Wrong Again

Ok, so I attended another meeting regarding the grant and I was wrong again. It looks like the focus of the grant will be on the Language Arts teachers. However, the equipment will also be available to teachers who are interested, but not initially. Sorry for the confusion and false hope.

Clearing up the Grant

The grant we received includes the training of 150 teachers, but only those who teacher 4-8 grades. The standards that we are critiqued by the state are only the Language Arts and Social Science standards, but we do plan to train all interested teachers. We will also be looking for tech leads at each school. Anybody interested?

Grant

We have received $1.3 million dollars in grant funds through the EETTC grant. The grant covers grades 4 - 8 so we will be working with that subgroup from our district. The grant includes funding for wireless laptop carts to be located at each school. By my calculations each elementary will be receiving 40 laptops via 2 carts and the middle schools will be receiving 80 laptops via 4 carts. Teachers must attend training in order to have access to these carts, but I think it will be a great opportunity for both our staff members and our students. Now we just need to work out the details. :-)

Wiki

We're working on ways to better communicate with the teachers in the district. Please check out our new training wiki. You can even search for information on specific topics by using the search box on the left.

Visit http://techiesteaching.pbwiki.com

Creating technology stations

We've redecorated our room, and have a little more space to move around. We even have some space around the room to make technology stations. Now we have to decide what to place in those stations. We have a "podcasting" corner, and I think we'll put some sort of scanner system at another one. That way teachers with old documents/photos can scan them to upload into Moodle. Any suggestions for other stations? We can probably have 1 to 2 more.
Thanks!

Setting up your Aeries Gradebook

This tutorial walks you through the basic set-up of your Aeries Gradebook. We will continue to create additional tutorials to give you more information on using Aeries.

Please let me know if you have any questions.
Additional Resources are available here. Just scroll down to find the Aeries material.

Aeries Training

What's the buzz about Aeries? Well as our student management system it does make some things much easier. For example - you will no longer need to input your students into your gradebook program. With a push of a button your students are enrolled in your class and any change in Aeries is modified in your gradebook too.

Also, at "Grade Reporting" time you will no longer have to input grades for each student using the those pesky drop down menus. All you need to do is click on the "Import from Gradebook" link and presto-chango your grades are all there.

We will be putting together another video tutorial on setting up your Aeries gradebook by the end of this week. You can also attend one of our Aeries classes offered September 10 and 17 at the DO.