The Plan - At Long Last, Data Gathering and More

Our school district is moving in a positive direction with a long range plan that has all the pieces coming to make data gathering and analysis extremely easy. The next three years will be an exciting time for everyone in our school district.

The Sharepoint system will be used as the data warehouse vehicle that will allow teachers and administrators to use 'dashboards' to access data easily. This is an extremely important, yet, missing piece of our current system. For example, Professional Learning Teams in our school find themselves unable to make curricular and teaching decisions because the ability to analyze data is cannot happen until all the data is gathered in one place. There is a group of teachers who are already beginning to work with the administration to identify specific types of data that needs to be collected.

A new student information system will also be in place by 2012. A significant feature of most student information systems is that there is an electronic grade book and attendance component. Another important feature is that it will most likely be web-based. The process of selecting a student information system (SIS) is underway.

We have already moved to an Active Directory environment which allows for so many processes to be automated. For example, a new teacher will automatically have a network and email account created when they are hired. Classes will be assigned automatically along with connections to other systems that are used in the school district.

The use of the Outlook email system for students and District staff is paving the way for easier and increased communication between faculty and students. Our students also now have a Windows Live account tied to their district email account. This includes 25 GB on cloud storage and the use of MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote online.

The Missing Piece

I think it is great that our school district is using technology to move us forward in the data gathering, communication, and productivity areas. The ability to analyze data will undoubtedly help teachers with instructional decisions. I also feel that moving to a cloud-based environment is fine as long as ALL students AND Staff have access to the cloud from their homes or via some type of personal computing device. Yet, another important component, in my opinion, is still missing. The instructional technology piece. There is no mention of this any where in the Plan.

I am very hopeful that SharePoint use will be expanded to become the one environment where teachers will have the ability to host their wiki, blog, web site, or any type of social networking site. I know teachers in our district would welcome the opportunity to use an 'in-house' system. Some school districts are using Google Apps for Education as their one stop shop. Zoho also has a wonderful suite of tools teacher could use. SharePoint is already in our district house, however, so it makes sense to explore this possibility further.

What remains to be seen is whether or not this last piece falls into place and makes us complete.

This image by lumaxart and has a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 License

The image used at the beginning of this post is by Andy.Brandon and is has a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 License.

Tablet Training

Several teachers came to the TLC or worked with Tech Coaches in other locations this week for tablet training. I am happy to say I've heard that teachers are generally happy with the information they learn. Are they sponges soaking up whatever we give them? Maybe leaky ones right now but repeated use of new techniques will help them retain what they learn. We all know this is a daunting task we face. Thanks, Tech Coaches, for making a difference! Let's hope these teachers go back to their departments and spread the word about their easy and enjoyable tablet training experiences!

I don't know about you but I seem to learn something new every time I help someone. I am hopeful this is a sign of the tablet learning/using/sharing culture being alive and well. Teachers are investigating on their own and discovering ways they can make the tablet do what they want it to do. For example, using the SnipIt! tool to encompass the entire IE7 window is a slick way to 'ink' on the Internet. (Normally, this can't be done with the standard inking tools like those found in MS Office.) Using SnipIt!, one can drag the + cursor over the open IE7 window to make a screen capture. That part won't be completed, however, until you tell SnipIt! what to do with the capture. So, ink away on the screen; just don't finish the capture unless you want to save it for a future use.

I had to trouble shoot an issue with a Word 2007 document all of a sudden not allowing inking. I found that if I save the document as a 97 - 2003 version, I was allowed to ink on it. I was also able to ink on the document if I then convert the 2003 version to a 2007 version. Very strange.

Please notice the new counter at the top right of the blog. Thanks to Nicole LaBeau for sharing that with me. Click on the link over there to go to the Easy-Hit-Counter.com site. Choose a counter and copy the code supplied. Go to the HTML/Java gadget and paste the code in the window that opens. Click OK and you are done!

That's it for now!