I’ve been back to work for a week and many of our faculty will be back next week.  My staff has been hard at work all summer setting up new machines and reimaging old ones.  We’ve rolled out 50 new desktop computers in two computer labs and classrooms.  We are in the process of rolling out 30 new faculty laptops and servicing the other 40 that are already deployed to faculty.  This includes service packs, an Outlook upgrade, and SmartNotebook 10.  As we do these laptop upgrades, we’re requiring faculty to participate in a 30-45 minute training session when they pick up their laptops.  During this training session, we’re reviewing basic laptop maintenance, spending a few minutes training the faculty on Outlook, and making sure our backup script works. 

In addition to the nuts and bolts above here are some of the projects that I’m working on for the school year (Thanks to Jim Heynderickx for the inspiration here):

Outlook Training: During the first month of school we have to make sure to provide enough support to faculty, staff and students so we can complete our transition from FirstClass to Outlook.  So far, so good as our transition over the summer was completed with only a few minor issues and with a positive reaction from the community.  Change is hard, so I don’t expect that September will be a cake walk, but with appropriate communication and preemptive training and support, we’ll be in a good place in October. 

Continued Professional Development including New Faculty and Student Orientation,  Collegiate Connect (our SIS and communication hub for school constituents), Gradebook, Smartboards, and Moodle.  This is a big one. 

• New Faculty Orientation is a big one as we need to bring our faculty in, show them what we have to offer and how to find resources about technology at the school.  Luckily, we have two one hour sessions with the new faculty this year and that will allow us to do a nuts and bolts session: file sharing, printing, Outlook email, and Collegiate Connect (SIS).  The second session will be a technology scavenger hunt that our Academic Dean and Lower School Assistant Head are putting together.  This is going to be a fun exercise to see if new faculty can use the training and FAQ material we’ve posted on our department web site to get the scavenger hunt done. 
• New Student Orientation includes much of the above, plus a heavy dose of Acceptable Use in 20 minutes.  Any ideas? 
• Collegiate Connect training is usually done in conjunction with division meetings as it consists of specific administrative responsibilities of the faculty in each division.    We’re creating lots of documentation in the form of FAQs on our Technology web site for this.
• Gradebook, Smartboard and Moodle training.  None of these tools are  required so we’ll be providing as needed support on them in September and then rolling each out via targeted monthly themes with professional development and communication with the faculty during those periods. 

Powerful Learning Practice — This is very exciting.  Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson are running this professional development program for five of our faculty/administrators.  Here’s how they describe it:

Powerful Learning Practice offers a unique opportunity for educators to participate in a long-term, job-embedded professional development program that immerses them in 21st Century learning environments.

Day one of this is September 8th.  I’m psyched. 

Website Upgrade — Yes, we’re upgrading our web site.  This collaborative process has taken longer than I planned, but we’re on track for a January launch providing us a much better look and feel and more integration between our site and Collegiate Connect. 

And a few smaller ones —

Faculty Professional Development Reports — Last year we did these in a DrupalEd environment.  This year, they will be in Moodle.   Just waiting for MoodleRooms to finish up our Moodle config and we’ll be rocking and rolling. 

New Media Gallery Training – Whipplehill just released the new version of their Media Gallery which is a Flickr like upgrade to their photo galleries but also includes a slick video and audio player.  Tagging and all sorts of web 2.0 goodies available.  We’re starting with our archived digital photos from 2001 to the present.  Our archivist has two parent volunteers who will be working on this all year.  Very exciting!

Oh, yeah — On the personal front we’re a few weeks away from a working kitchen — you can check out some of the pics here.  Feels like I have two 10 hour a day jobs lately. 

arvind and I will be webcasting again over at EdTechTalk in the next few weeks.  Just need to wait for his teaching schedule to get going. 

I’ve also decided not to subscribe to all of the listserv’s I traditional participate in and concentrate on Twitter, the ISENet Ning and my Blogroll this year.  See you all there. 

I’m sure there is lots more, but that’s it in a nut shell right now.  See you all on the other side!

After a long process, my school has decided to move to Microsoft Outlook/Exchange 2007.   I realize that this is bucking the trend to move towards outsourced email with Google’s Apps for Schools and Microsoft Live, but these systems did not meet our requirements.  I use Gmail for my personal email and am very happy with it, but we felt that for an enterprise, it were not quite ready to go in that direction.

What is exciting about this move is that we will have better basic email functionality for our basic email users  and more advanced functionality for many of our high end users.  The basic functions include:

• HTML email support
• Outlook Web Access — A much improved web user email interface
• Advanced search
• HTML mailto: support so our SIS email class and email parents links will work
• A standard, clean user interface for our community

The advanced features include:

• Industry standard calendaring
• Integration with many of our installed databases
• PDA/Phone integration

As we migrate, the one space in FirstClass that is not replicated in Outlook/Exchange is the conference.  We will be using Group mail lists, Outlook Public Folders for some of these conferences in addition to Moodle forums and possibly some Drupal or other open source forum software.  The result is that we’ll be moving to web apps being the center of our universe with our email system driving us in that direction.

I’ll be posting more along our migration road. 

I’ve created a documentation web site for this project here.  What do you think?

At my school, we’re looking at what our school policy on social networking between students and faculty should be.

Our initial inclination was to create a restriction between students and faculty ‘friending’ each other on social networks. arvind and I have discussed this on our webcast a number of times. For example: here and here.  But then the exceptions happen:

1. I have used Flickr, a photo social network to collaborate with my students in photography.
2. Our student environmental club has used Facebook groups and invitations to plan events between students, faculty and parents.

Given the positives that can come out of social networks, does anyone have a policy that rides the appropriateness of use tight rope?

Your thoughts/comments are appreciated.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Here are some general AUP resources I have collected on the subject:

School Computing Wiki: http://schoolcomputing.wikia.com/wiki/Acceptable_Use_Policies

David Warlick has recently jumped into this conversation: http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/archives/1452 and http://landmark-project.com/aup20/pmwiki.php

Photo from: http://flickr.com/photos/mkeefe/1457984966/

I’ve spent a great deal of time over my past 10 years as a Technology Director implementing new technologies that automate data systems (multiple student information systems, admissions, development, and business office systems), allow easier communication (e-mail), and help teachers teach and students learn (blogs, wikis, moodle and other communications tools).

We use FirstClass as our e-mail server and over the past couple of years, we have had some big gripes with FirstClass.  They have released server updates with big bugs and their support leaves much to be desired.  So earlier on this year we began to evaluate different communications platforms.  We started by defining criteria that we would use to evaluate each platforms.  Then we installed or tested Google Apps for Schools, Microsoft Live, Novell GroupWise and Microsoft Exchange 2007 .  We’re a Microsoft school and the only system that fit a majority of the criterion was Microsoft Exchange 2007.

So we went to user testing.  Most users who tested Exchange and Outlook gave us very positive feedback.  I’ve spoken to multiple Network Admins and Directors of Technology who give good reviews to Outlook.  I have evaluated it myself and really prefer its user interface to that of FirstClass.

But, with all of those positives, I still ask: What are the benefits of changing systems?  What are the benefits to asking 200 faculty and staff and 400 students to learn a new system that pretty much does the same thing they were doing on FirstClass?  The send and receive e-mail.  That’s what most people use e-mail for, right?

Yes, there will be a many administrators and staff who will have a system that makes their lives more convenient.  There may be some teachers who use the document sharing and collaboration tools built into Exchange 2007.  The Microsoft Office integration is much tighter and our Student Information System had an e-mail class roster link that will actually work correctly.  Web site links from e-mail will work correctly and we won’t have to be deleting and reconfiguring FirstClass folders that have become corrupted.  There is easier support for administrator, faculty and student handheld devices.

But does this list tip the scale?

What about the time it’s going to take to train all of the faculty, staff and students to use this new system?

It this technology for technology sake, even with the improvements we will see?

I wonder this about many of the changes that are coming down the pike such as Windows Vista and Office 2007.

I see all of the great things that I could be doing with faculty next fall to integrate technology into the curriculum at our school and then realize that changing to Exchange might delay them.  Or it might make thing easier.  Is it worth it?

I know you can’t answer this question, but it’s the one won’t get out of my head right now.

I yearn to think more about teaching and learning with technology and find myself hung up on seemingly surface level decisions about our e-mail system.  I’m definitely feeling a bit frustrated.

Thanks for listening.  I’ll update you once we make a decision.

Photo from: http://flickr.com/photos/priddy/3507724/

“You can’t keep up with all of the information, so don’t try.” That was one of the things that I said multiple times during my Saturday trip to EduCon 2.0 this past weekend. It’s true. With all of the networks and resources out there, Blogs, Nings, Twitter, Podcasts, Books, Television, etc., how do you keep up? You can’t. You just have to decide that much of the information will pass by and move on.

I find that I go through cycles. I think this is healthy. I read books for a month, I listen to podcasts during a vacation, I read RSS when I open up Google Reader, I check my Twitter account for a few minutes a day. The reality though, is that I can’t keep up with any of these the way I would like to. So I have to let go. And that’s ok.

It’s important to balance all of this with real live: family time with my wife and kids; time to look at the sky or stars; time to watch some bad TV; as Vinnie discussed, time to do chores; time to read the newspaper; and time to sleep.

And so the balancing act continues.

Photo Credit: #45/365: Balancing Act

 This year is a rebuilding year.  As I wrote about in my reorganization post in the summer, I have three new staff members in my department this year.  We are physically spread all over the school, creating divisions that can negatively effect department cohesiveness if we do not stay in frequent contact.

To work around this, we’ve been meeting bi-weekly as a whole department.   I meet daily with my Network Administration and Technical Support Specialist.  I have also scheduled bi-weekly meetings with individual department members.  I know, you’re saying, that’s a lot of meetings.  But these meetings are critical to keeping things going.  To check in and move projects forward.  To know how my staff is feeling.  As we grow more cohesive, I can see taking some time off of these meetings, but for now, they are critical. 

In the support staff meetings, we have been digging through our network settings (active directory policies, Internet settings, and router and switch configs), desktop and laptop image  creation and configuration, policies and procedures, and how to communicate with faculty and staff.  These conversations allow us to share best practices.  It allows us to know what our technical issues are and to wrestle with making decisions for next September. 

In full department meetings, we started by discussing how we are communicating internally, what we have been doing over the semester, and which tools we will be rolling out to the academic community over the next year.  We’ve used so many different technologies over the past few years, that keeping up is tough.  So we created a list of the department blog, wiki, and our web help desk.   We discussed how to use each one.  We use these tools in our day to day work with the school and the department.     

So is this and effective management technique? 

In order to evaluate them, I need to look back to the goals of my department:

• To provide reliable and consistent access to technology for students, faculty, and staff
• To develop technology skills in students, faculty and staff that support the curricular goals of the school

If I measure us against those goals, we are definitely more prepared to support our faculty and staff. This is a slow process because we are going through all of our configurations with a fine tooth comb, but we’re fixing support issues that have been nagging us for years and we’re looking to the future for major improvements.

On the classroom integration front, I see progress in taking our more technology savvy faculty to the next level.  We are also making progress in implementing student and faculty curriculum standards.  We are building out our Intranet where we can support Wordpress MU, Gallery, Moodle, and some group Drupal sites.  We’ll be concentrating on how we use these tools in the spring.

How do you manage staff transitions?

How do you keep a dispersed department cohesive?

When I got to Baltimore to present at the AIMS conference, I realized that I had Internet access. I uploaded my slides to Google Presentations, did some editing and got going. Vinnie Vrotny and Patrick Higgings showed up for the presentation (huge thanks to the two of them). Alecia Berman-Dry was a wonderful host (she invited me to present at the conference and blogged about it here).

The audience did a great job keeping their attention during the last session of the day. After my presentation, we all discussed how we could bring collaborative technology to back to their schools and classrooms.

Here’s my updated Google Presentation

Also, I forgot to hand out my handouts. Here’s a link to the PDF handout.

As I tweaked the presentation on the train to Baltimore, I realized more and more that these projects are about the relationships. Lucy Gray spoke about it in our conversations, Vicki Davis discusses it when she speaks about the Flat Classroom project. It’s all about the connections we are making. And they are real, even though many are virtual.

I’m working on editing the video of the event and will post that shortly.

Comments appreciated. Thanks!

I’m presenting at the AIMS conference on Monday, November 5th, 2007. There is no Internet access at the Baltimore Convention Center (for this conference at least) so I’m doing a traditional power point presentation. Here it is (I’m sure I’ll be updating this tonight after I tweak the whole way to Baltimore, but…):

| View | Upload your own

I’ve also pulled together a number of resources in del.icio.us:

1. Youth Voices

2. Remote Access: Whose Tools? Theirs.

3. Remote Access: Learning = Connecting

4. Life ’round here wiki - Life Round Here

5. The Global Education Collaborative

6. The Connected Classroom » home

7. the22initiative » home

8. Friends and Flags Project

9. 3Cs » CAIS-BP

10. globalprojects2007 » home

11. Musings - Just Learning » Let’s Go Global!

12. » [Live Blog] - Global Collaboration Multi-faceted Refractions

13. teachersseekingteachers » home

14. Classroom 2.0

    Welcome to the CLASSROOM 2.0 social networking site! This network is devoted to those interested in the practical application of Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies in the classroom and in their own professional development.

15. Personal Learning Space

16. Elgg Plans » home

Link: http://del.icio.us/rss/alex.ragone/global-collaboration

Lucy Gray’s Global Education Links.

I’ll be posting a video of the presentation later on this week.

This is by no means a list of resources on Global Collaboration. If you have others, please post them here!

Thanks!

This morning, I was at home with my daughter, Claire, who was sick.  I checked my  Twitter feed.  Jeff Utecht asked if someone could send him the K-12 Online Conference Presentations.  Apparently, they are blocked in China.  I direct Twittered him back telling him I could, and forgot about the interaction. 

A few minutes later, Jeff send me a Skype text message.  After a short im session, we decided that Jeff would create a ftp account on his server and I would upload the K-12 files for the next two weeks.  I had uploaded all of the files to Jeff’s server by 10:30 am EST — I believe that’s 12:30am in Jeff’s time zone in China.

What’s the point of this post? 

First of all, you can’t block everything, and in countries that allow Internet communications, there will always be a way to work around the filters.   Great as that is,  I was worried that the Chinese  government might find Jeff and shut down his server if I blogged about it.  I checked with Jeff and he reassured me that it would not be a problem. 

Second, is that always amazes me how small technology can make the world feel.  The fact that I was chatting with someone around the world was amazing. The fact that I was conscious of the differences in freedom between the US and China and was able to get feedback about the realities on the ground.  

Just one more story of how the web has brought us closer together.