Working with the Espy’s Kindergarten and 1st grade teachers with blogging.
Amazon announced a few new Kindles today, the most important, in my mind, is the Kindle Fire. It is a 7″ tablet running a specialized version of Android. The shocker was the price, $199. With todays announcement, every school district that is looking at mobile devices will need to take a pause and examine what the Fire has to offer. At that price point, it undercuts the iPod Touch by $30. It also sacrifices a camera and microphone. But it makes up for those deficiencies by offering a larger and better display. The main problem with the Fire would be the lack of applications for the educational market. Of course you have access to all the Kindle books, and the explicitly list full color children’s books for it, so it may be just a matter of time before educational software takes off on it.
In our iOS pilot programs with iPod Touches and iPads it has become pretty clear that it is hard to convince teachers that the small screen of the iPod Touch can still be used for content creation. The students, I’ve noticed, don’t mind using the iPod Touch, so for them, size doesn’t matter. When it comes to content such as PDFs and books, the larger screen size would be very advantageous. Theft is also an issue in school, but the larger size of the Fire may be a deterrent. The Fire would also be able to be used by more than one student at a time due to it’s size.
I’m going to try to hold off any further mobile purchases until the Fire is released and I get a chance to use one. I could see it replacing a lot of iPod Touches this Christmas, it will be interesting to see what Apple has in store on October 4th. If the applications come, the Fire will be a very compelling device for school districts. What devices are you investigating for use in your classroom or district?
Three new pages have been created to help the technology department help you with the integration and resolution of technology issues in the district:
In March and April a student technology survey was sent home to completed by the students and parents to help the district gauge where we are with home technology. Six hundred and fifty responses were received, allowing a confidence interval of 3.1 at a 95% confidence level (survey results are +-3.1%).
Preliminary results:
More results to follow as I get a chance to crunch the numbers.
adobe, afp, ARRA, budget, cafeteria, camera, certificates, copier, dasl, display, dns, dvd, dvr, emac, email, fax, filemakerpro, filemanagement, filter, filtering, firefox, flash, fonts, google, googledocs, googleforms, harddrive, hp2420, hp4050, hp4100, ibook, ical, ie, iep, imacg3, imovie, installation, internet, ios, ipad, iPod, ipodtouch, java, keyboard, keynote, laptop, levy, lifetouch, listserv, ltsp, macbook, machinemanagement, microsoftoffice, mini, monitor, mouse, movie, network, networking, notebook, order, osx, osxserver, passwords, pdf, personalcomputer, phd, plugins, pos, post, poster, power, powerpoint, printer, printing, progressbook, projector, projectormount, promethean, purchasing, quote, reflections, requisitions, roundcube, router, routing, sam, scanning, scholasticenterprise, security, server, shared, sketchup, smartboard, smb, socal, social, speakers, squid, src, sri, thunderbird, toner, training, upgrade, useradmin, ustream, video, vimea, virus, walkthroughs, wan, webserver, website, windows, windowsterminalserver, wireless, word, wordpress, workflows, youtube
Over Spring Break I installed (re-purposed) the old mail and web server as squid caching servers for Hardin Central and Espy. By putting this hardware it place it will:
A side effect will be that if a machine has the wrong directory server configured, no one will be able to log in. So far this hasn’t been an issue, but if you have a machine no one can log into, please submit a Help Desk request.
In the next few weeks I’m going to be experimenting with moving DNS and DHCP from the file server in those buildings to the router, speeding up the file server in the process.
.2, adobereader, afp, alumni, ARRA, backups, battery, bookmarks, cafeteria, calendar, camera, chrome, copier, dasl, datalink, dns, dropbox, dvd, easygradepro, emac, email, esber, excel, fax, filemakerpro, filemanagement, filter, filtering, firefox, flash, fonts, gallery, garageband, googledocs, googleforms, gradecard, graphics, helpdesk, hp1320, hp3005, hp3600, hp4100, hpcp1518, ibook, iep, im, imovie, installation, internet, ios, ipad, ipodtouch, keepass, keyboard, keynote, kiosk, labels, laptop, lenovo, levy, lifetouch, listserv, loanout, ltsp, macbook, macbookpro, machinemanagement, machineupgrade, microphone, microsoftoffice, mini, monitor, mouse, mycatpage, netbook, network, networking, notebook, onlinegrades, oo4kids, openoffice.org, order, osx, osxserver, pdf, permissions, phd, pictures, pos, poster, power, powerlifting, printer, printing, progressbook, projector, projectormount, requisitions, reunion, robotics, routing, safari, sam, scanning, scantron, scholasticenterprise, security, shared, shockwave, smartboard, soc, social, speakers, squid, squidguard, studyisland, switch, switches, thinkpad, toner, toshiba, training, treasurer, tuxpaint, twitter, useradmin, useradmin., walkthroughs, website, windows, windowsterminalserver, wireless, word, wordpress, workflows, youtube
I had the privilege of addressing the soon-to-be graduates of the University of Findlay College of Education on April 13. It was a pleasure to speak, although it was tough for me to limit myself to 20 minutes. A copy of the speech and the audio from the speech will be posted to http://ryancollins.org/ as soon as possible.
A help sheet on setting up Mozilla Thunderbird for email is now available at http://kcs.me/kdr.
Thunderbird is completely unsupported software. Feel free to use it but any Help Desk Requests on its use will not be completed.
When disaster strikes with technology, it usually disrupts communications. This makes it harder to keep people up to date on the status of the downtime. Then as I’m trying to fix the problem, every text or phone call slows down the repair as I respond to requests for updates.
When planning a technology alert system, I had two requirements:
I settled on using Twitter for technology alerts. Users can subscribe to the alerts through text messaging so they will receive the alert soon after I post it. There are eight Twitter accounts for KCS Tech alerts and updates: kcstech, kcsestech, kcshctech, kcshstech, kcsmstech, kcsnwtech, kcsoltech, and kcswvtech. The main account, kcstech, is used to publish alerts and updates that pertain to the technology of the entire Kenton City Schools District. The remaining seven accounts are for alerts and updates that only affect an individual building. To subscribe to an account through text messages, text follow kcstech to 40404. If you are already a Twitter user, you can just follow the accounts.
For example, if you are a teacher at Espy, you would want to text 40404 with follow kcstech and follow kcsestech.
If you don’t want to follow through your cell phone and just want to see what’s up, you can also visit the Twitter page for each account, which is twitter.com/kcstech (replacing kcstech with the Twitter account you would like to see).
Please check with your texting plan before subscribing, each text could cost you $.25 or more!
