Hello, my name is Nicholas Hay and I am a Technology Support Specialist at Jefferson Schools in Monroe, MI. I don't have any classroom teaching experience or even a teaching degree, but I work with teachers, support staff and students daily. My actual degree is in Computer Science (Programming) with a Mathematics minor. In the technology department, my main responsibilities are to keep the server equipment going, help support the staff with their computers and technology related items, and we also support the phone equipment since that too is running on our network (VoIP {voice over IP}).
The past two weeks have been nuts for me. It seems like every year, the last month before school starts and when school starts, I work 60 to 80 hour weeks to wrap up the various technology projects we have thru summer. I know my wife can't wait for things to calm down because I leave in the morning at 6:15am and I don't get home until 8pm. In our district, there has been more changes this summer than usual and quite a few of the teachers have their feathers ruffled. We have updated computers by moving away from laptops and going to a desktop design in the classrooms, transitioned the servers roles from building servers to each server have an individual role (ie: app server, active directory server, staff server, student server, etc), and the biggest change for the staff was our student and financial management systems. Our ISD just switched this system to Pentamation and it has not been a very smooth transition with any of our staff. We have had many bugs in the system, since this is the companies first web version of this product, and the staff have to learn a new whole interface. The staff and teachers have to keep attendance and use the grade book on this program. Things will get better but until that point, I will have to keep going around and help comfort them with this system because we are going to be using it for years.
Well, if I would take what we have learned this week, I could blogs and RSS feeds in my field to help reach the teachers and staff. I know we (Technology Department) could probably create a blog to post items technology related, such as tips with using software/programs (how to's), or see what people think about a technology idea/decision we are thinking about implementing. I am sure I could set an RSS feed up in Internet Explorer via Group Policy on the server and they would be able to view this and comment/post on their computers. But that would be something more to look into once things calm down and we catch up.
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7 comments:
You are incredibly busy. Your blog idea is excellent. How do you think the teachers would respond to this idea? Btw, Run dos run...trying to figure that out! :)
You have your hands tied. More power to you for working those hours, but hopefully things do calm down for you. Do you think having blogs set up would lessen your amount of work by receiving feedback from your staff and teachers rather than everyone coming to you at once for help?
Kathleen, I don't know how teachers will respond. We have a lot of middle to upper aged teachers that just use technology to do the bare minimum so at first, I don't think it will be very benificial.
Run dos run is computer humor. Dos is an operating system (old microsoft) without a graphic user interface (GUI). I like the saying see. see spot. see spot run. run spot run. So that's what run dos run is.
Fihmiya, I don't think it will lessen any amount of work right now but in the future, it could possibly help if the staff take a liking to this. But at the beginning of the year, we gave staff a technology guide that includes all the changes and information they should know and very few people actually looked at or read this guide. I would say that 25% of my time the past few weeks were issues that could have been solved if they referenced/read that guide.
Ahhh...Run dos run...very funny!
Nicholas,
A real interesting way that you might use RSS in your own work.
MKB
Hi Nicholas,
My district is currently working on putting a bond proposal together and is looking at doing a technology upgrade. Can I ask what the rationale was for going back to desktops as opposed to laptops? I know for me personally, I will never want to buy a desktop again but, I'm wondering why the switch in the schools? It would seem to me that laptops would be more useful. I'm interested in hearing your view.
-Teresa
From the technology point of view, we can do a lot more with he desktops. The first thing is rather teachers and staff working right off the computers with files and such, everything is redirected to the server so they can log onto the computer and it will follow them from one computer to another in the district. The big reasons we switched is (1) the cost and (2) that they will last the longest and still be 'useable' in 4 to 5 years. The first reason is the cost. We got top of the line Core 2 Duo processors with a gig of RAM for under 700 each with a 17' LCD montior with a 3 year warranty. A top of the line laptop would have costed 1000+ dollars. The reason two was that the desktops will last longer than laptops. With laptops, the idea is that you can take it where you go. This causes extra wear and tear and leaves more room for accidents to happen. The cost to repair laptop components are more expensive and sometimes you can't do anything for a laptop due to it being a screen or a motherboard. The desktop computers are typically stationary and less likely for components to fail as quickly, especially the hard drives. Problems with desktops can typically be fixed more cheaper and easily than laptops.
One final note on this is that we noticed that less than 10% of our staff were taking their laptops home so what's the point of spending the extra on laptops if they don't take them home?
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