Old Kennedy Website
New Kennedy Website
The first meeting of the year for the Kennedy Technology Committee was held Thursday evening, September 9th. Nine parents with a variety of backgrounds (including chemists, IT, control systems, and photography/digital imaging) met with principal Don Perry to begin organizing for the 2005-05 school year.
Introductions. We introduced ourselves, then Ernest Chamot (last year's chair) summarized the Technology Committee's history and past accomplishments, as an introduction to planning our activities for this year. Parents interested in the use of (computing) technology (both, in growing the infrastructure, and in its use in the classroom) at Kennedy have been meeting since 1996; first as the "KJHS Technology Team" (sponsoring technology nights, and surveying parents and teachers on desires and needs), then as the "Computer and Telecommunication Task Force" (focused on getting Kennedy wired for network access), and more recently as the "Kennedy Technology Committee" (starting the district wide Back Pack Syndrome Committee, and recommending the technology requirements for Louise Huffman's Antarctic trip). Last year the focus of the Committee was on updating and modernizing Kennedy's web page, culminating in a complete redesign to a friendlier and more professional appearance.
Computing Technology. District 203's Chief Information Officer, Craig Wilson, was unable to attend, but sent a copy of the Technology Department Long Range Goals (including the Current Scope of Services) to provide us background concerning the state of technology in the District. Five Long Range Goals over the next 3-5 years concern: a stable, secure infrastructure; coordinated district data; exemplary technical support; enhanced student learning; and web-based communication. Don Perry elaborated some, and described the state of technology at Kennedy. In addition to the 15 current ceiling mounted projectors for displaying from teachers laptops (15 more are ordered), Kennedy subscribes to a video service where the teachers can download short, illustrative clips to show as part of their class; and they can also distribute any satellite TV feed to the classrooms. There are 2 internet drops per classroom; there are 5 Elmo's (a system to project via the video system virtually any material, analogous to a combination overhead projector, opaque projector, and computer monitor projector); and there is a portable lab available, consisting of 15 3/4-size laptops and wireless base stations on a cart that can be brought to any class as needed (in addition to the 40+ computers in the LRC permanent computer lab.)
We discussed questions of new technology issues/questions/needs with Don. Is a refresher keyboarding class for those transferring into the district going to be needed? Could older PC's be set up to fill the science labs with stations for the basic charting and graphing needs? Students are now allowed cellphones, so long as they are kept in their lockers and used after school, but are kids moving to PDA's and how should they be used? The outgoing voice message system to parents from Kennedy is outdated, but the district is moving to Talk203 (the email system that parents can subscribe to, to receive announcements and emergency information via email). In addition to the district-wide announcements, Kennedy will start building based service (ie. Kennedy specific announcements to Kennedy parents) in the second semester. Don offered to give us a tour of the school at the next meeting, to point out all the ways technology is being made available.
Organization and Plans. Don would like help getting the word out on Talk203, and getting as many parents as are interested signed up during parent orientation on Tuesday. We wanted to have a presence for the Technology Committee so other parents could find out about us, and would like to have a station showing the work we did last year in upgrading the Website. Several members also volunteered to assist signing up parents with the LRC computers during orientation as part of our presence, including Sue Camasta, Kavian Goharderakhshan, and Ernest Chamot.
Organizing Webquest (the club of student webmasters, learning and working on web design) again was discussed. It may need to be different this year, since all of the Core Team webpages are in good shape now. Most of the kids have been through the simple "teaches" we've used twice now, so we may want to have separate sessions for the 6th graders. We may also want to combine Webquest with the Computer Club. No decisions were made.
Other things brought up included: how to get parents and kids to jump in; to consider branching out to include future meanings of "technology" (such as nanotechnology); to find more tie-ins for technology, such as getting pictures from the yearbook to the web site.
Finally, those present were polled to find when members would be available for future meetings. Although 3 members could make an occasional morning meeting, the consensus is that evening meetings will have the most parent attendance. There will be some conflicts, with Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, but so long as the meeting doesn't start until 7:30 pm, all of the parents should be able to make Thursday evening.
Return to Tech Committee page, reload KJHS home page, or NCUSD 203 web site.