California Educational Data Processing Association
	The DataBus - Vol. 36, No. 6 Conference Edition, 1996

CCSESA and CTAP Support Technical Staff Through The Internet Technical Academy

With the expansive development of the Internet and with an increasing demand for it's integration into the classroom, county and district offices of education are turning their attention towards their telecommunications infrastructure. A challenge they face is supporting their technical staff who are responsible for planning, installing, and maintaining the equipment and software required for Internet infrastructure. The Internet Technical Academy (ITA) was established to help support county and district offices with this professional development effort.

ITA is a resource for county and district personnel to identify and develop training programs for key technical and management staff who already manage and support other technologies and networks. CEDPA members are a key audience of the ITA, both to provide information to and to learn from. For this reason, we at WestEd (contracted by CCSESA and CTAP to facilitate ITA) would like to invite you to attend the ITA session at the CEDPA conference on Wednesday the 16th of October at 4.00 PM in the Sunset South Room. This session will be presented by WestEd staff, Kathleen Barfield, Project Director, and Technical Consultant, Andrea McCurdy.

At this session we will discuss a range of ITA professional information resources that are being developed that CEDPA members can take advantage of. These resources include:

1. the ITA web site to support the promotion and coordination of technical training in the 11 superintendent's regions;
2. case studies of implementations of networking in K-12 education, with links to resources and training events in the different regions;
3. the development of training resources to support technical needs that will be part of ITA Summer Institute next year; and
4. an ITA monthly newsletter focused on "hot topics" in networking in schools, that will also provide information about education network activities in California.

The ITA newsletter made its debut this month and we invite you to review it. The feature article this month is: "Network Firewalls: Hidden Hope? Or Another Hassle?" If you have web access you can get the newsletter at:

http://www.wested.org/ita/newsletter/1-1.html

The newsletter may also be obtained by e-mail by sending an message to containing the single line:

SUBSCRIBE ITA-Newsletter your full name

Or, you can request it by fax-on-demand at 1-800-360-9856.

We will also discuss your suggestions for including links to other valuable Web sites, training opportunities that you may be aware of that can be included in the ITA (such as training that might be available in your region), and any other additions or changes to ITA that will benefit people like you that support all the networking activities for your clients.

If you have any questions about the ITA, would like to submit an article for the newsletter, have suggestions or comments, please contact any of the following individuals:

Kathleen Barfield, Project Director e-mail: 415-565-3055

Mark Stokes, Newsletter editor e-mail: . 415-663-0442

Andrea McCurdy, Technical Consultant e-mail: 415-663-0443

Christine Esteban, Coordinator e-mail: 415-241-2754

If you would like to be added to our project mailing list, please contact Christine.

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