Tech Committee
A recent decision by the school board provides us with some hope for assistance towards the technology budget. The board decided to put to a vote the Revenue Purpose Statement of our Local Option Sales Tax (LOST) funds. The current statement was established before the laws governing the uses of these funds were changed to be less stringent. A successful change to the revenue purpose statement could free up some dollars for a technology budget that desperately needs assistance.
The Earlham Schools will be using Google Apps as a way to cut some software costs. Most folks have heard about Google Docs in some form or another. Google also has a suite of applications that are available to Educational institutions free of charge. While the applications are a bit more limited than the Microsoft Office Suite, students will have access to them any time they can access the internet. A few of the teachers have been using these applications over the past few months, and having all students set up with accounts will allow teachers to set workgroups for sharing documents and share working calendars, schedules and other items.
Special Ed Students working with MacBooks
With an eye toward increasing student work production and accessibility for some students, Special Education funds have been used to purchase 12 MacBook laptops for use by Special Education students in grades 3 - 12. The computers have arrived and I am currently configuring them to communicate with our Windows network. Surprisingly enough, this has been very easy on the Mac side, and our windows servers seem to be communicating relatively well. Heavy usage will occur after the first of the year and that will be our first real test.
