I hope this week’s break has been a restful one for all of you. Below is an update on happenings with CAC Tech. Please browse the topics of interest to you and refer back to this as the need arises. This Tech Update consist of information on the following topics:
End User Printing: Technology Green Initiative.
Entourage Glitch: Missing Mail.
Teacher’s g-cacegypt Mail Redirect: Students may send to your g-cacegypt account.
Student g-cacegypt Email Accounts: Use in Moodle and remind students to check or redirect.
Blended Classroom Update: Do your courses meet recommended use.
1 to 1 learning update: Pilot Program and MS, ES preparedness Teacher Surveys.
Student Laptop Checkout Reminder: Teacher Supervision Needed.
Missing Technology Equipment: Label clearly and inform security.
Moodle Update: Special update coming soon.
Emerging Technology: iPads available for exploration.
Content Filtering: Open DNS being Explored.
Network Slowdown test. Is it us or the site?
Bandwidth Use: The effects of streaming and downloading during the school day.
My Perspective: Technology and 21st Century Education.
On the Personal Side: Thanks for the support.
More information on these topics browse the descriptors below or visit our Tech Update Blog’s Nov entry at http://cactechupdates.blogspot.com/ You may want to save this one as a lot of information is given here. Please let me know if there is a topic you would like me to address in a future Tech Update.
End User Printing: You may have noticed that many conference including NESA has moved to end user printing where the majority of there information resources for sessions are being distributed digitally on line to participants. It is up to the participant (end user) to determine if they need to print a paper copy or view the digital version. Schools who are are moving towards a greener campus are taking a similar action by distributing coarse information to students digitally (when appropriate) through learning platforms like Moodle. Students who need the paper copy can print them if they like. Many students prefer the digital version because it is easier to keep up with. Teachers are also accepting assignments digitally through platforms like Moodle and Google Apps. Those teachers who prefer to work with hard copies of student work, then prints them once for themselves. Many teachers have learned to do grading and provide feedback digitally. This reduces the waste we often find from students printing multiple copies of there work for a variety of reason. Its a Technology Green Initiative for teachers consciences about paper waste and a green practice for our students. The technology department encourages you to initiate “End User” Printing whenever appropriate with your students.
Entourage Glitch: We have been trouble shooting a few users who have reported mail not showing up in their Entourage account but being in there web Outlook account. While not perfect these two usually sync with each other. We have discovered this is a glitch being addressed by the developer and according to one list serve they hope to have a solution in their next update. In the meantime if you are expecting mail that is not showing up in your Entourage account check your web outlook mail account including spam and junk mail folders. A link to web mail is in quick links on the school Web site. A similar issue from time to time is mail not reaching you account at all. Usually this is because of an misspelled email address but from time to time filters along its path may stop it. Domains get blacklisted for many different reasons. If you have reason to suspect this, send them an email with my address (cc me) and request them to email both of us as a test. We can then follow up on the email address, check some variables and white-list it if needed.
Teacher’s g-cacegypt Mail Redirect: From time to time students using their g-cacegypt account may be emailing you at an account that is included with your google apps account. Please consider this possibility if student say they emailed you and you didn’t receive it. While having an extra account is a recommended practice you can simply forward all the mail from your g-cacegypt account to you cacegypt account and seamlessly receive all mail there. For help doing this any technology department staff member can assist you.
Student g-cacegypt Email Accounts: All students grade 3-12 have a google apps account including g-cacegypt email. This email account is used for academic and school related communication with 6-12th grade students. It is the default account for students enrolled in your Moodle courses. Please have students check this account regularly or set it to forward to another account they check regularly. They may be missing some important information.
Blended Classroom Update: Your technology integrators and myself recommend the following basic uses for your Moodle Course/ Google Apps in a blended classroom environment. We believe all grade 6-12 course should have these in place as a minimum practice by the end of this year. We applaud those of you who are already meet these minimum uses and are well into a blended classroom environment. Upper ES classroom should begin to model some of these practices. Courses grade 6-12 at CAC should have:
- Course documents posted in Moodle or created in Google Docs and linked in Moodle.
- Class handouts distributed digitally in Moodle. End user printing used
- Homework and supporting materials posted in Moodle.
- Online digital tools and resources used by a course are embedded or link in Moodle for easy access by students.
- Email communication with student when appropriate.
- Explore student online Feedback in Moodle forums where appropriate.
- For assistant contact your divisional integrator or technology teacher assistant.
1 to 1 Learning Update: MS is currently conducting a pilot 1 to 1 learning project with a group of 40, 7th graders. Eaxh of these students have a laptop that they take from class to class each day. This is progressing well as teachers of this group further their development of a blended learning environment. Efforts will be made to expand 1 to1 learning based upon this groups work. I will soon send HS and ES teachers a 1 to 1 pre-implementation survey. This will help gage our preparedness to implement 1 to 1 learning in HS and a 10 to a class program in ES. This will also be an opportunity for teachers to provide their feedback into our planning process. 1 To 1 learning started with the use of our 1st class set of laptops on a carts. Our progression with digital tools and 21st century learning, demand for more student access, and strategic plan for Seamless Integration, makes 1 to 1 learning a key CAC Technology strategy.
Student Laptop Checkout Reminder: Teachers please remember when requesting a laptop form a cart for a student or assigning them one in your class it is your responsibility to supervised their use as an academic tool. Our demand for access to laptops is increasing and we need to make sure students are using them for classroom academic purpose. Computer labs and the library provide student access for non teacher supervised work.
Technology Equipment Inventory: Its a good inventory practice that all school laptops and other portable technology equipment should be well label to easily identified the owner. If you have some school owned portable technology equipment that at a minimum does not have a library barcode Label on it please let us know so we can label it. Please check that all equipment checked out to you is accounted for on a regular basis. If you or your students find technology equipment missing notify myself and your divisional principal immediately with details so we can follow up on its whereabouts. (It’s probably a good practice to label your personal equipment so that you are easily identified as the owner also.)
Moodle Update: Mona and I attended te NESA virtual School meeting last month. I’m happy to report that our planned use of Moodle is very much aligned with the NVS objectives and activities going on at many of our NESA schools. We will give more details about the meetings and Moodle in a special Moodle Tech Update. Keep Moodling!
Emerging Technology: I believe any good technology department explores new technology when it can. With that in mind we have two school owned iPads available for check out from the library. Feel free to explore these digital tools. While I consider them in-between technology, I don’t feel they have the functionality yet to meet the diverse needs of our students for technology access as a laptop does. Laptops do everything an iPad can do and more. No need to introduce many of these with their limited functionality only to out grown their use and move to a laptop anyway. However I do think one or two of them can be useful in special situation for specific purposes. Also I think a device similar to the iPad will one day be available with increase functionality to meet all of a student’s needs. So dream a bit and Keep Exploring!
Content Filtering: As we work to improve our connectivity and meet concerns of the content available to students on the internet we are exploring a tool called Open DNS. This web based content filtering tool will allow us to filter websites that may be causing network slowdowns. It can also be used to block sites containing inappropriate content for a school. You may get a blocked website message from CAC Technology while we are exploring this tool. Simply send me an email with the URL you are trying to reach and we can white list it. Use of Open DNS or similar tool will be balanced with our digital citizenship philosophy of teaching responsible use to our users.
Network Slowdown Test. Is it us or the site? Anytime you suspect their might be a network slowdown you can check if it is due to CAC network traffic or the traffic on the website you are trying to load. Simply try to load another site that you commonly use and see if you experience the same slow down. If not then the slow down has to do with the site you are trying to reach which is out of our control. I usually do a Google search on a random term to test. An additional network test to determine non connectivity is to access a file on our server when ever you cannot open a website. If you can access a file on the server then the connectivity problem is with our provider or the website your trying to reach. Please wait 10-15 minutes before contacting us. Often problems in our control are temporary and connection is restored or we would have contacted our provider for more information to share with you.
Bandwidth Use: Recently I sent a message regarding the use of our internet connection to stream and/or download movies, music, radio or large files during the school day. This eats up bandwidth and may interrupt a teacher’s academic real time use. Teachers and Students should download these files before, after school and weekends. Save them to a local drive to view and share with classes at a later time. Streaming and downloading during the school day may provide one or two users with a good speed but denies other users of the bandwidth needed for instructional activities as they will have to share the remaining bandwidth with the rest of the school.
My Perspective: I believe an underlying theme in many recent educational conferences has been information and communication technology’s use in education. Technology is a change agent in 21st Century Education. The immediate access to current research, ability to collaborate instantaneously anywhere in the world and access to a wide range of tools and resources is providing teachers with new skills and knowledge. The knowledge and ability to differentiate instruction and assess learning in ways that addresses the uniqueness of students in the 21st century. This impacts what is taught, how it is taught and why it is taught. As an educator it is important that we stay up to date with the ideas and practice being shared at these conference and in current publications. I recommend we stay mindful of these as we meet vertically about our curriculum.
On the Personal Side: The past two months have been bitter sweet time for me. I’d like to share my appreciation to all of you who sent me words of condolence at the news of my Mom’s passing and best wishes on my birthday. Thank you for your support during this time.
As always the tech department is ready to provide you with any technology assistance needed. If you have any questions or topics you would like addressed in future tech updates feel free to email me sroberts@cacegypt.org.
Keep Computing!
Your Friendly IT Guy,
Steve
Steven Roberts, Director of Information Services, Cairo American College
"The man who can make hard things easy is the educator." by ~Ralph Waldo
Emerson~
