By Rob Van Herk
The first day of the new school year
– Aug. 30 – is only five weeks away. Some of you think that the
11 weeks of summer vacation for the students must mean a lot less
work in the technology department, but reality is different.
By Rob Van Herk
The first day of the new school year – Aug. 30 – is only five weeks away. Some of you think that the 11 weeks of summer vacation for the students must mean a lot less work in the technology department, but reality is different.
First of all, several school sites are involved with summer school. More than 1,000 students attended six weeks of summer school which meant continued need for support for the students and teachers. Several of the other schools in the district are being upgraded. These modernization activities include new computers, movement of existing servers and much more.
There are a number of end-of-the-year activities that require special attention from the technology department and these activities can only happen in the few weeks when most of our schools don’t have their staff in the office. In other words, a typical summer means at least as much work as during the normal school year.
But this summer, it’s even more exciting. The district connected every classroom with the Internet earlier this spring. Using the fiber network provided by Charter Communications all the school sites are connected with each other and with the Internet using a high-speed connection.
As soon as all the schools were connected the next logical step was to provide all the teachers with a computer. More than 70 percent of our teachers will have a new computer on their desk when they return in August. These computers allow teachers to develop their curriculum material, check their email, use word processing and other applications and use grade-book software. Some schools will be able to do attendance recording on the computer instead of using the old scan sheets. Most importantly the teachers will be able to check the history of the test results of all their students on their computer.
Last week I had the pleasure of attending a training session organized by the Santa Clara County Office of Education. Three of our middle school math teachers decided to volunteer and spend four days with teachers from other districts in a SCCOE workshop and learn more about Microsoft PowerPoint and Breeze. With Breeze, software purchased by SCCOE and made available to the school districts in the county, these trained teachers can create dynamic presentations and Web content for the classroom.
For example, one of the teachers decided to use the training exercises and create a presentation highlighting the characteristics of negative numbers. She created a few dynamic PowerPoint slides using build-in animations. Using Breeze she then recorded audio commentary to each slide and published the combination of slides and audio on the Internet.
These mini-lessons can be used by teachers for instruction or by individual students on the classroom computer. Publishing the content on the Internet allows students and their parents to watch these presentations at home.
In addition to these mini lessons, we’re working on creating presentations that will provide parents information on many of their child’s test results. What do these MAP scores mean and what is the relationship between the grades the teachers gives the student and their CAT6 test score? Watch the GUSD Web page in the next few months to see these lessons and get the answers to these questions.
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I want to congratulate The Dispatch staff on their first and second places in the Better Newspapers Contest. The Editorial Pages and Editorial Comment both received a second place for newspapers with a distribution under 10,000 in addition to nine other first- and second-place awards.
The attention the school district gets (or dare I say scrutiny?) from The Dispatch and its readers on the opinion pages does not always come across as fair. At times people are unnecessarily attacked and they feel offended by stated opinions or specific attention to topics.
But having a local daily newspaper is a great thing. A local newspaper allows many voices to be heard including the information coming from the schools and the school district.
The coming year is a critical year for the schools. Will they be able to use the data in such a way that there can be a breakthrough and many more students reach proficient levels? I know it can be done, but I also know that the schools and the teachers cannot make this happen without help. Parents and the community will have to do their part. The news stories and the editorial pages in The Dispatch can be helpful by providing different viewpoints and forcing us all to look in the mirror occasionally and ask ourselves: “What can I do to improve education?”
