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A School Tech Profile: Then and Now

27 Mar

I was thinking today about how much growth I’ve overseen in my time as the Technology Coordinator for Scotland Elementary School. The school’s tech situation now is vastly different from what it was like in 2006! It’s been a lot of fun (and at times, challenging) upgrading the school’s tech and adding new equipment and software.

Here are some comparisons between the school in 2006 and the school now in 2012:

Network:
2006: The Windows domain ran on an old server. Backups were not in place. The domain controller also handled every piece of software the school used, from SuccessMaker for interactive student lessons to support software like Kurzweil reading tools and Type to Learn for typing lessons. There were around 50 PCs in the building.

2012: We now have dedicated servers for our domain, door system, and student information system (PowerSchool). The network now runs category 6 ethernet. The building’s network operates in two halves connected by a fiber line, and our Internet connection has been upgraded to a fiber optic line thanks to a state grant. 88 PCs and laptops are now in the building.

Email:
2006: The school piggybacked off of another school’s Exchange server, and we had to go through other people to have new boxes added.
2012: We have convenient webmail through our school’s domain name. I set up POP access to the server on the staff’s iPads and iPhones. Staff can access their email at home. I created a program that allows the superintendent to conveniently send a daily bulletin to all staff members.

Grade book software:
2006: The school had grade book software that frequently crashed and was unreliable. We had to rely on a consultant to get our report cards printed out 3x/year and had to pay for any changes we wished to make to the report card. Report cards ALWAYS went home late. Staff could not access their grade book from home.

2012: The staff use PowerSchool’s PowerTeacher Gradebook for grading. Staff can access their grade books from home. I created training videos on Youtube for teachers to reference. Parents can log in to see student grades at any time. Kindergarten and pre-k have been added to the report card system, which is now school-wide.

I wrote software that generates our report cards, so I can make changes at any time and any report card issues that arise can be fixed immediately. I can customize the report cards immediately in any way required.

Assessment:
2006: standard state mastery tests
2012: 2x yearly online Scantron assessments, online CBAS writing assessments with science and math assessments beginning next year. Detailed reports on scaled score, standard item pool scoring, national percentile rankings, and grade level expectations have helped to raise the school’s mastery test scores in grades 3-6.

Instructional Equipment:
2006: There were 3 unreliable white boards, with wheeled carts holding projectors and laptops. Students occasionally would trip over the cables, and the pens rarely charged correctly.
2012: We have 7 wall-mounted SMART Boards and projector pairs. Teachers don’t have to move or calibrate anything. Teachers use interactive Aegom lessons made for the SMART Boards as well as downloaded lessons from Smart Exchange. 3 additional mobile board setups are also available.

Connected school community:
2006: Notes sent home, or secretaries called every family in the school.
2012: The school, staff, and families are more connected. Automated alerts are immediately sent home via AlertNow. Families and staff are notified immediately of cancellations or special events. Updates and alerts are also posted to the website, which also has teacher pages, updates, calendars, and announcements.

Student information system:
2006: A DOS-based (!) information system was in use, and secretaries only had access to certain areas of student records.
2012: PowerSchool is in use. The school has electronic records for attendance, grading, lunch balances, family and demographics, and more. Set up reports for notifying families with negative lunch balances. Automatic integration with state-required reporting.

Other things that have been added:
- teachers map and save curriculum (linked with state standards) through Curriculum Mapper
- building-wide security system with door access control, ID cards, and access reports.
- camera surveillance system with DVR unit
- school-wide wireless network
- networked searchable library card catalog available from 4 PCs in the library

The school was fortunate to have a building renovation and a lot of money was available for new computers and equipment. Some of these updates were things I created software for, like the report card, or were things we were able to add over time. The school is in a dramatically different state than when I started. I learned a lot along the way and I’m very pleased by how much our situation is improved!

More Teacher Training Videos

21 Jan

There was no school on Tuesday this week due to snow so I took the opportunity to create two more training videos for the teachers I support.They requested these two specific videos since they cover operations that the teachers don’t do very regularly and are therefore trickier to remember.

I sent the links to these videos to the teachers I work with and also placed web links in an easily-accessible folder on a shared network location. Doing these videos is pretty enjoyable and I’m going to keep this strategy in mind in the future. It’s a great way to be able to provide support for someone without needing to be present, such as when a staff member is working from home or needs something right away.

Creating A Training Video for Staff Members

10 Jan

It recently occurred to me that it would be a great idea to create some training videos for the teachers at the school, so I recently created this video which is on creating an assignment in PowerTeacher Gradebook. I used ScreenFlow for OSX to record myself demonstrating the software and did a quick voice over using the built-in microphone on my iMac at home. I edited in iMovie, exported the final video, and uploaded it to Youtube.

Sometimes a teacher will be working on their grades when I’m not around or they’re doing it remotely from home. In these cases it could be very helpful for them to have a quick video to refer to. They can switch to 720 and see the video in full screen mode with high-quality. It’s very cool! I presented the video to the teachers and received some feedback on some topics to make future videos for. I’m glad I had this idea. Now the resource will always be available to the teachers to refer to and will be very helpful for any new staff as well.

How I Created Report Card Software for PowerSchool

1 Jan

An example report card generated using my application with PowerSchool grade data.

This post describes how I wrote custom software to generate report cards for Scotland Elementary School. Report cards were always a big hassle at my job at the school for several reasons. The main reason was that there were ALWAYS problems, errors, and inconsistencies in the student scores. I had to rely on an external company to fix any problems with the PDF export in the grade book software since I didn’t have access to it. Report cards are much more complex than the ones I used to receive, but it seems to be a national trend and we’re required to break down each subject so that each educational standard is scored individually. This kind of complexity introduces a lot of difficult in getting everything to come out right on the report cards.

At the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year we started using PowerSchool’s grade book software. It was included with the main PowerSchool software suite we already paid for and the existing grade book (Pinnacle by Excelsior Software) was easily the worst software I’ve ever used. I’m not saying that to be insulting or funny. I sincerely mean it!

When we made this switch to PowerSchool’s grading software I found out that PowerSchool’s internal report generation features were very unintuitive to use. It was not actually possible to create the report cards that the school needed using the software due to the complexity of the report cards themselves. There were hundreds of individual grade standards and many classes and sections. I couldn’t create a report that would do what I needed and even if I could the process would have taken much more time than I had. There simply wouldn’t be enough time to place every line and piece of text by telling it how far over and down for the page origin to go. It really was that difficult.

I settled on creating my own software using Visual C#. The basic process is:

teachers enter grades into gradebook -> grades are sent to server -> I run an export of those grades that spits out a raw text file with comma-seperated values -> my custom software interprets this data and generates PDF report cards for all the students

It took a lot of work to set up but it was an excellent decision to do. The software works perfectly and its benefits are many. I can now modify the report cards to look however I need or want them to look, such as changing formatting or adding a legend. The school saves thousands of dollars that we used to have to pay in support fees to a specialist that modified the report for us. There were only a couple of errors in the report (such as teacher comments running off the side of the page due to a bug) but I can easily fix any bugs or issues that arise rather than having to wait for someone else to get the work done when the send-home deadline is right ahead.

Sending home report cards at the end of each trimester is now an absolute breeze when it used to be a MAJOR hassle. I would spend a week or two in frustration dealing with support specialists and ultimately sending report cards home late due to bugs. Teachers like it better, too, because the report cards they receive are now accurate and the scores are an exact match for what they entered in the grade book. The old Pinnacle software was pretty much a crapshoot!

Creating the report card generating software is one of the most helpful and satisfying things I’ve done in my role at the school and it’s a huge pleasure to run a simple data export and have full PDF documents come out the other end.

Things I’ve Learned and Accomplished in 2010

31 Dec

2010 has been a killer year! I’ve made a lot of discoveries and positive changes in my career, both in my technical proficiency and my skills in communication and relationships. It didn’t feel right to let the year conclude without sharing some of those things so I want to share them now.

Social skills and the importance of compassion

I saw a lot of retweets of the Dalai Lama’s Twitter activity and eventually followed his account. He wrote a lot about the importance of compassion and in thinking about compassion I learned a few things.

First, compassion often will melt away any tension between me and a coworker. I often could be impatient with people (though it was internal and I wouldn’t pressure or be rude to others) and I usually tried urge them to “get to the point” when they were complaining about something that happened. I just wanted to know what they needed so I could fix it and get back to whatever else I was doing. By slowing down and understanding that the problem they were experiencing was significant to them I was better able to see the situation from their perspective. To me, it’s nothing to show up and fix a technical problem by clicking the mouse a few times but to another person that same problem might be a significant technical hassle that causes them to lose their cool in an already stressful day.

By seeing people’s problems from their perspective and listening patiently before providing a solution I am better able to create trust and understanding between us. This has helped my interaction with coworkers and clients because they see me as patient and understanding. They can not only ask for help but can also confide in me and feel they’re understood. I make sure they know that they aren’t hassling me by bothering me with their problems but that I genuinely want to help them. On my end, I feel like a more supportive and helpful coworker and my relationships with other people in professional situations have become more personal and enjoyable. There’s more of a human connection and it’s made a significant and pleasant difference at work! Solving problems with patience and humor isn’t just fixing computers; it’s making a positive difference by solving problems for other people and making their day better.

Technical skills

This year I’ve discovered some useful software and invented some solutions. I’ve also found ways to handle some tasks with greater efficiency. Let me break ‘em down:

Biggest improvement/time saver:

I wrote custom report card generating software in C# that takes raw student grades from our PowerSchool server and generates attractive and detailed PDF report cards for all our students. This streamlines the report card process, which was easily my number one headache working at the school, and allows report cards to be finished much more easily. Put simply, it works faster and better than anything else we’ve previously used or had available and I can immediately fix any problems that pop up rather than waiting days or a week for a tech support call to resolve the issue. It also saved my wife a week’s worth of ranting at home during stressful report card release times!

Best free software implementation:

UltraVNC is free software allows remote access. You can control another computer as thought you were sitting right in front of it. I prefer it to the built-in Windows Remote Desktop Connection due to its added features and ease of configuration. The funny thing is that I didn’t know you could use it through a web browser! Now I can log in to the Windows servers at work through Google Chrome on my iMac at home. Nice.

Biggest accomplishments:

Set up new network server

The school was able to purchase a new network server and I set up a new network this year. Until now the school had to run with an (embarrassingly!) old Windows server acting as our network domain controller. I set up the new domain using our new server and was able to use domain startup scripts to place most of the school’s users frequently used shortcuts on their desktops and to map their preferred printers as their default. This has been a positive change for everyone through being an increase in reliability, efficiency, and ease of use. It’s a plus on the administrative side because the network is now more reliable and easier to maintain.

Deployed PowerTeacher Gradebook

Teachers use grade book software to enter student grades and I generate detailed report cards from those grades. I set up brand new grade book software this year which is staggeringly more reliable than the older software we were using and the school’s teachers have very positive things to say about it! The old software was a huge hassle for both teachers and myself but the new PowerTeacher Gradebook is a pleasure to use.

I provided the teachers with some professional development training sessions and set up all the grading standards, conversion scales, software, classes, and sections. The transition went exceptionally smoothly and everyone (especially me!) is happy with the new software.

The decision to empower users

Traditional wisdom with network administration seems to be to give network users the most restrictive set of permissions possible while still allowing them to do their jobs. I’ve been on the user end of that and it’s not very enjoyable when you can’t do what you need to do on your own computer because of a security policy. Out of habit I started off working at the school by running the network this way, but due to the sheer annoyance of having to run around typing in administrator passwords to install Adobe Reader or Flash Player on everyone’s computer all the time I started giving everyone administrative permissions on their own machines instead.

I received a big surprise: I no longer had to continually walk around the school installing trivial software and the instances of actual problems resulting from this decision were very low! I found that it actually saved me time to deal with the technical issues like spyware that arose from this decision than it was to install software for everyone. If someone did end up with spyware issues due to their user account’s increased permissions I would just fix those issues and spend time educating the user on safer practices to use in the future. There’s rarely been a repeat problem after this step. By empowering users I was able to save time and increase user competency.

2010 has been a great year at work and I’m more confident and comfortable in my role at the school (and in my larger career adventure as well) through the things I’ve learned and the discoveries I’ve made. I’m looking forward to learning more so that I can increase the value I’m able to contribute to my coworkers and clients and to enjoy my work even more. Thanks for reading!

Creative Solutions Without Big Budgets

22 Dec

Staff members come to me with all kinds of strange technical problems in my job at the elementary school. I take a lot of pride in solving those problems and the more difficult they seem the more enjoyable they usually are to solve.

There’s rarely enough money in the school budget for an ideal technological solution, which is usually to order some special software or hardware. It can be fun coming up with solutions, or even hacks, when the situation calls for it.

For example, The school library uses a piece of software to inventory all the library books and to handle checking them in and out. The software’s old, but it does its job. The librarian asked if I could set up some computers in the library for students to use to search the catalog.

I set up four spare computers that were too old to set up for anyone else but would be sufficient for simply searching the library catalog. The problem was that the library software didn’t support a network setup where user terminals could search the catalog. I called for a price quote and was told we’d have to pay $3,000 for new software if we wanted to be able to have users access the catalog through the network.

$3,000 was way out of the budget. The software was a bit old but worked just fine so I began researching an alternative solution. I discovered a free tool by Microsoft called Synctoy that lets you synchronize folders across a network. As a trial I set up a shared folder on a server and then configured Synctoy on the librarian’s PC and on the four PCs set up for catalog searches so that the original library database would be shared with each of the four computers and, to our satisfaction, it all worked flawlessly.

This simple fix saved us $3,000 and the librarian loves it. She simply runs a quick synchronization on her main computer and on the four search terminals and students can search for books much faster than with the card catalog (and can even see whether the book’s been checked out or not).

Of course, hacks like this only work in certain circumstances. There are situations that require special hardware and software (such as implementing a student information system or electronic door access) but in everyday circumstances it’s a lot of fun and a huge benefit to the organization to save a few dozen dollars by splicing together a custom cable or to save thousands of dollars and improve functionality using free software.