Libraries+and+Technology+Action+Plan


 * Libraries and Technology Action Plan **


 * May, 2007 notes **
 * August, 2008 notes **


 * 1**. **provide the time and necessary support to the new academic department so that members may develop and communicate a common, cohesive vision.**

The Information Services department has evolved a meeting schedule as follows: This schedule, which is now successfully in place, appears to be serving the needs of the department. The schedules in each division currently accommodate release time for the technology directors and librarians to attend these meetings.
 * Monthly 2-hour department meetings (Technology directors, head librarians, and IT Director combined)
 * Monthly librarians-only meetings
 * 3-times a month technology directors meetings.
 * IS department half day or full day “retreats” to deal with especially difficult topics, for example, creating a whole-school library research plan.

2 . undertake a comprehensive curriculum review, using national standards as benchmarks, to create an expanded, unified scope and sequence.
The technology directors and librarians will review the AASL, NETS, other state standards, and the NAIS Principles of Good Practice, in light of our current curriculum to create a scope and sequence for application of technology and library skills in the classroom curriculum. === 3 . encourage faculty to integrate information literacy, media literacy and technology skills into their curricula through ongoing training and collaboration with members of the information services department. === 1. The Information Services Department has already established a formal series of training opportunities for all faculty members. During the spring semester of the 2006-07 school year, all teachers received mandatory training in the use of our new web site's class pages' tools. Teachers will be expected, at a minimum, to know how to use these tools in the event of a prolonged emergency school closing. In addition, the Administrative Council has agreed to the following training opportunities for the 2007-08 school year: · 2 hour mandatory training in the week that teachers return to school in early September – Fall 2007 -This became 30 minute sessions with smaller groups of teachers at a time. Taught class web page updating techniques. Fall 2008 each division will give Office 2007 training to teachers on as needed basis during week teachers come back in August. · one faculty meeting or the equivalent in each semester · Summer Training Institute in Technology and Library Research August 2007, very successful, 15 offerings in 25 classes, 78 teachers and staff; August 2008 also successful 2. As always, the technology directors and librarians will continue to offer optional mini workshops and one-on-one training to all teachers and work with them both individually and in groups to integrate information literacy, media literacy and technology skills into the curricula. Charmaine in MS offered a ton of workshops on a big variety of topics Jenni did end of school workshops on Office 2007 Rachel did some faculty meeting demos with teachers and offered workshops that were not well attended

3. The librarians and technology directors are developing a K-12 research skills curriculum which they hope to make standard throughout the school. Finshed and test spring 2007. Implemented school year 2007-08 Will emphasize with renewed zeal in 2008-09

4. The Coordinator of Academic Technology continues in her efforts to bring media literacy lessons into the classrooms of teachers wherever the opportunity may present itself. Media Literacy is a possible topic for the Summer Training Institute. Similarly, Information Literacy is a topic to cover at the Training Institute.

5. The LS and MS technology directors will continue to pursue ways to integrate technology teaching into the regular classroom curriculum and away from pullout classes. This is already underway in the MS this year with one of the science teachers. Also a proposal was accepted for next year in the MS to pullout the 7th grade computer classes that met 6 weeks of the year. August, 2007, presented this topic in a 4 hour AC workshop. At LS 207-08 Jenni and Angela worked together on several projects for 4th grade classes and others. Tried to find a common block of time for 08/09 but were not successful

4 . maintain an appropriate balance between teaching information and technology skills and encouraging a love of books and reading.
Since technology is becoming more ubiquitous throughout the school and society in general, it seems logical that, of the three areas articulated above, “encouraging a love of books and reading” is the one that most needs protection by taking the following steps.

During 07/08 librarians created a descriptive profile of what our graduates should look like in terms of reading and research skills
 * 1) Clearly define the libraries’ goal of developing the “habit of reading” in our students and what that habit looks like in our students.
 * 1) Clearly articulate a scope and sequence of lesson plans and activities in our library program that is designed to instill the habit of reading in our students.
 * 2) Evaluate our findings to determine if we are satisfied with the balance between the “habit of reading” and the use of technology. Began work on this for libraries, trying to incorporate the AASL standards of learning

5 . ensure that roles and expectations for department members are clearly defined and that each has adequate time, support and authority to effectively carry out assigned tasks.
At the end of this academic year, having had a year to create this new department, each member will fine tune his or her job description and write some comments regarding the amount of time given to accomplish all of the aspects of the job description. If it is deemed that there is not enough time to complete all that is asked of a department member, discussions will take place to determine what can be done to improve the situation.

6 . address the issues with the network, both actual and perceived, to restore the faculty’s confidence in the reliability of the technology infrastructure.
1. Explore having an outside vendor evaluate the download speed of our internet connections and make recommendations for improvement, including whether or not we need to add more T-1 lines or a T-3 line. Design Data is doing a network evaluation and wireless survey, September-October, 2007. Evaluation found no major problem areas. Wireless survey complete in all 3 divisions and is working well. Summer Training classes were run almost exclusively wirelessly in US classrooms.

2. It has already been determined that 2007-08 IT funds will be used to bring our campuses to near 100% wireless capability. To accomplish this, we will ask an outside vendor to evaluate our current wireless network and make recommendations for the best way to quickly and inexpensively make the entire campus wireless. See above

3. The IT staff and technology directors will encourage teachers to notify the tech directors and the IT staff in advance when they plan on using wireless laptops in their classrooms so that an IT person may be on hand to help trouble shoot the situation. IT worked in 07/08 to overcome the problem of some laptops from carts getting stuck on wrong IP address and not connecting to wireless. We will have to see how this works out in 08/09.

4. The technology directors will hold trouble shooting training sessions for teachers to help them trouble shoot their laptops, SmartBoard computers, off campus use of Educator, and wireless keyboards and mice. 2007 and 2008 Summer Institute had classes in trouble shooting

5. The IT staff will get the Help Star system up and running so that all problems may be recorded and dealt with in an efficient manner. This will enable us to maintain a library of "Fixes" accessible to the IT staff and the technology directors. Spring 2007, loaded on to computers, but not yet being used consistently. <span style="color: rgb(0, 176, 80)">HelpStar instituted in spring 2008 and seems to be working well.

6. The technology directors will create Technology Help pages on our web site with a library of trouble shooting tips and technology instructions for teachers to choose.

7. The technology directors will actively push the use of Atomic Learning as a way for teachers, students, and parents to solve some of their own technology problems. <span style="color: rgb(0, 176, 80)">Have done so in Summer Training Institute 2008

8. It has already been determined that the great majority of the IT budget for 2007-08 will be used to upgrade our infrastructure. A new SAN server has already been ordered and we are hopeful that it will be installed in April, 2007. This, combined with some other network upgrades, will improve the stability of our network. Implemented summer 2007. <span style="color: rgb(0, 176, 80)">Major crash on Aug. 1, 2008, was a big disappointment. UPS systems failed and led to SAN disk failures. IT was up and running again in a few days. Also during 2007/08, LS email completely crashed and $17K was spent to recover the data.

9. The IT staff will prepare and follow a regular preventive maintenance schedule to ensure that our network and its components remain healthy.

10. The IT staff will engage outside consultants as necessary to solve issues outside the knowledge scope of the IT department.

11. To highlight the fact that stability has been achieved, the Director of Information Services will hold some sort of school-wide celebration once we are able to go for an entire semester without any major problems with our network components. Cake spring 2007.