CCDS Tablet Conference Feeback

Unanswered Question File

I would like to know more about DyKnow and how to set up lessons in the program - exactly how the science teacher set up the individual student notebooks on the network

We are not sure if this is two questions or if you have "mixed up your ink" with this question. Nate Johnston uses Onenote for his student notebooks. They are shared notebooks. I will attempt to clarify the way we have set up our shared notebooks in Onenote. Dyknow uses prepared notes to streamline the class sharing process. These can be made in Dyknow or you can import PPT presentations as well.

Do your teachers need to learn and use their own web pages?

All teachers do have their own websites. Teachers currently use Frontpage to author their websites. This is changing here at CCDS. We just enhanced our website and we are switching to a web based solution. Moodle is also an option for our teachers.

I have had most of my questions answered, but I am sure there are others that will occur to me overnight. Shared notbooks in OneNote.

As mentioned above, I will attempt to clarify this.

Do your teachers have to make the contacts for videoconferencing, or does a person from the tech staff do that?

Both occur here. Faculty may make contact with an author or organization and seek out our support to make the conference happen. Others may come to us with a request and we try and match them up with a relevant videoconference.

This is more of a logistical question -- we don't have students with Tablets -- only carts. I have been posting the notes that I take in One Note for the students to access off of our class website. Many of them print all of the notes that I post at school and use up a LOT of paper and a LOT of color ink. I am interested in other ideas for how to avoid this. I like sharing my notes (especially for the students who have learning disabilities) and I love the e-mail option to OneNote that Rob shared with us. Is this my answer? E-mail my material home and have them print it at home? Any other ideas??

It is great that you are working hard to provide you students with a record of what goes on in your class. If you are providing them with resources that they need to have immediate access to, there will be some printing involved in a non 1:1 environment. We do not allow our students to access color printers on campus and we have all of our printers set to duplex by default. I am not sure if it helps but often choosing two pages per sheet and duplex printing works well. Onenote emailing does streamline the sharing process, but students could still just print everything at school.

How do you find funding for all of your programs?

We do require our families to purchase the tablets and our CFO will be available during lunch tomorrow. Please catch Rob for specific questions, we are not exactly sure what you are asking.

I am eager to speak with the CFO and administrators tomorrow and hopefully the students about their experiences.

You will have the opportunity to speak with Todd Witt, our CFO tomorrow.

What is the name/brand of the little webcam you put on your computer, Rob, when you were demoing One Note? Also, do you have somewhere "minimum" or "optimum" tech proficiency standards for your faculty?

The webcam is a basic logitech quickcam. Not sure of the model, but I think it has been discontinued. We are very excited about the built in webcam that will be standard on our M700 tablets next year. Kelly will speak to the faculty proficiency question.

Tell us what software you use for your plasma screens, who updates them etc. Please.

Nothing special here on the software side. We usually use Powerpoint to share projects etc. We do use a video extender which allows us to send audio and video over our network. A dedicated, older tablet is used for each plasma screen.

Want to hear whether shared notebook is a viable outside of classroom option. Would like to streamline the way I add oneNote pages to my website, is there a faster way? Can I save with rule lines? How do I download polar graph paper?

Would you clarify on the website question? How are you saving currently? We're working on the rule line thing.

Our students and faculty have access to our network outside of school via VPN, so we haven't looked in to the off-network possibilities. Jeff Spain tells us, though, that Sharepoint Portal Server may be the answer there.

For polar graph paper (and others) try http://www.printfreegraphpaper.com/ . There are other similar free resources as well.

I would like a more detailed explanation or "tour" of how to use OneNote.

There's a session Tuesday at 2:45.

Does this technology improve students learning? Is there evidence that demonstrates students being able to perform at a higher level than they were previous to tablet technology.

Yes. We'll discuss this in the morning, since a few asked the same question informally during the day.

What are the different methods of collecting homework electronically? How does one conduct a shared group discussion or live session? How do we create shared notebooks in OneNote?

We collect homework largely via email and network folders (and, in an emergency, on secure digital cards). For the OneNote questions, we should be able to cover these in Tuesday's 2:45 session. If not, ask us again tomorrow!

Yes, I am going to the the hardware person and would love to have some time with Nancy Streicher.

I'd certainly like to know how expensive and user-friendly Dyknow is. We use NetOp, and I've not been impressed.

Rob will address both in our DyKnow session tomorrow. But the fact that our Math department chair told me last week (as I prepared for my very first DyKnow class) that DyKnow is "a breeze" is pretty remarkable. (And he was right; it was.)

How are you using Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom? I have other nuts and bolts questions which will hopefully be answered in the next session.

We've used Web 2.0 technologies with great irregularity. I think one reason for the spotty adaptation has been how thrilled teachers have been with what the tablet applications do. We are seeing greater interest recently, though, now that applications that use digital ink (like Sketchcast) or video (like Splashcast) are being created. John Polasko (our MS division head) has done some groundbreaking work for us with his Ning site. He'll be available during our admin lunch tomorrow and would LOVE to share (in fact, he beams when he logs on to his site). By the way, Columbia University is doing amazing things with wikis; I highly recommend.

I am still not sure how applicable all of these tactics are in a school in which all students don't have tablets. I think it would be time consuming, because they don't use tablets on a regular basis, to teach them how to use them over and over.

Keep in mind that from fourth grade and below, our students do not have tablets on a regular basis. During the class visits tomorrow, I hope you'll see that, after their first use or two, students retain their excitement, but become comfortable with the tools. When we only had six (and even that first year when only a few kids per grade had tablets) we really found that the learning curve was more a learning plateau. Be sure to ask Marge Rockwell (kindergarten) Wednesday.

How to implement DyKnow -- but this is supposed to be covered tomorrow.

Yes. We'll cover this tomorrow.

How do you all handle the "technology emergenices" that students have? ("I can't open the file" or "I didn't get the e-mail" or "my file is corrupt" and similar errors).

We never have these problems! (I jest.) Actually, we don't get the "I didn't get the email" much, as our acceptable use policy asks that students check once a day. Otherwise, we get creative, employing similar techniques to the "I left my paper at home" or "I've lost my notebook" issues.

I would love some more info about setting up student folders for turning in work, but I think that will be covered tomorrow.

Rob Baker can help you with this. He and Jeff Spain set up our network folders and they simply magically appear after our requests are made.

I'm still interested in the cost of the program, and the parent buy-in.

We'll discuss this tomorrow.

How does your wireless handle all the traffic from students?

We were slow last year, but have upgraded to B/G/A this year and we feel like we're speeding down the autobahn.

I want to learn how to use the sharing feature of OneNote.

We'll cover this in Tuesday's 2:45 session.

Still can't figure out how to ink in Outlook 2007 ....

It's fully integrated into 2007--just click on the Start Inking button. Rob will review this in Wednesday's "Beta You Didn't Know That!" session, but you can also see him individually.

What did you do about hardware made obsolete - SmartBoards, language labs, etc. We just invested in both of these - hard to justify the new technological expenditure when we haven't fully discovered and explored the uses of what we just got ...

We totally feel for you. We had a similar issue. First, we decided to absolve ourselves of the guilt (very tough for us), since the tablets were simply too powerful not to use. Then, we considered where the SmartBoards had an advantage: gross motor skills, classrooms without 1:1, etc. We've moved many of our SmartBoards to those rooms and with great success. We did not have a stand alone language lab; if we did, we'd probably have had to cry. But, the fact that our students can practice language at home, even in dialogue with a teacher, well...that's just too good to give up, even for top-of-the-line equipment.

Would like to know what your technology administrative structure looks like. I mean how many support people, curriculum people.

Are you sitting? Good. Here goes. For our 800+ tablets/desktops on campus, we have basically four and three quarters support people. We've got three full time administrators:

Rob (Director of Tech)
Jeff (Network Administrator)
Nancy (Hardware Administrator)

We have fragments of other help via four faculty members:

Kathryn (a computer science teacher who devotes roughly half of her time to tech)
Our two techbrarians (who, combined, probably equal the equivalent of maybe close to a single full time tech person)

The additional quarter would be me (Kelly), since I provide support (schedule videoconferences, run the plasma, and assist teachers), but my job is technically academic.

mine have to do with nuts and bolts and with my own laptop capabilities - (My OneNote 2007 wouldn't launch)

If you can, swing by Rob tomorrow to check the OneNote launch; it'd be great if we can get it taken care of before the OneNote session at 2:45.

How do you use moodle with your classes?

Rob will address this.

Want more on OneNote; More info on how art teachers can integrate tech. into their curriculum.

We'll set you up with Linda Yokel--an integration whiz!

More time to hear what you do...

Two more days!

1. How & when are new staffed trained?

We have a mentoring program for new faculty, and a day is given to orientation to CCDS specific resources (plus we provide the 45-minute tablet orientation I mentioned today). We often share some specific implementations (such as sound recording for language teachers) early, if we're pretty sure the techniques will become weekly staples. Otherwise, our faculty learn organically, sharing as we go along.

2. Are technology goals set in the beginning of the year?How are they monitored throughout?

Do you mean for faculty? If so, we'll talk about this. Note that our faculty evaluation includes a line item that reads "Effectively employs technology to help improve student learning and actively pursues new integration ideas."

3. How often do faculty/staff trainings occur? When do teachers have opportunities to share ideas with one another?

I hope you don't mind, but I merged your questions three and four into the above. We don't do "trainings" per se, though we do have a few for administrative software. We may also informally "train" at a divisional faculty meeting (Greg Martin introduced the LS faculty to OneNote just last week, for example). We provide formal but collaborative sharing opportunities at least once a year in an in-service, one or two additional SW____ sessions (like SWINE or SWANKY), plus we share at pedagogical development meetings (3x/year) though that is as likely to include technology as not. But what we really don't do anymore is the lecture approach. If I haven't made any sense here, ask again during the day tomorrow. I'll grab a Starbucks Doubleshot and strive for clarity. (I'm also happy to share some of the collaborative activities we've done.)