Elementary School TV Stations

Another project the Technology Services department tackled was the implementation of "local" TV stations in three more of our elementary schools. These TV stations are broadcasted only in building at each of these sites. They are broadcast over a local channel 98. These schools use the channel to broadcast the morning announcements, and post videos and photos of activities. They produce and publish PBIS(Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports) broadcasts to the classrooms and following these broadcasts there are other activities that follow. These schools rotate 5th grade students to film and produce each event. This has been a great way to engage students and teachers. It is a real climate changer in those buildings.

Note: East, South, NF and GLW all have a local channel 98.

Upgrading of District Computer Labs

Our school computer labs house from 16-27 computer workstations. In all of our schools, these rooms have a high amount of traffic throughout each day. Students of all ages use these labs for research projects and skill enhancement. Due to the high traffic and the amount of data passed in each of these labs, we felt it necessary to upgrade the wiring and layout of these learning areas. Our first step was to disassemble each of the labs at the High School, South Elementary, GLW Elementary, Middle School and North Freedom. We then concentrated on laying these labs out to create a 21st century learning environment, where teachers can teach easily and students can learn in a comfortable, engaging environment. Once laid out, then we went to work on rearranging the power and network to match the layout. When finished, we will have successfully updated two middle school, two high school, and four elementary school labs.

Note: Labs that are being updated are HS IMC, HS 203, MS 423, MS IMC, South Lab, GLW Lab, NF Lab and EAST Upper

Apple Professional Development using iPad and iPod

The special education, regular education and technology department are combining together to pilot a program using Apple iPad, iPod Touch and Apple professional development. We are formulating this opportunity to encourage inclusion and to focus on our current math, language arts and reading initiatives. The iPad/iPod are revolutionary touch screen devices that maximize the use of applications, accessibility features and a full functional Internet to provide an excellent resource for the classroom.

Pilot 1 - BELC/K-1 iPod/iPad (Training October 18 and Feb 9) This program involves 13 teachers total. There will be 8 teachers from the BELC locations. Those BELC teachers will be piloting the use of iPads in their facilities. We will also have 5 k-1 teachers from our elementary schools. These teachers will be piloting using iPods. Read linked(above) document for specific details of the Pilot program.

Pilot 2 - Elementary iPad Pilot (Training October 19 and Feb 10) There will be 15 teachers working in this pilot program. Within this specific iPad Pilot program, our regular education(10) instructors will be working closely with the special education(5) teachers and a specific population of students in each of their respective classrooms. See linked(above) document for more details.

Pilot 3 - HS/MS iPod Pilot (Training Ocotober 20 and Feb 11) There will be 15 teachers working in this iPod pilot program. The (11) special education, (4)regular education and technology department are combining together to pilot a program using the Apple iPod Touch and Apple professional development. See linked(above) document for more details.

Apple OSX Pilot

We wanted to provide our teachers more mobile access to technology and work on piloting the use of the Mac OS 10 operating system in our district. We decided to remove some teacher desktop computers and replace them with laptop computers. We asked the teachers to use these new mobile workstations entirely with the new Mac OS 10.6 platform. Our hope with this group is to make this new operating system "user friendly" for staff and students in our networked environment. We took their desktops and updated the lab at South. South had the oldest workstations in the district (8 years old).

Note: Staff Breakdown for Pilot-8 HS, 8 MS, 3 East, 3 GLW, South 4, NF 2

Summer Technology Academy 2010

When our Technology Committee worked on the summer technology academy agenda, our focus was to look at what our technology initiatives were working on. We then developed the academy based on those topics.

We chose to focus on Smartboard training, Apple(Mac) resources, and Gaggle(student email).

The academy went very well with 15 sessions and 90 staff attending.

We had some wonderful feedback. You can take a look at the survey results from the Technology Academy and please provide any suggestions and/or comments.

Technology Academy Survey 2010

Wireless Technology in Our Schools

Wireless technology has been in the forefront of some of the changes that we are implementing in the district. We have slowly been able to add some of this technology as the dollars come in. Wireless technology can have a wonderful impact on technology. Listed below are some of the benefits of using wireless technologies.

Ease/Seamless use of Mobile Devices including:

Laptop carts- We currently have several mobile laptop carts in our MS, HS and South elementary school (coming soon!). Simply roll in the laptop cart, pull out the computers and start using this resource.

Smart board Carts- Not necessary to unplug your computer to plug in the laptop that is connected to the smart board (Seamless!)

Laptop computers- For teachers, administrators, special need students. We will now be able to look at getting our teachers laptop computers as we upgrade teacher workstations.

Wireless desktop computers- We currently have no capacity to add more wired student use computers to our classroom. With this environment, we can add these workstations wirelessly to the classroom.

Baraboo Schools Looking to Macs for the Future

As we are upgrading and purchasing computers in our district we are looking more toward using Macintosh computers to fit this need. With the advent of the intel processor in the mac, now each Macintosh computer you purchase has the capabilities to have both the windows operating system and the Macintosh operating system on it. So you will get the benefits of both resources on one machine. Hence, the Ultimate Learning Tool.

• Benefit- All windows resources we currently have along with all the Macintosh Resources (I Movie, I DVD, I Photo, Garage Band etc.)


• Benefit- The workstation is wireless and a one piece unit. Easy for our Technology Department to setup and connect to network.


• Benefit- Training for the Macintosh Platform. We have several people in the district who use Macintosh computes and would be will in to train staff
  
• Issue- The mouse and keyboard are different.

These workstations will ultimately be a Macintosh computer running Windows XP, so there will be no learning curve here.

We will be piloting 5 i-Macs in the district in 3 elementary schools, 1 ms and 1hs teachers classrooms.