Sor far, District Bridge Plan money has bought 1,090 computers in three rounds of purchasing. Fall 2007 purchases are making their way to sites now. Many of the desktops were installed right before winter break. The balance will be delivered and installed at sites in February. The last round for purchasing will start in March. $1.6 million over two years has made quite an impact on computer inventories at the sites.

SafeAssign presentations are scheduled for the following days and times:

• Terman - January 30 (completed)
• JLS - February 4, 3:15, Loction TBD
• Jordan - February 5, 3:15, H-6
• Paly - February 6, 12:00, CL 1
• Gunn - February 6, 3:30, Mac Lab - L14A

Also at these sessions, teachers will get a peek at the new Grade Center that will be available in early February.  It's a significant improvement over the old version, so teachers who post grades online may well be interested.

iConnect Update: Expansion to Grade 6

iConnect is the new PAUSD program that loans a computer for home use to families who do not have one due to financial reasons. The computer serves as a direct support for these students’ education in PAUSD.

iConnect loans eligible families a desktop computer and a pocket flash drive to move computer files easily between home and school.  As a family contribution to the program, parents/guardians agree to maintain a home Internet connection to support their students’ academic program. 

During this school year, iConnect is starting with students in grades 6 and 9. In November, we sent letters to 24 families with 9th graders at Paly and Gunn.  As it turned out, most of those students already had computers at home – a  nice surprise.  The remaining eligible students are turning in their paperwork, and we hope to finalize arrangements with them in early February. 

Now we are turning out attention to 6th graders at the three middle schools.  Soon, we will send home iConnect information and applications to 43 families.  We hope to have their applications and support materials back to us by the end of February and then will plan for implementation in March.

Teacher's Toolkit

QuickShow 1.0
Quickly create slideshows or scrapbooks with live web content. The program lets you create slides containing text, pictures and even portions of a web page. Importing web content is easy: enter the address of a web page, drag the mouse over the area you wish to import and click OK. Every time you play the slideshow, the web content will be refreshed automatically. QuickShow supports a variety of file formats for saving your work and comes with a free player application.

System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4+
Cost: Free starter download to try it out. Then $30 for shareware license.
Download

Upcoming Workshops for Teachers & Staff

All full day workshops run 8:15 am to 3:00 pm at the 85A Lab on the Paly campus (unless otherwise notified). To register and receive sub codes, log on to Bob, click on the Workshop Registration link, select the workshop you want, and click on the Register button. You can also register for the 60-minute sessions online (or drop in).