Trying to find logic in the technological... - Latest Comments

Re: Questions for a set of Data Entry Rules and Style Guide

William Stites — Thu, 16 May 2013 11:00:30 -0000

I am in the process of writing another post on the topic and will be including the document with that post.

Re: Questions for a set of Data Entry Rules and Style Guide

Guest — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:10:24 -0000

Hi! I'm curious to know if you ever completed this guide. I would love to read it if you've made it public.

Re: Using Minecraft in your school’s admission process.

Miko — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 15:26:10 -0000

I'm a teacher at Da Vinci Innovation Academy in Hawthorne CA, and I have been developing and using Minecraft in the classroom all year. Take a look at my blog to see the potential of this powerful tool! www.craft-academy.com

Re: COPPA and Verifiable Parental Consent

William Stites — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 17:12:56 -0000

Yes. It is what we (MKA) have used with our families in our Admissions contracts and is something I believe other schools have used as well.

Re: COPPA and Verifiable Parental Consent

Siobhan Ryan — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 11:53:27 -0000

Is it okay to use this letter as starting point for parental permission?

Re: Considerations for deploying the AppleTV in your school or enterprise.

William Stites — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 13:59:30 -0000

Thanks! This will be helpful to people. We actually programmed switch ports that the AppleTV are on to be members of the various subnets.

Re: Considerations for deploying the AppleTV in your school or enterprise.

Jake — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 17:56:33 -0000

William,
Thanks for the article and, as someone who is rolling these devices out on a global scale, we went through the same checklist.

In regards to item 2, Cisco now honors Bounjor across L3 domains. Info here:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/pro...

We ended up rolling out a common SSID across all of our offices with the sole purpose of Multi-media (i.e Apple TV's and some others) devices.

Hope it helps
- Jake

Re: Success is about sharing.

David Korfhage — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 17:40:47 -0000

Sharing your success is important, but when I read about this, I also wondered, "Are you sharing your failure?" We can learn a lot from our failures, and we can learn even more, I think, if we share are failures with others.

Re: Considerations for deploying the AppleTV in your school or enterprise.

William Stites — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 16:46:21 -0000

Thanks for the update.

Re: Considerations for deploying the AppleTV in your school or enterprise.

Randall King — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 15:24:21 -0000

I think Apple TV supports 802.1x now. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT...

Re: Using Minecraft in your school’s admission process.

William Stites — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 21:42:12 -0000

This is awesome and exactly what I am getting at. Involve students in the process can really connect students to the school... not only prospective students, but those in the school as well. REALLY COOL!!!

Re: Using Minecraft in your school’s admission process.

Basil Kolani — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 21:37:53 -0000

Love the idea of a virtual tour that kids will engage with. I'm reminded of a project that @daniellau6 did with her seventh grade class last year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Re: Considerations for deploying the AppleTV in your school or enterprise.

William Stites — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 14:26:41 -0000

Its a concern for sure, however there are so many variable to each persons infrastructure both wired and wireless along with internal bandwidth. It is something you will want to keep an eye on for certain as you deploy more and more devices.

Re: Considerations for deploying the AppleTV in your school or enterprise.

Tedturner — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 11:43:08 -0000

How come no review of what potential an appleTV will have on the overall wireless infastructure ( No concerns there?) Seems like most IT people at schools look at Layer 7 and forget about Layer 1 and 2

Re: Google is offering a $99 Chromebook! Wait…does cheap make it right?

Basil Kolani — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 08:59:57 -0000

I get that the hurdles are different, and that's something I wouldn't deny. But I still see the Chromebook as a great multipurpose device. It's a low-cost computer that, on a basic level, works with or without wifi. And it natively supports multiple users.

Let's assume that I don't have my own internet access. I can take my Chromebook to the library, coffee shop, McDonald's, wherever, and use their free wifi. I can go home, without wifi, and work on writing a paper to synthesize the research that I've done in places where I can jump online. And then the next morning, back at school, I'm back online.

It's not the optimal situation that we're used to or that we want to envision for our students, but it still works.

Re: Google is offering a $99 Chromebook! Wait…does cheap make it right?

William Stites — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 08:37:57 -0000

Basil... I agree completely, but to Jason point above the issues with public and private institutions vary greatly. Could the Chromebook work in our (independent school) situations? Sure. Our students have a number of other resources at their disposal. But, for those without ready and easy access to broadband or wireless who are without other options if this is their primary device are they left wanting/needing more?

Re: Google is offering a $99 Chromebook! Wait…does cheap make it right?

William Stites — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 08:35:07 -0000

Agreed that the public sector has different issues to content with and partially to my point is the issue with access to the Internet and WiFi in particular in these areas. I think that when you look at Chromebooks they CAN be a greta option for may school, both public and private, it is just that I think access is a big concern.

My cousin's husband in principle in a South Jersey school that has the majority of their students on free or reduced lunch (the measure of poverty levels in NJ) and as they are looking to roll Chromebooks they are trying to figure out how to get Internet access into the homes.

The device may be relatively inexpensive, but the cost of access needs to be brought down to the point where is is a primary service like heat and water. At this point those without access are now falling further behind.

Re: Google is offering a $99 Chromebook! Wait…does cheap make it right?

Jason Ramsden — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 08:15:34 -0000

The $99.00 is per device and only through donorschoose.org so the money has to be raised by parents. In my opinion it was designed to provide schools who might not otherwise have the resources to get in the game in a relatively inexpensive way. Most public schools are using this as an entry point, not for 1:1, but for plain old classroom sets which is probably helping them reduce costs. You have to remove yourself from your independent school model and consider what public schools have to contend with when it comes to technology. Once you do you'll quickly learn that our hurdles and their hurdles are incredibly different. Just remember, all technology has hurdles regardless of the platform, setup, and design.

Re: Google is offering a $99 Chromebook! Wait…does cheap make it right?

Basil Kolani — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 08:12:45 -0000

I'm not sure the criticism is valid. Can the Chromebook do everything that, say, a MacBook Pro can do? No. But I can do enough with it offline that I think it's at least a compelling alternative, especially at that price. If you think of how many of our students have phones that let them tether for internet access, you have to start believing that they do have access in a whole lot of places besides our schools. No one says that a baseline iPad with no cellular access is incapable of day-to-day use.

What I love the Chromebook for is pushing us towards a place where the networks that we put a lot of resources into eventually won't matter. We're getting close to BYON (bring your own network), and this is just another step towards that. It's coming... heck, it's already here in some places. So what do we do about it?

Re: The iPad in Education: The Apps & Deployment

William Stites — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:37:24 -0000

If you are working from a syncing model you can use the VPP to purchase the number of codes needed to be legal with the licensing. You then have the app download to a laptop with your school account on it and sync all the devices to that one single account that used the one, single code. You hold the other accounts and put them away so that you can prove you own the correct number of licenses/codes for the apps you have in use. You DON'T use those other codes.

Re: The iPad is not considered an educational tool?!

William Stites — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 07:09:06 -0000

Thanks... usually my mistake is with you, your and you're.

Re: The iPad is not considered an educational tool?!

Gordonmahung — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 02:27:45 -0000

Please correct your post. You've used "and" many places where what you meant to write was "an".

Re: COPPA and Verifiable Parental Consent

Tom Smith — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 20:05:23 -0000

Hi Bill,
Thanks for this post. It provides some good thinking and resources as we deal with this issue at our school.

Re: Considerations for deploying the AppleTV in your school or enterprise.

William Stites — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 14:46:25 -0000

It's a start, but not there yet. One thing that I saw that is very interesting in avoiding an AppleTV to be inadvertently hijacked is the OnScreen Passcode - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT...

Re: Considerations for deploying the AppleTV in your school or enterprise.

Duncan Wilcock — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 15:46:56 -0000

Looks like you just got your wish RE: Configurator:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT... Apple TV update today - Sep 24th, 2012)