Mon Jun 25 2012, 6:00pm
District Meeting Room
Regular Meeting

REPORTS TO THE BOARD

Tech Report

Date: June 19th, 2012
To: Michael Green
From: Steve Rippl
Subject: Tech Dept. Executive Summary

Since the last tech report we've been through the online MSP testing with the Intermediate and Middle Schools.  We successfully rode out some problems generated by the State's new provider of the system and all students were able to test without any significant issues.  We also setup online Compass testing for LCC and Clark as well as online testing for a Federal longitudinal study the High School has been involved with. 

We received a donation of 100 compact desktop student computers from the Camas School District, specifically via their main tech Sherman Davis who we've collaborated with on a few projects now.  We have been stung before accepting donations from other Districts and finding the computers are unsuitable for one reason or another, but Camas clearly surpluses a better class of computers than most!  While still technically below the States suggested specs these computers are well above the specs of a lot of our remaining old Windows computers and so are mostly replacing existing equipment.

And now the summer is upon us and the list of upgrades, alterations and additions to our IT infrastructure is pretty extensive.  A new digital photography lab in the High School, an upgraded application server to enable us to upgrade our Library and Accelerated Reader systems and a major upgrade of the software that runs our thin clients are some of the highlights.  We now have our Microsoft Terminal Services server in place and have tested it quite extensively (with the help of Michael Smith and one of his classes).  It now enables us to take any one of our thin client machines and either run a Linux environment for a browser or other open source applications in a regular class, or a specialized MS environment with things like Adobe Photoshop in them for things like the new digital photography class, all from the same place.  I'm quite excited by the flexibility this promises as we move forwards. 

We'll also be modestly expanding our wireless coverage around the Primary School and the new LRA room(s), upgrading more staff computers, moving some classrooms, we have 2 or 3 new interactive whiteboards going in and all the usual fixing/repairing/replacing various bits and pieces.  Our Moodle site will be upgraded, we're rearranging how our Google Apps domains are setup (to facilitate easier sharing between Staff and Students), there's a long list of Sips additions folks have asked for, we're moving from School Master to Skyward and trying to update our District web site.  I did say we had a pretty extensive to-do list!