March Update #2

IT Updates

Refresh Cycle & New Computers 

Now is the time of year when we start thinking about refreshing devices, much of which actually takes place during the summer while staff is off. This year's process has begun with a refresh of some teacher laptops. This has raised some questions about who gets a new computer and when. I want to take some time to go over the refresh cycle to give some clarity regarding our device cycles.

First, it is important to understand that all district-owned devices go through a different lifespan depending on the type of use. Below is the "goal" or minimum lifespan of some of the devices in the district.

Chromebooks	Teacher MacBooks	iMac/PC Labs	District Office &  Operations PCs	Infrastructure
3 years	5 years	5-6 years	5-6 years	5 years

In other words, this is the minimum amount time we expect most devices in the category to last with normal wear and tear before even considering replacement. This is based on combination of experience and budget projections/planning.  As stated above, this is a goal or "best-case" scenario. The reality is that usually we begin refreshing devices as we can afford which may mean waiting an additional year for replacement.

Additionally, we try to squeeze all the life out of them we can by reallocating the computers from areas that are direct student instruction or mission-critical operations (Tier 1) to lower use, student support,  or "part-time" areas (Tier 2) where we can often get another 2 years or so of life before they are eventually discharged entirely.




While it might seem at times like certain people are getting new items or maybe the computers you use seem really old, we do our best to ensure district devices are fairly and equally distributed and refreshed. We also try to ensure we are getting as much use out of them as possible and only purchase devices that fit sustainably within our budget. While we are forced to refresh labs in their entirety (which is a huge cost!), we refresh staff machines and student Chromebooks on a rolling basis as the budget allows. To get a general idea of where any device fits on this cycle, one need only pull up the specs and see where you fall based on the table above.

In the Mac example here, I've pulled up the "About this Mac" from the Apple icon and you can see that this is a mid-2012 MacBook. One important note is that this date refers to manufacture not purchase which is usually 6 months later at the beginning of the next year (so really 2013). According to the table above, that means this lap is due for refresh in SY2018. This example was used because it is currently teacher laptops that are being refreshed.

Open Educational Resources

CC Search

In an effort to promote Open Educational Resources (OERs), I try to occasionally feature a good tool for teachers to use to access CC content. CC content -- unlike copyrighted material -- is free and open to use as long as you follow your English teacher's advice and "Cite your sources!" or more accurately provide attribution to the authors involved. Other than that, you are generally able to mix and match, adapt and edit, and so forth as needed.

If this is all new to you, think about how a resource text is bound under copyright. If you want more copies, you have to buy more. If you want to take out a section that is outdated or inaccurate by current standards, you can't. You're stuck with an expensive, as-is text. If you were to go the other route and write your own text from scratch, it would be better but how long would that take? An OER text gets you 75% of the way there; you add, subtract or edit as necessary and BOOM, you've got a perfectly aligned text (or resource) before you turn grey.

If I had to think of a CC tool I use all the time, it has to be CC Search. Basically, CC Search is the Google of OER resources. It searches a bunch of OER sites simultaneously so you don't have to remember which site has a certain type of resources. Say you're wondering, "What's that photo site again that has CC photos I can use for free?... Flyer...Floto....Flotsom..?" (It's Flickr by the way).

Just bookmark CC Search and it will do the searching (and remembering) for you.

Tips

Find & Replace

In terms of indispensable keyboard shortcuts, everybody knows cut (cmd + x), copy (cmd + c), and paste (cmd + v). You might even know that (cmd + k) takes selected text and makes it a link, but do you know about cmd + f? 

Find (cmd + f) is a search tool I use daily to quickly find text. Here are some examples: 

A. Say I get a 80 page pdf of standards and benchmarks and I am only looking for a standard on mitosis. Instead of wasting time scanning the document for that word, I would simply type it into the search box, hit enter and it would jump to the first instance of that word. 

B. Or maybe I have spreadsheet or webpage open with a huge roster of names like an entire grade or multiple grades and I want to find a particular student. If I'm lucky, it's in alpha order and I can scroll but it doesn't matter if I just do a 'Find' for that student's name. It's just quicker than scrolling. 

C. Finally, the find tool also comes with a replace option in things you can edit. (In gDocs you need to click those three little dots to get it to show up). So imagine I discovered that in a document I was keeping as notes, I had spelled Keven's name wrong (a lot!) and needed to get that "i" in there. Well, being it was a lot of notes, I've got 22 pages to scroll through and read OR I would type the error "Keven" in the find box and the correct spelling "Kevin" into the replace box and hit enter. BOOM! All of the mistakes are fixed. 

** If you're using a PC on Windows or Linux, it is ctrl + f.

March Update #1

IT Notes

Upgrades 

Well, it's been a few months now since our upgraded connection that doubled our overall network speeds for the district. We've seen greatly improved experiences in classroom, labs, and on carts. We've got enough wiggle room to be able to support testing or other larger scale days with lots of people on, but it's important to keep things in perspective. We have a faster internet connection than many school districts in the area and in the state. There also are several school districts much larger than us that have same connection speeds. So, we should be grateful that we are out front and able to take advantage these higher speeds to provide our students with the best digital learning experiences. Yet, we still want to make sure that we're following best practices in maximizing our resources by not streaming in HD or in multiple instances if we don't have to.

Also, it is important to understand why "drops" are still occurring in some areas. Each wireless access point or "AP" is one of those little white boxes mounted on the ceiling. They provide wireless network access like your wireless router at home. Besides overall network speed, the other major factor in wireless experience is simply the number of devices connecting. Each AP can only handle certain number of devices connecting. If it goes over that amount, some devices won't be able to connect.

Three years ago when we transitioned from a very low number of wireless devices to several carts worth, we envisioned a "pod" type setup where one AP would provide service for a small area of a few classrooms. As we've continued to ramp-up our devices to our current 1:1.16 student:device ratio, we've learned that we need to transition to a more per-classroom approach for APs to ensure adequate coverage. That transition started this year with installation of additional APs at the HS in the fall and several at the ML this winter. You will continue to see additions over the next couple of years as the budget allows until each classroom has an AP in it. Additional common spaces, gyms and auditoriums will not see additional APs but will have replacements cycled through as we're already at our 3 year average lifespan for many of these.

PLEAT Program Wrapping Up

Today, our PLEAT program wraps up for this year. PLEAT provides students in grades 6, 9 and soon 12 the opportunity to get a dual-funded Chromebook. As we look forward to next year's program kicking off in August, we've learned some important lessons about things that worked well and changes that need to be made for next year's program. One important thing that I hope to get across to all stakeholders is the importance of the this program's success and how it impacts students in terms of access to technology.

We are at our device peak for district-owned student devices. In fact, with budget projections for the next few years, we will likely need to scale back the number of overall devices owned by the district by a few. Thus, the only way to see a net increase in devices in kids' hands is with the PLEAT program which allows for additional devices plus some redistribution of current device assignments to areas of need that aren't eligible for PLEAT like Eagle View. If we get larger numbers of parents taking advantage the PLEAT program in the future, we will be able to realize our district's vision of a 1:1 student device ratio in a financially sustainable way. Please do your part by encouraging participation whenever possible.

Using PLEAT Devices at School

After speaking with two parents, there was some confusion as to whether students were supposed to bring PLEAT devices at all or when. Students should start bringing their PLEAT devices to school as soon as they receive them. For internet access, students with PLEAT devices will use the 186Open WiFi network (as they do with their phones). The intention is that they will be able to access the same educational content as they do on school devices.

Teachers: If you find that something for your class is blocked or not working on the 186Open network for students with these devices, please put in a ticket immediately to tech support so that we can unblock it. We've had the open network locked down quite a bit this year so it is likely we'll miss something as we start to open it back up for use with PLEAT devices.

If you need a refresher on how to switch or get on the open network, please email me.

Google Apps Updates

GoogleDocs Dictation -

Google keeps adding more and more features to apps though they often get overlooked. This has happened recently with Docs which now supports integrated dictation. That means you click a button, the microphone turns on, captures your speech and types it out for you. It also has the ability to capture punctuation. So if you say "comma" it will type a "," for you.

This has huge implications for the classroom and in my opinion, this is the first time the speech recognition is good enough that it doesn't take longer to dictate than just type. One word of warning: it relies heavily on enunciation or speaking clearly, so in some cases, student success may vary until they get used to speaking louder and clearer than they normally would. If you would like to use it, open a gDoc and it will be under the tools menu.

DCL Updates

Monday's PD with goals and scales and the DCL was productive, no doubt. We got most teams in the district moved out of phase one and into phase two at least. Days like Monday also give me a lot of information about what is working for people and what makes them want to go Office Space on something because it doesn't work or is too hard/many steps.  I've been aware for some time of something in the DCL that qualifies as the printer in the image above. 

One word: Tables.

Tables are as needed in our daily work in schools as copy+paste. Without tables, we are essentially flashing back to the error era of typewriters where we would spend 2 hours trying to spacebar and return our way into lining things up so they look halfway decent. Case in point, the DCL's phase two focuses mainly on developing and putting learning goals & scales in the template into the DCL. That entire task is predicated on being able to use a table. 

So you would probably think that since Moodle was built for education, it would be great at tables. You would be wrong. 

Tables in Moodle are frustrating and harder than they should be. This is largely due to the nature of the differences between how a desktop application like Word handles this task vs how an Internet-based app can handle it. Classic square-peg, round hole. 

So one is left with two options: Spend the equivalent of two lifetimes setting up a scale by hand in a Moodle table or set it up in Word/GoogleDocs and copy/paste. 

I wonder which most folks will choose? 

The unfortunate thing about copy/paste is that it works until it doesn't. Copying and pasting a goals/scales combo worked until we started adding multiple tables in a unit. This was found by one of our CLs who was adding scales. Once she got scale #3 pasted in, the text editor (the box we type into in the DCL) locked up entirely and she couldn't do anything. Troubleshooting led to copy/paste, in that you get a lot of hidden formatting that comes with and when converted to Internet-readable code during paste, you end up with a mess that Moodle can't read and thus locks up. 

Solutions

So today I went back and reworked some things in an effort to make it easier and just work. Here's a rundown:

1. Added Autosave. Moodle (including the DCL) will autosave what you're typing as a "draft" every 30 seconds. Like GoogleDocs but just not as fast.

2. Reworked the toolbar getting rid of the extra click to expand the bar and tools we don't use. It's much shorter now.

3. Added back tools lost when we upgraded like the "Oops" back button

and the "Go to a full screen so you can actually see what you're doing" button


4. Added a replacement to tables called "grid" which is easier to use. It really should be called "columns" which explains how it would be used.


5. Made "Remove Formatting" more prominent. This is your number one button when cleaning up the aftermath of a copy/paste fiasco.


6. Fixed the copy/paste code problem with "paste special" 


Now when you copy/paste something from GoogleDocs or Word it will give you a preview before you paste it in.  You can then tell if it will be a disaster or not.

If you tell it where you're copying from, Moodle will strip out the garbage in the background making it so you can actually edit the table later without problems.

Take-aways 

1. There is an on-going effort to simplify and make things 'just work'. It is important to realize that adapting on the fly is the name of the game. I will try to find a solution or build a solution to your DCL or Moodle Classroom problem, but first I need to clearly understand it which comes from specific feedback. A CL gave me this table problem and it clearly was getting in the way moving forward in phase 2. 

2. Try out copying and pasting your goals/scale tables now. Hopefully it will work a lot better and not give you a post-paste mess. If we're still having a lot of troubles getting the goals & scales template in there, we'll need try other fixes.