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Showing posts from September, 2008

Post 09/30/2008

Some schools are uncompromising when it comes to cell phones :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Metro & Tri-State Some schools are uncompromising when it comes to cell phones - gives little description as to why schools have these rules. Just because I guess.. tags: cellphone

Post 09/26/2008

Martha Beck: How to Be Wildly Successful tags: no_tag Quick Start. When you want to learn, you just jump in and start messing around. Fact Finder. Before she starts a task, she needs to know all about it. Implementors—like Thomas Edison, for example—need physical objects to work with ollow Thrus. They set up orderly systems Martha Beck: How to Be Wildly Successful tags: no_tag self-efficacy—her belief that she could succeed at specific tasks and life in general.

One Week Later - A Question of Reliability

We are a week after the flood and everything is back to normal at our schools. The same can't be said for all of our families, some of which are still homeless or have been greatly impacted by the local flooding. Last week was an interesting test for us. Over the past year we had fiber optics installed for our data network and we have been transitioning off of our T1 lines. Currently some of our systems are on fiber, some are on T1, and some ride between them. Last week's flood put an important box of equipment (somewhere between us and AT&T) underwater and behind police barricades. We lost part of our network for 48 hours. Here is what I learned. 1. The more dependable your network becomes the more people rely on it. 2 years ago network outages were common here. People counted on the network going down at times. Over the past year we have been down for no more than 10 minutes at a time and but one instance was a planned occurrence (that one was AT&T's fault

Post 09/16/2008

Projection Calculator - Throw Distance and Screen Size Calculates the throw distance for projectors tags: no_tag

AUP's, Unions, and Stuff that has to do with them...

Interesting afternoon... This was sent out by the Teacher's Union today and was routed to me by several teachers and was titled “MTA Warning” “Don’t put too much faith in this technological terror that has been created. . .” (accompanied by a picture of Darth Vader) A reminder. . . The use of computers that are associated with the District 207 server/laptops does not guarantee personal security in regards to your computer activity and emails. Avoid the use of the school PC’s to convey personal or highly sensitive information to other people. Your emails can be monitored and read, if the need presents itself. Also, the use of a “Blind Copy” does not guarantee any camouflage either. If you have to convey personal information in regards to MTA or personal business, it is best to keep it out of the District’s system. Either, contact your building reps personally or use the district email to set up a meeting/conversation, but do not divulge anything of a

Finally Quieting Down and Gearing up

Well I have been away from blogging for a while. We had a crazy summer around here and everyone is back in place. I am setting a goal to offer more to the professional community this year (more details on how later - still piecing this together). I have been in a reflective mood over the last few days. It has been 14 months since I moved into this new role and I am trying to assess my impact on 207. I came here to work with a large organization to impact change. I'm not quite sure yet if it is all coming together perfectly or if it is tenuously held together with paperclips and bubblegum. I guess only time will answer that one. There have been a lot of people involved in moving this mountain and we are much further ahead in infrastructure, hardware, software, staffing, and planning. I feel like we are ready for the hardest part - using all of that to impact how learning occurs in the classroom. We will be working as a technology staff along with teachers over the next few we