Happy Birthday! Today the PM Technology Blog is officially 5 years old.
Over the past several years, blog readership has grown at a steady clip–we are just shy of 28,000 visits. During this time, technology has transformed at a mind-melting pace. Consider that in July 2007:
- MySpace was the king of social media with 70 million subscribers; Facebook had a mere 30 million accounts.
- Android/Apple tablets and the Kindle did not yet exist.
- RIM’s Blackberry was the smartphone giant. The iPhone was just a few weeks old; Android phones arrived a year later.
- Nintendo’s 1st generation Wii was still new and difficult to find in stores.
- Windows Vista, Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) and Ubuntu 7 were state-of-the-art.
- Twitter passed the paltry 60,000 messages a day mark.
- Blockbuster began sinking as Netflix had delivered its 1 billionth DVD.
- Wikipedia published its 2 millionth article. (They crossed the 22 million mark in June 2012.)
In parallel to rapidly evolving business technology, Penn Manor I.T. has grown and expanded since 2007. Our schools have benefited from:
- BYOT initiatives to open our networks for student personal devices
- Anytime, anywhere classroom web publishing via WordPress blogs
- Strong leadership in open-source solutions and software
- Major classroom and facility technology upgrades
- Large-scale student laptop initiatives and deployments
- Significant infusions of interactive teaching technology
- Expanding our support resources via the help desk and support suite
- Launching online classes and virtual school programs
- The ongoing adoption of rich software tools for teaching and learning
Infrastructure, hardware and network gear is only part of the story–the real magic is interwoven in our people. I am so proud of my team’s innovative school technology contributions and continue to be amazed by the remarkable accomplishments of our students and staff. The past 5 years have been the most rewarding time of my career.
So where do we go from here? I am much more fond of reminiscing than making future technology predictions; however, is it too ambitious to predict that by July 2017 we will have flying school buses?