After the staff members new to District 21 completed their podcast with their thoughts regarding how to make school relevant for our students in the 21st Century, school administrators throughout District 21 were able to participate in the same workshop during the second week of school. They have also recorded their thoughts about how they can and will make schools relevant in their own podcast.

Listen to District 21 administrators discuss making school relevant!

At this year’s School District 21 New Teacher Orientation, staff members new to School District 21 learned about all facets of School District 21 from assessment and curriculum to special education and the instruction of English language learners.

New certified staff members also spent time considering the impact of the dramatic changes that the world has witnessed over the past two decades in the areas of technology and economics; changes which have effectively decreased the size of our world and increased the interdependence of all people on one another.

As a conclusion to these conversations and lessons, the new staff members made commitments in this podcast about how they will make school relevant for the students in their classroom during this school year.

Listen now!

This summer, new servers have been installed throughout School District 21 schools. With these new servers, we are also instituting a very exciting, completely new infrastructure. Through this infrastructure, we will more tightly be able to control the user experience in different ways for different users--so teachers have the tools that they need and so that elementary school and middle school students have the tools that they need. Additionally, we will be able to provide far better support as users’ work is centralized on the servers.

Coming this year will be even more changes. With the addition of staff laptops and the move of all staff members over to the Exchange Email, Calendar, Contacts, and Tasks Productivity Server, we are instituting a new consistent username standard that will minimize the number of conflicts between District 21 students and staff members who have similar (or the same) names. This new firstname.lastname format is already in effect for current Exchange users and is now in effect for all individuals to access their server folders.

During the two weeks prior to the start of the year, iTech teachers are available in schools to help users access their new server home directories and to ensure that users are best prepared to use those home directories effectively. (For teachers, once laptops are deployed later this year, your data will sync to and from the server when you are in the district, providing a safe back-up! Thus, using your home directory effectively now is critical.)

Please note: Assuming you were not already in Active Directory* at the end of the 2008-2009 school year**, the first time you login to the new server, you will need to do so from a computer running OS 10.4 or 10.5 that has already been connected to Active Directory. These computers include the Mac Minis in the computer labs and the aluminum 20” iMacs for staff use.

The Technology Office has prepared some documents to help individuals log-in to their new server folders.

• Directions for logging in to the server from OS 10.4/10.5 computers (including initial login) and OS 10.3 computers
• Logging in to OS 10.4/10.5 computers (Mac Minis/Teacher iMacs) video
• Logging in to OS 10.3 (Classroom) computers video

*Active Directory is an underlying system for managing student and staff users.

**With only a few exceptions, like Business Office staff members, the individuals who were already in Active Directory at the end of the 08-09 school year, were the same individuals who were using Exchange. These individuals included: Administrators, Tech Office staff and iTech teachers, Support Services staff, Psychologists, Social Workers, and Speech Pathologists.

Learning in Hand is a website devoted to the tools of 21st Century Learning--Podcasts, Blogs, Wikis, Netbooks, and more.

To see how these are being used in our District, check out:

Blogs

• Mrs. Merrill’s Classroom
• Mr. ZIma’s Classroom
• Mrs. Kosacz’s Classroom
• Cooper LMC People

Wikis

• London 7th Grade Solutions to the Economic Situation
• District 21 Technology Curriculum

Podcasts

• London 7th Grade Immigration Podcasts
• Whitman Podcasts
• Cooper 8th Grade Alcohol Podcasts

For more information on 21st Century Skills, visit the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

Throughout our professional development with the Web Gradebook, we have learned that we can re-size column width and the size of sub-windows within the main window by clicking on the borders between columns or sections of the Gradebook and dragging.

Did you know that you can also make more space by eliminating the icons on the buttons at the top of the screen?



By shrinking the size of these tabs, you will be able to see the names of more students listed below.

Simply click the eject icon (below) in the upper left corner of the button/tab bar.



It will eliminate the icons, and you will see just the names of the tabs giving you more vertical space within the screen!



In order to view the icons once again, just click the (now upside-down) eject button again!