Notes from meeting April 2009

Please let Katie know by April 18 if you want off the IslandJ or if you are staying. If tech team is not for you, please let her know so we can advertise for a replacement. Also let Katie know if you plan to stay so I can account for everyone.

Leslie Fisher training all day April 22—may be 7:30-3:30. Call sub clerk to reserve/request subs.

MIET/Ed Tech Summit brochures will be coming. Fill them out and return to Katie as soon as you can to make sure you get into classes you want. Katie will pay fees. Offered for 12 PIR or 2 college credits.

For software ordering, pricing etc., please contact Gwen Williams. Sandy is no longer in our office as she has moved to HR. She will not be replaced in Info Serve.

For concerns on the HelpDesk, need to reopen ticket, etc., call Janet Enloe x 6032 she will direct to correct person, check if a ticket needs to be elevated… Please remember not to call Dan, Mark, Bob or other techs directly. Call Janet or Katie if you have problems or questions and they will redirect.

Refresh still on hold. Blitz is at East and has completed 10 elementaries. Probably will head to CMR and then GFH next so that they can then do refresh at those schools. What is being done is clean up on all desktops and making it so that things can be deployed over the network without a tech having to run out to the schools. Also, the desktops are uniform, teacheritems has moved to \\disk\Special\TeacherItems and z-drives too in many cases\\disk\staff\teacher_name. RAM is being upped to 1 gig on teachers and at least .75 on others unless they are laptops (schools must buy RAM for these) or old machines that don’t make sense to upgrade. Lastly, any disk protection is being taken off the computers, e.g. Drive Shield, except on some student laptop labs that do not have enough memory. Watch for java updates as they cause trouble with the gradebook. The correct version is in Teacheritems.

Projector project is still on track with East set for this summer.

Be sure to request a trial of NetControl 2 on your lab to try it out to give us advice on purchase.

The TeacherItems area has a Reset for Student profile/desktop in case a student really messes up his profile. Teachers must log on as themselves and type in the username to reset. They cannot reset teachers. This will erase that user’s documents’ folder and all other settings, customization he/she has done. Instruction shortcut is also in teacheritems.

PIR for technology is moving toward TAGLIT-based training. Teachers must be proficient by 2012 in all four areas: Basic tools, Communication Tools, Research and Problem solving, Multimedia, so PIR classes, which open next week, will revolve around these. Teachers will be offered pay to take these classes and also will take our own version of TAGLIT this year and base their tech choices around their needs. Our version will only have questions that revolve around the areas for which we are held accountable. Also, we will be relying a lot on the Team to offer the needed areas at your school.

Good news: we will have more money for teacher professional development for next year—probably about double what we have now ($80,000-100,000 expected). We will be looking to the team to provide training needed at their schools as many teachers like to learn at their home school, with their colleagues. Again, we will base this on Taglit needs.

Jeff has Moodle up on a server. Feel free to check it out. We hope to use it for online PIR classes, book discussions and eventually hybrid online/face-to-face and totally online classes.

Address is courses.gfps.k12.mt.us this is just for our team at this time. Tell Katie if you want to be on the Moodle implementation team, which will work and receive training this summer. You can set up discussions or other hybridization for your regular courses or professional development.

Don’t forget to update your tech plans. If there is stimulus money to burn or spend down this year, we will look to the plans for guidance. \\disk\special\teacheritems --look for the shortcut

Elevated Rights privileges: The “assessment” is being built from the following topics and will be comprised of accomplishing the task and pasting a screen shot of the task into a Word document along with short-answer questions typed into Word.

1. Create folders
2. Find executables for Word
3. Find location of your documents folder
4. Add/remove software
5. Add/remove printer
6. Map drive
7. Browse to your Z: through UNC: \\server\folder
8. Explain steps to take if computer not on network
9. Explain steps to take if can’t get to Internet
10. Safe surfing / phishing
11. Clear cache in browser
12. Browser settings (enable Java, javascript, etc)
13. Change power settings on computer
14. Resolution change (including refresh rate)
15. Scan a flash drive (or folder) via Kaspersky
16. Find your IP address
17. Identify computer specifications
18. Run disk defrag / cleanup
19. Start menu pin
20. Startup items
21. Task manager (plus killing a runaway thread)
22. Elevated install
23. Email configuration / password reset ?
24. Straighten computer desktop icons on student machine
25. Rebuild student profile
26. Troubleshoot classroom technology (boards, projectors, doc cams, etc)
27. Computer security / best-practices (locking keyboards, password management)

28. Hook up projectors, doc cameras, smartboards and troubleshoot.