Happy Friday! It has been a great week in Ed Tech as we have completed our first round of site visits. Thank you to everyone for sharing their learning with us over the last two weeks. Our calendar and schedule can be found on the blog.
Next week is our "coaching" week where we are able to make individual appointments with you and discuss your technology, classroom use, co-teach a lesson, plan, etc. Let us know how we can support you and your students!
If you have new staff at your site, submit the new email account request form to IT. They are able to assist in creating accounts. http://goo.gl/0m0ph8
Because of our move to Google Apps for Education, Chromebooks are becoming popular! It is important to get the "education version" from an approved education vendor. Please contact us for a list of vendors who provide education pricing and the "education version" of the Chromebook.
Over the last week the 8th grade Chromebooks have rolled out at ACMS and NTS. Students were very excited to unpack their Chromebooks, log into their TTUSD account for the first time, and
learn about device care and use for education!
A big THANK YOU goes out to Excellence in Education for funding this prototype project. We are very excited about where we are headed with technology in education and are so thankful to our community sponsors who support student learning! A sepcial thank you video: http://youtu.be/TBlOhgIMhPw
Google Apps for Education
As we transition to Google Apps and other free, open source productivity tools, it is important to communicate why we have moved in this direction. The technology committee took a long, serious look at alternatives to what we currently were using and landed on the Google productivity suite (email, drive, docs, etc.) for many reasons.
First and foremost, as we transition to the common core and are expected to teach and model the 5 C's, Google offer a high level of communication and collaboration built into and throughout all of their productivity tools.
Second was cost. Open source tools are free or close to free and the cost of licensing MS Office and Outlook email server was becoming expensive. In rough terms, hosting the email server cost about 5K per year, and this provided limited storage with many users hitting storage limitations each day (would have to delete emails). In addition Microsoft is moving to a yearly subscription/update for all office products. It is $54 a year per staff member per year (with upgrades). This would be $23,652 a year ongoing for the office suite for our staff!
Google tools and upgrades are free for TTUSD faculty, staff, and students - along with unlimited storage! Please visit our FAQ document or our deployment website for more information and rationale.
Tech Committee
We had our first TTUSD Technology Committee (TechComm) meeting on Tuesday. A record 22 people joined us for a lively discussion about technology@ttusd. A number of items were discussed including the 1:1 prototype projects at SHS, ACMS, and NTS.
TechComm Meeting (Photo Jon Halvorsen)
Because of changes in technology the committee will be working on the "standard classroom" which is now a computer, speakers, a projector, and a document camera. There may be new tools to include in each classroom or replacements. For example, we will be testing out large format TV's (think 70" and Super Bowl size) instead of projectors. What do you think? Any tools you think should be added or changed?
Our next meeting is October 22 at 3:45 PM. Let us know if you have any items you'd like the committee to discuss!Blogs of the Week
Ms. Kosich, technology teacher at ACMS has started her blogging journey at http://acmstechblog.blogspot.com/. Welcome to the TTUSD blogging family, Katie!
Lisa Nielsen is an Ed Tech rockstar! We've gleaned so many useful ideas for the classroom from her blog, "The Innovative Educator." Check it out at http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot.com/
Any blogs that you read regularly that you would like to share? Any TTUSD bloggers out there? Let us know and we'll feature you on This Week in Tech!Podcast of the Week
Ed Tech Talk is a podcast that is updated with many shows each week. From their website,
"EdTechTalk is a community of educators interested in discussing and learning about the uses of educational technology. We webcast several live shows each week. During shows, listeners can use any common media player (i.e. Windows Media Player, Real Player, or iTunes) to listen to the discussion and use the chat room to make comments and ask questions. After each show, we post a recording of the discussion as an mp3 file, which can be downloaded directly from the site or subscribed to using our RSS feed."
Listen or subscribe at: http://edtechtalk.com/TeachersTeachingTeachersTTUSD Websites of the Week
Mrs. Stefani at NTHS: http://anniestefani.com
North Tahoe High School librarian and media specialist, Ms. Wright, updates the library website often. Visit https://sites.google.com/a/ttusd.org/north-tahoe-laker-library/ to check it out!
If you have a website to share, let us know!Upcoming Events and Conferences
Fall CUE - October 25-26
American Canyon High School, Napa
$120 CUE members/$160 non-members (includes membership)
http://www.cue.org/fall
Visit our Educational Technology Blog often for up-to-date information an tech tools!
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