And now for the second half of the school year

New for second half of the school year

We have implemented an email address that helps us detect work orders or 'tickets'. If you are unaware of this change please send technical difficulties to techsupport@rsu36.org. In April, we will use a more robust application for this need.

Students at LHS have file-shares now so that their work can be securely accessed, stored, shared, retrieved, and backed up just like LHS staff members. Kym and Sue St. Pies will be showing staff and students how to do this on Macs and later PC's like in the library and Computer Labs.

We are continuing to repair issues on the new infrastructure but let us assure you that these are growth issues not patch-work repairs of an ailing system. Please keep us informed of issues.

Currently, long log-ins are an issue and it has been noticed that it may be a connection issue with the servers, so we will update to Win Server 2008 sooner than later .....As an option, Macbook logins are quicker....Also, put your work/files in folders in the parent My Documents folder. If you have many files you do not need or use and they add up to huge memory files, remember you can put them in a share - or on a memory stick - or just delete them (or not)

Also, if you are not logging in at your PC to the rsu36 please do so since other local login options will be disabled

Student intra-district emails (gmail accounts) are ready to be deployed next week. Staff gmail accounts are ready and that means it is ripe for accessing Google Apps....We will get to this when we complete showing students how to log in and showing staff more about the network shares they have available - and even how to use these with your students...This, combined with Google Apps, begins robust collaboration and communication dynamics necessary for 21st century skills. We will schedule weekly trainings/discussions this point foreward.... To start with see this Google Resource Wiki Page created just for you.

Please note that we will be upgrading to a brand new First Class server and Archiving server over the next couple of weeks and although we will back the old system up it is not a migration without unforeseen issues, so please take some time to back up stuff you don't want to lose.

More details on this later. The new server will be a clean install with new user name and accounts - not the old ones, like jsmith@sad36.org - more like, jsmith@rsu36.net

As you may or may not know we monitor bandwidth use weekly and have noticed spikes affecting end-user performance. We have detected devices not part of our system and these would be ipod touches. To assist maximizing bandwidth and minimizing infiltration, we will attempt to block these devices until we devise a policy for use and/or an academic reason - and they do have academic merit. I am hoping this creates a dynamic for discussion with staff and students, esp since we have mechanisms for communication and collaboration in place....Ideally, we could reach a solution that embraces our 'connected' students and limits distraction in the classroom- and on the servers.

District Website - We will meet with Admins and admin asst's Feb 4 (and the following three weeks) initially to decide information for the ditrict page and the individual school pages. The site will start as an informational portal first and (slowly) grow to a dynamic one throughout the year. Gathering and managing content, regular updates, photo uploads and management are and will be three great challenges. We would like a basic webiste launch date in March.
The infrastructure project for the LHS and LES is 90% complete and we begin at LMS Feb3, 2010.

It has been a pleasure so far and we hoped it would have been a little smoother on the user end. Please bring any discussions, ideas, concerns, issues, complaints to us because we want things to work for you and your students.

And now a search for a learning management system for our district. Can you say 'Moodle'? Visit http://demo.moodle.net/