Importance of Technology in the Education Sector

Frank Williams III, IT Director, Student Management Systems at Houston Independent School District

Frank Williams III, IT Director, Student Management Systems at Houston Independent School District

Frank is a highly experienced Director Of Information Technology with a demonstrated history of working in the education management industry. His specialties include Domain Name System (DNS), Databases, Data Center, Management, and Software Documentation. Williams has a diverse background in student support services as well as admissions and enrollment management. He began his career as a teacher, and in 2013 he joined the Houston Independent School District. Over the years, he has worked in different roles as teacher, webmaster, and eventually as the IT directorin charge of the district's student information system.

What are some of the key challenges that a public school or school district encountered as the pandemic expanded the market's pain points?

The biggest problem for district schools during the pandemic was the unexpected decline in enrollment. That problem arises from a variety of factors, including the provision of high-quality education, resources, and facilities for the children. We helped kids receive content, teaching, and matched the needs of a virtual school environment by employing a Learning Management System (LMS). We also moved to a hybrid system, where kids or parents may choose to send their children to school or have them learn from home. Needless to say, it was a difficult transition, as several schools experienced enrollment drops and spikes. We witnessed a significant increase in attendance at the Texas campus because it was entirely virtual. This transition helped parents in deciding how they wanted to educate their children. It became critical for us to be in a more virtual state in order to assist the district. Our IT group swiftly responded to the district's needs by ensuring that all of our third-party applications, such as Microsoft teams, were operational. We leveraged a secure process to get access to the SIS system, HR and all third-party applications to enable everyone to log into the system from their places. I believe the pandemic compelled us to leverage technology to assist the district.The issue is that we are losing students as a result of other third-party services and different types of educational setups competing for their attention. However, we have recently noticed that children are returning because they want to get complete education experience.

What do you believe are some of the most recent technological developments in the market?

We are taking full advantage of a third-party company offering a cloud-based platform to support not only our departments but other campuses as well. The other part that we had to speed up quickly was our One-to-One Device Ratio. This initiative was setup up to make sure each kid has a laptop or a tablet device so that they can participate in the virtual instruction that's available in the curriculum without any delay.

Do you have any recent project initiatives that you've been working on?

The biggest initiative is working with data warehouse to pull together data from many different sources into a single centralized repository for sophisticated analytics and decision support. Our CIO's objective is to centralize all information and ensure that all the data we all share hasn't been modified until it reaches its destination or serves its intended function. We need to manage data since it influences students and their academic achievement, as well as increases analytics to provide services and funding for our campuses.

Ibelieve the pandemic compelled us to leverage technology in order to assist the district

What do you think the future of this space will be in the next 12 to 24 months?

For us, the most important thing in the future is to ensure that we are collaborating with all departments and continuing to provide the best IT services that will enable us to be a part of the conversation. Our primary goal is to transition into the cloud and virtual platforms.

Any piece of advice there for upcoming professionals in the field?

My best advice to them is to not to offer solutions first, but be a part of every conversation and listen to our school’s needs. We sometimes try to solve problems without consulting our partners, coworkers, principals, teachers, students, or administrative employees. We need to understand their problems, as well as the barriers they face in the classroom, and then connect the dots as we provide solutions to decision-making partners.