Florence Unified School District #1 May Board Report Nicole Steele, Director of Educational Technology

Telemed Grant Equipment Mountain Health and Wellness, an organization which we have partnered on a USDA Rural Utility Services Telemed grant, will be installing Polycom Medical Carts at four locations in the district as part of a School Based Health Care program. Poston Butte High School, Florence High School, Walker Butte K-8 School and Anthem K-8 School will each be receiving Polycom videoconferencing equipment to support this program. Each school’s equipment list will include dual monitors installed on a movable cart. The equipment will eventually be connected to our wireless network providing more flexibility in use of the equipment. All of the equipment will be delivered and installed by Mountain Health and Wellness during the week of April 29th.

Upgraded Intercom Systems We have recently upgraded the intercom systems at Skyline Ranch K-8 School, Copper Basin K-8 School, Anthem K-8 School and Florence K-8 School. The addition of a Quantum Card to the existing system provides each school with the ability to page through their Cisco Voice over IP (VoIP) phones, set-up their bell schedules via a webpage, it provides easy change paging zones and sets-up an emergency tone.

Technology Professional Development Throughout the course of the year Gabriel Carrillo and Nick Trakas, FUSD’s technology integration specialists, have been conducting fewer trainings on how to use technology. Instead they have been spending more time in the classrooms modeling the use of technology and coaching our teachers on the integration of technology into the curriculum. Here is a short snippet on some of the support they have been providing district faculty.

Gabriel Carrillo has been working with teachers at multiple K-8 schools setting-up Google Docs for homework submissions. Currently, he’s been working with Mark Millaud (Skyline Technology Teacher) to get multiple classes set up to submit homework electronically. He’s created accounts for 5 of Mr. Millaud’s classes and has trained every single class as well as Mr. Millaud. Students have created a folder that is shared with Mr. Millaud so that they can submit assignments more efficiently. The overall response from the students was very positive. He showed them that all documents can easily be accessed, modified, created, and even shared through almost any Internet enabled device. He showcased the Google Drive App from his iPad as well as his Android phone and edited a document with them in real time from those devices. Many of the students expressed that they have computers at home, but many of them do not have Microsoft Office. This platform is a perfect solution for those students to create, share, and submit assignments as they have never been able to do so before. Gabriel has also trained 10 teachers at Copper Basin on iPads since Copper Basin purchased some for their site. He has been following-up with those teachers as well as following-up with teachers who attended his trainings over the Spring Intersession. He recently held a Webinar one evening to train teachers who were interested in building a Google Website for next school year. He’s done some trainings and modeling with teachers for student response systems as well as document cameras.

Nick Trakas has been working with high school teachers and students on Google Apps for Education as well. He’s done trainings with classes at Poston Butte High School as well as Florence High School with these apps. Students are not only submitting assignments electronically, they are also building websites for certain projects and collaborative assignments. He’s created accounts for these classes and staff members and worked with the teachers to ensure they know how to manage the data coming into them in a manageable workflow. He’s also been experimenting with Google Groups to give more power to the teachers and push out documents easily to their classes. Liza Schlinger (FHS) wanted to learn more about creating a Blog through Google’s Blogger application. He showed the students the differences between a website and a blog and showed a sample of his training Blog. He then walked through the creation process with them. That class is now blogging successfully with the teacher. He’s also gone throughout the district to follow up with teachers who attended his trainings. He’s done one-on-one trainings with teachers for Document Camera integration and student response systems. Also, Raleigh Jones at PBHS has been collaborating with colleagues and classes through Skype with the assistance of Nick.

Altogether, Nick Trakas and Gabriel Carrillo have worked directly with over 200 students throughout the district modeling the use of Web 2.0 tools. They’ve also trained staff and coached them on different creation and collaboration methods

Technology Work Orders The technology department staff has completed 153 official technology work order requests during the month of April. Many thanks go to Amado Gutierrez III for coordinating these efforts.