Bulldog Tech Coach - johnwoodring

Tuesday

16Mar2010

Take Notice

Tuesday, March 16, 2010 at 11:06AM

Wow, it has been really busy for me these last few weeks. I would like to thank you all again for the sympathy you showed to my family after the passing of my Father in Law. Again, it shows that your caring helps make you the best faculty and staff in the world!

Powerteacher

As far as I am concerned the launch of PowerTeacher was successful. You were prepared for this rollout and it made the training go very smoothly. I know it has been a pain putting the third quarter grades into the gradebook but know I appreciate the hard work you are putting into this effort and wish I could give you more of a reward.

Security Issues

Recently I sent an e-mail about regarding security concerns with your school laptops. Here are some of the issues I touched on in that e-mail.

You are financially responsible for your laptop. If anything happens to your laptop in your car or home, your respective insurance plans must cover the replacement cost and you will have to pay any out of pocket expenses your insurance does not cover. At school, the laptop needs to locked in a secure area and there needs to be evidence of forced entry before the district’s insurance will cover the loss.
Be careful of where you surf on the Internet while away from the school. Our tech gurus have discovered most viruses affecting laptops were picked up by teachers surfing websites and doing downloads they should not be doing at home. The usual answer to a virus is reimaging the laptop.
It is forbidden to use your personal credit card to make purchases on your school laptop. The district tech folks are serious about this and they can find out if you did.
Bottomline – You should only use your district laptop for work and use a personal computer for anything else.

Friday, I will be briefed on more security concerns and will share this with you later.

Odds and ends

I hope your students do very well on their Writing PASS test this week. I have a great group of students to work with.
Ms. Cavalluzzi’s honor classes are about finished with their Iditarod project. They are using a wiki to create webpages as travel brochures of Alaska. Hopefully, I will be able to share some of these sites with you. Some of them are very creative.
Got some great projects coming up with Ms. Merrick and Ms. Wayland. Looking forward to working with those outstanding teachers and their students.

Hope everyone has a great week.

John Woodring |

How to find PowerTeacher

Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 11:00AM

Here is a video I did on how to find PowerTeacher if you have not found it already.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

John Woodring |

PowerSchool is Coming

Monday, February 22, 2010 at 10:29AM

First off, I would like to thank you for the support, well wishes, and condolences you all have expressed to me over the last several days. My wife, my Father-in-Law's family, my son, and I truly appreciate your sentiments. It was a tough day for me to come back but you all have made it much easier. It is great to know I am not only working with the best faculty and staff around but also a great family.

Now on to the business at hand. As of this writing, PowerTeacher is still scheduled to go live on Wednesday. The biggest reason for the delay is to ensure student data is set in PowerSchool and ready to access. With this said there may be some hiccups in the system. This is to be expected with any new system but hopefully any issues will be minor and easily worked out. Just be patient with this for the first few days.

Today and Tuesday you should run a final hard copy of your grades if you have not done so already. Please have this in a safe place incase you need to access them. Make sure you have printed the information Kimberlee Smith and I sent to you on Friday in an e-mail. Especially the gradebook file association. Please let me know if you do not have these files. Also, you should find where to access PowerTeacher. It is in the Teacher Menu under the Start Menu. Your login is the same as your network login.

Wednesday morning I will stop by each class to make sure you are able to access and login to PowerTeacher then take roll. You should also do the gradebook file association procedure. Please ask me any questions and I will get them answered for you quickly.

Thursday, I will be in a meeting at Bluffton Elementary all day starting at 8:00. I will come in for a few minutes early in the morning so e-mail me any issues you may have quickly and I will try to address them before I have to leave.

Friday, I will do another early morning walk-through to see if everything is working okay.

For the first few days work on getting used to accessing the application, taking roll, and other daily functions. Make sure your student data is correct. Please let me know if there are any problems. Don't worry too much about the Gradebook in the first two or three days but those of you who are comfortable enough to start working with it go ahead. On Monday, March 1 I will have a help session on PowerTeacher in Room 819 from 2:45 until the last customer is served. This session may deal mostly with the gradebook but other questions are welcome. This Tech Monday session is listed on My Learning Plan.

As always, let me know if you have any questions.

We will get through this and I will be with you every step of the way. People I have talked with in other districts using PowerTeacher say it is an easy system to use.

Update on Monday, February 22, 2010 at 1:01PM by

John Woodring

Apparently I cannot read a calendar correctly. My meeting is on Friday. Thursday I will do another walk through as I planned to do on Friday in the original blog post. I will be in briefly on Friday to address any quick problems that might arise. Sorry for any confusion this may cause.

Update on Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 10:56AM by

John Woodring

I stated in the post the login is the same as your network login. This is partially correct. The username will be the same as your network login but please read my PowerTeacher Login e-mail dated February 23 for password information or contact me if you have any questions.

John Woodring |

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Tuesday

09Feb2010

Bulldog Tech Coach February 9, 2010

Tuesday, February 9, 2010 at 9:27AM

Computer Labs

I sent out an e-mail earlier stating I will not be able to accept any further computer lab requests until further notice. While this may be as frustrating to you as it is to me it shows your interest in having student technology-based activities is growing. Should the lab situation deter you from doing further student projects this year? No! We are going to have to be more creative in how we manage our resources and I know you are the people who can do it. Please contact me to show you how this can be accomplished. Hopefully, there will be some openings later in the year.

Room 719

I have noticed several teachers making use of the Room 719 computer lab which is great. With the current lab situation this space will be important. However, I would like to remind you that during testing periods starting February 22 (and will seemingly last for the rest of the of the school year) this space will not be available until further notice. For other times, I ask you please check with her if you wish to send students to make sure it is okay.

Staff Development February 15

Unless Mr. Shaw has other plans, the district powers say you may work on the PowerSource modules during the February 15 Staff Development day. Mr. Shaw should be sending out a schedule for the day soon.

Grades

The grading window will open when Ms. Rollins returns and will close on February 19 at noon. Please let me know if you are having any problems with grades. Also, remember PowerTeacher is expected to come online next week. Please make sure you have paper copies of your grades for this year in case they are needed. The PowerSource site is still open for you to view the training modules.

Student Blogs

Teachers in teams 7-1 and 7-2 most of your students have their own Edublogs account. This means you may incorporate blogging into your lessons. Please see me if you wish to learn more.

Student Accounts

Please remember you can enter a Help Desk ticket for a student network account. While I will be happy to do this it could be faster for you to do this. Please see me if you need help creating these tickets. Also, there have been problems with accounts that have been created recently via Help Desk but I have been working with Joe Bass to resolve this problem. Please let me know if you have a student who is having problems with a login.

Collaborations

I have wrapped up creating student blogs for 7th Grade ELA teachers and we will move to the writing phase. Also, I will be working with Ms. Wayland, Ms. Greene, and Ms. R. Smith on a video project Thursday.

Next Tech Monday

The next Tech Monday session will be February 22. The topic will be PowerTeacher and I will help address any issues you may have with PowerTeacher. Make sure to sign-up early because I feel this one may sell out quickly. I will try Media Sharing again on March 1. Please sign-up on My Learning Plan.

I hope everyone has a great week!

John Woodring |

Bulldog Tech Coach February 4, 2010

Thursday, February 4, 2010 at 9:46AM

Sorry to be getting this out so late but I have been really busy in a good way.

Computer Labs

Computer Lab time is now at premium. However, this does not mean technology integration projects cannot be done. This is a time we can all use our creativity to do the "out of the box" thinking to make integration possible. Please contact me. If computer labs open up I will let you all know as soon as possible. Also, remember Ms. Kimberlee Smith can accommodate small groups if you make prior arrangements with her. The computer lab time crunch is a very good problem. It means you are wanting to integrate technology into your teaching.

Integration Projects

This week I have been classrooms working on a variety of projects with students and teachers. Ms. Greer and Mr. Manning are working on a project which their students will blog persuasive essays. Earlier this week we made sure students in teams 7-1 and 7-2 created blogs. Friday I will be showing students how to post a writing on their blog and make comments. If you are teaching in these teams you can use these blogs for your classes. Please see me for ideas.

Ms. Cavalluzzi's honor students learned how to edit a wiki for a future project. I had a great time working with them Wednesday.

Student Logins

I consolidated the student login list and will update it as I receive updates from Joe Bass. If you have a student who needs a login you can enter a Help Desk Ticket or contact me. Doing the ticket yourself might be a little quicker depending on what I have going on. The information needed for Joe Bass to create a student login is name, last five digits of the SASI number, and date of birth.

Media Creation with ActivInspire

I will be repeating the Media Creation with ActivInspire with Mr. Stoddard. We have not set a date or time for this yet. Please contact one of us if you are interested in joining in.

Grades

The grade import window for 3rd Quarter Interim will be coming soon. I don't know the deadline at this time. We will be using IG Pro at least one more time. Make sure your rosters are complete and you have the proper spreadsheet for reporting. Let myself and Ms. Rollins know if you have any problems.

We are still on track to making the transition to PowerTeacher on February 15. Make sure you are doing the PowerSource training modules so you will be able to work with this new system when it comes online. There will be other training opportunities after PowerTeacher arrives to address any concerns that arise.

Tech Monday

I plan on demonstrating media sharing sites on the Internet. This will include Streamline Media Share, YouTube, and TeacherTube. If I have time I may also show Flickr and Photobucket again. Please sign-up on MyLearningPlan.

John Woodring |

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