January News in WOCSD

Filters in WOCSD

To comply with Federal NCLB law the district uses the state issued filter called Bess. This filter is updated weekly so you may find things you normally accessed not available. The State of Maine controls the filter and I apply exceptions for our schools. Please email coakes@wocsd.org if you need access to a website for you or your students. I can usually open the site within 10 minutes. However a day’s notice by email is best. I’ve closed Internet Radio in order to free up bandwidth. After 2--3 PM the sites open up.

Ways to Learn more about Technology, when you want!

If you are looking for new ways to learn more about technology please check out these 2 online workshop offerings.
Http://k12onlineconference.org
http://dafnegonzlex.com/evo-07/index1.htm
Both of these conferences are FREE. It might work for yo u if you have some kind of technology goal in your professional plan.
University of Berkley makes 50 courses available for your iPOD. Free courses, college level. Good for you or your students.

Research Time
You can check out the Portaportal page I created  http://www.portaportal.com and the guest login is  internetresearch
You will find some great links about using the Internet to Research.
Another great spot to begin research is with the State of Maine MARVEL, virtual library and databases. There is a FREE workshop at the public library Jan. 22, 2007.

Looking to get a question answered about a particular piece of software? Check out Atomic Learning.com They have free online movies. It may be a movie you need to answer that question! If you really like this site let me know and it may be time for our district to get some accounts!

Web2School in WOCSD
This school year has seen many challenges for the district and the partnership with Web2school.
In each building 1 secretary is in charge of adding new teacher and assigning new permissions. Each staff member needs to update the web client when prompted. Parent information( user names and passwords) will be handled by the building secretary. The computer technicians will be responsible for ensuring the daily connections are working for all staff.
Web2School has volunteered to work with a committee on revising the mid-trimester progress report so that it prints out in a more professional way. See your building principal if you are interested in working on this committee. The committee should only need 3 meetings. FMI email coakes@wocsd.org

Web2School for Parents
If you hear from a parent that they are having
trouble logging into their Web2School please
let me know. I’ve worked with several people to get them in their accounts.

There are  83 staff members with Homeworknow accounts.
There are 6 parents signed up for emergency alerts from the schools.
Did you know you can check your pages to see how many people have visited  your site since you began?The District Technology Committee
made up of school and community members recommends using  Homeworknow.com K-12!

Thanks for using this site How many visitors have you had?

Thanks for visiting and reading this newsletter. Leave a comment!

technorati tags:technology, wocsd, web2school, homeworknow.com

Blogged with Flock

New 5th/6th Grade blogging activity group at WJHS

On Tuesday (January 9, 2007) I'll be starting a blogging group with 5th and 6th graders at Wells Junior High School. The purpose is to share Internet Online safety and netiquette rules. Our first charge will be to review online safety and create a collaborative wikispace on Internet Safety. You can watch as this site grows. Students must have parent permission before they create their own blog. However, they will be able to add to the collaborative wikisspace we are using for our webpage.

In order to watch this site grow you can subscribe to the RSS feed. You must have a blog aggregator. This is a way of collecting the blogs or news you want to keep track of. A popular blog aggregator is Bloglines. The RSS feed for this new site is (feeds:http%3A%2F%2Fwjhsinternetsafety.wikispaces.com%2Fpage%2Fxml%2Fhome%3Fv%3Drss_2_0). By adding this feed to your aggregator you can see each new upgrade. Watch this student site grow.

Another place to watch this grow is by clicking on the link from the Wells Junior High district page.

Wells Junior High Internet Safety

Any comments or questions please email coakesATwocsddotorg

technorati tags:internet, safety, wjhs

Blogged with Flock

Tagged and I am It! 2007

Apparently, a game of tag is currently going on in the blogosphere - and I have been caught! In a better attempt for you to get to know me better I'm to "reveal" five things about myself that you otherwise wouldn't know from reading this blog.  Here goes:

Sharon Peters, a Women of WEB 2.0 tagged me while I was still at the mountain house. She even had to give me a hint I'd been tagged!

According to the rules, I am now supposed to share 5 things you may not know about me. And then, I am supposed to tag 5 other bloggers.

1. I am a downhill winter skier. Last year I was able to ski 80 days during our winter. My goal someday is to ski the winter season around the planet! During the winters in Maine I ski Sugarloaf Mountain in Carrabassett Valley.

2. I am going to present at NECC for the first time in June 2007 in Atlanta, GA. If you are there I hope to meet up with you! Look for our session as Women of Web 2.0. Okay, many of you did not know I belong to the Women of Web 2.0 well, the secret life of Cheryl Oakes. As part of Women of Web 2.0 and Webcast Academy, I co-host a weekly Internet Radio show , called a webcast, at Worldbridges.net Tuesdays at 9 PM EST also known as Wednesdays 2 AM GMT.

3. I love to spend time outside in the summer either in my kayak along the coast of Maine or in the community garden.  Part of my outside summer activities include raising 3 pigs for our dinner table.

4. When I began my career in education in 1974 I was a kindergarten long term substitute, then I worked in the field of Special Education, got my Masters in Special Education from the University of Maine in 1977 a field I stayed with until 1992. Then I migrated to the field of technology integration at  Wells Elementary School.

5. When I was working summer jobs I landed a great job as a cook at The Teashop at Squirrel Island Maine.

Tag you are it! Maria Knee, Leah Tondreau, Bob Sprankle, Ryan Palmer and Sharon Betts!

technorati tags:tag, blogosphere

Blogged with Flock