\nThe principal audience
\n of this blog entry is my English Education students–to give them a kind of
\n "behind the scenes" look at one type of professional involvement
\n and volunteer work. The entry also presents some leads on an educational administrative
\n technology system–the Centre<\/a> system–which
\n students might find very useful, as a sample of the type of record-keeping
\n system they will need to employ in their student teaching and teaching. The
\n text below (in <\/font>green<\/font> and maroon<\/font>)
\n is a letter I wrote in July 2004 to Principal Bill Donegan of St. Odilo School
\n and Paul Rau, the school’s Music Director and technology guru. <\/p>\nI think this entry also
\n shows some of the "sprawl" of professional\/personal\/community relations
\n that is inevitable if one wishes to be an effective, dedicated teacher. I
\n am or have been the parent of five St. Odilo schoolchildren; I’ve served on
\n the St. Odilo School Board as member and president; I’ve taught teacher in-services
\n at the school; I’ve conducted several clinical programs with the Language
\n Arts and Computers teachers–and I’ve served on the school’s technology committee
\n (Techcom), in which capacity the current letter was written. There’s been
\n a connectedness and trajectory to each of these roles, even if there wasn’t
\n a clear sense always of the purpose and direction and feasibility and worth
\n of each endeavor.<\/font><\/p>\nI think it’s important
\n for beginning teachers to know how "messy" it can be to get a foothold
\n in a school and build a professional role there. I confess that from the beginning
\n I always<\/em> had ulterior motives for my contributions to St. Odilo School.
\n Those motives involved not only helping the school be the best it can be for
\n my children, but also finding a "partner" site where I could conduct
\n some of my clinical programs–which required a high level of technological
\n capacity and dependability. As I engaged in technological work at SXU, I knew
\n immediately that work could pay off in other contexts–everything could fall
\n into place neatly–but only after a lot of indirect setup and involvement.
\n Anyway, this blog is just an illustration of that…<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\n\nDear Bill
\n and Paul–The Centre School Information System (administrative school package)
\n is installed, upgraded, and ready for use. The current system is four upgrades
\n beyond the first system that was installed about a month ago. So the product
\n has had an intense development this summer by its creators. The current version,
\n 1.02, seems to have most of the bugs worked out, and I think you can depend
\n on it in terms of data safety and security. (But there may be kinks lefts,
\n FOR EXAMPLE: On my Mac at home, I find that Internet Explorer doesn’t always
\n work for every feature (namely, for editing data); I haven’t been able to
\n test on a Windows machine yet, so if you experience a problem, and you’re
\n using Explorer, try switching to Mozilla or Netscape or some other browser
\n to see if the problem persists).<\/font><\/p>\nBill–if
\n you intend to use this system, you’ll probably need some assistance in figuring
\n it out and finding all its uses. It took me a couple of hours of tinkering
\n to get the hang of it (once all the installation difficulties were overcome).
\n Some of the features are pretty obvious; some, however, I found counter-intuitive
\n or a little odd. Some of the features won’t be needed at all by St. Odilo,
\n but most seem pretty useful.<\/font><\/p>\nEverything
\n is editable from within an admin account, even though it often doesn’t look
\n so. If you see something you’d like to edit (e.g., a password), try clicking
\n on it, and you should get a text box or pop-up menu for editing. (Here’s where
\n I had the problem with Explorer. Explorer lets you change the data, but after
\n you click "Save" the change doesn’t stick.)<\/font><\/p>\nI’ve created
\n an Administrator account for each of you. One feature I don’t like is that
\n an administrator can see the password of every user (not just CHANGE the password,
\n as is the typical admin power with such systems). So I’m sending this message
\n with your password at the same time, since either of you could look at each
\n other’s passwords at any time. In fact, to keep things simple at this point,
\n I’ve given you each the same password: ******.<\/font><\/p>\nIt’s important
\n to know that every administrator will always be able to view every password,
\n so you’d want to know who your admins are, of course, and you’d want to advise
\n users not to use a super-sensitive password (for instance, Paul, I don’t think
\n we should use our master Odilo password in this system).
\n Here’s the login info you need:<\/font><\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.saintodilo.org\/centre<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n
Username:
\n **********
\n Password: **********<\/font><\/p>\nThere
\n are some test accounts created for us to tinker with. Feel free to create
\n some new accounts.<\/font><\/p>\nGo ahead–log
\n in. You’ll see eight icons across the top. Click on "Users" ("Users"
\n are parents, teachers, and administrators; students are administered from
\n another icon). To see a list of all the current users, clck the "Submit"
\n button with all the search boxes left blank (this procedure for displaying
\n all the users is one of the less obvious features I referred to above). Try
\n to edit any of the users by clicking on their names, and then clicking on
\n the text you wish to edit.<\/font><\/p>\nThere
\n are four types of accounts available in the Centre system: student, teacher,
\n parent, and administrator. To download a brief manual on each, go to:<\/font><\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.saintodilo.org\/centre\/Docs<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n
Do either
\n of you think it would be a bad idea to go to Techcom with some kind of call
\n for assistance in using\/testing the system? I don’t think we should create
\n any "spare" administrator accounts on our system, but there is a
\n demo site set up for the general public to learn about and practice with the
\n system. If you decide to use Centre to handle the school’s record keeping,
\n you’ll want, eventually to get parents and students on board. First, of course,
\n are the teachers, but my hope is that it won’t be too difficult to give them
\n a start in using it. Perhaps Paul and I could prepare some type of in-service
\n for the start of the year?
\n But what do you think about sending Techcom something along these lines?<\/font><\/p>\n
\nDRAFT
\n OF POSSIBLE ANNOUNCEMENT TO TECHCOM: <\/font><\/h3>\n
\nDear Techcom–This
\n summer we’ve installed a new system on our server for managing record-keeping
\n and various administrative\/communicative tasks for the school and school community.
\n The new system is call "Centre," and it is Open Source software
\n developed by the Miller Group (http:\/\/www.miller-group.net\/). The Centre system
\n can be used for scheduling, record-keeping, turning in grades, making reports,
\n taking attendance, recording grades for assignments, quizzes, and quarters,
\n making mailings, determining sports eligibility, etc.<\/font><\/p>\nSince
\n an implementation of Centre would involve the whole St. Odilo community (there
\n are four types of log-in: parent, student, teacher, and administrator), Techcom
\n should probably lead the way in learning about the system and testing it out.
\n If we decide to go with a full implementation of Centre, Techcom could probably
\n best advise on how to announce and promote the system, as well as to educate
\n users–primarily teachers, but also parents and students.<\/font><\/p>\nA demo
\n site has been created for people who wish to get started in Centre:<\/font><\/p>\nhttp:\/\/demo.miller-group.net\/index.php<\/font><\/p>\n
You can
\n log in with one of four demo accounts (the different account levels carry
\n different permissions and functions):<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n•
\n Username: admin; Password: admin
\n • Username: teacher; Password: teacher
\n • Username: parent; Password: parent
\n • Username: student; Password: student<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nFor user
\n manuals for each of the four types of login (Administrator, Parent, Teacher,
\n and Student), go to<\/font><\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.saintodilo.org\/centre\/Docs<\/a>
\n <\/font><\/p>\n
\nEND OF
\n DRAFT OF POSSIBLE ANNOUNCEMENT TO TECHCOM<\/font><\/h3>\n
\n
\n Bill–If you like this message, you may send it, or any version of it. Or
\n I would be happy to send it or something else, if you wish. Or Paul could
\n send something. Or, we don’t have to send anything. But getting the word out
\n might generate some interest and assistance….<\/font><\/p>\nOkay–that’s
\n it for now. Take care, Angelo <\/font><\/p>\n<\/body><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The principal audience of this blog entry is my English Education students–to give them a kind of "behind the scenes" look at one type of professional involvement and volunteer work. The entry also presents some leads on an educational administrative technology system–the Centre system–which students might find very useful, as a sample of the type … Continue reading Volunteer Technology Committee Work<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reform-in-education","category-server-admin-guy","category-technology-talk","category-thoughts-on-teaching-and-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}