Thursday, March 6, 2014

Tech Hardware man in AP role

So these last three weeks have been quite interesting in our year round school.  Due to budget cuts, we were unable to rehire our technology assistant for this school year.  So I have had the dubious honor of filling in that role.  Let's just say that it has been a learning curve and an eye opening experience.  I love technology and I love using it, but I am not a big fan of fixing it.  I have learned about network printing, smart board wiring, and a variety of computer errors.  I am fortunate to have the "help desk" to help out, but I received an email from them that they are backed up with a high volume of request (hmmm sorry). Now that I have "fixed" repaired most of the problems it is time to start using the technology with teachers and students.

One things that we would like to work with is  Live streaming of our morning news, events, performances, etc.  We feel that this would provide our extended families and traveling family members the opportunity to see are wonderful performances even if they are not on site.

Another area that I would like to model for teachers to use with students is the creating and presenting apps or sites.  We are using imovie, puppet pals, prezi, voice threads, and etc.

Lastly, as a school leader I would like to dive into podcasting and video chatting (or google groups) as a way to send out information.

It's funny that I started this in August and it seems like we have made some strides in the areas of concerns...We have been able to convert our studio news into a student ran show that uses a mini ipad and a mac air to create and edit their segments of the show.  Students are able to do interviews, report out and create the news using iMovie.
On the administrator side we create a weekly vlog to share out school news.  We are also adding in the video portion of the news into our daily world.