I have had my head down working on our new school web site for the past few weeks, hence I have not written much here.

We presented new features to focus groups: three faculty, one parent-faculty association, and one board communications advisory group. We hired a local college intern to migrate content from the old site to the new. Two staff members are working on the photo directory, site copying and backup utilities, and an emergency contacts form. Our graphic designer sent us two graphic concepts, and our web site team met and sent back comments. We received the a second revision and are preparing to send back our comments on Monday.

We are gradually taking on real users as we build up the web site. Our athletics director has started entering competition dates for next year. The arts department recently met to build out their new "schoolwide" arts program section. This week, we plan to invite employees to update their emergency contact information through our new custom form. The week after, we will likely invite all parents to update their contact information and review their directory entries online.

Our publications director has been developing her Twitter "voice" and getting to know the Facebook Pages interface in preparation for that aspect of the site launch.

So far, we have committed about $5,000 of contracted work to the project. We plan to finish the project at less than $10,000 total.

Hopefully, I will find time after site launch in July to post more information about our project!


tags: drupal, facebook, twitter, webdesign, webdevelopment

Provide teachers with technology tools, and they will invent the most remarkable uses for them.(first grade caterpillar study)

Our summer helpers have developed a killer room for the process of completing annual maintenance on our faculty and staff laptop computers. Note the ingenious use of the built-in projection system to get everyone through the long days!

Today, I led day one of our MacOS class. I was pleased that five teachers and staff members chose to spend time learning more about an operating system. I wish more would seek such professional develoment, since good practice with one's OS can make a huge difference. Four of the participants were switchng to a Mac at school or at home, and only one just wanted to better get to know their computer.I used an emergent curriculum approach, which worked well for day one. A brief introduction, prompt about challenges faced or problems solved, and then we spent the rest of the time rolling with the questions encountered as the participants toyed with their machines.We also discovered that any Mac loaner laptop user could control the screen of any other's, because we used shared login credentials for our shared machines! We will have to change the remote management preferences, finding a way to allow screen sharing when useful and prevent it when not.

I picked up this coffee mug to remind me to always create new ideas and content. In the darkest months of winter, warm beverages will remind me that the sea of content is best navigated when we participate in the creation of that information. May you create something today.

The online learning environment and community for the 50 Big Picture schools. I would like to learn more about the design of this portal.

Exemplifies care for the school.

Sixth grade students convert files from WMA and Garageband formats to make their Drupal podcast files.

tags: drupal, podcast, garageband, wma, mp3, aac, itunes

It's much smaller than I thought it would be. Yes, that's a 12 inch iBook adjacent! Over the summer, we will also pick up a couple of Asus eeePCs and see whether either will serve our lower school students well as classroom computers.

Analyzing golf swings on a newly-installed data projector.

Craig Newmark Skyped into our class, describing his support for OneVoice Movement.

How to hang a stack of paper on a magnetic surface (day well spent!).

We don't do late starts, and it appears that most families have made it here on time this morning.