The Tech Committee met on the evenings of March 9th and April 11th, 2005. Ernie Chamot, Hal Bullard, Kavian Goharderakhshan, Deb Houston, Wayne Lindquist, and Pradnya Parulekar were present at the March 9th meeting. Ernie and Wayne met with Don Perry at the April 11th meeting.

Technology in Science Classes. Sue Camasta could not be present, but she has arranged with Don to share her expertise (on using computers in teaching science) with the Kennedy teachers for 3 hours, of the April 29th, teacher institute day. Don is especially interested in getting the kids going with collecting their own data and analyzing it in Excel.

Flying Eagle Graphic. Hal has been exploring animating graphics, with an eye toward developing a custom graphic of the Kennedy Eagle, possibly for use on the Kennedy website. He has come up with a nice 8x10 color graphic, including a realistic eagle, flying with the name, Kennedy, and an American flag and the Kennedy watchwords (Respect, Fairness, etc.) and team names (Carps, Fire, Stars, etc.) in the background.

A reduced (300K) version of Hal's flying Eagle, as a QuickTime movie, can be viewed at:

We noted a spelling error, but are excited about this graphic, and look forward to the finished product.

Don suggested this might make a nice, Kennedy specific, screen saver. Hal is continuing to refine his graphic, and we will look into how it might be converted into a screen saver, at least for the school's Windows computers.

Portable Audio Player Technology. With the Apple iPod and MP3 players becoming common, we brainstormed on whether there is a new opportunity for audio technology at Kennedy. Attaching audio to Talk 203 emails, and generating the voice from the text via a speech synthesizer, or conversely generating the text from the speech via speech recognition to support both phone and internet (website or email) homework hotline access were suggested.

More immediate uses of the newer audio technology, would be to provide audio for students to download to iPods (or other MP3 players) for practicing foreign language or band music at home. The band department already records the band sections rehearsing, for other sections of the band to listen to during their rehearsals. This idea was subsequently discussed with Mr. McManis, and he is receptive to the idea. He also said he has some other ideas for expanding the use of technology in music, and will collect his thoughts in an email. Don suggested we might also meet with the foreign language teachers, and brainstorm about whether there is a use for audio downloads in their department.

District Website Redesign Status. A mockup for the latest iteration of American Eagle's design for the new District website, incorporating our feedback as of 3/31/05, had been posted at:

The next meeting between the District's Website Redesign Steering Committee and American Eagle will be April 22nd, to provide our feedback on this design.

The Tech Committee discussed the design, and we like the new look. American Eagle's plans call for a "Document Management System" that would allow the individuals responsible for webpages on the site to access and modify their pages live, at any time. The group is very much in favor of this principle, and we look forward to this accessibility filtering down to the school and team webpages. The current mechanism for updating or correcting webpages is much too round-about and unwieldy.

Looking Ahead. The SFCP (School Family Community Partnership) has already begun planning for next year, and has asked who will be the contact person for the Tech Committee next year, and to update the information in their volunteer coupon book at the start of the year. Ernie will not be available to chair the committee next year, as his son will be moving on to high school. Wayne Lindquist has agreed to take over as Chairman and be the contact person for the SFCP's coupon. Wayne has been one of the most active members over the last two years, attending most of the meetings and being the one to evaluate the public domain PDF writers for us to recommend and has supplied it to the team newsletter editors, for posting the newsletters on the team websites. Ernie will be passing on the contact information for the current Tech Committee members, and the SFCP contact information to him.

Next Meeting. The May meeting will be our last meeting of the year. Don agreed to pay for pizza, and we are thinking of meeting at Connie's, May 11th or 12th, depending on people's availability.

Return to Tech Committee page, reload KJHS home page, or NCUSD 203 web site.