My father found out last week that he has cancer. He will begin treatments this week and the hope is that he will be cured. The reason I bring it up here is because I can't conceive of going through a health situation like this without access to high speed Internet. When my dad found out that his yearly physical had turned up some troubling issues, where did he turn for more information? The Internet. When he needed to communicate with his family to keep them informed of his prognosis and the course of his treatment, where did he turn? The Internet. When he was looking for the qualifications of the doctors recommended to him, where did he turn? The Internet. When he needed to let his clients know that he wouldn't be working for some time, where did he turn? The Internet. When he needs to do work from home during this time of healing, where will he turn? The Internet.

I can't conceive of living in today's world without access to high speed Internet. Maps, phone numbers, books, movie schedules, research for work, email, news, instant messaging, social networking, weather information, applying for jobs, registering for classes, taking classes, keeping in touch with family members, sharing pictures and documents, banking, shopping. I can't imagine it!

So, how do we give our students the skills to use these resources? How do we ensure that they have access to the Internet while they're students? We can provide laptops, but that doesn't guarantee Internet access. Perhaps we need to lengthen school building hours to give students access to the network and Internet there before and after school. If we're in smaller communities, maybe we can work something out with local Internet providers. Maybe Internet ready cell phones are the answer.

Honestly, I don't know for sure how to give students equal access to information. What I do know is that Internet access for students is a necessity in education today, and we better work together to come up with a solution for providing that. We can start by providing robust Internet in our schools, but we can't stop there. Access 24/7 is the goal. The question is how close can we come to approaching that goal?

Dad's lucky. He has good Internet both at work and at home, and he is a well versed user of Internet resources, but boy, does it ever make me worry about those who don't have those resources. What a huge disadvantage in today's world!

Happy 2011, the year when schools will continue to struggle to re-invent education to take into account the new world we live in. A world where we have instant communication without the stumbling block of non-verbal cues, where we have information at our fingertips making filling out worksheets and doing math problems a snap, and where technology devices are considered the panacea of the 21^st Century.

If I sound contemplative and full of questions, then I’ve been successful. I worry about email, and instant messaging, and Facebook, and wikis, and other forms of social networking where it’s easy to bare one’s soul and to stomp on someone else’s, because you aren’t forced to interpret the paralanguage or the physical cues of the party you’re communicating with, or because you can purposely make your written non-verbal cues ambiguous. I worry about communicating without taking responsibility for what’s communicated, because the parties are distant in space. I worry about classrooms where students have become totally disengaged, because they’re being asked to spew information that is nano-seconds away on their mobile devices, which by the way they aren’t allowed to use, because that would be cheating. I worry about schools that sing and dance the one-to-one laptop movement as the answer to our educational prayers, as if owning the devices will suddenly cure the educational woes of this century. Oh, and by the way, test scores are a great way to measure the effectiveness of a teacher, but they are a terrible way to measure the success of a technology initiative. What’s that all about?

Let me be clear:

No one. I repeat, no one believes in the value of technology for improving education for both teachers and students than I do. Equal access to the Internet has become an educational moral imperative, and if my school can get Internet devices into the hands of all our students, then I will be thrilled, but it can’t stop there, and I know my school district gets that.

The ability to communicate across great distances, to access and analyze information, to solve real world problems, and to really get at the meat of one’s own thoughts and opinions through technology can’t be underestimated. We owe it to our students to give them access. On the other hand, the new wave in education cannot have the motto “laptops for all,” although these movements are admirable. The new wave in education has got to be better teacher and administrator preparation. It has to be. Do we throw the old ways of teaching away? Of course not. There’s still a place for stand-and-deliver on occasion. There’s still a place for working with physical manipulatives on occasion. There’s still a place for a printed handout on occasion. However, these methods are no longer sufficient.

Teachers need to become well versed in the use of technology themselves, and they need to model the appropriate use of it through their teaching methods. They need to teach students that responsibility needs to be taken for communication even when it’s not face-to-face and that purposely being ambiguous to avoid responsibility is unethical. They need to teach students that information is readily available on the Internet. From spelling to math problems to historical facts, you can look it up, and by the way, I encourage you to do that. On the other hand, you need to evaluate your sources. You need to protect yourself and your private information. You need to gather a variety of information from a variety of sources. You need to understand the concepts. You need to see that what you’re learning can be applied to real world situations, and that what you’re learning can be used to solve problems, to invent new information, and to suggest other things you want to know. You need to take personal responsibility for your learning. This is what’s important.

Yes, we should put Internet connected devices in the hands of all our teachers and students. Absolutely. But let’s get past the point we expect that mere fact to transform education, because it won’t. Teaching methods will transform education, and we owe it to our current teachers and our future teachers to show them what these new teaching methods look like, teaching methods that are right now being invented and perfected. It’s not an easy task. We start by demonstrating some of the tools, i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Google Apps, Prezi, Skype, bibme . . . the list would go on and on, and it evolves practically day by day. We continue by getting technology coaches into classrooms with teachers to help them and their students use all these tools to improve their individual journeys of learning. We realize the goal is self-sufficient teachers and students who don’t need technology help, but we know there has to be a transitional learning period.

I know I’m all over the page here with my thoughts. I guess my point is that we need to quit focusing on the devices. Seriously, laptops, iPods and iPads, interactive whiteboards, student response systems, cell phones, document cameras, digital cameras. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. None of these things by themselves are transformative. Give me a school that focuses on what teachers, administrators, and students are doing, and I see a school that really means business. Give me a school where teachers, administrators, and students, work together to increase the learning of everyone, and I see a school that has really bought into change. While a significant technology budget is exceedingly important, change is not magically brought about by purchases. It takes more.

I hope I’ve generated some controversy here. Only with an honest discussion can we improve education in this country. What do your classrooms look like? What does your P.D. look like? How do your teachers feel about what’s going on? How about your students? And, where do you really fit on the continuum of educational change? Hats off to those schools who, one-to-one initiatives or not, are working hard to transform education through instructional practices. Welcome to educational technology P.D., Storm Lake teachers. Our transformative train is gaining speed!

I went to blog a few weeks ago and because of a server that needed to be replaced, I could no longer upload pictures. Oh, no! I think our provider for this web site has fixed that problem now, though, so it's time to get back at it.

The latest pictures I have are from Priscilla Robinson of her TAG students working with both Skype and with a web quest that she created for them.

I had someone say to me the other day, "We are so behind with technology in our district." I about fell off my chair. I wanted to adamantly tell this person that they must not be aware of all the good things that are going on in classrooms around the district. Our teachers are working very hard to make the best possible use of the technology we have, and we have a lot! Furthermore, our technology staff and our administrators are working very hard to plan for the future to make sure all our students and teachers have even more access to the technology tools students need to learn in 21st century ways. Way behind? I don't think so. While we talk about the future and how to provide and manage laptops for every student, our teachers continue to learn new ways to use technology in the classroom, including researching and information evaluation and collaborating and presenting and. . . you get the drift. We are not waiting for that golden opportunity in the future when we have everything we ever dreamed of. We are teaching the students we have now with the technologies available to us, and we're doing a great job of getting to that next step of more access for our students and teachers.

Many of our staff and teachers have started to blog. Please go to our main web site to take a look:

http://storm-lake.k12.ia.us/

Click on any building link there, and you will see links to both administrative pages, where administrator blogs are linked, and also links to the staff emails and blogs. Take a look. You will be impressed by what our staff members are doing.

Also, let me direct you to Karen Hixon's class web site, created for her unit on prairies:

https://sites.google.com/site/proprairie/

What a wonderful way for students to learn the material and to also display their learning using technology every step of the way.

We relish the opportunities we have to use technology in our schools. We just set up our brand new Google domains for staff and student use. We just finished updating a mobile lab of computers at the middle school and a mobile lab of computers at the high school to provide all the new tools we want to use in classrooms. We'll be deploying more laptops for students to check out for use outside the district. We have 62 more laptops arriving on Friday for two mobile labs for student use, one at the high school and one at the middle school. We have new networkable reading software to deploy at the elementary school. And, we have new music creating software on order for use at the middle school. That's not the mention all the new Flip cameras and digital cameras we've purchased over the past month or so for students to use, or the additional document cameras deployed for presentation use in classrooms. We are on the move, and we are moving fast!

Congratulations to our teachers who are working so diligently to keep up with educational strategies that use technology. I just put the stuff out there and show the teachers some basic uses. They are the heroes!

Take a look at this video and tell me what you think:

I think:

• We must provide our students with access to information--Equity
• We must change the focus—Higher Order Thinking Skills and Collaboration
• We must re-train our teachers—Professional Development

Instructional Strategies
Classroom Management

What’s the best way to do it?:

Ready accessibility to a technology device connected to the Internet.

This video is controversial. I think it offers some valid points, though.

It's wonderful to see these students using the technology we have available in our new elementary school.
Our teachers report that it's engaging both for the student at the board
but also for those who are waiting for their turns at the board.

I think about the fence I have in my back yard that needs to be replaced. How many boards do I need?
I suppose I'd better start by finding the perimeter of my yard. I bet these fourth graders could help me!

I blogged quite a bit when I was in graduate school only to stray away from it because of the time constraints of a new job. I've recently returned to blogging, though, because I think it's a good way to get people thinking about certain topics, and it's also a good way to promote the good things going on at school. In addition, I love the process of writing. I think it dates back to my debating days, when it was so fulfilling to formulate support for and dissent against various topics. Blogging is just such a wonderful place to do that in writing.

Since the administrators here are getting started with their own blogs and since several teachers are going to start having their students blog in the classroom, I've been looking for resources that talk about blogging. I was interested in the thoughts expressed on both of these sites:

Here are two links about blogging. The first one is a principal talking about good reasons to blog as an administrator:

Why administrators should blog

Why teachers and students should blog

It's a wonderful thing to put one's thoughts down on paper. Whether it is to think through a topic or to report on a topic, or to publicize what's going on, blogging is a wonderful educational tool.

The Internet is down this morning. At 7:15 a.m. when I first got to work, it was working perfectly. The next thing I knew it was shortly after 8:00 a.m., and I was receiving the usual barrage of calls and emails informing me that our Internet was down. Funny how quickly an organization knows that! A call to our Internet provider indicates that there’s a widespread outage from South Dakota into Iowa. Wow, no emails coming into the district, no ability to collaborate on the Internet, no outside sources of information, no online courses. Oh, wait, I have my Smartphone. Hooray! I’m not totally isolated from the real world.

It does give one pause to think of the ramifications of technology that is always going to be less than perfect. The bulb blows on the projector during an important presentation; the laptop you’ve used daily for two years suddenly won’t boot up; the cell phone gets dropped and quits working; the student information system has a glitch that requires the company’s intervention; or the Internet goes down. Argh! Our reliance on being connected causes stress and consternation when things don’t work as expected.

On the other hand, I can’t do my Internet project, but I can get a post ready for my blog to post as soon as the Internet comes back up. I can enter data into my local database for uploading later. I can exchange emails with people in-house. I can clean up my desk that hasn’t been seen for a month. What I’ve learned after my many years in technology is the key is to “Keep calm and carry on” when technology doesn’t behave as expected. It’s no use to get all stressed out and angry when the problem is out of your control. It happens.

Of course, as the technology director, there are those instances when things go down, and it is my job to fix it—Talk about stress! That’s a whole other post, though.

I contemplate regularly about what technology equipment best serves the needs of students and teachers as we move closer and closer to completely student centered learning rather than teacher centered learning. What I know for sure is this:

1. You need to provide professional development for teachers, where they can learn new ways of teaching, and where they can collaborate with one another and with others outside the school walls.
2. You need the biggest Internet pipe coming into your school that you can possibly afford.
3. You need the best wireless network solution your school can possibly afford.
4. You need projection equipment to allow students and teachers to share what they’re learning with the larger group.
5. You need devices that will access the Internet in the hands of as many of your teachers and students as possible as many hours of the day as possible.

I think it’s true that a computer with Internet access in the hands of every student and every teacher 24/7, with a staff of teachers who have learned a new way of teaching and classrooms of students who are allowed to take ownership of their own learning is a wonderful scenario for learning in the 21^st century. I envy those schools!

On the other hand, I think of all the schools across the nation, including our own, that are doing a great job of educating students, despite the fact they haven’t got 1:1 computer ratios yet. I liken it to my own family. While the ideal would be for all my children to have their own bedrooms, their own computers, and their own cars, this is not a feasible reality for my household. My children share computers, bedrooms, and cars, and I honestly don’t think that their development or their education is compromised because of that. We compensate for the reality, and we make it work.

There are schools out there where a one-to-one initiative just isn’t feasible, or where a one-to-one initiative is down the road a year or two. Could it be that we can educate our students well, despite the fact they don’t have an Internet device in their hands all the time?--Can we share mobile labs between classrooms? Can we share computers within classrooms? Can we loan computers to students who don’t have them at home? Can we use the cell phones that many of our students already carry? Can we teach our staff better ways of teaching, making technology tools a central part of student learning?--I firmly believe the answer to this is yes. I think we continue to be creative, and we share the technology resources we have—Imagine that, collaborating!—and we remind ourselves that it’s not the technology, per se. It’s the access to information and to others that is what’s important.

I applaud those schools who have found ways to put computers in the hands of all their teachers and all their students all the time. It opens up so many doors. I just worry that schools who have fewer devices think it’s inevitable that the education they have to offer can’t be as good. I adamantly disagree with this. What do you think?

I have just received pictures from Linda Gutel at the elementary school showing two classrooms of students working with technology. In Jean Knapp's 2nd grade classroom the students are learning the parts of the ear. While in Mel Langner's 2nd grade classroom the students are working with the laptops and using them to share information.

We are so pleased to have our students making use of technology for learning!

Our Elementary School media/tech person, Linda Gutel, and I just got back from ITEC, the Iowa Technology Education Connection conference in Coralville, IA, and we brought back all sorts of interesting information to share with our staff members. From social networking for learning (as well as the pile of policy decision-making that can require), to web sites for literacy, to one-to-one laptop initiative conversations, to tweeting on Twitter, the conference talked about all things that make up technology in education.

The point I want to focus on in this blog is a point that one of the keynote speakers, Vicki Davis, made repeatedly during her speech. Vicki Davis, for those of you who don't know, is better know on the Internet as the Cool Cat Teacher. She has blogged regularly for several years and also has led several wiki centered projects, connecting students across the globe for collaboration and learning. She now presents at many conferences like ITEC. Take a look at her sites. You will be so excited at the richness of the information that is available there:

http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/

http://www.coolcatteacher.com/

Vicki presented several times at ITEC, but  there was one point that hit the ball out of the park for me, and that was this: As a member of an organization, whether it be a teacher or an administrator, or the technology director, for that matter, there is really only one thing you can reliably change, and that thing is yourself. In other words, people can complain that the school doesn't have enought tech equipment or wish that the policies for social networking in school were different. Both things that we are improving almost daily in our schools, by the way. They can wonder why the schedule looks like it does or ridicule the latest government requirement when it comes to the curriculum for their subject area. Or alternately, as a teacher I can brush up on my own technology learning, and figure out what it is in my classroom that I can control and use to help my students learn.

We have many examples of these teachers in our own school district. Cindy Cone, the high school speech teacher, uses flip video cameras in her classroom to help teach speech. Esther Vieira, the high school Spanish teacher, uses Flickr and Bookr to help with Spanish vocabulary acquisition. Salli Nichols, a high school teacher, has used student cell phones as a way for them to respond to poll questions in her classroom. Preston Meineke has created a classroom wiki as a place to share documents with his students, and he's used Jing to create mini-tutorials for both when he's had a sub, so the students get the lesson from him even in his absence and also in the classroom when he's there to help those students who need reinforcement to the main lessons. Jacquie Bauer, an elementary teacher, is using Skype in her classroom to connect her students with people from different parts of the country. Jason Baker, another elementary teacher, has been using our student response systems in his classroom since last year, and in fact, he just did a training session yesterday to help get more teachers using them. Carrie Barglof is a special education teacher who has taken her SmartBoard and incorporated her Boardmaker software with it to create lessons for her students to use that are bringing out learning in her students that is remarkable. Many of the elementary teachers are starting to use Photostory 3 with their students to create video-like presentations from still photographs. These are just a few examples from the Storm Lake Schools of how our teachers are seeing the technology that's available to them and are running with it. We have many more, and for those of you who are teachers here, keep sending me your photographs of students and the different ways that you are integrating technology in your classrooms, so I can continue to spread the good word.

The point is that each of these teachers found at least one technology available to them and figured out how best to use it in the classroom. They didn't wait for the school-wide initiative that mandated the use of technology. They didn't sit back and wait for someone else to teach them how to do it. They saw something that would make education better for their students, and they did it. I commend these teachers. At the same time, I remain available to any of you who want some help or guidance in the use of technology in your classrooms. Just let your building tech or me know what you want to do, and we'll schedule a meeting to help.

The same principle of making a technology change for yourself goes for administrators, too. One may decide to learn to use Twitter, starts following tweets pertinent to education, and then begins to post his/her own tweets with useful or interesting information. Stacey Cole, our assistant high school principal has been doing this for some time. Another administrator may decide that blogging weekly on what's going on at school or on the latest book he/she is reading is the place to start, or another one may decide to work on his/her own web site. Diane Jones, our middle school principal, is using a wiki as a means for her PLC groups to collaborate and share information. The key is to start. The reality is that those who start will be amazed at the tools they are using regularly in a year's time, because one tool leads to another tool, and one professional contact leads to another professional contact, and each of those contacts may have a great idea you've never thought of that would work just great in your own school.

This, folks, is the beauty of collaboration. It's not the tool. It's the focus, and what the tool is used for to learn. You must start with a goal, and then you pick a tool that will help you accomplish that goal. Which one will it be for you? What is it that you want to accomplish? Like Vicki Davis said, "Start today!"

Mr. Noah Wilson has his students creating various culminating projects on their computers after they read books in their classrooms. Some students were making maps of the race at the end of Stone Fox, while others were creating newspaper articles describing the race. It's wonderful to see students actively using the knowledge they've gained from the books they've read, being creative, using technology, , and having so much fun all at the same time!

Two groups of people were trained this week. The first group was the group of teachers who took the 21st Century instructional strategies (featuring SmartBoards) course this summer for credit. With this group we shared successful SmartBoard lessons used in the classroom, collaborated to find answers to questions, and looked forward to what we want to do in the future. It was noted that we especially want to continue to integrate the use of the interactive white boards with the use of the document cameras, to take advantage of the markup possibilites for documents or objects projected from the document cameras. Teachers also contemplated where they fit along a continuum of technology implementation in their classrooms. It was noted that research shows that it can take 3 to 5 years to implement a new strategy with fidelity. This being barely year 2 helps us to realize the fast track we are on to use technology to make a difference in student outcomes. It is only through the very hard work of our teachers that this is possible.

The second training session was this afternoon at the East Early Childhood Center where teachers and staff were taught both the mechanics of using video cameras in the classroom but also some possible uses for video as both an instructional tool and as a way to keep parents informed. Teachers agreed that they would like to have more cameras available for their classrooms.

An important point that I keep returning to in my thoughts as we move forward with technology in our schools is this: We must get the technologies in the hands of our students. They must be allowed to use the equipment to learn. The video cameras and interactive whiteboards are both good examples. Teachers can use these tools very effectively for teaching, but until we take the step of letting our students use them, we are missing their very powerful potential of their use for student directed learning.

Jason Spooner sent me pictures today of his students learning about Native American tribes in Iowa.

What a joy to see a community of young learners making use of the plethora of information available at their fingertips! Thanks to Jason for sharing his pictures!

Another step forward at the middle school level is the Professional Learning Community wiki the staff there is using to share agenda items and documents, as well as a place for them to discuss issues affecting their classrooms throughout the school year. Allison Emery created this wiki this summer as part of a project at the Storm Lake tech conference held at BVU. Through consultation with Principal Diane Jones, Allison and I have spent time inviting teachers to join. We have uploaded and created links to documents and designed the pages in what we hope is a way that is user friendly for new wiki users to get started. The point of a wiki is for all users to edit and perfect what is there, so we anticipate our work will be changed, but we've provided a place for the staff to start. This is a great step forward from giant three ring binders, bursting with paper, to a 21st century method of sharing information. My expectation is that as the year goes on Mrs. Jones and her staff will come up with more and more ways to use this wiki for collaboration and will continue to edit and evolve those pages.

As you know, our new elementary school is equipped with lots of the latest technology, and our teachers there are making great use of that technology in their classrooms. Today, I got a picture from a high school math classroom, though, that makes a good point: It's not the hardware or the software that is important. It's not. I don't care if you are using a digital camera, a SmartBoard, a projector and the Internet, a mobile computer lab, Microsoft Word, or Adobe Photoshop. What we are teaching our students is to use tools to learn. It's as simple as that. "Make use of what's available to you to be productive and to learn." We are preparing our kids for a future that we can't even conceive of: Different jobs, different skills, new technologies, a whole new world. We need to teach our students how to learn, to think, to analyze, to synthesize, to evaluate, to collaborate, to be creative................That's what's important. Hats off to Al Slight in his math classroom where he's taken a very old SmartBoard, learned the new software, and engaged his students in their own learning!

Teachers, send me your classroom pictures. What are you doing to integrate technology in your classroom?

I just love the beginning of school in the fall. I remember so vividly the first day of school outfit, the new school supplies, seeing old friends, getting acquainted with new teachers....I loved the whole package! With students back, we get to troubleshoot students who forgot their passwords over the summer and teachers who think of last minute tech things they'd like help with. It's a great environment--Figuring out how best to learn with the countless tools available to us in 2010.

We had a wonderful technology boot camp at the middle school since I last posted. All the teachers learned about their new PCs and the new version of Microsoft Office that we've rolled out this year. While it can be a transition from the Mac to the PC, hopefully, the information we provided will make it easier. Teachers also were given a plethora of web tutorials and resources that should be helpful when they have questions. The boot camp also included a section on wikis, something the middle school is going to use extensively for their Professional Learning Community communications but also as a tool teachers may choose to use in their classrooms with their students. Finally, teachers learned all about the new copiers and printers in the middle school. It was a great day of learning how to use technology.

We continue to work at break neck speed to get as much of our tech work done before teachers come back as we can. At the high school we’ve updated all the computer labs, as well as added the new lab I spoke about in an earlier post. We've configured and deployed quite a few new teacher and office staff computers. We’ve also added a large screen TV in our commons area that will scroll daily announcements as well as have cable TV access for occasions that merit television viewing in the commons. This project is thanks to the ACE students and all the hard work they’ve done to raise money to make the school a student friendly environment.

Once the furniture and wiring is completed in the media center and the computer lab at the elementary school, we will deploy computers in those areas. Our biggest issue right now is getting teacher computers set up again, after having to tear them all down in anticipation of the new furniture that has been going in this summer. Many rooms have their new furniture, so that process has begun, but there are some rooms that we’re still waiting on. We are also looking into adding SmartBoards to the classrooms that didn’t get them last year. Unfortunately, some of those rooms weren’t designed for SmartBoards and all the technology they require, so we’re working at getting creative to make that project work. 

We continue to roll out Office 2007 to all the PCs in the District, somewhere around 600 computers. I was fortunate enough to attend a Microsoft Teacher Leader training session in July that armed me with lots of ideas for training teachers in the use of Microsoft products in the classroom. I was very impressed with the free tools available to teachers and am very excited to introduce the new technology instructional tools that are out there for the taking. 

I’ve been working closely with our Internet Service Provider and my AEA technology consultants to get to the bottom of the Internet performance issues we’ve seen over the past few months, and I’m very happy to say that the service provider is now actively working on the problem, realizing that the issue is coming from their end, not ours.

 We have training sessions set up for the new e2020 software for alternative high school students as well as another day for SmartBoard training for the elementary teachers who were unable to attend the training in June. In addition, there are several technology professional development sessions that will take place during the course of the next school year. 

As always summertime is a busy time for the tech department, and we can’t wait for everyone to get back and start using technology to increase student achievement!

What a crazy couple of weeks we've had in the technology department. We deployed four labs of brand new computers, one at the high school and three at the middle school. We updated JMC and configured the online software, attendance and gradebooks for the new school year. We began to load drivers for the new copiers and printers at the middle school. We emptied all the student folders in preparation for the new school year. We deployed a Windows 7 computer for testing purposes over the course of this school year in preparation for moving to Windows 7 next summer. We continue to load Office 2007 on all our workstations for the start of school. We troubleshot Skype in hopes of using it more effectively in classroom instruction next year. We continued to roll out new computers to staff members. We worked on some group policy security settings. We met as a tech staff to see where we are with our summer tasks and to plan and prioritize the rest of the summer. We sent a load of ancient technology equipment off to recycling. We continue to discuss technology professional development with administration and are planning for that. Speaking of which, I had the privilege of attending a training session for teacher technology leaders in Ames, and I came away with a plethora of information to share with teachers this school year. It's very exciting!

Right now I'm updating our virus protection management console.  It's been a long process with much troubleshooting, but it's going to be nice to have our programs updated for easier management of our many district workstations and servers.

These summers always go far too quickly, but we're feeling good as a tech department about where we are at this point. Afterall, we were completely rolling out a new network AND a new school at this time last summer. What could be more hectic than that?!

Made great headway today. Installed the new e2020 server in the rack in the server room, so it's no longer roaring in my office. I've never felt such a light server. I think it weighs less than some work stations do! This server will provide new curriculum software for the Alternative High School students. Also began the process of converting our current JMC database to the SQL version of JMC in hopes of there being better performance of the program when many users are accessing the database at the same time. JMC is our student information system, and it's used throughout the school year and into the summer for scheduling, grading, lunch money, student and teacher information, and so forth. Justin and I also made great headway with our images for the 160 computers I've written about before. It's an onerous task to make images exactly how we want them for various uses in the district, but it's well worth the time invested. The biggest problem is that the easiest way to image is to use the regular school network to do it, but doing so has a tendency to slow things down, so we wind up imaging computers after hours when no one else is around. Yeah, it's 8:15 p.m., and I'm at work. It will be worth it to have all these jobs done before school starts back up in August, though.

Back to work today after a couple days of vacation time. Looking forward to discussing technology professional development with the curriculum director, to finally getting an image pulled from our new Acer desktops in preparation for pushing that image out to 160  new computers, and to finding the bottom of my desk  and my email in preparation for the new school year that officially begins for me tomorrow.

What a great year 09-10 has been for technology in the Storm Lake Schools. From the outfitting of a brand new elementary school with state-of-the art technology for both staff and students, to a brand new behind the scenes computer network, to the beginnings of staff web pages, to the widespread use of technology in classrooms throughout the district, we have made great strides smack dab into the middle of 21st century educational strategies. There's no doubt that it's a great time to be a Tornado!