6
By Michael Chamness
IASA Director of Communications
With reform groups and government entities all
trying to “fix” public education, a project called
IlliniCloud provides an interesting juxtaposition: a
self-driven solution that relies on collaboration and
the sharing of resources and ideas.
“It’s an Illinois-based initiative that’s by K12
schools for K12 schools,” summarized Jim Peterson,
the technology director for Bloomington District, who
doubles as the chief technology officer for IlliniCloud,
a consortium of more than 400 school districts from
seven states, including more than 200 Illinois school
districts. “Our goal is to provide resources for school
districts at scale. By leveraging shared resources to
meet common K12 technology demands we can do it
cheaper, faster and better than districts are able to
do by themselves”
Simply put, IlliniCloud facilitates school districts to
share hardware, applications, services and IT
support. Throw in built-in security features, ongoing
upgrades and a never-ending search for more
efficient ways for schools to do business and it is
evident that the benefits to school districts go beyond
the estimated 30 percent to 60 percent savings for
the above-mentioned items.
IlliniCloud is non-profit and Peterson and other
Illinois technology leaders have volunteered their
time and excess capacity within their own districts to
bootstrap its development.
“Now that we have critical mass of member
districts, and a series of grants and state projects that
provided a catalyst to expand our services, we have
built a sustainable cost recovery model that charges
districts only for what they use -- a model that
responsibly expands what the cooperative has built,
and one that districts can count on year after year,”
Peterson said.
The group for the most part utilizes existing
resources, such as using the state’s Illinois Century
Network for bandwidth and school districts’ data
centers across the state. They don’t spend money on
research and development or buy the newest gizmo.
Instead, they wait for a product or service that is used
by peer groups or developed within a school district.
Then they try to deliver it to all of their members.
“It’s kind of like Walmart,” Peterson said. “We
fight for new licensing models with vendors as a
whole, versus the 800 plus districts divided, trying to
get CPS prices that rarely happen. Quite simply, if
they want to be on our shelves, they have to change
their pricing models that are more education friendly.
“We don’t really need to create or buy new things.
I cringe sometimes when I hear about somebody
going out and spending a lot of money on the newest
technology promised to boost achievement or
another state or federal program that rarely has
adoption in K12. It is our feeling that there are many
highly effective individuals, organizations, and
institutions throughout our state. Using cloud
services is simply a tool to help them efficiently
expand their reach to students and staff they are
trying to serve regardless of school size, geography
and tax base.
We see great projects that take root out of the
places like the Illinois Math and Science Academy,
our state universities, state agencies and regional
centers, or organizations like the Illinois Computing
Educators. Our goal is to leverage those efforts, find
the best ways to integrate tried and true K12
technologies, and invest our dollars wisely.”
IlliniCloud has been able to access federal E-
Rate funds and also received a $5 million grant from
the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) for school
(Continued on page 7)
IlliniCloud: The silver lining in
technology for Illinois schools
Technology in the classroom
