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As the school year rapidly draws closer, Dan McCarriar is running through checklists both large and small. Hired as the director of technology for the Steel Valley School District in May, Mr. McCarriar has been busy all summer preparing for the return of students and teachers on August 22 and August 23.
One of the primary tasks is the annual preparation to equip each student with the appropriate iPad, with some high school students receiving a new accessory.
“We're going to be introducing keyboard cases for the first time for ninth graders going this year. What I've heard from the high school is that they want a more functional laptop-like device,” Mr. McCarriar said. “An iPad is a great device, but sometimes when you get into writing a lot of papers and things like that the typing on the screen just doesn't quite cut it.”
Then there are the smaller tasks on the seemingly endless to-do list, including a check of every piece of technology in each building, including audio/visual systems, printers and copiers, and staff computers. And that’s just the hardware.
“It's just all the thousands of little preparations. There are all these apps and websites that we use, and they all have to have student accounts,” he said. “So, we’re doing a lot of behind-the-scenes kind of work so that hopefully it’s seamless when school starts.”
Through it all, he’s been busy building a team. Mr. McCarriar came on board as part of a transition to an in-house IT department following a couple years of caretaker work by the Allegheny Intermediate Unit.
“We've been fortunate to have help from the AIU for the last few years here at Steel Valley,” Mr. McCarriar said. “But we've recently hired a systems and network administrator who is a Steel Valley employee.”
The department also hired an in-house technology support specialist and will continue to have the AIU as a resource.
“I've been really trying to focus on making sure we get some great people into those spots,” he said. “I'm excited to introduce those people to the community when teachers and students come back.”
Mr. McCarriar has extensive IT experience to lean on as he navigates his first school year with Steel Valley. A native of Severn, Maryland near Annapolis, he was fascinated by computers from an early age. He was accepted into Carnegie Mellon University, which introduced him to Pittsburgh, and studied computer science. He was working for CMU before he graduated, gaining experience in multiple departments at the university, including working on the early forms of wireless networking.
“We were one of the pioneers in doing campus wide wireless networks,” he explained. “That sounds kind of silly at this point, because everybody has that, but we were one of the first ones that actually had wireless coverage in every building.”
Mr. McCarriar later spent three years at Duke University, where he worked on the university’s networking and helped build a web services group that was responsible for various university websites and a content management system. He returned to CMU, this time helping the university explore the early days of streaming video so that professors could record lectures and provide them beyond the traditional classroom. He also continued his work with network systems, eventually running the department that was responsible for the university’s networking, data centers, communications cabling, and more.
He was on the move again, though, as his wife accepted a job in Washington, D.C. Mr. McCarriar landed a job with Amazon Web Services for a few years, but the pull to return to education was too strong. It was at that point that he landed in K-12 education.
“I was actually looking around for more universities, but I found an opportunity at a local independent school in D.C. that was advertising for a CIO/director of technology and got that opportunity,” Mr. McCarriar said.
He spent seven years with the school and discovered that while the budgets and resources were different, K-12 information technology has all the same issues as a large university.
Mr. McCarriar and his wife decided to return to the Pittsburgh area. He worked remotely to help his former school transition to his replacement and picked up some consulting work, at which point the Steel Valley position opened and caught his attention.
“One thing that attracted me to the district was the fact that they're using Apple devices across all grades,” he said. “Apple puts out a great product in terms of being on the cutting edge, but also in a thoughtful way in terms of how these technologies affect and enhance education.”
Mr. McCarriar is an advocate for digital citizenship, information security, and data privacy. One of his long-term goals is finding ways to work with district staff to help educate both students and staff about safe technology use, as well as finding ways to help teachers navigate new technology in their classrooms. He pointed to an upcoming release of Apple’s iOS, which will include a new feature in the Notes app called “Math Notes.” The program touts itself as being able to complete math equations, including algebra.
“In an educational context, is that an interesting tool? Is it scary?” McCarriar said. “I don't know the answer, but that's the kind of thing I'm looking forward to helping teachers kind of process and figure out for themselves. These tools are going to be available to students. How do we not just have a kneejerk reaction to disable it? How can we take advantage of it?”
In the meantime, Mr. McCarriar will be focused on the start of the school year. There are bound to be some bumps along the way, as there usually are in the world of technology. Students, parents, and staff in need of assistance can email techsupport@steelvalleysd.org or call 412-464-3600 and dial extension 8324.
“My goal is to make sure that for the vast majority of problems, anybody on the team can help,” he said. “We really are starting over in a number of different respects. We're doing everything we can to make sure that starting school isn't rocky and we have everything under control as much as we can, but there are going to be things we just don't know. So, bear with us. And I think by this time next year, hopefully people will be really impressed with the level of service we're providing as well as the products and services we're putting out.”
