Technology Policies

Acceptable use policies are meant to govern student and staff access to district technology.  Our current acceptable use policy is dated and in the process of being updated.  We are, in fact, currently in the process of updating our entire policy manual.  While this is a time consuming task, it does make sense to do it this way since many of our district policies will be referenced in the Acceptable Use Policy. 

We currently do not have an internet publishing policy.  It is something we should be looking into.  Right now our staff does not do much in the way of internet publishing so we have not really had to deal with it.  We currently block a large number of sites that are considered social media.  I do feel like we are doing a disservice to our students by not allowing them to publish in this manner for their classes.  Teachers are encouraged to have class websites if they choose but we have not specifically set forth guidelines for their website. 

Our distance education policy is fairly simple right now, only dealing with our students in the credit recovery program, AP classes, and Spanish classes.  It outlines our student selection criteria and completion timeline criteria to earn credit for that year. 

These technology policies are all areas that we feel are important and need some fixing in our district.  They are, however, taking a back seat to some of our other policy updates.  Our technology committee includes the Superintendent, HS Principal, and Technology Director and we meet on a regular basis (informally) to discuss our technology needs.  At this time, I would say we are leaning toward being more reactive to technology than proactive.  This will have to change in order for us to stay close to the technology changes that are occurring in society. 

CoSN website Review

The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) is a professional organization for school technology leaders.  It provides leadership, community and advocacy tools essential for school leaders. The CoSN website is a bit overwhelming with all of the information that it contains.

One of the links that was the most helpful was the Total Cost of Ownership.  The information it provided in the checklist for efficient operations was very good.  It pointed out some areas that I do not typically deal with in a small school, like a centralized  help desk, but that I may deal with in the future.

This site will be useful to districts in numerous ways.  I would make this my first source of information when my district is working on its technology plan.  Districts should be sure to refer to the Total Cost of Ownership, Value of Investment pages as they make decisions about purchases ranging from servers, computers, software, printers and ink.

Technology planning in my district has not, and probably will not become a very formal process like it is the larger districts.  Our technology committee includes the superintendent, HS principal, and Tech Director.  We gather our information from teachers throughout the year and usually just decide how many new computers we will need to replace outdated ones.  We have some discussion about what features we would like the new computers to have.  In recent years we have also been looking into adding Mac's into out building.  We are piloting it with a few Macbooks and iPads but we dont really have a plan in mind yet.  This site will help us ask the right questions and make the best decisions about our future purchases.

School Websites

Assignment 2: In your blog, write your reactions to the websites you looked at. Some of the questions you could consider include:
• What are your reactions to the websites you looked at?
• Is a website like this useful to a school district?
• Is it worth the time and effort to establish and maintain such a website?
• What is the condition of your school’s website?
• What information should be included in a school website?
• What role should the superintendent have with the school website?
• Should each teacher be required to have a link on the school website that contains information about their classes (such as assignments, web resources, etc)?
• How can students be involved creating and maintaining a school website?

It appears that many school district websites are very professionally done.  I wonder how they go about creating the design for their site.  Are they hiring companies to create it or are they doing it internally?  Who is responsible for the website in a large district like Sioux falls or rapid city?  I designed and currently maintain the Marion website, which is a daily task.  My philosophy about a school or a teacher website is that if it is not maintained and kept up to date and accurate then you are better off not having one at all.
These other school sites all have a lot of information, but I found it hard to find the teachers and if they had web pages, especially on the large district websites.   When designing our school site, and my own website when I was teaching, I tried to think of any possible question a parent or student might have and then find a place, link or page where I can have that information available for them.  Over time, the amount of use that particular page or link gets will help me determine the most important pages to update first or most often.
Having a school website is not an optional facet of your school, it is a requirement and is expected by the community.  But now, having a website may not be enough. We need to considering twitter and Facebook as additional Internet forms of communication.  Schools need to constantly change the communication practices to adapt to the ways in which their stakeholders prefer to communicate.
A school superintendent's role regarding the school website should be three-fold.
They should have a place for a superintendent message and use it frequently, they should determine who/what company is in charge of the design, creation, and updating, and they should have set the parameters for the types of information that should or should not be placed on the website.  Superintendents may be more involved if they choose or have the technologically savvy.  
Many teachers have also created we pages of their own.  While this does not necessarily need to be a requirement, it has become an expectation of many parents.  The important thing that teachers need to is decide how they are going to use their website and then consistently update it.  I have always suggested to teachers that if they are not keeping their site up to date then I don't want them to publicize or link it on the district page.
Sometimes students have an interest in creating or designing a web page whether it be for a class or a school group or club.  In these situations I make sure the adult mentor has set parameters and supervision over the publishing of the site.  What I like to do is have some of our graphics classes create themed banners for the website each month or season.  
I have been in charge of designing and maintaining the Marion website for the past 3 years.  I have come to realize just how much I rely on the website to convey our district information.  I now use our district Facebook page and my Twitter page to direct parents and students to particular pages of the website.

Introduction

My name is Chad Allison.  I have been in the public education setting since 1998.  I taught high school science at Columbus Public High School in Columbus, NE for 2 years.  I moved back to South Dakota in 2000 and taught Middle school science in the Tri-Valley school district in Colton, SD for 10 years.  I have been the MS/HS Principal and Athletic Director at Marion since 2010.  I began the superintendent program at the University of Sioux Falls this past summer and hope to have it completed by the summer of 2014.