Today is Sunday, April 23 2017. We're heading into the home stretch! Whenever you can, sneak a look at a senior, remember how far all of them have come, and pat yourself on the back for your willingness to walk that journey with them!
On these pages, you'll find:
- the TOP 3 technology ideas we're thinking about this week,
- 2 TIPS to help things work a little better in your classroom, and
- the SINGLE issue that is keeping us from technological greatness.
This week's TOP3.
- Tech4Testing Game Plan: First, a thank you is in order! We've taken stock again of the ChromeBook inventory in preparation for testing, and we are delighted to report that for the second year our loss rate has been very low! Thank you for the role each of you play in making sure we take care of these handy little devices. We have lots of kids' hands on them throughout the year, and you're doing an excellent job of reminding the kids to help us keep our ChromeBooks in good working order.
- Tech4Testing Game Plan @ 565: Because we don't need to invest time in repairing and restoring lots of devices, we can again leave ChromeBooks in place in your rooms at 565 until Wednesday, May 10. We will collect regularly assigned elementary and middle Chromebooks on that Wednesday and continue inventorying them and readying them for the 5th Grade Science EOG on the following Tuesday morning. By Tuesday afternoon, May 16, grades 3-7 will have access to 58 ChromeBooks for general purposes--all other ChromeBooks will be reserved for testing. That's 26 more devices than last year at the same time! After Tuesday, May 23, we can make an additional 12 available @ 565. Admin will finalize the plan this week. Coming soon: a link you can use to advise us of your classroom device needs during that period.
- Tech4Tesing Game Plan, Grade 8: Thanks to your efforts at preplanning your needs, Team 8, you're already working with a supplemental cart of ChromeBooks (from the teacher stash) in addition to your usually assigned devices right through until testing time. We will grab them from you on Monday, May 15, to get them ready for testing later in that week. Again, many thanks for the awesome job you've done in keeping tabs on the devices assigned to your team and for reporting problems with them quickly.
2TIPs
- (From last week & continuing through May) Reusing those old, creepingly slow desktops: Remember that if you're now using a new Chromebook as your teacher device, we plan to do a round-up of the desktop monsters in your resource rooms and classrooms this summer. Please make sure you've moved critical files that you saved locally (C:// drive) to the Google Drive before the beginning of June. We will spend the summer rebuilding the desktops that can be saved and repurpose them as drivers for Promethean Boards, projectors and attendance kiosks in your rooms.
- Keep those ChromeBooks in good working order! Many more little hands will be on these devices between now and test days.
- Please make sure you are reminding our young scholars not to sit on the floor to use ChromeBooks. (The devices lie defenseless on the floor when the kids get up to go to the bathroom, get a drink of water, talk with friends, etc.)
- Please remind my your friends to keep their pencils out of the orafices of the ChromeBooks--pleasing, but damaging nonetheless.
- Please make sure every young scholar logs out of the ChromeBook when he or she is finished with it.
- Please let us know the minute you see damage or see performance issues!
We need to keep the ChromeBooks working at tiptop condition as they are now!
TO MAKE LIFE A LITTLE BIT EASIER.
MISSED It by that much.
Coming this week to a MS classroom near you! I'm not finished with visits to the 6th and 7th grade teams. My schedule got interrupted by student meetings I need to do with independent study students and interns at high school. I'll be back right after Spring Break.
Don't forget:
Support@nucentric.com: wired pcs and laptops, CSD.local domain, wireless or wired Internet connection, etc. AND SEND A SCREENSHOT!!!!!! (Know that we will poke back and insist on a screenshot. It is the most efficient way to help us diagnose what's up.)
Tech Team Students are available for triage and diagnosis ONLY. Please do not tempt them to make changes to your device! They remain on provisional licenses only!
