The next round of educational grants from PiE are due December 3, 2007. The PiE Board of Directors has approved an allocation of $50,000 for this round of grants with individual grant limits of $3,000 for a one year grant and $1500 for a one semester grant. Specific information including an online application form are included in the PiE website: www.papie.org

To apply, go to the website and look under the heading "Our Programs." Under that heading is a subsection entitled "Teacher Grant Handbook." Included in that sub-section: a description of the program, a downloadable application form as well as an online application form (which most applicants use).

Also, an important reminder, please remember to include sales tax and shipping charges in any application where appropriate. Also, if you believe that an installation cost will be involved due to the type of equipment that you might be requesting, please contact District staff regarding possible costs.

If you have any questions about the application process, or about whether your idea could be funded by PiE, please feel free to contact Al Russell by email at jaruss981@yahoo.com or by phone at (650) 813-1372.

Grant Notification will be in January.

iConnect is a new Palo Alto Unified School District program that will loan a computer for home use to families who do not have one due to financial reasons. The computer serves as a support for each student’s education in PAUSD. Later this fall, iConnect will start with students in Grade 9. We have a list of families who may qualify and will contact them via mail in the next month. Our timeline is to have computers in homes by the beginning of second semester. iConnect relies totally on private donations. As more money becomes available, the program will expand to other grade levels.

InClass, the web portal for information about assignments and other class content, is in its fourth year of implementation. We are seeing an increase in use this year, as more and more teachers find this a convenient way to promote communication. A few notes and reminders:

   • Enrollment updates occur daily. At this time, they should accurately reflect students who take your classes. If there are students still in the class who have transferred, contact Terry Young, and he will remove them.

   • We continue to test the new Blackboard gradebook. We expect to install the new Bb version on our test server in November. Later this fall, or certainly for second semester, we will update the InClass server.

   • In conjunction with the upgrade to Bb 8.0, we will host workshops onsite to acquaint teachers with the new features: Grade Center, Peer & Self Evaluation Tool, and SafeAssign (plagiarism detector).

Connect-ED Notification System

The District has evaluated a number of notification systems and chosen Connect-ED to implement over the coming months. This system allows the District and principals to send out four types of messages: Attendance Notification, Emergency Communication, Community Outreach, and Single Survey. The system can also be used to contact all staff with important information.

In a matter of minutes, the system can phone, email, and/or text contact numbers for our families. You only have to consider the recent fires in Southern California or the bridge collapse in Minneapolis or an earthquake (did you feel that one last night?) to understand the importance of Connect-ED for the District. In the coming weeks, we will work with Connect-ED to implement the program and train administrative staff.

Teacher's Toolkit

Mac OS X Built-in Dictionary

Mac OS X has a built-in dictionary application. It will do the usual: Open the application, type in a word, and get definition(s) and thesaurus entries. (See image at left). However, it will do an even better trick.

Hold down the Command + Control + D keys. Then move your cursor over words and see definitions. After the first word, you can even let go of the D key and just hold down Command + Control and move your cursor over various words. (see image at lower right). This works with Apple native applications, like the Safari browser. So open Safari, go to a text heavy site, and give it a try. Then show your students ~ pretty cool!

System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3.9+
Cost: Free - Find it in your Applications folder :-)

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).