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Hello,

I would like to introduce myself. My name is Julie and I work as the Technology Coordinator at Annunciation School. I have attended a few workshops and have probably met some of you.

Our school is starting to research school management systems and I was wondering if your school has one and what it is.  What do you like about it and what don’t you like.

Currently we have our own website that is managed by a volunteer (we post a lot of information for parents here), teacher webpage’s and a grade portal for our middle school. We would like to incorporate the school information into one system where parents have a login so that we can use our website more for marketing purposes. I attended a workshop at the NCEA conference that was put on by SchoolsSpeak. They seem to incorporate a lot of what we are looking for in one package but I’m sure there are a lot of other programs available.

Thank you for taking the time to get back to me.

Julie
Technology Coordinator
Annunciation School

The school board member writes:

I have been looking into Linux and think we could do some travelling carts for pretty cheap. Or if not carts we could have some computers in the classroom. Linux runs well on old computers (Windows 98 or the Mac equivalent), which could be pretty cheap to get our hands on from places that are upgrading, and then you can run all sorts of free programs – word processing, etc. If you put Wine on the computer, it will emulate Windows and you can run many (not all) old software CDs. That would allow teachers to do keyboarding and art and math facts, etc. on the computers.  There is a guy on my work listserv who runs his whole law office using Linux, free software, and internet-based programs.

It might be something to look into for the future. Do you know much about Linux, or have you heard of any schools using it? We probably couldn’t do podcasts and things, but it might be a solution for the younger grades, which could free up tech room space for the older grades.

Archdiocese/ISTE Standards: Grades K-2

Archdiocese/ISTE Standards: Grades 3-5

Archdiocese/ISTE Standards: Grades 6-8

Standards (gr. K-2) — Resources & Lessons

Standards (gr. 3-5) — Resources & Lessons

Standards (gr. 6-8) — Resources & Lessons

Contact me with any questions or issues with the documents.

Board of Teaching – Tech License revisions (download)

Grades K-2

Grades 3-5

Grades 6-8

We are planning on meeting again in place of our regular January tech meeting.  Watch your email or contact me for more information!

The McREL standards state that “fifteen documents were identified as useful for developing content standards for technology,” including the NETS-S by ISTE, but the 1998 version of NETS-S has since been drastically revised.  Looking at the McREL standards, I am finding myself frequently asking the question, “what does that have to do with educational technology?”  Almost half of the McREL standards seem to envelop the very broad spectrum of “technology” to include science, engineering, agriculture, medicine, etc.  While I realize these are all fields related to technology, it is not focused on the same things as NETS-S, which has a smaller focus on computer and media technologies our students would be using in school.  Beyond the first three McREL standards, I find very little relationship to NETS-S from 1998 or 2007.

McREL says very little about multimedia and collaboration and nothing about authoring tools beyond a desktop publishing program.  With Web 2.0 in the forefront of our technologies today, can we afford to overlook this omission?

In my opinion, we will need to look at three different sources when creating a list of standards for the Archdiocese.  These three sources are: NETS-S from 1998, which focuses more on learning how to use computers and related technologies; NETS-S from 2007, which focuses on collaboration and creativity as well as current digital responsibilities of students, with a central focus on activities that use computer technologies rather than lessons on how to use various technologies; and McREL standards for technology, which includes much of what is contained in the previous but has some areas that relate more to industrial technology, which most of our schools do not offer before grade 9.

There is no way to merge the documents together seamlessly because of how each is organized.  So, there are three documents available here.  One is a grid that shows how I feel the McREL standards relate to NETS, side-by-side.  Another is a list of the McREL Standards, each followed by a note that refers to a NETS item.  The final document is a list of the NETS items, along with a “profile” talking about various activities students should be able to accomplish at different benchmark years, and each of these are followed by statements from the McREL standards that I felt related.  In some cases the relationship between the two was obvious, but at other times I really stretched, for example, using the category topics to link some of the McREL loosely to NETS.  Hopefully after our next meeting it will make some tiny bit of sense, but for now, here it is:

Standards – Grid

Standards – McREL base, with NETS items

Standards – NETS base, with McREL items

mcrel-tech_standards_3-5

mcrel-tech_standards_6-8

I am hopeful these will download for you. Let me know of success or failure. Should we have a new category of ‘standards’?

I am feeling energized after yesterday’s meeting!

As well, who has anything included in their AUP dealing with video? Since more and more items are being posted – not just pictures and names anymore! How about we bring a copy of our AUPs to the first Tech Coordinator meeting? Or post somewhere here?

Also, I need my memory refreshed. One of the reasons (I thought) we needed – or it was a good idea to have – an AUP is that some federal funds are available only if we have an acceptable use policy in place? As well, isn’t there something about CIPA that requires us to have one? I know, I should know the answers to these things. I just have one in place for our school because I knew we needed it (for lots of reasons.)

Overview
I made sure all student lab workstations were equipped with the proper add-ins/plug-ins needed for the testing, and I went through and enabled pop-ups for the student Learnia site ahead of time. We used Internet Explorer v.7 at Blessed Trinity.

I created cards for the students with their Site Code, Student ID/Username and Password. I used index cards and just pasted a regular mailing label on which I had printed the information using mail merge and a spreadsheet. The “test tickets” printed on the Learnia site are virtually useless – you really can’t use them more than once (even if you laminate them first, I learned last year), and they’re hard to store in those little strips. Each teacher got a set of student cards for each group they teach.

I also created a resource binder for each of my teachers. These binders contained:

• A list of their students with passwords,
• A copy of the instructions for tests they will administer,
• A full printed copy of the test (without answers), so they could make their own copies if giving the test in written form,
• Sample answer sheets to use if giving the test in written form, and
• Math reference sheets (for math teachers only).

This seemed to help them to know exactly what their responsibility was as test administrators and keeps all of their information in one place. My plan is collect the binders at the end of the year so they can be updated if necessary for next year’s teachers.

Scheduling the tests wasn’t nearly the hassle I expected. I had the teachers schedule their own time and was available to help for at least their first testing period. After that, they could request my help if they wanted it. Once students were logged on (more difficult with the 3rd and 4th graders), things went very smoothly, and most teachers did not need my help. Some teachers scheduled an additional time in the lab to teach students just how to log on to the site. Being their first time, I thought this was very beneficial as far as time efficiency was concerned. In future years, perhaps only the 3rd grade would need to do this, since most other students will be familiar with the process. Some teachers broke the tests up into multiple class periods and others used time from other classes to complete the tests in one sitting.

Issues and Questions
There are still some issues with the administrator instructions. Many of the specific instructions are incorrect (such as the existence of a highlight tool?). I found that to be confusing for the teachers and students, and in some cases the teachers went “off-script” to give instructions, which is not ideal for a standardized test.

Students (especially the younger ones) could benefit from a better zoom tool to make the text bigger. At younger reading levels, the students are used to larger text. The zoom tool, while helpful on the first reading passage, does not allow you to use it for the other passages, and it manipulates the screen in a way that prevents the user from being able to scroll properly.

Join the Conversation
Are other schools or teachers having similar experiences and issues? Please add to the conversation with your comments, good and bad, about your Learnia experience! I have also asked my teachers to add their comments here.

What are other schools doing for the mid-year testing? Is anyone using more than one ClassLinks test? If you are using only one, which one?