Dec.
2009
ITRT Activities
We are now well in to the school
year. So far it has been a busy
year for me. I spent most of Sep-
tember trying to make sure that
PowerSchool/PowerTeacher got
off to a smooth start. I only de-
serve a very small portion of the
credit for it, but, I think most of
you will agree that the launch
went smoothly. Additionally we
moved our ―offices‖ to a new lo-
cation a week or so after school
started.
October was devoted to teaching a
class in SMART Board usage.
Most of my teacher-students were
elementary teachers, but neverthe-
less I felt good about how the
course went. The teachers in-
volved are now comfortable with
the SMART Board software and
have developed some of the better
SMART Board lessons that I’ve
seen anywhere. As an additional
bonus, we also tried out an online
testing program that worked very
well. If any of you are interested
in having your students take
quizzes, practice tests, or tests on-
line, I can now recommend
Classmarker.com and I can give
you some guidance should you
decide to try it.
For me, November included show-
ing the H1N1 video to bus drivers,
helping to facilitate the viewing of
President Obama’s education
speech, and
helping with
the benchmark
testing at Pun-
goteague Ele-
mentary School. I’m also happy
to announce that in November my
first grandson was born.
Last week I added the SMART
Board lessons my students created
to our Technology Resource Web
Pages. Then I made some major
changes to our Technology Re-
source Web Page—it will be much
easier for me to update from now
on. In fact, my next major goal is
to add a fine arts page, an ESL
page, and a Choir/Band page. Af-
ter that, I’ll need to update the So-
cial Studies pages to reflect the
new SOLs. This should keep me
busy for some time.
Nevertheless, I have always fig-
ured that the time between
Thanksgiving and Christmas is a
good time to volunteer to come in
to your room and demonstrate
TurningPoint, TurningPoint Any-
where, or an interactive lesson of
some sort. If any of you would
like such a demonstration, contact
me now and I’ll be happy to work
with you to put together a lesson
tailored to your needs.
System Upgrades
If you’ve ever upgraded your
modem at home you’ve probably
had the same experience I have.
After an upgrade my Internet
speed at first seems incredibly
fast, but before long, I am getting
impatient with the new speed, and
it also seems slow.
Perhaps you haven’t noticed any
difference; however, the fact is
that since the start of the school
year, AHS, TCS, and NHS have
all had another T-1 line added. In
theory this doubles the Internet
transmission capacity.
In addition, each high school me-
dia center has received two more
document cameras. That is cer-
tainly welcome news, especially at
AHS where Mrs. Parker had re-
served one camera for circulation
and all the others had been signed
out long-term. At CHS and NHS
they haven’t been as hard to come
by, but given their usefulness, I’m
sure it won’t be long until the de-
mand for these items catches up to
the supply.
I’d like to note one additional
―upgrade‖. An online course in
the National Educational Technol-
ogy Standards for Teachers
(NETS-T) has been added to the
training available on ―How To
Master.‖ The course was designed
to prepare teachers who might
want to become candidates for
NETS-T certification. This course
can be taken either sequentially
where all of the available lessons
are taken in order, or prescriptive-
ly, where lessons are assigned
based on the results of a pre-test.
In either case, for those who only
want to take a limited number of
lessons, recertification points will
be awarded on a one point/hour
spent basis—up to forty-five
points. If, on the other hand, a
teacher completes the entire
course and has put a sufficient
number of hours into the effort,
ninety recertification points will
be awarded. See me for more in-
formation.
Survey Results
You will no doubt recall the tech-
nology survey we gave you right
before school got out last June.
With the use of TurningPoint I
was able to instantly tabulate the
results, and I sent them to you in
an email. However, as close as it
was to the end of the year, I’m
guessing that those results were
largely overlooked. I’d like you to
be able to compare the results at
the high school level with the oth-
er two levels. However, there
seems to be a hang up which pre-
vents me from doing so. Here is a
link to the results which compares
the three high schools I surveyed.
I’ve added some annotations and
observations which you might find
of interest.
You might recall that in the inter-
ests of time, I did not answer a
number of questions which came
up while conducting the survey.
Questions such as ―What’s Wor-
dle.‖ To address these questions
I’ve created a technology dictio-
nary which defines the terms used
in the survey. Links to the various
web pages are supplied as well as
examples of how to use some of
these resources.
While giving the survey I heard a
number of reasons for NOT using
technology. I compiled them into
the following list and, in an at-
tempt to use humor to demonstrate
how most of them seem to be
merely excuses to me, I grouped
them as a series of contradictions.
I don’t use technology because:
1. No time, I'm too busy teaching
SOLs.
2. I'm so efficient at teaching
SOLs that all my students pass, so
why should I take the time.
3. My students don't have Internet
access so there is no point in
teaching them Internet skills.
4. My students don't need me to
show them how to blog, etc., they
are already very proficient at it.
5. Larry, you show me this stuff,
and then fail to leave me with any
directions for when I forget.
6. The directions available are so
comprehensive that they are too
much to wade through.
7. There is nothing out there that is
any good in my subject field.
8. There is so much available that
it is just too overwhelming.
9. I'm not required to use technol-
ogy, so why bother?
10. I resent them shoving it down
my throat.
11. How about looking at this stuff
after SOL tests?
12. Now that the tests are over I
need to get grades in and just kick
back--if you show me now, I'll just
forget by next year.
13. I'm so poor at this I'd require
way too much of the ITRT's time.
14. The ITRT just sits around all
day, their job is unnecessary.
15. I'm reluctant to have my kids
use the Internet, too many dangers
lurk there.
16. With all the blocked web sites,
what's the sense in using the Inter-
net?
In response, let me just give three
reasons for using technology--it
engages the students, teaches them
essential 21st century job skills,
and has the potential to save you
time (in the long run).
PowerSchool
Changes Coming
The current plan is that when
second semester comes, parents
will be able to access their child’s
grades using a parent portal on the
Internet. This means two big
changes for you.
First, you will be able to access
PowerSchool from home, and en-
ter grades in the comfort of your
living room, kitchen, or den.
Second, parents will be able to see
comments you make about stu-
dents, grades, etc. Which ones?
Looks to me like any and all of
them. Here is what the Power-
School Training Guides has to
say:
“PowerSchool’s Parent Access
provides parents or guardians
round-the-clock access to real-
time information about their
child’s attendance and grades. It
also provides a means for teach-
ers to communicate with parents
or guardians about class events
and assignments, and ways they
can help their child at home.
Parents or guardians can contact
teachers via email – teacher ad-
dresses are right on the front
page. They can also elect to re-
ceive periodic emails with atten-
dance and grade updates, if that
method is easier for them than
going to the site.”
“The Grades and Attendance
page provides parents with a list
of the student’s current courses,
grades and attendance for each
class. “
“Attendance is provided in two
locations on this page – on the
left is the current two-week pe-
riod, and on the right is the
school year running total. The
student’s attendance is marked
on the left for Last Week and
This Week. A list of attendance
codes appear at the bottom of
the page. This page also provides
parents with an accurate run-
ning count of absences and tar-
dies from each class in which the
student is enrolled, as well as an
attendance total. Clicking the
number of absences or tardies
displays the dates of the ab-
sences or tardies.”
“Current or historical grades for
each course in which the student
is enrolled are listed next to the
course name on the Grades and
Attendance page. Clicking the
grade displays assignment in-
formation, as well as overall final
grade comments.
This feature helps parents know
how the student is performing
throughout the term and helps
prevent their getting a surprise
when report cards come home.
Parents can see when assign-
ments are due and whether stu-
dents are falling behind in their
work. There is also a note to par-
ents indicating that the student’s
final grade may include assign-
ments you have created but not
yet published. Clicking the name
of the assignment will provide
the parent with a description of
the assignment.” (ITRT note –
this is any information you pro-
vide about the assignment in
your gradebook.)
“If assignment scores display in
blue, clicking the score will show
parents the score comment.”
“If your school enters teacher
email addresses in PowerSchool,
parents can email teachers by
clicking the teacher’s name.”
Teacher to Parent
Communication
“Parents and teachers can use
PowerSchool Parent Access as a
communication tool.”
“The easiest method for parents
to communicate with teachers is
to click the teacher’s name on
the Start Page of PowerSchool
Parent Access and send the
teacher an email.”
“Parents can read certain teach-
er comments about their student
by clicking the Teacher Com-
ment icon. These teacher com-
ments can reflect the student’s
performance in the class as a
whole, not on a specific assign-
ment or test. Also, these com-
ments can be general informa-
tion not linked to a specific term
or final grade. (The comments
that appear here were entered in
via the Teacher Comment screen
in PowerTeacher.)” (ITRT note –
several have asked which com-
ments parents can see. according
to this, the comments you enter
in PowerTeacher are displayed
here. The comments you enter in
the gradebook are displayed in
the Grades section (see above).)
The following is from the
PowerSchool 6.0 Power-
Teacher Portal User Guide:
Teacher Comments
Teachers can either select com-
ment bank codes from the com-
ment bank in PowerTeacher por-
tal or the PowerTeacher grade-
book. If a teacher does not delete
a comment before the Power-
School administrator perma-
nently stores grades for a grad-
ing term, that comment becomes
part of the student's permanent
record. Parents can view teacher
comments on the Parent portal
Christmas Fonts
I HAVE DOWNLOADED
AND INTALLED
SOME CHRIST-
MAS FONTS
If any of you are interested in ac-
quiring these fonts, send me an
email, or click on this link and get
them for yourself—although the
installation instructions turned out
to be a bit more complicated than
they indicated.
Sites to Check Out
These contain some really good
links and are good examples of
educational uses of the Internet.
For English - Quizzes, study
helps, informative links about re-
levant subjects, and more—for
high school English.
For Science – Chemestry Land,
and one teacher’s Chemestry web
page.
For Social Studies – One Virginia
teacher’s on line material for Geo-
graphy.
For English/Social Studies –
TweenTribune.com lets kids blog
about news stories of interest to
them. Lets the teacher moderate
the discussion, track student blogs,
and comment on those blogs. –
designed for middle school, but
good stuff.
For Math – Math in the Movies
For Everyone - on line ―mind
mapping.‖, and for some encou-
ragement to use technology – Just
One Thing.