Overlake
Technology

This week tech directosand educators from the Northwest are meeting near Mt. Hood. This 3-day conference has focused primarily on using technology to facilitate international collaboration and global service.

The conference is unlike traditional conferences in that we don’t allow vendors on site and many of the sessions are loosely arranged around themes. In addition these sessions often don’t have a lead presenter. This format allows us to fully participate and drive the discussions, share best practices and develop stronger professional ties with peers.

I am reviewing my list of great ideas I’ve taken from this conference and it seems overwhelming. My aim is to pull 3-5 of these ideas and fully implement them over the next academic year. In addition to various practical technology tools I have also seen some that are just plain fun. I hope to share a few of those with you here in the coming days.

This week we got final approval for a school-wide Microsoft DreamSpark membership. This allows us distribute free license keys for professional-grade software developer and designer tools to Overlake students. For more information about software availability check the DreamSpark website here. If you are interested in obtaining a license key please visit the Technology office in lower Humanities.

Recently the National Council of Teachers of English took a stab at revising their curriculum to include various web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and wikis. Here is a link the the eSchool news article. While I agree completely that we should spend more time focusing on various digital literacies, it appears that NCTE may have missed an important aspect of the digital literacy movement. So far I have seen no discussion about educating students to be critical consumers of the new modes of communication. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Here is a guest posting from Rennie our Desktop Support Technician…

We recently received a Acer NETbook to evaluate for 30 days. It’s an Aspire AOD150-1165, with a 10 inch display, 1 Gig of RAM, and a 160 G hard drive. It came with a 6-cell battery which seems to last about six hours. First impressions – it is small! This has both good and bad points. It’s small enough to easily carry with one hand, slip in a bag, and move around. It weights just under 3lbs. However, the keyboard is cramped, even for someone with small hands. The small display is tiring to look at for a long time. It helps to bump up the brightness, but that also compromises battery life. With a max resolution of 1200×600, there’s a lot of scrolling necessary for web browsing. The wireless works well, jumping on both home and public networks quickly and holding the connection with no problem.

Some surprising disappointments: The touch pad and associated “mouse” buttons are difficult to work with. The pad has very little boundary, so it’s hard to tell when your fingers have moved off and are no longer providing input. The buttons are really one button which you press on the left or right. If you don’t press on the very ends, it is hard to push. Without looking, it’s hard to feel where you are pressing.

There is no optical drive, so we will find an external DVD burner to create recovery and driver disks, which Acer kindly gives us a utility for. The unit comes loaded with Windows XP Home, which does not allow it to be joined to a domain and therefore on our network. We’ll reload it with Windows XP Pro, join the domain, and see how it runs Microsoft Office and our other student software.

Two years ago we upgraded our campus to Microsoft Office 2007. As part of this upgrade documents are now saved in a new XML format with the .docx file extension. In order to open and modify these files from home you must either install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack or upgrade your version of Office.

If you choose to install the Office Compatibility Pack the download is free and versions are available for the Mac and PC.

Please take a few moments and update your home computers.

PC Users: Information and the download can be found here.

Mac Users: Information and the download can be found here.

I know other Overlake bloggers occasionally post personal updates and reflections. Since I often get questions about how things are going with my program at UW, I thought I would blog about my progress. I am excited to say that about two weeks ago I passed my general exams. In other words, I am near the end of my program and the only remaining step is to complete my dissertation (which is well underway).

For those interested, my Ph. D. will be in Education with a specialization in Educational Communication & Technology (ECT). UW doctoral students are also required to choose cognate areas that help frame their coursework and research interests. I have chosen Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Philosophy of Education and Philosophy for my cognates. While daunting at times, this program has been incredibly rewarding.

As my dissertation begins to take its final form I hope to keep you updated with occasional posts on my blog. Stay tuned.

The last several weeks the Technology Team has been especially busy. Project Week included several inspirational on-campus projects, many of which included various technology components. With everything from a virtual planetarium, to several music studios, a documentary film project and student blogging about their adventures in Seattle… this place was hopping.

In addition, we also moved all the servers and network core from the soon to be demolished TLC building to our temporary space in the new Armstrong Humanities Building. A special thanks to Jim our server & network manager for all his planning. Our systems were only down for about 12 hours while we moved the servers to the new racks and rerouted our fiber optic network to a new 48 strand backbone. Anna and Rennie were also busy completing other critically important projects on campus.

They include:
• Setting up all the language teachers in the temporary classrooms east of the gym.
• Overhauling the Math/Science laptop carts.
• Installing a SMARTBoard in one of the 5th grade classrooms (now all 5th and 6th grade classrooms are SMART classrooms).
• Updating ceiling projectors and installing integrated sound systems in all Math classrooms.

Other exciting news…
• We now have a 50/10mbps business class internet connection serving our campus.
• We have dedicated fiber connections to all campus buildings.
• New TLC plans are on target and we should have a contractor selected in the next few weeks!

Annie Wright School in Tacoma is having a Film Festival this spring open to High School Students. They are offering two cash prizes of $827 for Best of the Festival and the People’s Choice Award. There is no entry fee! If your film is selected to play at the Festival it will also be on our local cable companies (Click) On Demand Channel.

The deadline is April 13th!
For more details check out the website www.827filmfestival.com.

Yesterday we completed our first technology orientation for teachers moving into the new William Armstrong Humanities building. All the classrooms are outfitted with state of the art projectors, SMARTboards and integrated audio systems (including jacks for MP3 players so teachers can play their Zune or iPod). The rooms also include wall controls for the projectors and sounds systems (pictured here).

It was very clear during the orientation how excited the teachers are to get in their new spaces and begin using the technology. Many of the teachers are ready to get into their rooms and begin teaching this Friday! We are planning a half day workshop in early March which will focus on using the SMARTBoards.

I often get asked about electronic recycling. Good news! Now Washington now has a FREE, convenient and environmentally responsible recycling program for computers, monitors, laptops and televisions. According to their website the program is open to households, small businesses, schools & school districts and charities. For more information visit E-Cycle Washington’s website.