RE: Technology Department Executive Summary
The classroom AV systems in our new high school have been slightly problematic in some small ways. They are a very new system, being digital and supporting HDMI, and while on paper they are an excellent device in practice they have been somewhat complicated and perhaps a little fragile. Recently we have been spending quite a bit of time learning how to program them ourselves so we can ensure all units are configured the same way and potentially simplify use for teachers, and we’ve reached out to Extron themselves who are coming to pay us a visit and teach us more about how they work. Most of the problems have been dealt with as best we can, but there are still reports of them “flickering”, and a couple of locations where we may have the wrong type of device in place for what’s really needed. They do still provide excellent functionality overall and are an asset to the classrooms, we’re just trying to iron out as many of the remaining wrinkles as we can.
The online ELL ELPA testing kicked off this week, along with some small trials of the WCAP interim tests. All reports so far are that the software side of things is working well which is reassuring to us!
We’ve just completed an online van reservation system for our facilities department. It’s basically a form on our website that staff can fill out when they would like to reserve a District vehicle, but like the facilities request system we put in place last year it adds the ability to generate notifications of activity to appropriate folks, and allow easier management of request approvals and the like. Tegan has just started to test it out so no doubt there will still need to be a few modifications made as we roll it out to staff. Now it’s back to working on some of the more general website improvements that Eric Jacobson has been spearheading, specifically giving some of the school’s front pages a facelift.