Thursday, September 23, 2010

Tech Meeting 9/23/2010

Meeting notes: Betty Weycker:

Betty Showed a Star-fish video,  an inspirational story on YouTube.
It was the summer from "you know what",  but they pulled it together

New tech Facilitators:
Courtney Talor, Kimberly Park Elem
Forest Sturgess Mineral Springs
Randy Shearer Petree Elem?
Crystal Joyce Walkertown Elem
Brian Smith Hanes MS
Mike Nesser Carter Voc
Ryan Crater Brunson Elem
Scott Armstrong, North Forsyth
Becca ?, Reagan

Overview:  General Information:
  • Marlo Gaddis, director of Instructional technology
  • Jackie Pierson, Media
  • Carla Miller, Technical Support manager
  • Kevin Sherril,  Mr. IT
  • Debbie Harmon, NCwise Coordinator

475 Corporate Square is for NCwise training, and instructional technology training

This Educational Building, 4801 Bethania Church Rd.
  • we are in room 219
  • There is an auditorium
  • a large conference room
  • IRC is down-stairs, a wireless computer lab, and another computer lab down there too
  • Other building, there are 12 conference rooms
 New students - district wide
  • elem 208
  • MS 263
  • HS -49
  • Non-traditional 54
  • total WS/FCS: +476

 Bond monies: this summer
  • Speas--20 new classrooms, with classroom solution
  • 32 classrooms at Glenn
  • Carter HS - 20
  • Downtown - 12
  • Diggs - 28
  • Piney Grove - 62 Ip phones
  • Kingswood--new location
  • Miller Street closes next Friday... 
  
Personal Losses:
Many people in the tech department lost close family members. 
Chippy fell down 13 steps
  
Assist Tickets:
  • Taking five days sometimes to get to tickets...
  • Things are not getting done in 24 hours.  
  • Betty knows this People just have to understand what has happened this summer with all the moves, and how proud she is of the staff considering everything.
 Classroom Designs for WS/FCS K-12
  • Why price list not on the web--people need to understand what they are ordering.
  • Classroom design: 
    • She will post spreadsheet with the "standard" for the different levels
    • 714 classrooms in 2 years that have the complete classroom solution along with the training that goes along with that--there is a huge commitment...commissioners and board are still supporting the model.
    •  Middle and HS  standard is 55" flat screen
    • Elementary is smart Board and Promethium Board.
    •  They have to do 300 more classroom solutions before next summer as part of the 2006 Bond. 
Laptops:
  • Budget is approved to purchase wake forest laptops.
  • Think of the list as a slide-rule
  • all designed in how many she gets from Wake Forest.
  • until Tuesday she could not tell anyone anything
  • There is an order by year.
  • She will be letting us know she will be contacting the schools soon--T-61 Lenovo
  • Will definitely be in TBT updates next week (probably not this week)
Role of Technology Facilitator:
  • At least 20% of time should be in the Role of facilitator
  • Supplement has doubled in two years (from $1000 to $2000)
  • We can continue monthly (2-4) or go to every other month (supplement with webbinars, etc.)
  • Maybe 5 times a year? 
    • First suggestion: Idea for open labs on the day of the meeting?
    • Maybe one month technical and one month instructional?
    • Maybe sometimes a K-5, 6-12 split
    • Sandy--maybe send in suggestions week before--Betty introduced the MTAC advisory
    • Sam Walker, Susan Mcbride--NW MS, Jackie Pierson--IRC, Jean White-Reynolds, Erin Mulhurn-Old Richmond, Pat Glover-Flatrock, (Sharon Creasy--West is leaving--going to be the AP Career Center.
    • Delayne Harley: New administrative assistant for Betty

Marlo Gaddis:

  • Webportal linked off the Quick Links on the main WS/FCS Page
  • Archived has all the old TBT's
  • April 17, 2009 Betty had posted the signature requirment for teacher e-mails.  Remind staff:
  • The revisions add a new Section III.10., which reads as follows:

All WS/FCS employees with a WS/FCS e-mail account shall adopt and use a uniform e-mail signature which consists of only the following information and none other:

  • a. Employee’s name;
  • b. Employee’s title;
  • c. Employee’s school or location;
  • d. Address of the school or location;
  • e. Employee’s school or office and/or cellular telephone number;
  • f. Employee’s school or office facsimile number.
  • Employees are not permitted to add a quotation, graphics or other language or item beyond those set forth hereinabove.  
Instructional Technology Department:
  • Under departments/instructional technology on the website
  • (Lost Emory Maiden, April Patterson and Thelma Anderson)
  • filled with: Doreen Bates, Steven Anderson)
  • Roles is under the contact information page at the bottom...
  •  In-Touch Blog--be sure to check out...
  • New teacher Tips blog (linked on the top right of the In-Touch blog)
  • google translate at the bottom of every district page.
  • CIPA (children's Internet Protection Act)  restrictions make the web filter change almost on a daily basis.  Web filter request changes are not a priority at this time.
Staff Development:

  •  Will be posted on the Tech facilitator portal soon (all face to face and on-line)
  • Moodle--runs from the first of the month to the last day of the month.
  • get credit after the month is complete.
  • Can not go to the moodle site to register, you register in staff development and registration, and then they will be contacted
  • Workshop list is also on the calendar page of their websites.

Media Cast--is a media retrieval system 15 schools have it.
Dibels: (elementary) Curriculum coordinators have install information

Elementary report cards--are available--
  • Sherry and Colleen worked on this,
  • On teacher's webportal..now on the left under "schools specific reporting"...
    • teacher will only see their school...all the templates are there.  EVERY YEAR there is a NEW report--Please make sure they use the correct YEAR!!
  • They can save to the H drive, but they must follow the elementary school directions (posted on the webportal) so that principals can see...
  • Notes from Colleen:Type only on the English worksheets, don't delete Spanish worksheets, don't move them around
  • No more R drive
Email,  another issue
  • Parent trying to e-mail a teacher and it's not getting through
    • In most cases...go to website, they find the teacher's name and they click on the name and it opens the default e-mail client for the computer (like outlook express)
    • It's not a School wires issue, it is the way e-mail links work on websites
    • Best Practice--Parents basically need to copy the e-mail address and paste it into whatever e-mail they use--need to educate the community on that front.
Essential Skills:

All new standards are posted uner ACRE Accountability and Curriculum Reform Effort:
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/acre/

These standards should be taught be every classroom teacher.  DPI is developing tool kits for all the different subject areas to incorporate technology--start talking to teachers about the fact that they have the responsibility to teach these standards.

State is doing their new technology plan this Jan,  district will be Nov 2011, and that's when we will develop a new plan for schools.

Computer Skills Testing:
not just a 1 year deal :(,  if you received any federal monies (all schools have) then have to comply.
Plan is to do the exact same thing we did last year--If they took computer test before and passed a CTE class and passed, then they will not have to take but if not, then they will take the Atomic learning test.

Queen of learning Village/  Melissa Edwards:
  • https://learningvillage.wsfcs.k12.nc.us/_layouts/LearningVillage/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2f
  • to navigate there:  go to ws/fcs website go to employees/resources/planning
  • Sign on is their active directory user name and password...
  • Curriculum warehouse
  • You can find all the Updated pacing guides for all of the subjects--some with links to lessons
  • Professional Learning Community section is coming
  • Single school Culture resources are coming
  • help document for school wires are also there
  • On-demand writing prompts can be found on LV
  • Career start information can be found there too
  • If you have questions on things under instructional resources, like nettrekker, ask Melissa
  • LV will be down next week for an upgrade this Friday (5:00 PM) through October 4th (hopefully will be up sooner)
  • You can find the bookmark with all the log-in information for LV, net trekker, atomic learning, learn 360 and others) tech facilitator web portal/information for technology facilitators/ instructional technology/learning village (the path will be in the TBT)
Atomic learning
  • In process of updating accounts
  • Let staff know of this resource
  • try and get teachers to be self sufficient
  • user name is your full e-mail address, and pw:  wsfcs (unless they changed it)

Learn 360:
  • Teacher Account is their full e-mail address  @wsfcs.k12.nc.us,  old default password is wsfcs360
  •  Students;  user name:  wsfcs and lunch number, pw:  lunch number  (not all students are in there yet, they are up to Hanes alphabetically)
  • Do not delete a teacher who has moved to another school
  • They upgraded last week, and have added much content (including reading rainbow)
Parent Assistant:
  • Up and running...
School Wires:
  • There was some Confusion. (parents/teachers)..the grades drop down now says NCWISE under user options
  • In October, you will have the ability to put a banner across the bottom of your page--directions are inon the webportal under the school wires folder also on the school wires wiki..
  • Ability to put a title in that banner below the slide show
  • Do not delete pages of teachers who move!
  • Can make section inactive to hide from the public
    • Upgrade to Cyntricity is coming in December hopefully over the holidays with a huge amount of increased capability.
    • Synergy upgrade is coming
Betty:  Pricelist
Jackie Pierson: 
  • Make sure Media is a Quick link on your web page
  • All students and teachers have log-ins to destiny...
  • click on home base school
  • Students: log in with ncwise number and their last name is their pw (as it is in ncwise)
  • Webpath express is an instructional resource on Destiny
  • Teachers log in with an "f" in front of it: using their  payroll number  and their last name (all lower case) is their password (and the number that goes on your strawbridge photo...(nothing to do with their social security password)
  • teachers can create resource lists and webpages that are topic related.
  • IRC destiny resource are under teacher resources and learning village
  • IRC is a destiny school and teachers can reserve videos and books through school mail and equipment like headphones and microphones for pod casting
  • Laminates no longer repaired as a central office expense, now a school expense
  • No longer TV's that qualify for repair,  have to look at classroom solution from here on...
Carla Miller:
  • Surplus pickup,  is under web portal
  • info for tech facilitators/request for information/choose your school
  • do not use the SPRING spreadsheet
  • when items are compiled, they need the following info:
    • must be non functional equipment
    • type
    • model
    • serial number
    • fixed asset
    • machine name (if possible)
    • ESIN if available
  • found a company (Scott's Recycling out of TN)
    • They will take everything INCLUDING BROKEN TV"S!!
  • Schedule pickup will be coming out in the next couple of weeks
  • Still taking old laptop batteries
  • old copy machines
  • overhead projectors as well
  • hold off on data projector lamps (waiting on confirmation, mercury issues)
  • will be a survey of older equipment that you have that still works to get out of your way, and use for parts here at the new central office.

New Technical Support Model:
  • Assigned darlene (level 1) anderson zones 1 and 2, Tim Frizzell (level 2)
  • Tayron zones 3/4, Justin Ritchey (level2)
  • Zones 5/6  Garnett Hill (level1) Jennifer Ellington (level2)
  • Corey McLeod--Zones 7/8 (only one right now-advertised second position)
  • Jeff Taylor is central office support
  • Gloria Padgett--CTE technician
  • Calvin Raynor--pickup repair and delivery
  • Mike Cox, good fixit man
  • Courier Services:
    • zone 1/2 Monday
    • zone 3/4 Tuesday
    • zone 5/6 Wednesday
    • zone 7/8 Thursday
  • If it is an administrators machine put in a ticket for a site visit!
Kevin Sherrill/technical
  • Sherry--sharepoint
  • Buddy, Chris, Chrintine, Jim M etc.
  • wsadmin password is changing once a year, try and keep as secure as possible.
  • Will activate on Monday, when you log-in, you were be prompted to accept , another box will pop up and give you the password..not distributing a paper copy
    • new password will be pushed out on Monday
    • will need to recall your old password for machines that do not get it
  • New password is tied to the new images.
  • All installs to go through the AICP from now on...will keep core images the same
  • Buddy Martin and Chris Corbin
    • drives:
    • K drive / Media Storage
      • file://340data01/xxxmedia$
      • is mapped for everyone in your school including students (they can delete--if it's gone it's gone, you need to back it up locally)
      • folders are labeled by year, and they will inform you when a folder has to be deleted because of space restrictions.
    • N drive  newspaper/ Y Drive yearbook
    • I drive--CTE storage
User accounts:
  • Generic account user and school number...
  • Had been for subs....parent volunteers, etc.
  • Can be used to check access to websites for teachers wanting to test certain sites.
  • Major issue with usb drives and an auto run feature--that locks out all administrator accounts.
  • They will disable the auto run feature, so when they plug in a window will not pop up asking them what they want to open. They will have to navigate to mp computer.
  • Map drive issues replacing network drives, reset that under disk management and rename the drive like X or Z
  • Buddy will get those directions for us...
  • Sheet on different images on the web portal...
  • Images will be coming out next weekend..'

0pen labs start in October...

 Work order system:

  • Saved 20,000 with assist
  • A little bumpy
  • Demo last year
  • Jim Mendoza to demo again
  • Roll out to teachers
  • Assist 5 times of failed log-in and u are locked out.
  • They need to have them log in to set up their accounts...
  • Users will choose a building and location
  • User name and pw is active directory user name and pw

Ticket flow;

  •  Everyone goes into a queue
  • Only see tickets that in ur building
  • Either look by technition or by queue...
  • They made all assignments for u, and now we need to assign
  • By technition--just see those assigned to u
  • Assist edit tickets in "BY Queue"
  • DOT does authorize u to assign tickets to:
  • You or service desk
  • Can Not edit a ticket assigned to anyone else
  • Use find command--powerful. Does not let u edit from that view...
  • My tickets view--requester view
  • Find ticket view--only way to see closed tickets...
  • Currently don't use assets--long way off
  • Encourage u to get users to sign in at least once
  • Do not alter the priority unless major event/ fire!
  • Technitions have all these extra features...

Service tickets

  •  Users need to know how to find tickets
  • Comments vs history:
  • Two way conversation between requester and technition
  • They should not reply, but should click on the comment link in the email notification.
  • Email Replies stop today.
  • Slight exception: data manager request might go directly to an auto-decline...
  • Hit finish ticket more than one time, will get more than one ticket...gotta watch the complete bar.
  • Internal only comment check means requester will not see
  • I have closed, then tell user to use find command to see old ticket...
  • Do not set up an email flag for closed tickets.
  • Check on expiration for link to closed tickets




  

Wiki-How to, a decent source for computer trouble-shooting



When it comes to basic computer trouble-shooting and maintenance and repair, I have used "Wiki-How to" to help me explain some basic step by step directions in troubleshooting computers.  Look at all these categories of how-to!

http://www.wikihow.com/Category:System-Maintenance-and-Repair

Here is just a sample, there are a ton more: 

  • How to:
  • Permanently Erase Data Off a Hard Drive
  • Remove Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications
  • Access the Bios, Grub Boot Menu and Bash Shell of a Data Domain Appliance
  • Backup Files on a Laptop
  • Change Computer BIOS Settings
  • Change Your Keyboard from American to English
  • Change a Windows XP Product Key
  • Clean Your Computer System
  • Clean the Windows Registry by Hand
  • Clean up a Slow Performing Computer
  • Clear up Unnecessary Files on Your Linux PC
  • Clone a Partition
  • Close Several Programs and Pages by One Click Using a Batch File

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Podcasting using Audacity and uploading MP3's


Recently, our French Teacher asked me about uploading an MP3 file that she had created using a sound recording program called Audacity--which did pose some problems for us...
(http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=9869_)

But, I was able to upload an Mp3 to our schoolwires website with now problem and copy the url and open it in a new window.  From that link it simply opened up windows media player, so our school wires website should be capable of playing uploaded mp3's.

Generally, the process would be to upload a sound file either on a  file page or simply as a link on a flex page. There is also a "Podcasting Page" on School wires that you can choose when you create a new page. Here is a link to the PODCASTING page Help manual on school wires:
http://help.schoolwires.com/36651082412593930/lib/36651082412593930/_files/CenUnit5Ch9.pdf

Our staff will receive training on working with a "podcasting page" on November 16th--Here is the schedule of technology training for this year:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ApexppJsFByqdGVVak1YTklrTUkwZmdDUWtzZ0xmT0E&hl=en#gid=0

Finally, if you figure out school wires is not the best place for podasting, there are alternatives... Here is an article with a suggestion for a site where you can upload podcasts:

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11293_7-6246557-7.html

The school district has also written about Podcasting on their "in-touch" technology blog:

http://wsfcsintouch.blogspot.com/search/label/podcast

Finally, Mr. Cardarelli completed a project this week using Photo-Story.  Photo-Story is an easy program to use and make a pod-cast.  If it's your first time making one, and you don't want the problems of Audacity, give Photo-story a try.  Here is the free download site for Photo-story 3:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

Here is a link to some more resources on Podcasting/digital story-telling: