Date: March 21st, 2012 To: Michael Green From: Steve Rippl Subject: Tech Dept. Executive Summary
Our Districts conversion over to Google Apps for Staff email and calendars is now complete. This week we've been cleaning up the few migrations that didn't run successfully, in a few cases not all old emails moved over to the new system which in every case was fixed by simply running the migration tool again. We'll soon turn off the old Exchange server and turn it into a Microsoft Terminal Services server that will allow us to deliver Microsoft applications in a more flexible manner. In theory staff and students could access specific applications from any computer in the District, we'll be running a real test of it with Joan Huston before the end of the year.
Also on the Google Apps front we're trying to do some more specific Google Docs training with staff before the end of the year as they now all have much easier access to it (they're already logged in for email) and students will be using it more and more going forwards. Both Intermediate and Middle School technology classes are transitioning to Google Docs and the feedback I'm getting is that the students really appreciate the the ease of access and use.
The State's MSP testing software has now been deployed in the Intermediate and Middle Schools and teachers have begun to introduce it to their students. Despite our initial difficulties with its deployment now that it's in place it is working fine for the students. We are now taking stock of what functioning old laptops we have (I now hold back old staff laptops for occasional loaners but mainly to have around for testing time) and preparing them for the extra computers we'll put in place at testing time.
We're just in the process of finalizing the data for the annual State Tech survey, I'll provide some numbers next month.
Despite some potential uncertainty about the place of Sips after we transition to Skyward requests for extra functionality are still coming in. There's more work to be done around the TEAM/LRA learning plans, the Primary and Intermediate Schools are looking for more centralized spots for teachers and support staff to be able to share relevant notes on their students, and currently we're digging deeper into the two years of Math data we have and creating flexible views to compare our succeeding and failing kids across specific strands.