Local District 4 Instructional Technology News

Future Cities Competition

Future Cities is is a national competition you’ll find as fulfilling as it is fun for your students. Now in its second decade, the National Engineers Week Future City Competition is a program developed for seventh and eighth grade students to help them discover and foster interests in math, science and engineering. As you’ll soon discover, it’s a program that’s both challenging and stimulating for everyone involved.  LAUSD is looking for Middle schools teams to compete at the regional in January.  Contact Joe Oliver for more information.  Winning teams get to compete in a national event in Washington DC. Joe.oliver@lausd.net 213-241-1362.

Netbooks

We’ve all heard about the netbook phenomenon. They’re small, low on power, ultra-cheap, super portable and the fastest growing segment of the computer industry.  Now, you can purchase them for your school.  These light weigh computers are configured for student use.  Teachers may use them, but they are not designed to handle district applications.  AreyJones offers three models, HP, Dell and Lenovo.  Prices range from $448 to $465 for the basic model that comes equipped with 1GB of memory and a 160 GB hard drive.  Contact AreyJones at 800-998-9199 for a custom quote or send me an email and I will forward you the standard quote.

Developing a School Technology Plan

If you are updating or creating a School Technology Plan, LACOE has created an online Tech Plan Builder to assist you in the process.  The website is modeled after the State’s guidelines.  Sign up at http://ito.lacoe.edu/tpb.

School Websites

If your school needs a website, there are various ways to go about acquiring one.

•    Have a staff member create one and host it on LAUSD.  Contact Diana Liston (Diana.liston@lausd.net).
•    Contact Educational Networks (http://www.educationalnetworks.net ) to have them create and maintain it for you ($3,000 – $5,000/year).
•    Use SchoolLoop (http://www.schoolloop.com ) to get a school website with individual teacher websites (Free).
•    Use Class Jump (www.classjump.com ) for individual teacher websites only. (Free)

Both SchoolLoop and Class Jump are free and you do not need any website development experience to set one up.

* For a list of current and/or ongoing grants, go to http://www.grantsalert.com/gsft.cfm