First Day Done, a Few More to Go

Well after a first exciting, busy, never stopping day, I feel that I have successfully rolled out our 1:1 here at Emmetsburg. With a lot of help from teachers, administrators and the board we have now currently sent out over 200 machines in our district in grade 9-12. Also added another 120 machines on cards to different grade levels. Although the carts weren't used today our 1:1 program sure was. I looked as if teachers jumped right into this and started working right away with the students. Even though it was a long day for myself, it feels good to see that all my hard work at making sure everything was ready to go has paid off.

Fighting the Facebook Temptation

Something that is always brought up in school is how to keep our students off of Facebook or and social networking sites. And as they grow more and more like they are it keeps getting harder at an I.T. department. With ability to now post them to Facebook from your phones, iPod Touch, iPad's and most any other electronic devices it is really hard to block all of them. So is it now to the point where we should stop blocking and start teaching. Teaching responsibility on when and when not to be on these sites. I'm really, that's what we are suppose to be doing anyway, teaching our student responsibility. So how do we go about doing this? I think it all starts with the teacher working with our students on how and when to be on Facebook. So it might involve walking around the classroom as we teach and just check on what things are going on on their screens. Or get a monitoring software that lets you do that right at your desk like we are looking at. We will be using Intel's Classroom Management software that will come pre-installed on all of our students laptops. But that won't always catch what they are doing but it will do a very good jobs at what programs are running. Then it might be to where we get to just preaching to them that our work must be done and then the last few minutes of class is when we get to use that time to check our accounts, email, Facebook, ect... Maybe our classroom concepts need to start looking like that and maybe our students will start listening a little more during class if they know that they get time to Facebook after the first part of class. Now chatting, that is a whole different post but I need to gather some information and give it some thought on what I think about chatting.

Wireless Systems

A few months back I wrote a blog post on deploying your own wireless and not spending all the extra money for the "Cadillac". Well, I was wrong, we deployed a system that was at the time a very good system to use compared to our old Linksys access points that we had. It consisted of a controller, PoE, Gig connections and all the works, but as we used it more and more with more laptops the slower it got. So we decided to have Xirrus to come in and do a site survey and hoping to find answers. Well, we got them and the change is so extreme. We have now had Xirrus in place for only a few days but the change is so great. One thing I have noticed is our login times have been so much better, quicker that is, extremely quicker. We also did get the management software for it so it is so much easier to manage of coarse. So as we continue to learn what this system all does it get more exciting to me. I really enjoy learning more about networking since I didn't get to do a lot of it before since it was all set up when I came to the school here in Emmetsburg. So when our engineer got here and started talking numbers and network mask and things like that, I started getting confused. Muhammad, our Xirrus engineer explained everything so well to me and made me feel a little smarter on the networking side. So Tuesday night when he arrived we spent about 4 or 5 hours going through our network, deciding how we are going to setup our wireless infrastructure. After the night was of course we got to get a few hours of sleep, came in the next morning and we were ready to go. So we did our training as we waited for our arrays to arrive and then, they came. We were quite excited and ready for them as we were waiting for an hour or so and once the got here, it was work time. We starting un-boxing them and getting the software loaded on the server. So as soon as I got done installing the software, the other guys had them ready to go and labeled. So came the time to starting hanging and configuring them. Things went very smooth at the deployment and the rest is history. So if your looking for a great wireless system to consider in your district, look at Xirrus. From what I found, they are fast in more ways then one.

1:1 Projects

We are coming closer and closer to the end of the year, which means we are starting to plan for the next year. And with that, we are planning our 1:1 program with students laptops. And coming into this with very little knowledge, there are a lot of questions that need answered. So last night I sat down and started thinking of things that need to be covered. So I started looking for answers. As we work more and more with Bytespeed Computers, we both learn more on this topic. And since we are going to be the first school to go 1:1 computers with Bytespeed we both have a lot of things to figure out. But since we are working with Intel now we at least have someone with a little better knowing of all this.
But I still ask myself, is this the best thing for our students or is it just going to look like a big computer lab in our school. Well I don't think it will, I trust that our teachers will use these pieces of equipment to their full ability. We are looking into getting my professional development for our teachers as the year comes to a close. And now that our staff is feeling more secure about using these machines, we will make sure that we are getting whatever we can to our teachers to make this lives easier. I really want to get a program going here that over schools want to come see and I know with the staff we have here, we can, we will make it successful. I want to become the school of Windows and have schools look at us like they do Newell-Fonda and Apple.

Being an Educator

Even though I'm not in the classroom teaching our students I still feel important to making our students a success.  And this video really gives you the inspiration that you need.  I know that our teachers sometimes feel over whelmed as I do a lot but when we need a kick up, we need to watch this video.  It is so great.

The Social Media Revolution

I watched this video this morning and it really make a big impression on how much social media has really changed how everything and everyone communicate, buy, and rate items. This video really sums up what social media has done the world.

I watched this video this morning and it just blew my mind away:

This school is so amazing how it all came together to put this video together. I just couldn't believe how this school could put this all together with their students.