Local District 4 Instructional Technology News

Developing a School Technology Plan

LACOE has created an online Tech Plan Builder to assist you in creating a School Technology Plan.  Your plan should include input from all stakeholders and should cover at least a three-year span.  Set goals and reachable benchmarks along the way with the outcome focused on student achievement and not how much technology you have or need. The website is modeled after the State’s guidelines. Sign up at http://ito.lacoe.edu/tpb.

Digital Voice Awards 2010 Entry Deadline: March 31, 2010

The California Technology Assistance Project (CTAP) Region 11 and Multimedia Services of the Instructional Technology Outreach division at the Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) invite K-12 school educators from Los Angeles County to submit exemplary classroom instructional technology projects to the Digital Voice Awards. Information can be found at http://ito.lacoe.edu/dva

California Streaming Digital Photography Contest Deadline: March 14, 2010

The CaliforniaStreaming Digital Photography Contest judges will select up to six student winners and two teacher winners that best reflect the 2010 contest theme: ENERGY!

Winners will have their photographs incorporated into a collectable poster, which will be distributed to classrooms across the state of California. Two teacher winners will receive a 16GB iPod touch and six student winners will receive 16GB iPod nanos. For additional information, go to http://ccetc.net/photocontest

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

Here’s additional site with available grants. http://www.vernier.com/grants/corporate.html

All staff at each school in our local district should update their EdTech profiles at http://edtechprofile.org. If the principal at your school would like to designate someone to be the administrator for your school, please have him/her send me an email with that person’s name. An administrator of the school’s edtech profile information can send staff their log in information and gather data from the survey.

*** This year, students in grades 5, 8 and 11 will also be required to take the EdTech survey.  The Memo will be available soon. If you have an EdTech site administrator at your school, he/she can create the student accounts.  If you don’t have a designated administrator, contact me and I will assist you with the creation of the accounts.

Local District 4 News

As you may or may not know, Local District 4 is no longer at the Harbor Building.  As of September 1st, we are now on the 11th floor of the Beaudry building.  Things are definitely different around here, but we will continue to support all of our schools as best as possible.  Our resources have been diminished so please be patient with us if we do not get back to you right away.  Since we no longer have a large conference room, we will not be having our monthly Tech Coordinator meetings.  If you would like to host a meeting at your school site, please email me so that we can schedule it, otherwise please continue to check our blog for news and updates.

Local District 4 Website
Our Local District 4 Website will be undergoing construction as we update information on it. Please give your input on what more you would like to have access to on our website.

LAUSD District News and Events

Site Computer Inventory MEM-4170.2
All schools should complete the Site Computer inventory by October 1, 2009. For more information, please refer to the memo.
Note: The site used to update a school’s inventory: http://site-computer-inventory.noc.lausd.net/, appears to work only within the firewall.

EdTech Profile
All staff at each school in our local district should update their EdTech profiles at http://edtechprofile.org If the principal at your school would like to designate someone to be the administrator for your school, please have him/her send me an email with that person’s name. An administrator of the school’s edtech profile information can send staff their login information and gather data from the survey.

LAUSD iTunes U
LAUSD is now online on iTunes University. (Please note: This link requires iTunes) The site is still under development and will be populated with more content in the near future.  If you have content you would like to contribute, please contact me.

EdTech at LAUSD
Visit the LAUSD EdTech WebPage for regular updates on Educational Technology resources for LAUSD.

School Websites
Many schools have requested information on how to update their school’s website. There are several great resources available to address this:

iWeb Workshop
On Monday, October 5th, Dave Douglas, Apple Systems Engineer for LAUSD, will be offering a workshop in the  Local District 6 Office from 3:45 to 5:45 on developing your school’s website using Apple’s iWeb software. For more information, download this flyer. This is an easy way for schools to easily update their web presence using free tools and LAUSD’s web server.

School Loop
School Loop is offering free websites for all LAUSD schools. This is a fantastic opportunity to create an interactive website for your school. To find out more, please visit the website

Upcoming Conferences

21st Century Learners Symposium - Friday, October 23, 2009 7:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m.
LACOE’s Instructional Technology Outreach offers this conference to all educators. The cost is $95 per person or $375.00 for a group of 6. For more information, download this flyer.

CUE Los Angeles Technology Fair - Saturday, November 14, 2009 8:30 – 3:30
Paradise Found at Mulholland Middle School. Registration and more information coming soon!
The keynote speaker this year is Ted Lai.

Thanks to Janice Stearns from LD6 for sharing her resources.

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

The 13th annual Infortech conference is official.  As mentioned before, the event is scheduled for April 25, 2009 from 9 am -12 noon at the Los Angeles Convention Center.  The theme for this year is “Expanding Student Learning.” Visit the Infotech website  at http://infotech.lausd.net/2009/ to get the latest information.

Tags: conference, infotech, itaf, LAUSD, LD4, Technology

InfoTech will soon be here!  Planning for this event has already begun.  We will once again be at the LA Convention Center.  The conference is scheduled for Saturday, April 25, 2009. The theme for this year will be “Expanding Student Learning.” Start thinking about your student projects around this theme.  More details will be available soon.

Tags: conference, infotech, itaf, LAUSD, LD4, Technology