March 07, 2008
From the Director of Technology 3-7-2008
March 7, 2008
by Greg Beuthin
As you know, Russ and I will be leaving at the end of this school year. Russ will return to Los Angeles and continue his studies, and I will move to France with my wife to be closer to family who need care. As excited as we are about our new ventures, it is bittersweet, since our time at PHS has been marked by growth, challenges that have made us rise to the occasion, and great memories.
I'm in the middle of looking at job applicants to replace Russ and me, and interviewing people over the phone (and in person in the next couple of weeks). While I often wish Russ and I could have done more during our time here, it's during this new hire process that I realize just how much we actually have accomplished. We standardized student login, upgraded and maintained a sophisticated mail and calendaring system, and, this year, moved it in-house which saved us a lot of money. We acquired new hardware in the form of new computers for faculty and staff. We bought projectors, color and high-output black-and-white printers, and (finally) 6 student laptops.
This last is a small step towards the full classroom laptop cart that has been a dream at PHS for almost a decade, according to some teachers who have been here long enough to know.
We've introduced and supported a lot of new technology. The Filemaker database was just being implemented when I came aboard, and I've figured out that we increase our use of its features in leaps about every three months. We enroll students, print directories, take attendance, and reports grades with the system. Our use of the fundraising tool has expanded this year, and has made Namrata's reporting to the board easier and more reliable than ever. We're using, or introducing, several open-source applications, including Gallery2 for our image server, WikiMedia for our upcoming PHS History Wiki, and Drupal for our website revision.
We've focused on the basics, such as the infrastructure and daily use of technology, mainly because you cannot build an educational technology program if the technology doesn't work. We are in great shape now todevelop a supportable technology curriculum for the classrooms. So my focus for the new hires is to see what educational technology background they bring with them, their experience developing curriculum, and supporting teachers and students with tech projects in the classroom.
I see three roles that support the technology at Presidio Hill. The firstis tech management, making smart decisions about the technology priorities at PHS. The second is educational technology support, including supporting technology in the classrooms and the development of a technology curriculum.
The third role is tech support, maintaining and fixing the computers. No single person will be an expert in all three, and so we will have to identify which candidates are well rounded enough to do a great job with the skills they do have. Russ and I will put in a lot of effort during the slow tech period towards the end of the year (after Spring Break) to document and build-out a robust transfer plan for the new Director of Technology to ease the transition.
It's been a fantastic two years at PHS. I feel like I've learned as much as I've been able to contribute to the school. This is an amazing community, and I am as moved and touched by the students as the teachers are. I want all my TechSquad students to sign my PHS yearbook, for sure, and I know Russ wants their signatures too. I know that seeing the eighth grade graduation will make me cry. I've developed some deep friendships I know will continue past my sojourn here. It's not over yet, but so long and take care.
September 14, 2007
From the Director of Technology 09-14-2007
From Greg Beuthin, Director of Technology:
I remember the first two weeks of school last year - the week the teachers came back, and the following week when the students returned. For Russ and I, both who had been at PHS less than 10 days prior to that date, it was
barely-managed chaos. We stayed the course as much as we were able, and slowly over the course year we strived to make everything function properly and reliably, slowly building up trust and enthusiasm in technology.
The beginning of this year is a different story. Many teachers are expressing a general feeling of excitement and exploration about technology right from the start of school; new teachers are coming in with an expectation that technology will be part of their work in the classroom.
Everyone is expecting things to work from the outset, as opposed to assuming it won't. That's great, even if it does put more pressure and expectation on Russ and I - it's where we want to be.
The teachers and staff raising the bar of tech expectations this year creates the right atmosphere to ramp up the student technology experience. Everything tech-related is starting earlier - we don't need the time to get our sea legs, as it were. The Internet Safety presentation was just this last Wednesday; next Wednesday we are doing a student training on how to use the network.
Several more teachers will have web-accesible classroom pages for students (keep your eye on the Friday Letter, and in the Community Section, for more info on these). And Russ and I are presently discussing how to support our planned 6-laptop cart that can be shared among different classrooms this year.
And if all goes well, we'll be implementing a long overdue project that is close to my heart - "renovating" the PHS website. Look for the new site around Thanksgiving - unless I am entangled in laptop cart power cords and eager students and teachers wanting to do ever more ambitious tech projects.
And if so, that means everyone's very enthusiastic about technology in the classroom - a great place to be.
April 20, 2007
From the director of technology 04-20-2007
Year in review
This is about the right time for me to do a "year in review" - a phrase that will probably cause panic among 8th grade parents who already feel this year is moving too fast. A lot has happened in tech PHS, so even though I'm not directly responsible for many of these tech accomplishments, I feel responsible for sharing these successes, since they may not be readily apparent to people who are not often in the building.
Student accounts: Over the course of the year we've slowly changed the existing student account configuration, so they can do less on the "guest" accounts (which was causing a maze of lost local files, network copying problems, and local configuration challenges), and making their personal accounts more stable, reliable and standardized. We know it's working as more and more students come to us to be "reminded" of of their old personal logins. Things are still being refined - we did a major network transition this Spring Break - but we are now completely on what's called a "net-boot" system, which means if a computer breaks down, we can swap it out with another machine, and get a student working again with a single reboot. This also means that a student who logs in anywhere in the building will always have access to exactly the same files and applications - something that was theoretically possible before, but not actually functioning very well.
Communication: The Friday Letter has moved completely online, with print versions available with one click on the website every week. We have finally graduated beyond the "phone-tree" style email system for PHS announcements to an in-house email application that can broadcast to all parents, or even a specific sub-set (all middle-school parents, for example).
Multi-media: We've done a big multi-media boost this year, and I can't really claim any of the credit. When I arrived, we had one projector on a cart and an old one without any working bulbs; and at least 2 days a week when the needs for the projector conflicted. A combination of fortune, resource juggling, and advice led to PHS now having 3 in-class projectors (5th and 6th grade, and the science room), a new in-class large format TV and DVD player (7-8th humanities), and we still have a projector on a cart for extra needs. In addition, several classes are now making songs on GarageBand, as well as movies on iMovie - we recently put together a multimedia DVD of student Spanish songs and cooking demonstrations. We've also boosted our licensed copies of Photoshop to support the increased needs of the student body (particularly now with ongoing Photoshop after-school classes).
Infrastructure: The biggest area of improvement is also the least visible. At the beginning of the year we made improvements to our security and "liability reduction" - a business phrase for things like off-site backups and proper software licensing. We've invested significantly in new hardware for teachers who were using their own laptops for work, and will continue to do so in the coming year - our goal is to have all teachers and staff using
PHS-purchased and supported equipment, which may take more than a year. We audited all student computers, and will begin on-going replacement cycle for these next year. We replaced a dying printer that was consuming to much of our tech-support time, and now have an automated system that warns us if there's a "hung" printer on the network. And along with that old printer, we recycled (through an eWaste program) over 500lbs of old computer equipment. And on a weekly basis we continue to troubleshoot tech problems, provide support for the website and special events (like the auction software) - oh, and somewhere I find time to plan for the future.
Finally, a couple of follow-ups to previous projects I mentioned in this space:
Tech squad and Internet safety: We started a tech squad a couple of months ago, which is turning into a cross between "student tech support" and a tech social club. It's completely voluntary, and we've had 3-5 students come every week. I also gave a presentation for the 5-8th grade on Internet safety (if you did not get a copy, we can send it to you), a presentation we will continue to revise and give every year.
Eportfolio: At a recent board meeting, I demonstrated a "proof-of-concept" electronic portfolio tool, which mirrors and supports the paper-based portfolio process that already exists in grades 3-5. We are currently looking for financial supporters of this tool so we can build it into our budget without jeopardizing any of our existing commitments. We are working on this project with Open Academic, who focus on building open-source educational technology tools.
Parents email listserv: The technology for a parent email listerv is there (it's called Yahoo ;-)) - but this project this actually foundered because I didn't have the time to move it forward. Really all that is needed is adopters, not tech support - I'd love to find some parents take this on (hint hint).
We still have a ways to go - but we always will, as technology keeps changing and we need to keep up to date with our equipment and software. We've definitely made great strides in making things more usable, sustainable, and "invisi-able" - and for this I have to acknowledge not only key PHS staff who do a lot of tech work "on the side" - Tania H., Christopher, Tony, Martin - and the staff who have been obliging guinea pigs - Trevor, Wendy, Sue - but also Russ King, without whom we might have well just thrown all the computers away and gone back to pencils and paper.
January 19, 2007
From the director of technology 01-19-2007
I recently sat in on some room parent meetings and got a lot of great feedback. For starters - and I'll just come out and say it - the website is confusing. For example, a few people recently admitted to me that they didn't know there was a difference between the Friday Letter and the Community section. And I'll admit, the differences are somewhat arbitrary (for what it's worth, the "Community" section was originally designed to host information that required more security and / or privacy than the Friday Letter; but what constitutes privacy, and what requires privacy, was subject to discussion at the room parent meeting). Also, contrary to popular belief, "community" announcements from parents - e.g. car for sale, lodge for rent, looking for dog-sitter, etc - are still welcome, and are printed whenever they come in, on the Community pages. If you have a community announcement, send it to Tania Hurter (tania_hurter@presidiohill.org), and she'll publish it in the following Friday's Community section. (And if you don't know know the login information, it's included in the Friday Letter emails sent out after the Friday Letter is published).
At the room parent meeting, we also discussed having an online PHS parents email discussion list. That's still coming, most likely on Yahoo Groups, but you will be able to sign up yourself (if you want) and - best of all - receive emails in a digest, as opposed to one at a time.
Since there's a lot of info flying around here, I want to host a little hour-long "tech café" to do a Q&A / review of the website (and email list if it's up by then). And just to sweeten the pot, we'll start with a 15-minute quiz show "What's your burning PHS-related tech question?"
Presidio Tech Café:
PHS Website - Who, What, Where and Huh?
Fri, Feb 2nd, 8:45-9:45am
(overlapping with Curbside Coffee)
And some other quick updates:
Students are asking me when I'm going to start the "tech squad" I talked about in the last letter - that should get rolling by the end of the month, to coincide with a new semester. We're also beginning to look at an open-source student assessment / eportfolio solution, to support the self-assessment / portfolio work already happening in grades 3-5 (which we intend eventually to expand to grades 6-8 as well). This is a long-term project, but it's very exciting for me to help lead PHS’s adoption of open source tools. Finally, our day-to-day tech challenges have moved away from troubleshooting email and fixing printers to more sophisticated classroom-focused issues, e.g. "I need help getting my students to write a song on Garageband" and "Do you think we can video-conference my interview with a judge next week so students can watch?" (Unfortunately, the judge was unavailable,). If the questions we are asked are a reflection of where we're going, then I'm very happy with that direction.
Greg Beuthin
Director of Technology
October 13, 2006
From the Director of Technology 10-13-06
I started at PHS just before the beginning of the school year, and during the first week I talked to the teachers about my goals of making technology at PHS become usable, sustainable, and "invis-able." By invisible, I mean that the technology "just works" - and works the same way consistently for everyone.
Of course, I've worked in technology far too long to give a hard deadline for making everything "just work." But the key here is that I aim not just to get by with what we have, but to make our technology work seamlessly and consistently for the largest number of users (including students and even parents), while trying to balance security - which always makes a system more complex - and responsibility on the side of users, be they staff, students or parents.
Helping me through this transition is Russ King, a temporary hire who came in originally to get us up to speed during the crunch period at the beginning of the school year, after which we would look for a longer-term support solution. That longer term solution turned out to be Russ himself, who has now joined us as our regular, part-time tech support person. In our first few months here we, as a team, have configured and trained the staff on the new email system, installed and configured a new firewall (and will begin training teachers and students on how to access our servers from outside of PHS), trained several new staff on how to use and update the PHS website, and supported the implementation of PHS's new enrollment database - in addition to setting up, configuring and training several new staff, and the daily troubleshooting and maintenance of the PHS tech infrastructure.
My background in technology is influenced by the open source movement, and the idea that you are not measured by how much information you acquire, but how much you can share and teach others - a philosophy that meshes well with progressive education in general, and PHS in particular. Part of my larger plan in building this usable, sustainable and "invis-able" system is developing "communities of support" among the different groups of users - staff, students and parents - who can share their learning and expertise with each other. Staff are already learning and supporting each other, and we will be looking to ask a few students to be the "go to" people from each class to help others with their log-ins and remote access. And I want to explore what kind of technology and community of support will work best for the parent community - so that parents can communicate effectively and efficiently with each other, as well as learn and support each other not only with technology, but as an active community.
There's a lot happening, all at once, all the time - that's the nature of this work, and it's challenging and exciting. It's easy to get absorbed in the day to day work of fixing computers, budgeting, writing documentation or researching new solutions - but when I have the opportunities to step back and look at the larger picture, I'm already seeing great things happening.
Greg Beuthin
Director of Technology