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Here are a few of the Tech happenings here at MISD for your information:
New Digital Cameras: We have now placed digital still frame and digital video cameras on every campus. They can be checked out for special school related projects, but cannot be kept for more than 4 school days in succession unless special consideration is made from your building principal. OSX users can pull video and pictures directly into your computers to create slide shows, presentations, and more. OS9 users can pull video into their computers if they have a FireWire port on their computer, but may need some software loaded to pull pictures from the still frame cameras. This is easy to do and the campus technical support can help to get this loaded for you.
United Streaming: We have purchased licenses to allow all of our campuses full motion streaming video directly into your classrooms from the internet and offers more than 20,000 core-curriculum, standards-based video clips, lesson plans, and assessments in science, social studies, math, language arts, and health with a history timeline. The content has been correlated to the TEKS and can be accessed by content key word searches for different curriculum areas, by topic, by subject, and by grade level. This cross-curricular video service was chosen to be the best by eWeek magazine subscribers. We will need to install Windows Media Player as a companion to Quicktime (already loaded) in order for you to take full advantage of this service so hold tight. You will be able to incorporate video into your
lessons and presentations. As soon as we have everything set up, we will send you the link to the site along with your passcode which will enable you to setup your own account. This will best be utilized with presentation systems such as the Computer On Wheels at every campus.
Virus Filter: We realize there has been a dramatic increase in Spam messages (junk mail) and virus composed email. We have been more fortunate than most as some Districts have been shut down or had their networks severely crippled by the viruses and 1000’s of generated emails. We have several policies in place to block certain Spam messages, and we have a virus protection device between us and Region 10 that strips most of the attached viruses from the messages before you receive them. A word of caution: If you are not expecting to receive an attachment from a friend, please do not open it without contacting them first to verify the attachment. The Macs are safe from most of the viruses, however, you can still send a PC user a virus in an email attachment that could severely cripple their computer
even though it did nothing to your Mac. We are hesitant to be too stringent with our mail filtering policies as we take a chance of deleting legitimate mail. We will restrict the most common spam messages and depend on you to use good judgment.
Web Filter: We are presently moving away from WebSense as our Web Filtering system. The price of Websense has more than tripled in the last 6 years. We are presently testing out the top alternative (that is rated very highly in several reviews) and is about 1/3 the price. We are also hoping for more flexibility in issuing policies that restrict legitimate searches. The new system should be up and running next week so expect some surfing interruptions as we put it through some tests and tweak the policies.
OSX Secondary: OSX has more packed-in features than any operating system I have seen. It is Unix at its core, therefore utilizes the internet very well and is more stable than just about anything you could use. If your system ever locks up in OSX, there is probably a hardware issue as the operating system is very hard to bring down. I’m not saying that it can’t be done so please do not try to prove me wrong. ;) Let me give a couple of quick tips (and there are more features than I will list tonight...)...
Sherlock: If you haven’t used this little program yet, you are in for a real treat. It includes a full blown dictionary, all the yellow pages for searching, a language translator for about 8 different languages (including Spanish), movie locator (quite cool), stocks, flights, pictures (clip art), and more… If it’s not in your dock, look in the Applications folder. Speaking of the Dock, you can drag things into it for quick access. BTW, the dock is the bar with icons at the bottom of your screen.
iPhoto: Plug in a digital still frame camera (like the ones we just purchased for you) to your computer, and OSX will automatically detect the camera, launch iPhoto, and allow you to click one button to import all of your pictures from the camera. You can touch up the pictures, take out the red eye, resize and crop your pictures to use in presentations and such.
iMovie: Edit a movie in a fashion that is as easy as word processing. Add effects to your movie and save it in a web format that allows you to post it on HomeWork online, or attach it to an email if it is under 3 meg in size. If students are in the picture, remember to always check to see if they meet the FERPA guidelines (which would probably be the most difficult part of using iMove). ;)
iTunes: All of the OSX eMacs have CD burners in them. You can use iTunes to find any music that you desire, listen to a royalty free 30 second clip, and purchase the song for .99 cents that would be yours to keep. Just remember, if you give the song you purchased away in a highlight video or sell the presentation or video with your purchased clip, you are still in violation of copyright law. You can however use up to 30 seconds of your clip in any presentation for educational needs as a part of the Fair Use Act.
Music Industry: Which brings up the next item as I am sure that most of you are aware of the Music Industries lawsuits that are either pending or are being settled out of court. Make sure that you have not loaded or are using any file sharing (swapping) software on any school computers. If you have LimeWire or something like it, please delete it immediately. Thanks!
PowerSchool and HomeworkOnline: We all appreciate your effort and timeliness of the postings of assignments, homework, and grades! We have had a lot of compliments from parents and community members, and I just wanted to congratulate you on a job well done. Please keep up the good work! Parents have grown dependent on this system and I am quickly notified if it’s not functioning properly. ;) Thanks again for all of your hard work as I know your plates are full. Just know that you are making a difference in more ways than you may sometimes realize.
Upcoming Projects:
Printer Bid: We are in the process of bidding out our printer supplies for another year. With this in mind, please note that it is 4 to 8 times more costly to print on ink jet printers than it is on a laser printer. If you have an inkjet printer, use your best judgment and print to it when you need to. Just remember that you can send things to Joann at the print shop or even photocopying would even be cheaper.
Meadows Library Lab: We are in the process of moving the Meadows Library lab over to the former senior citizens area at Meadows. Carlos is doing the electrical renovation now. We hope to have this move completed by the end of next week. We are planning on utilizing our Cisco networking students to pull the drops needed for the new lab.
New COWs: We are about to request bids for some new Cows. That’s right, we are putting a few out to pasture as the old elementary COWS will become the VCR Cows. We are only looking into replacing the Princeton Monitors with NetTV’s in order to gain the higher screen resolution needed for the streaming video presentations and other types of presentations. This is just for the elementary schools for now.
New North Campus lab: We have just finished purchasing some new computers that will be used in Desktop Publishing, Webmastering, and Digital Graphics. Thanks to Kathleen Krum, these students were pushing the older (almost 5 years) computers further than they could respond in a reasonable class period. (That’s a good thing) ;) We will move the old stations to Meadows and some other places that will only require them to do Office and Web Surfing.
New Rolling Wireless Labs: We are also adding 2 wireless rolling labs at the North Campus to aid in research as they have a little further to walk to Meadows library. I’m hoping this will help out on rainy days. ;)
Video Tech Lab: We are in the process of setting up a video technology lab at the South Campus that will allow professional video productions to be made. We haven’t started bidding out any items yet. More to come.
Windows XP Upgrade: Two of the High School labs have just recently received and updated their operating system as well. BCIS, Computer Science, and Keyboarding are now using this newest Windows operating system.
New Student Server: We now have in operation a new Xserve (unix based system) that allows both the Windows XP student users and Mac OSX student users to save their work and retrieve it from either platform from any lab. It is serving nearly 1800 accounts and because of some of the demands of the Video Technology classes and other Digital Graphics courses, we have increased its storage capacity to over 400 gigabytes. (that’s a lot) ;)
Board Room Presentation System: If you get a chance, check out the new board room presentation system. It will allow a presenter to bring one document that can be easily displayed to all of the board members and the audience for better communication utilizing a document camera. We can also do the usual PowerPoints and Video presentations as well. This system was installed at a 1/3 of the cost of the original estimate. Give Carlos Rivera a pat on the back for the professional job of locating and moving the necessary electrical outlets and for mounting the projection system. We were able to use some existing equipment to cut costs as well. We specked out the equipment and design of the system which also saved money.
We have more in the works but I will stop here. I appreciate all that you do for our students here at MISD! You make this a great place to work! Thanks!
Kirk Paschall
Director of Technology
Midlothian I. S. D.
100 Walter Stephenson Rd.
Midlothian, TX 76065
voice 972.775.8296
fax 972.775.2126
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