K12 Engineer · Chief Technology Officer, Model Communicator
Jim Tyler
K-12 technology leader. CTO of Model Communicator, free AAC for everyone. 2x Microsoft MVP.
K-12 Director of Technology by day. On my own time I build free tools for schools: communication software for people who cannot speak, Chromebook hardening, and plain-language security playbooks that fit a school budget. Every project here is my own.
- 20 years in IT
- 2x Microsoft MVP for PowerShell
- MAEDS presenter since 2019
- Author, PowerShell for Systems Engineers
- Watervliet, Michigan
Key projects
Free tools and guides for schools
Everything here is free. No accounts, no paywalls, no student data. Built on nights and weekends and used by hundreds of thousands of students, teachers and IT staff.
Model Communicator
Communicate Freely. A free augmentative and alternative communication system organized by topic, with a consistent sentence-building border on every page. No trial, no account, no paywall: the core language system is free for anyone who needs it.
modelcommunicator.com 658 checksGuerrilla
Security assessment for Active Directory, Entra ID / Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. 658 checks, each verdict proven by a golden fixture, mapped to NIST, CIS, MITRE ATT&CK and CISA SCuBA. Agentless, read-only, free, CC BY 4.0.
Explore the catalogActive Directory Security
Admin accounts that cannot be stolen, servers that cannot be reached from a classroom PC, Group Policy that cannot be abused, backups that actually run. Every item says which free scanner catches it, and which ones nothing catches.
Read the guideGoogle Workspace Security
District devices only, United States only, maximum data protection, student misuse controls, and AI turned off for student OUs. Every setting with its Admin console path and what it costs.
Read the guide 750K+ usersYou Shall Not Pass
Keeps proxy sites, filter evasion and tab spam off managed school Chromebooks. The playbook covers Jim's 10 quick hits and the Admin console settings that close the rest, with license and effort for each.
Read the playbook 13K subscribersK12Engineer
Practical walkthroughs for school IT: PowerShell, Google Workspace, Active Directory, and security on a school budget. The flagship video, Learn PowerShell in Less Than 2 Hours, has passed 500,000 views.
Watch on YouTubePowerShell.News
Practical PowerShell delivered to your inbox: automation patterns, tool builds, community highlights and real-world solutions from someone who lives in the shell every day.
powershell.newsTeacherMagic.org
429 AI prompts for 13 K-12 staff roles, connecting educators directly to Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot. 106 languages, 170 countries' standards. No accounts, no telemetry, no student data. Also home of You Shall Not Pass.
teachermagic.orgPowerShellEngineer.com
The PowerShell Engineer Standard: an AGENTS.md that teaches AI models to write secure, idiomatic PowerShell, with a benchmark and validator to prove it. The Standard is the product. The model is the demo.
powershellengineer.comAbout
Built on nights and weekends
I am a K-12 Director of Technology in southwest Michigan and the Chief Technology Officer of Model Communicator, a free augmentative and alternative communication system for anyone who needs one.
Twenty years in IT, two Microsoft MVP awards for PowerShell, and one book, PowerShell for Systems Engineers, written for admins who need automation that works in production, not a reference manual.
Everything on this site is my own work, built on my own time and my own equipment, and shared because school IT runs on budgets that do not stretch to enterprise anything. The guides are plain-language checklists written so any district can pick them up and use them.
Communication is a right, not a privilege. Model Communicator exists to remove the barriers between a person and the words they need.
The idea behind Model Communicator
Speaking
Field reports, not slide decks
No vendor pitches. Real talk from someone who responds to incidents at 11pm and ships tools on weekends. Every talk comes with a handout you can take back to your district.
- Midwest Tech Talk 2026 · Keynote
Zero Trust Security
Keynote at the Midwest Tech Talk in the Ozarks. Zero Trust as a philosophy, not a product line: what it means for schools and small organizations, where to start, and how far free and open-source tools can take you.
- MAEDS 2026
Defense in Depth: layered security approaches that work
Zero Trust is a philosophy, not a product line. What agentic AI changes about the K-12 attack surface, and the layers that still hold, all on free tools. Handouts: the Google Workspace and Active Directory security playbooks.
- MAEDS 2026
You Shall Not Pass
Keeping filter evasion off managed school Chromebooks, said politely, by a Chrome extension. Handout: the Chromebook hardening playbook.
- MAEDS 2025
Guerilla Zero Trust Security
Implementing Zero Trust on K-12 budgets: practical, resourceful security for districts that cannot afford enterprise solutions but cannot afford to skip security either.
- MAEDS 2024
Securing Active Directory with PowerShell and Other Tools
Hands-on AD hardening and auditing with PowerShell: finding vulnerabilities, automating compliance checks, and building a defensible directory.
- MAEDS 2023
Building Graphical Applications 2.0 with PowerShell · PowerShell AI
Two sessions: interactive GUI tools with Windows Forms, and integrating OpenAI into PowerShell workflows for K-12 IT administration.
Community
Serving southwest Michigan
Leadership beyond the terminal: school boards, planning commissions, youth sports and arts education in Watervliet, Michigan.
- 2024 – now
Treasurer and Audit/Finance Committee Chair
Watervliet Public Schools Board of Education
- 2022 – now
Chairperson, Planning Commission
City of Watervliet. Chair since 2025, trustee since 2022.
- 2023 – now
President, Baseball/Softball Rec Council
Watervliet Recreation
- 2024 – 2026
Former President, Children's Music Workshop
Arts and music education for kids in southwest Michigan
Contact
Just Jim. No sales funnel.
I answer every email personally. Districts and organizations hire me for Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 hardening, Active Directory security reviews, PowerShell automation, and AAC program implementation. If you just want to pick my brain for 30 minutes, that works too.
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