What’s new in Technology
at Breck?
PowerSchool and
PowerTeacher Upgrade
PowerSchool was upgraded to the latest release,
and is now running on a faster server. In conjunction with the PowerSchool
upgrade, PowerTeacher Gradebook was upgraded to the latest release.
The biggest new feature of Gradebook is the
ability to copy multiple assignments from other classes and previous years
into a current class. If you have a consistent set of assessments from a
previous years’ class, you can now copy those forward en masse, saving you time
and effort.
A full list of enhancements is available here: http://powerschool.breckschool.org/teachers/gradebook/new_features_ptg_1_6.htm
(this link is also accessible on the “Gradebook”
screen when logged into PowerTeacher: http://powerschool.breckschool.org/teachers/)
Moodle Upgrade
Moodle has been updated to the latest release, and
I’ve also created a new default theme. It features some easy to use navigation
at the top of every page.
With this upgrade, Moodle will completely replace
the “Intranet” as a homepage for Students and Faculty. If you’re missing an
essential link from the Intranet, please let A.J. know.
Application Updates
All of the applications on the image were updated
to the latest available releases at the time of the image creation. This
includes bug fixes and enhancements to Microsoft Office, iMovie, iPhoto,
Garageband, and iWeb, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, Safari, Firefox, etc.
iMovie ’06 has been removed from the image.
Serious bugs were discovered at the end of last year, and it is no longer
supported by Apple. iMovie ’09 looks quite different than ’06, and if you are
interested in taking a workshop at TIES, please consult their schedule.
Publishing in iWeb has changed. Please consult this article on our virtual help desk
for more info.
Every computer now has the Smart Notebook and
ActivStudio software installed. These programs can be used without connecting
to a board, if you’d like to plan a lesson away from school.
Although every effort was made to create an image
with the latest and greatest, a few more updates have been released in the
meantime. Please install any updates that you receive notifications about. Your
username and password will be used to install the updates.
Student Email
The Upper School Students can now send and receive
email with addresses outside of Breck. This change was made in consultation
with Academic Advisory so that students may use Breck email addresses in
communicating with colleges, outside advisors, and to utilize 3rd party
services that require an email address.
Consequentially, the middle school email address
for students had to change slightly. Middle school students are now username@msmail.breckschool.org
Upper school students continue as username@student.breckschool.org
If you need to clear old email addresses out of Mail, there is a short
article on our virtual help desk.
Student “classof” email groups are being created
this week.
Printing
In an effort to do our part to help conserve
paper, we have implemented a print server. Adding a printer is now slightly
different:
The Address field is now always filled in as papercut.breckschool.org
The queue: field is where the printer name goes,
in this case, us-library-color-ptr
Most of the commonly used printers are pre-loaded
on your computer.
Division Meeting Tips
This is a recap of the tips offered at the
division meeting:
In an effort to support Active Reading on laptops
with electronic sources, encourage your students to open PDFs with Acrobat
Professional (or Preview in the Middle School). You will find tools for
highlighting and margin notes. Also, Acrobat Professional has a function for
emailing the document (with annotations).
How do you create a PDF? From any application
(including web browsers) choose File -> Print, click the PDF button, and
choose Save PDF.
If creating a PDF from a web article, it is best
to find the link for the “printable” version of the page. This will generally
remove extra advertisements and navigation from the page.
The resulting file can be emailed or posted to
moodle. PDFs can also be read to you. . .
Text to Speech
To enable text-to-speech in any application,
follow these steps: Open System Preferences from the Apple Menu, and choose the
Speech Preference. Check the box that says “Speak selected text when the key is
pressed”, and then click the “Set Key. . .” button.
Select a keystroke to use for starting and
stopping speech. I recommend command-option-shift-s (‘s’ for speech)
In any application that allows you to select text,
you can have the computer read you the text aloud! I think you will find the
speech synthesis to be more advanced that what you might remember from older
Macintosh systems.
Also in support of building vocabulary, encourage
your students to add the Dictionary application to their doc. This application
allows immediate access to the New Oxford American Dictionary, the Oxford
American Writer’s Thesaurus, and the Wikipedia.
This information is also accessed via the
Spotlight menu, or via the Dashboard.
Getting Help
The best way to get help is via the Web Help Desk system. The tickets you create
here are routed to the appropriate person, and allow us to track and share
information within our department.
The RMC is open for tech support M-F 8:00 - 4:00
for drop in support.
Dave Kust, Angie Kritta, Jake Miller, and A.J. Colianni are available throughout the day
and by appointment for curriculum integration questions and discussions.
Stop any of us at any time and we’ll do our best
to help!
If
you have any questions, please let us know!
