Monday, April 20, 2009

Technology Tidbits

I recently attended STC Level 1 Training at the Schultz Center and wanted to bring back a little about what I learned....

We were given a tour of the "behind-the-scenes" areas that help run the district's data/computer system. It was very interesting to see how all these components work together!

There are a couple of things that they wanted us to remind our faculty...
1. Upon turning on your IBM computers (teacher OR student), you MUST let the Trend scan (black box with all the white writing that pops up) run! This is what helps get your computer its updates and keeps it free of viruses, spyware, etc. Do NOT "x" out of this.

2. Teachers are NOT allowed to be logging students' computers in under their own login information. This is a BIG no-no. The reason being that we just do not know what our students may be doing online when we aren't watching them carefully. (They told us some horror stories, including a student as young as 9-years-old surfing inappropriate sites on a school computer!)

* Students' login information is: Login - "s" followed by their student #. (ex: s12345678). The password is - last 4 digits of the SSN#. If they do not have a SSN# available, it would be the last 4 of their Florida ID#. This is also their new AR login information, so that should be helpful. Students must LOG OFF when they are finished using the computer - before another student uses it.

3. In order to increase the speed of your IBM (black) computers, we can do a couple of simple things...
* Delete Cookies
* Delete Temporary Internet Files
* Run a Disk Cleanup (only the first part - "Free Up Disk Space")

Running these programs at least once a month can help increase your computer's speed, so you're not like this guy! :)











Please contact Alice or Norma with any questions. Thank you!!

Monday, April 13, 2009

SmartBoard Cleaning



A Kindergarten teacher recently asked me how to clean a SmartBoard (A Kindergartener with dirty hands!? Shocking, right?). I didn't know the answer...but my friend, Google, helped me. Here is an article from the SmartTech website that tells how to keep your SmartBoard surface clean as well as how to remove marker, fingerprints, etc.