Pajaro Valley High Tech Blog

Discovery Streaming - Teacher resources with assessment. Dang. No CAHSEE stuff. But there is ACT pretesting. Log on to PC. Go to www.pvusd.net and click on the student tab. Then click on Discovery Education button and you will be directed directly to Discover Streaming.

Dan’s grandmother “In the army they gave me a medal for killing a man. Then they gave me a dishonorable discharge for loving a man”

SCCOE - TICAL (Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership)

Click on the links

. Wordle and wallwisher and Speak Up and Moodle. We need to survey our students and find out what they want. Bloom’s taxonomy. What’s on the top? Evaluation. New version puts “Creating” on the top. Eliteracy defined by UNESCO. Northwestern Tree Octopus. Ipod control. Bearded Cat. You can become a reporter for CNN. Students’ Assumptions about books. Poll everywhere. I need my teachers to learn (YouTube - need to unblock or view from home). Tipping Point (Kindle version). Yes I am a Kindle user… Phew.

[If I hear 1 more reference to the iPad, I am going to gag…]

eSchoolPlus There are now training materials for eSP. The access link is on the same Web page as Teacher Access Center. Then just click on eSchoolPlus eLearning Resource.

Successmaker - Frances Basich, Vicente Garcia, and David Slavin. Working out some of the glitches. Hardware and software issues. Seems to be in geometry strand. Email all three if you have issues. There is support out there, please request it through Help Ticket (tech problem) and email (program issues, adding students). I have some info that might be helpful. Please email me if you want a copy of the Tips and Tricks.

PVHS - Because of the lack of a network technician the lab cannot be maintained and SuccessMaker cannot be guaranteed.

Tech Laptop Grant - Get on it ASAP. See previous email.

Passwords - Students have been caught using teacher passwords to try to change grades and attendance… PVHS will be first on list to force password changes. Be prepared. Will be more complicated than before. Numbers, special characters, 6 or more characters, capital and small letters, etc.

Smartboards - The new vendor is providing great support.

Generic Student Accounts - They are being locked out little by little i.e. starstudent, ccstudent, adultedstudent, etc. This is a big loophole. Students are trying access porn logged on a generic account. Some teachers have never used their own accounts at some schools. All such accounts WILL be locked out. There are legal reasons for this. We were able to help a student that was googling “kill me” and “suicide” etc. because we knew the individual ID. If it had been a generic account, we would never have been able to help that student.

erate - Discount for network services. Just received funding 3 weeks ago (should have been in July…) PVHS is getting a lot of network infrastructure. Moving in new routers, more drops in some of the portables for student computers (not in erate grant), more wireless access points, servers (?). Complete wireless coverage! We won’t see a lot of change, but our equipment will go out to other sites to bring them up to district standards. This will start in the spring. Required school board to spend $100,000 to get $1,000,000 in services!

SchoolLoop - Applying for erate funding. We are one of the test sites for this. I will let you know when it will be rolled out. Needs to be married up to eSchoolPlus so parents won’t have two log ons. According to Jose Anaya, it will be soon.

Staff Development - There is a lot of them. Go to http://staffdev.pvusd.net/sites/workshops/showall.php

Tech Support - Jose Anaya (DD, MyAccess, Rosetta Stone), Vicente Garcia (SuccessMaker), Dan Kristi and Alec (Ren Place - AR MIAF, EIAF)

LUNCH BREAK

Well here I am. I think I will try to blog some of the topics as I sit here rather than try to send it out later.

From Dan’s Weiser’s grandmother.

“I went to a fight last night and a hockey game broke out.”
“If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism. If you steal from a lot of people, it’s research.”

William Garrido is the new person to help with eSP. Please don’t bombard him with email.

EdTech profile is happening again. Be prepared to get an email about it.

If someone wants to donate a computer, these are the specs.

[Minimum Donation Specifications: Rev 22309
Windows 2000 or XP, Pentium 4, 512 RAM, 40GB Hard drive, working CD ROM
Macintosh OS X, G4, 512MB RAM, 40GB Hard Drive, working CD ROM drive
Laser Printer (no inkjet printers), 15″ Color Monitor (LCD- No CRTs unless packaged with a computer that meets Min. Specs)]

Google Apps - Looking at using it district-wide

Windows 7 - Will come on all new machines. Not that different from WinXP. Need to play around with it.

U Drive - All staff now has 2GB of storage with not a lot of restrictions i.e. .exe .zip files, etc.

Student Information System - eSP, elearning vignettes, self-training, more to come

AMS lanmate - repair program for all ports, put in Help Ticket. They are all warrantied now. So get those requests in ASAP. Only until June?

Student interns - Jack. Has to be with a Network technician. Shadows a technician.

Power outages for VOIP - If no one answers at school because power out, then it goes into DO. Can’t call directly to school, but Peggy Raymond (sp?) at DO will answer the phone. Get important imformation to her. Call on your cell phone.

School Messenger - Ancient technology, analog system, uses old computers, there are new Web-based systems, looking at new system through DO, not through Scotts Valley. 1-2 hours to make all calls for high school instead of 2-3 days. Emergency calls can happen in minutes. Must convert all schools to make it work. Teachers could call their own students. Funding issue. Maybe by spring it can be rolled out. $1 per student cost. 1st year - DO pays. After that - school pays.

Accelerated Reader - No longer can be accessed from home. Prevents cheating by students at home. Now that it is district-wide, it cannot be accessed because of Rennaissance policy. Teacher access still continues from home.

Tech support volunteers - It is very difficult to hand over these permissions because of passwords, Active Directory issues, protocols, access to student information, etc.

Tech purchasing confusion - Please talk with tech liaison (me) and/or tech department @ DO to make sure you are buying the right technology. Don’t be penny wise and pound foolish. Need to factor in total cost - bulbs, ink, etc.

Yesterday was really the first day of getting together with the other pilgrims. We met at the Pilgrimage Center on Hatzanout street. We registered talked to a few other Bahai’s. Some from Brazil, El Salvador, Macao, Australia, Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, Ethiopia, Thailand, and many other countries.

Lily and I went and visited the gardens for awhile and then we got some shopping done. We needed bread and fruit. We had a felafal near the hotel and it was delicious.

Our hotel is near the market place so it is easy to get most of what we want.

After arriving at Tel Aviv airport, we went to get our luggage. I know that a lot of luggage looks similar, so I checked and double-checked my suitcases. Yep they were all ours. Surprisingly we went through customs without anyone checking to see if they were ours or what was inside.

We changed some money and went outside. They have large “minivan” type of taxis called “collectives”. We were able to find one to Haifa about a 100 kilometers to the north for 65 shekels each (about $15 - $20 depending on the exchange rate).

We had a great ride north along the coast of the Mediterranean. From the window I could see beautiful landscapes that reminded me a lot of California. Also saw Mosques in the distance and drip agriculture along the highways. There were a number of monoculture forests as we went along. Lots of pine trees. I did not expect that for some reason. And a good number of eucalyptus trees.

Lily slept through most of it due to jet lag…

We had a great conversation on the way up. One of the passengers was an Israeli Middle School teacher who was retired (happily). She was coming back from Greece with her husband after visiting family. Another couple were young tourists. Two others were young Jews from Brooklyn on a “birthright” program. As I understood it is a chance for all Jews to come to Israel for any length of time, but I am not sure. They were actually quite talkative and asked a lot of excellent questions about Baha’i.

After dropping off the teacher and her husband we got to our hotel, the Gallery Hotel. I grabbed all of our luggage and walked over to the hotel. We got our room and went upstairs.

Guess what? I had grabbed the wrong bag and had the suitcase of one of the girls from Brooklyn.

I felt so bad. Not so much for me, cuz I could always buy some clothes and get by. I looked through the luggage and there was nothing about where they were staying. There was a phone number from New York, so I took a chance and called. Unfortunately, there was only a message, “You called the right number, but at the wrong time. Leave a message.” So I left a message that Ruth’s luggage was at the Gallery Hotel in Haifa and to please let her know. That was the best I could do.

The next day, Friday, Ruth called and Lily answered. She had got my message and would drop off my bag on Saturday after Shabbat (9 pm) and pick up hers. So I had spent Wednesday, Thursday and most of Saturday with only one change of clothes.

About 10:30 at night I went down and they said she had not come. I was not worried, but with Pilgrimage starting on Monday I wanted time to go through my stuff and iron some clothes.

Today, Sunday, my baggage arrive!!! It was like Christmas (or Ayyam-i-Ha). I had all of my stuff back again. I was never really worried and was trusting in God, but it was nice because I was going to go out and buy clothes today.

What did I learn?
1. Trust in God, but tie the camel.
2. Check your bags twice.
3. There are good people out there.
4. Carry extra clothes in your carry-on bag.

First of all let me explain that I am not an expert on Jewish Sabbath customs, however, I want to describe my experiences here in Israel.

I was told that Shabbat was from sunset on Friday until sunset on Saturday. I, of course, interpreted that to mean from 8pm on Friday to about the same time on Saturday. Of course, I was wrong.

I took a nap on Friday afternoon and woke up at about 4pm. The falafel place near the hotel was open so I went to an ATM to withdraw some money. Unfortunately all of the instructions were in Hebrew and I could not get the machine to change over to English. After about 15 minutes of not getting any money out of the ATM I gave up and walked a couple of blocks and went to another one. I was finally able to withdraw some money and was feeling very proud of myself. I returned to by a falafel and discovered that Shabbat starts at 4pm! I walked all over the area and the only place I could find open to eat was a McDonald’s so I went back to the hotel.

Lily finally woke up from her 6-hour nap and we went out for food. Yep, you guessed it. I swallowed my pride and we had to eat at McDonald’s. Please see photos on Facebook. Interesting enough the bread in my kabob wrap was called a “tortilla”. Strange, but true. Lily had salad.

After we got back to the hotel, I found out that Shabbat does not really end on Saturday, but on Sunday morning.

On Saturday we had breakfast at the hotel. We got bread, but not toast (can’t toast bread on Shabbat?). However I was able to get coffee and milk. If any of you are Jewish and can explain this, I would appreciate it.

Luckily we were not hungry most of the day. Probably because of the heat… However since Shabbat did not end at sunset, none of the restaurants were open! We asked around and found out the Arab area, Wadi Nisnaz, had some falafel places open. It was only a 15-20 minute walk, so off we went and had our first falafel. It was delicious. Fried chickpeas, beets, onions, lettuce, tomato and spices. Excellent.

Total travel time - I calculated we spent 26 hours from the time we left Watsonville until we arrived at the hotel in Haifa. This included waiting an extra two hours sitting on the plane in Philadelphia to take off…

Escalators - Found out my daughter loves to go up and down and up and down and up and down escalators.

Scariest moment - One hour after take off the pilot got on the speakers and requested that if any of the passengers were an M.D., R.N., or EMT, he or she should identify him or herself. Never did find out why, but nothing else seemed to happen.

Jet Lag - There is really no real solution to jet lag. I have tried so many things and none of them work. However, it is fun to get people to talk about their solutions.

Inaugural Flight - Our flight from Philadelphia, PA to Tel Aviv, Israel was the first such flight! Didn’t know this until we arrived at gate. There was so much security! I am not kidding. We had to go through an extra security checkpoint to get through the gate to the plane.

These are instructions first given to me by Daniel Johnston at Watsonville High School. If there are any problems with it, please advise me.

Part One: Entering Report Card Averages
1. From your home page, select the DEF (Define Assessments) link for the class you wish to edit.
2. Click on the Categories tab.
3. Add the Final category. Leave the 0 in the Drop Lowest column. Leave the Missing scores count as 0 in the average. Click Save on the right side of the row.
4. Click on the Report Card Averages tab.
5. In the Current View column, be sure the Exam row is selected. Put a check in the Override column.
6. In the table below, select ONLY the FINAL category. Be sure that no other categories are selected.
7. Next, in the top table, select the TERM category. Put a check in the Override column.
8. In the table below, select ALL CATEGORIES EXCEPT the Final category.
9. Next, in the top table, select the SEMESTER category.
10. Look at the table below. The default is 2/5, 2/5, 1/5 (aka 40/40/20). If you are OK with this, move on to Part Two.
11. If you wish to use the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 system, click on the Override link in each row and change the Weight to 33. Be sure to Save each row.
Part Two: Entering Final Exam Grades
1. Click on the Define Assessments tab.
2. Add an assessment. Be sure the date is before the end of the semester. Select the Final category from the drop down menu. Enter an appropriate name and number of points. Click Save on the right side.
3. Click on Score Assessments. Enter your final grades.
Part Three: Entering Semester Grades
1. From your home page, click on the RC button for the appropriate class.
2. Click on the Load From Gradebook button. You may override grades at this point if necessary. Add comments as necessary. Click the Save button.

FYI.

A large number of tech positions are being cut at the site level. There will only be 2 district technicians for the entire district (35+ schools).

For PVHS that means we will receive 1 visit a month for about 3 hours. I have seen 4 site technicians in 5 year, Tony Lopez, Mike Oakden, Luke Hess and now David Russell. If you think getting technology problems solved currently id difficult, wait 6 weeks and it will be more difficult.

What can we do? I don’t know. Take it to Cabinet. Email you school board members. Work on funding at the state level.

God help us all.