District Technology Committee
Minutes – March 30, 2010
Joe Butler Cindy Hubert Caroline Loomer John Schinker
Carla Calevich Kristen Huston Kathi Powers Todd Wasil
Michelle Gagné Rosanne Kraus Todd Rings Ann Marie Williams
Chris Hartland
The district technology team met at Central School on March 30, 2010 from 4:05 – 5:00 PM.
Attendance is indicated above. Middle school teacher Tom Valenti also attended the meeting.
1. Tech demo: Voicethread and Flexbooks
John showed this tool (http://voicethread.com), which Mr. Wasil seemed to know everything
about, except that he couldn’t remember. The basic idea is that you can upload a series of
pictures, and it makes a slide show out of them. You can then comment on each of the sides,
either by recording a voice comment, adding a text comment, or recording a video comment.
This allows a student to narrate the slide show. It has some great applications for digital
storytelling, reports, presentations, etc. When shared online, a Voicethread can also be
configured to allow others to comment. Those comments can optionally be moderated. So, a
student (or group of students) could create a project and put it online, and others could
comment on their slides and give them feedback. Or, a teacher might post a Voicethread with
several discussion prompts, and ask the students to weigh in by adding comments. The tool
has both free and paid versions, but the free version does just about everything most people
need.
John also showed CK-12 Flexbooks (http://ck12.org/flexr/). The idea with this tool is that a
teacher can build a customized textbook using freely available online sources. Those sources
include book chapters, wiki entries, and other articles that are licensed with copy-friendly
Creative Commons licenses. You start by searching for a topic. You can then review the
resources found, and add them to your book. Once you’re finished with that, you can edit any
of the pieces. Maybe you only want the first part of this chapter, or you want to re-word that
confusing paragraph. You can make any of those changes. You can also add your own text
and pictures. When you’re finished, you have a book that you can share electronically with
your students or print out.
2. Old Stuff
John provided quick updates on a number of ongoing projects.
• Wireless update
The wireless network at Central School should be working (although Todd Wasil had
trouble using it from his Droid during the meeting). The laptops at Central will be
configured to use the new network over spring break. The wiring at the high school
should be completed this week, and we plan to configure the access points there over
spring break as well. Wiring at the middle school has just begun, and the installers plan to
work on that over spring break as well. The planning for the K-3 buildings is nearly
complete, and installation there should take place shortly after school is out in June. This
is also the tentative time frame for the access points in the athletic center and the board
office. There are no plans for wireless at the maintenance/transportation facility. We have
also not addressed outdoor wireless on the main campus. We’ll investigate the
possibilities for that as funding and time permits.
• Teacher tech grants
Tech grants were due the day of the meeting. Six applications were received, totaling
$29,907. John will provide the applications and feedback forms to staff members prior to
spring break. Each team member will be asked to evaluate four of the proposals. Team
members are encouraged to complete those evaluations as quickly as practical so we can
move forward with the process.
• Waiver Day feedback
John distributed the feedback for the technology portion of the Waiver Day, including the
general feedback about the breakout sessions. The feedback was overwhelmingly
positive. Nearly everyone felt that the morning was time well spent. Feedback on
individual sessions has already been given to those sessions’ presenters, and Mrs. Powers
has received all of the feedback, including the questions relating to the non-technology
sessions and afternoon activities.
Nearly every response to the question “This Waiver Day would have been more valuable
for me if:” addressed a lack of time.
The suggestions for future technology sessions were not surprising, and include such
things as teacher web sites, Smart Boards, office productivity tools, finding online
resources, Flip cameras, Moodle, and social networking tools.
• Google Apps
Last week, a group of interested teachers and administrators met to discuss student use of
Google Apps. The group’s primary concern is providing access to these applications in an
appropriate way that also addresses expected behavior, safe online practices, and
cyberbullying. At the high school and middle school, it was decided to allow students to
create Google Apps accounts, but not automatically assign them for everyone. That way,
teachers can have the students sign up and use them when appropriate. The team also felt
that the best place to introduce Google Apps for all students may be at Central. Joe
currently teaches office productivity applications in Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. Some
time during this unit could be used introducing them to Google Apps, and some of the
basic office productivity instruction could take place within that environment. We still
need to discuss this a bit more to work out a definitive plan, but it seems like mid-year
fifth grade may be a reasonable time to roll this out.
Cindy also suggested that a refresher in the sixth grade Word class might be appropriate,
especially beginning in 2011. If a general need is seen by middle school teachers,
students could also receive similar instruction in 2010-11. The down-side is that it’s a
nine-week class, so some students wouldn’t necessarily get their accounts until close to
the end of the year.
3. Summer Tech Classes
John reported that Morgan Kolis and Janet Rowland have volunteered to play a role in the
management and instruction of the summer tech classes. Joe Zenir has also expressed some
interest in doing a more in-depth Moodle class, and Kristen Huston may be interested in
some more extensive Smart Board classes. We’re still waiting to hear on available funding.
We’ll begin finalizing plans after spring break.
4. Summer Projects
• Web server upgrade
We’re currently seeing capacity problems in a number of areas, including our web server,
mail server, firewall, and three building file servers. The first step for upgrades involves
splitting the web server into three parts. One will handle the district web site
(www.bbhcsd.org). The second will handle staff web sites (staff.bbhcsd.org) including
blogs. The third will handle Moodle (moodle.bbhcsd.org). Splitting these functions
should allow us to better handle the load. Over the last few months, we’ve seen
significant slowdowns on the web server, especially when a lot of people are using
Moodle. This is due to the number of SQL connections being made to the server. We’ve
raised the limit from 150 connections to 800, which appears to be helping for the
moment. Incidentally, our web server is seeing about 63,000 visits per month, from more
than 22,000 unique visitors. The main page at www.bbhcsd.org gets about 1400 hits per
day.
These changes to web site configuration will happen in conjunction with major updates to
Moodle and Wordpress. Both have major releases coming this summer, and we hope to
install them while switching servers.
Additionally, we are planning for upgrades to the firewall and further transitioning to the
storage array to alleviate problems with slow web access and a shortage of disk space on
the servers at the High School, Middle School, and Chippewa.
• Email changes
A change in spam scanning was implemented two weeks ago to alleviate some of the
mail server problems. Essentially, all email was passing through the spam filter. Because
the filter needs examples of both good and bad messages, outgoing email was being sent
to it as examples of good email. We stopped doing this to improve performance, and
instead hope to use a sampling of outbound email as examples of good email instead.
This has dramatically improved mail performance, especially when sending messages.
We’re also looking for additional solutions to address this ongoing frustration.
Additionally, we’re also looking at the possibility of routing our email through Google. It
would be possible, as we move to Google Apps for Education, to just send our email
there. Gmail would then be our webmail client. It would also be possible to just have
everyone use Gmail instead of re-configuring Outlook Express.
Joe expressed concern about this plan. In cases where we have trouble accessing the web,
using Gmail would cause a lot of frustration. Kristen also noted that our teachers are used
to Outlook Express, and changing would cause a lot of problems for some of our
teachers. Tom Valenti also support the continued use of desktop mail clients, because
they’re more tightly integrated with the desktop. So, for example, you can right click on a
file and send it as an email attachment. Such things are not possible with web-based
email like Gmail.
John reported that we could switch to Gmail, and still use imap, configured in Outlook
Express, to access it. This seemed to be a better option. From a tech perspective, though,
this would mean reconfiguring the email setup for every person on every computer
district-wide.
John also reported that we would need to make some decisions regarding email archiving,
which would not be trivial to do if we were using Gmail. Those who want details and
have an interest in weighing in on that discussion should contact him.
• Staff moves & changes
It is anticipated that we will have an abundance of room, building, and position changes.
Such changes will mean reconfiguration of computers and network accounts, which will
take quite a bit of time this summer.
• Queued printing
One item that was initially on the list of things to do this year has been pushed to
summer. This is queued printing. Currently, the computers are configured to print directly
to the printers. We want to change that, so the computers connect to a print server. It
manages the print jobs, and sends them to the printer. This has a number of advantages,
including the ability to redirect printouts to an alternate printer, and delete queued jobs
when the printer isn’t available. We will also be moving toward print monitoring and
quota software, which will allow us to monitor and limit printing by user. Eventually,
students will have print quotas, limiting the amount of printing they can do.
5. Other
No additional topics or concerns were raised by the team.
The next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, April 27, at Central School. This will be the last
meeting of the school year. Additionally, team members are reminded that grant presentations
are scheduled for the afternoon of May 17 at the high school. Agenda items for the April 27
meeting should be submitted to John.