Technology updates and upgrades for 2007-2008
October 15, 2007
Tech specialist Kim Dayhoff reported the following technology updates at a teacher inservice meeting.
At the Melvern attendance center, 25 thin clients with flat screens have been installed in the junior high computer lab and fifteen additional ones were placed in the high school media center. These thin clients have neither hard drives, nor CD/DVD drives. For this reason, students must use jump drives (sometimes called thumb or pen drives), or they can save their school work to a designated network file. In addition, four external DVD/RW drives -- primarily for VPL use.-- will be placed on four of the thin clients in the media center.
Thirty Dell laptops and a new cart with pull-out shelves is now located in the high school English room. The 25 older Gateway laptops that used to be in the English room are now located in the social science room, in order to provide more laptops for use by high school students. All together, the district has 105 total laptops: 80 in the high school and 25 in the junior high.
An enhanced Accelerated Reader™ will provide students with more than 100,000 book quizzes, 3,000 literacy quizzes, and 7,000 vocabulary quizzes. As a result, more books in the school library are more likely to have a quiz for students to take, and past data recorded by each student will be retained. In fact, parents can sign up for their own username and password to view their child's AR records. There is also an Accelerated Math program for grades 6-12-plus.
USD 456 has a subscription to BrainPOP®, an online interactive educational website. It provides programming in seven main subjects: science, math, social studies, health, arts, music, English and technology. This site is available for use at school or home, by parent or student, using the letters mdcv as both the username and the password.
ALSO,Kidspiration, a graphic organizer software, and Math Munchers Deluxe, for grades 3-6, will be available for elementary use this year.
An external DVD/RW will be available for use in each building.
A few LCD projectors have been ordered for each building -- some mounted and the rest on carts.
