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REMC #1 Creates U.P. Educational Technology Consortium
By Caitlin Judge
"Collaboration allows us to work more efficiently, share services, and share best practices; it's an enabler. It allows us to create better economies of scale in order to save time and money. There's just too much for one person to keep up with at this point; you need a team and colleagues to stay informed." - Mike Richardson, Director of REMC #1
In light of the current economic downturn, organizations have had to sacrifice technological improvements to support their basic professional needs. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan has unfortunately had extensive experience with limited bandwidth and its unmanageable costs. Single points of failure and a pure lack of high-speed wireless availability have left schools and businesses without the same advantages as Lower Peninsula organizations.
During a time when funds seem preventative, however, recent partnerships have allowed some organizations to move forward to accomplish their goals more rapidly and decisively despite daunting IT costs.
Regional Educational Media Center (REMC) #1's Director Mike Richardson embraces the value of regional and statewide collaboration. In an attempt to increase economies of scale and reduce bandwidth costs, Richardson and his staff created the U.P. Educational Technology Consortium, a collaborative partnership between REMC #1, the Marquette-Alger Regional Educational Service Agency (MARESA), Eastern Upper Peninsula Intermediate School District (EUPISD), and most recently the Dickinson-Iron Intermediate School District (DIISD).
REMC #1 became a Merit Member in 1996. The center serves the Copper County Intermediate School District and the Gogebic-Ontonagon Intermediate School District in Michigan's Western Upper Peninsula, which include 10,000 students and 700 educators in both public and private schools.
MARESA also became a Merit Member in 1996. The agency provides services to the Marquette and Alger counties in the Upper Peninsula that include 12 school districts, 1 public academy and 3 parochial schools that serve about 11,000 students. The RESA also has strong relationships with Northern Michigan University, the Lake Superior Partnership and several human service agencies in the state.
A charter member of the consortium, EUPISD is the largest geographic intermediate school district in Michigan and has been a Merit Member since 1998. Serving over 7,500 students, EUPISD strives to provide "every student, every opportunity, every time." In the past several years, the ISD's educators have been working tirelessly to integrate technology into the curriculum in order to align their programs with the state's standards.
The most recent member to join the consortium, DIISD, serves about 6,000 students and over 700 staff in 9 school districts on the Michigan-Wisconsin border in the central portion of the Upper Peninsula. DIISD has been a Merit Member since 2010 and only recently became a member of the consortium because it did not previously have access to high-speed Internet fiber. Now, because of Merit's REACH-3MC project, DIISD has access to Merit's statewide fiber-optic network and all of the technological benefits it provides.
In a joint effort to maximize limited dollars and data center resources, REMC #1 allowed Marquette-Alger RESA and DIISD to utilize its data center by aggregating physical hardware and centralizing combined services into one secure location. This has allowed the involved organizations to expand their economies of scale while building upon their capabilities as resources become available to them. The EUPISD uses the consortium primarily for bandwidth and knowledge, but this collaboration has enabled the organizations to share the costs for services, giving them access to more resources than they would have been able to afford on their own.
"We get [Marquette-Alger RESA and DIISD] to help us pay for our hardware, and they're getting bandwidth that they wouldn't otherwise have access to. Merit is the only provider that was willing to help us do that," said Richardson.
In cooperation with the partnership, REMC #1 provides the RESA and DIISD with valuable services, including firewalls, anti-spam, and content filtering. All of the organizations benefit from a unified threat management system for web-filtering firewall and application control. The system is used to protect the network from both internal and external attacks. The REMC also provides packet-shaping equipment, which partitions a portion of bandwidth to each of the districts, as it is needed, so no one district can monopolize the bandwidth. In return for these services, the RESA and the ISD help pay for data center costs so that their Internet traffic can be transferred via fiber from the MARESA and DIISD schools to Hancock and tunneled through Merit's secure network.
"This has become something that is growing on its own, and it's already bigger than we thought it was going to get, " Richardson said. "In the face of economic downturn, expansion is something to look at."
Tangible Improvements Through Remote Services
Connecting to Merit's fiber-optic network has enabled REMC #1 to host services remotely through Merit's redundant infrastructure, allowing it to help schools within its region while avoiding exorbitant commercial costs. The REMC currently maintains a media collection of over 4,000 items, coordinates Distance Learning Education across five counties, and helps provide secure Internet access to all of its students and teachers. When asked about the REMC's ability to provide additional helpful services in the future, Richardson commented that, as a smaller organization, they have the ability to be more flexible and more responsive to the needs of their users, especially when services are maintained centrally and thus, more efficiently.
With Merit's REACH-3MC project to be finished in the summer of 2013, Merit's high-speed, fiber-optic network will be more readily available to Upper Peninsula organizations, creating accelerated opportunities for collaboration and professional growth. The private, affordable network will enable institutions like REMC #1, MARESA, DIISD and EUPISD to acquire reasonably priced bandwidth, allowing their users to download resources faster and more efficiently. They will also be able to better consolidate their services and provide a greater quality network to Michigan's education and nonprofit communities. Richardson said that with the upcoming improvements through REACH-3MC, they will be "keeping their eyes on the horizon" for new ways of leveraging their economies of scale to provide more educational tools in support of teaching and learning.
Leverage Networking for Collaboration and Learning
Making connections with colleagues around the state has helped professionals like Mike Richardson foster innovation for their users by generating efficiencies and reducing expenses. With the number of intermediate school districts in Michigan, however, it becomes difficult to identify similarly structured schools that may want to collaborate on IT projects. As an educational director in the U.P., Richardson said that part of his success comes from making the effort to talk to people from around the state about sharing equipment and forming partnerships.
"You make the relationships, and you make them work, " said Richardson.
These relationships allow people to learn from one another as they share their experiences and what lead to certain outcomes. Talking with other IT professionals in Michigan keeps people informed about what has been done successfully in the past and how their current and future projects can be improved.
By working with Merit and local organizations in the Upper Peninsula, REMC #1 is setting the example for other RESAs and ISDs considering collaboration. The U.P. Educational Technology Consortium has enabled consolidated services and has better positioned MARESA, DIISD, EUPISD and other participants to deal with the changing economy.
September 2011 - Merit Connections Newsletter
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