computer education consists of my freshman year in college as a CS major.

Basically, I'm looking to do what I can to increase my chances or landing a job as a school's IT guy in the geographic area of my choice in five years.

posted by jmd82 to Education (14 answers total)

I'd recommend taking as many college level courses as you can at your local community college and doing well in them. Then after a year or 2, apply to grad school and send both your undergrad transcripts and your new ones. This will show the grad school that you are capable of working harder than your undergrad GPA reflects.
posted by k8t at 6:47 PM on October 7, 2006

My husband has a degree in economics, and has still managed a healthy career in IT. I think you just have to know stuff and have experience to succeed. That shouldn't be a problem if you hold on to your current job for five years. If networking is your thing, you could get some certifications, I guess.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 7:29 PM on October 7, 2006

More education is great, but you'll help your chances of landing a job out west in 5 years if you start networking now. Find out about conferences (or sub-conferences) that focus on educational IT/IS. Make a point of going to them. Talk to lots of people and keep in touch after the conference. Also, find out how to volunteer to help organize the next conference. Next step is to increase your visibility. Maybe organize & introduce a few panel discussions in subsequent years.
posted by Good Brain at 7:31 PM on October 7, 2006

Look into getting various certifications. Certs say "I know how to do X" which is more important for administrative jobs as opposed to programming jobs, where you have to "know X' and write clean code.
posted by delmoi at 7:39 PM on October 7, 2006

I think five years' experience will definitely be a major, major plus on your resume, beyond education. I'd agree with Good Brain, though, networking is key, especially if you're going to try to shoot for a more prestigious institution.

If you can get onto panels and/or make presentations or get quoted on topics and points relating to your position, and that of IS in education in genreal, you're going to have killer material for your resume. I'd say that being well known and having your voice heard is worth a lot more than the education because once you reach a certain point, education is less important and that point is quite low in many professions.
posted by wackybrit at 7:40 PM on October 7, 2006

Response by poster: Never thought of the networking slant. Thanks for the suggestion. That leads me to another question: Any conferences I should pay special attention to attending? I live close to the Twin Cities if that helps.
posted by jmd82 at 8:59 PM on October 7, 2006

Best answer: No offence to jmd82, but K-12 schools are infamous for putting people with no experiance in IT positions. This simply amazes me. Would they even consider hiring an accountant with no experiance? Every school in my area has a network that's completely fucked up and this is why. The taxpayers money hard at work I guess. It's not a good deal for your district, but you got really lucky because there aren't many sweeter gigs in IT than education (for many reasons).

I wouldn't waste your time taking formal classes or getting another degree unless your district will pay for 100%. Most employers only care that you have a college degree - they don't really care about your major. Taking a bunch of programming classes isn't going to help you in any way if your career goal is to be a Director.

Right now you need to learn some actual technical skills. I would suggest getting some basic certs like MCSE (I would wait until next year for the 2007\Longhorn track so it will still be current when you make your move in 5 years) and CCNA. Don't go to any silly bootcamps to pass the tests either. Those are only useful for experianced people who just need to fill in the gaps in their knowledge. Read the material and set up a test lab at home so you actually learn it.

Use sites like howstuffworks to understand basic concepts. When someone asks you a question like "how do your elementaries connect to your high school?" (SONIC, Wireless, T1, ect.), you need to know and understand the answer. Next time you're paying your district's Internet provider, don't be afraid to ask if they can have an engineer stop by and explain the specifics of your connection (and maybe give you a Visio drawing).

Assuming you have techs working under you, I would go on as many calls with them as possible. If can't troubleshoot a PC, replace hardware or fix basic software problems, you'll never get any respect from your staff. You don't need to be better (or even as good) as them, but you must be better than the average end user.

I would also concentrate on learning how curriculum integrates with technology. This is where most IT Directors fail. You need to give your district direction in how to use technology to teach kids, support the staff and ultimately improve test scores (the only thing anyone really cares about). Educate yourself in the hot IT topics in education: Moodle, blogging, podcasting, blackboard, smart boards, one-to-one computing (laptops for every student), ect.

Most districts operate on really tight budgets, so learn ways to save money. Use free imaging software like G4U instead of paying for Ghost. Learn how to deploy software through Group Policy rather than paying techs to manually install it. Make sure your district has a some type of Select contract with Microsoft. See if you can pool resources with other districts to buy PCs and software in bulk for less. There are a million grants out there for schools, but most districts don't even apply because it's such a huge pain in the ass. Showing that you're an experianced (and successful) grant writer will look fantastic on your resume.

I've always found conferences to be a total waste of my time. You can learn about new products from the vendors' website or sales rep. A week-long conference can easily run $5,000 per person. IMHO, they're nothing more than a vacation on the taxpayers dime. If you insist on attending every conference under the sun (and many do) than at least come back with some good ideas and not just a tan.

When you decide exactly where you'll relocate, find out if that state requires any specific certifications to hold the position of IT Director in a school. Usually, you can start the job and then get the cert within a year or two. This is part of the reason why there are so many ex-teachers in these positions; they know how to play the game and people outside of the educational system don't.
posted by bda1972 at 11:08 PM on October 7, 2006

ACM has a huge volume of online courses and books in tech skills. I've never been to their conferences or committees.

There are a number of options for online degrees. Drexel would probably not be laughed at. But like others have said, you might be better off with hard experience and some certs than an expensive masters.
posted by Marnie at 6:11 AM on October 8, 2006

Best answer: I work with a lot of school/school district IT people in a support role. In my area, each school (or one or two schools, in the case of elementary schools) have a single "lab tech," typically an entry-level IT person with minimal formal education in IT -- a high school diploma is the only training-related prerequisite for the job, although in practice most techs tend to be college-educated, and many are former teachers/media specialists. These techs are overseen by "network analysts," who take responsibility for two or three highschools and all their feeder schools, and handle the network administration and other geeky heavy lifting. These folks tend to have IT-related degrees and/or much more formal career-training (MCSE, CCNE, etc).

The school system I work with seems to provide a lot of training support to its employees. I've never discussed whether there is a continuing education requirement, but several of the analysts I work with regularly are currently involved in high-end Cisco training sponsored by the school district.

Of course, your milage may vary in different school systems, but it seems what they look for is ability to be trained, and certifications/work experience. Find out what networking environments your likely target schools use, and get certified in topics relevant (and keep current!)
posted by Alterscape at 7:47 AM on October 8, 2006

I've done some work in the past for the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). They're mostly geared towards educators, but they might have some information for IT heads in educational environments as well. Worth taking a look at least.
posted by Deathalicious at 12:46 PM on October 8, 2006

I would echo bda1972's response and add that it might also be worth your while getting some teaching time or classroom experience under your belt and look for areas where technology can fit in (unobtrusively). I joined an international school as an IT Admin and within a year was asked to teach technology to 6th, 7th and 8th grades. Our ICT Director also teaches and it has given us some great scope within the classroom and school as well as with the rest of the staff (it greatly breaks down and "them and us" mentality that can exists with staff and IT staff - as well as students and IT staff).
posted by jim.christian at 1:16 PM on October 8, 2006

Response by poster: Good idea jim, except I am the lone IT guy and the way it is, I'm having to work weekends just to get things where they need to be. I would love to be in the classroom- I was originally slated to teach technology to 4-8th grade, but our former IT guy left unexpectedly so they asked me to step in. However, we don't have any computer classes for HS- an atrocity ihmo which I'm working to hopefully get changed by possibly teaching some classes myself or offer some kind of independent study opportunity.
posted by jmd82 at 1:27 PM on October 8, 2006

On a resume, work experience is less important that work accomplishments. What sort of systems have you rolled out for your district? What sort of challenges (financial / technical / administrative) have you overcome? It's unlikely that a school superintendant will be very sharp, technically. The super will want to know, "what can you do for me?" Can you save him money? Make her look good to the school board?

I will agree that most school districts hire whoever shows up. My school district is terribly happy with me, since I have many years of experience in the IT field and took a pay cut in order to take a job that helps the community. And maybe that's another point to stress: if you're so smart, why are you working for a school district? If you're motivated by a desire to help the school district meet its goals, good. If you're motivated by a desire for personal advancement, then you may be viewed as a threat by the administration, rather than a genuine asset.
posted by SPrintF at 2:00 PM on October 8, 2006

The good thing about being the lone IT guy is that you have to deal with every problem even if you don't understand it. This is honestly the best way to learn (for you, not your district). I'm afraid it's also the most stressful way to learn. You'll definately fuck some things up, but if you're a fast learner it will quickly advance your knowledge base. The pieces of the puzzle will start to fall into place with every problem you fix and then one day you'll simply "get it".

Of course, the bad thing about being the lone IT guy is there's nobody to teach you anything. Unless your district is tiny, you must use some outside contractors to do PC repair and network upgrades (especially if you are not qualified to do it). Even though IT people have the (well-earned) reputation of being rude and arrogant, most will gladly teach you stuff if you're humble and genuinely interested in learning. These are the guys who can teach you things you'll never read in a book or on the Internet.

I can't speak to getting classroom experiance. If I entered a classroom to do anything other than fix a PC our teachers would file a union grievance by the end of the day.
posted by bda1972 at 9:33 PM on October 8, 2006