Happy New Year!
A new batch of projectors, wireless keyboards and mice were delivered during break. Please work with your technology coaches if you are ready to have one of these placed in your classroom. We should have enough projectors on hand to meet the rest of our classroom requests for the school year. We are also working on sound systems as appropriate. Remember to have your technology plan ready as you discuss your needs with your tech coach. Thanks for your patience as we try to place equipment into classrooms.
A new email filtering system was installed this fall. Hopefully this has cut down your nuisance email traffic. Please contact your tech coach if you would like to learn how to manage your email traffic.
Lee, Bill and some outside consultants have been working on managing our Internet traffic. During their research they discovered that over 70% of our traffic was being generated by clients listening to, watching and/or downloading music, video and animation files and doing social networking. It is difficult to judge how much of this traffic has a legitimate educational purpose so instead of blocking this completely a priority system was established that limited the resources dedicated to this type of traffic. A second option that adds resources to our network specifically for this type of traffic is being tested over the next two months.
You Can Help Manage our Network Traffic by limiting your recreational and non-essential Internet traffic during our high traffic time from 7:45 AM - 3:15 PM on school days. You can also help our students be good literate citizens and digital consumers. Your media specialists and tech coaches can help! Digital literacy and citizenship are exceptionally important both inside and outside our educational community.
Computer upgrades and new computers for elementary classrooms are being considered as our next major project. The new reading and math curriculum is driving this capital project. Bill will be working with me and the elementary tech coaches to prioritize this project.
Interactive White (SMART) Boards are being considered for placement in classrooms where teachers demonstrate a teaching style, lesson design, attitude, and tech plan that fits with this type of technology. SMART boards are not necessary for show and tell types of technology interaction. If you are a teacher that is comfortable with using technology to demonstrate, manipulate, model, reference and interact then this might be the thing for you.
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2 comments:
I am thankful for the new e-mail filtering system. It works great for me. I appreciate not having my mail box jammed with junk each morning and for having the choice of dealing with junk mail when it fits my schedule. This is a good product--thanks!
Greg
Concerning our internet traffic: Can we tell how much of this traffic is coming from United Streaming? Have most teachers gotten information about the recommendation to download United Streaming videos to their computers for classroom use instead of playing them directly from United Streaming's site?
Greg
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