About the K-12 Data Center
Located on the campus of Dakota State University, the K-12 Data Center helps educational entities to
enhance their technology. The Center offers technology services to South
Dakota's K-12 educational community including public schools, tech
schools, cooperatives, multi-districts, etc. The Center provides
consistent, cost-effective services including email and calendars, email
list services, web hosting, course management, streaming media, a help
desk for the schools, and more.
More detailed information of the services we provide are listed
below.
Services and Objectives
All of the K-12 Data Center services for the State of South Dakota
K-12 Schools including Educators, Staff, and Students have been built to
provide a state-wide safe and reliable electronic communications system.
E-mail
- E-mail for Teachers, Administrators, and Staff
- This service provides a state-wide groupware capable e-mail system.
This service provides e-mail capabilities such as calendar
(scheduling & time management), contacts, and task list
applications. You can easily share your calendar, contacts, or
anything in your e-mail with your co-workers across the hall or
across the state!
- Your State K-12 E-mail account also lets you
send and receive messages from any computer in the world that
has Web access. That makes it easy to stay in touch with your
e-mail, regardless of your location.
- E-mail for Students
- This service is built on the same feature rich state-wide
groupware-capable e-mail system as the K-12 Educators use. These
accounts will coexist with the Teachers, Administrators, and
Staff E-mail system. This service provides e-mail capabilities
such as calendar (scheduling & time management), contacts, and
task list applications.
Web Hosting
- Web Hosting for K-12 Teachers, Administrators, and Staff
- Web Hosting for K-12 Students
- Web Hosting for Individual Schools
- Web Hosting K-12 Educator Associations
- The web hosting services provide a personal, reliable,
secure web space for associations that have state-wide
implications. This space provides a meaningful URL to state-wide
projects, associations, and/or activities that impact multiple
school districts.
- Web hosting of Department of Education sites
DNS (Domain Naming Service)
As the domain authority for the k12.sd.us domain it is the K-12
Data Center’s responsibility to ensure the naming of domains for
our schools follow the guidelines and rules for proper
registration. We are also responsible to ensure our servers data
is continually updated with the Internet root domain name
servers.Mailing List Services
We provide mail list services for school districts, State of South
Dakota K-12 groups, or organizations. The list needs to be educational
related. Course Management System - WebCT
WebCT is a tool that facilitates the creation of World Wide
Web-based educational environments. It provides an interface
allowing the design of the presentation of the course (color
schemes, layout, etc.) and it provides a set of educational
tools to facilitate learning, communication and collaboration.
WebCT allows teachers to enhance existing on-site, in class, or
distance education courses by putting course content online
including course syllabi, calendar, and communication tools.
Media Streaming Server
This service provides space for Educators and Students to place
streaming media (Video or Audio) resources to support classroom
instruction. This service provides both live streaming and
on-demand video clips. Internet User Authentication Services
We
provide Internet User Authentication to the schools, which
allows the schools to communicate securely with a central server
to authenticate users and authorize (or deny) their access to
the Internet. As we maintain user accounts in a central database
that all schools can share, we can provide a single sign-on.
This single sign-on gives us better security by allowing the
school to point their Internet users at a single administered
network point for authentication. Having this central service
also means that it's easier for the schools to track usage for
their users. As a part of this service the schools have the
ability to enable or disable their Internet access (for the
entire school or individuals) very quickly from one central
location. On-line system for requesting services and Account Management
The K-12 Data Center team has made every effort to make working
with them as easy as possible for their clients. We provide a
centralized web-based Members Site to facilitate technical support,
information sharing, and data collection activities.
The Members Site allows school technical contacts full control of
the school's account information as well as giving individual
users access to their own information. Misc. services
We provide direct technical support to K-12 districts by
conducting an on site review of network setup and topology,
configuration and hardening of servers, security features consistent
with DOE and BIT standards. We assist with setup of servers and
workstations, and other common technical support activities relating to
K-12 technology needs. DOE has many various services that it makes sense for the K-12
Data Center to provide, assist with, help support, or simply
offer suggestions to ensure success of the Department of
Education technology initiatives.
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