To: Michael Green
From: Steve Rippl
Date: May 19, 2022
RE: Tech Department Report
We’re still busy with the day-to-day happenings of keeping the tech wheels turning, but the main emphasis has turned towards summer projects and next year. We’ll be finalizing student Chromebook assignments for next year's 5th and 9th-grade students, replacing older staff desktops (we’ve fallen a little behind in that regard due to pandemic shortages and price hikes), and deploying new touchscreen Chromebooks for K-4 staff as that will be a requirement for a new student assessment they will be running next year. Fortunately, we’ve found good value Chromebooks for them, and we’re going to be putting together our own desktops at almost half the price of what Lenovo is asking for them at the moment.
We’ll be looking at replacing a few more projectors with TVs. The high school has a bunch of 65” screens from remote and hybrid learning that serve well enough on the wall. Nice and bright and clear, but not really quite as large as you would ideally want. The 86” interactive screens we put up in some test classrooms last summer look amazing, so clear and bright that they can easily be seen from anywhere in the classroom. We’ll gradually be putting more of those in place as budgets allow (and with building support), so it’ll be a gradual process.
Keeping track of all this equipment is obviously important, and we’ll be working this summer on streamlining and improving our inventory management. Last year we updated the system that handles all network connected devices, and this year will be rolling in our TVs, projectors, and doc cams, finally moving off of spreadsheets for the last of these items.