CPS
Cambridge Public SchoolsInformation, Communication,
and Technology Services
vision statement
The Information, Communi-cation, Technology Services (ICTS) department is a collabo-ration among Library Media, Educational Technology, Media Arts, Web Services and Technical Services divisions. This department strives to support administration and teachers; inform parents; and to prepare students for lifelong learning, informed decision-making, a love of reading, and the use of information and communication technologies.
icts leadership team
Steve Smith
Chief Information Officer
Marjorie Berger
Assistant Director of LibraryMedia Services
Ginny Berkowitz
Media Arts Manager
Kevin Keegan
Technical Services Manager
Gina Roughton
Assistant Director of Educational Technology
Lisa Waters
Web & Online Services Manager
459 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02138 617.349.9360
Fax: 617.349.6800 www.cpsd.us
As spring arrives in Cambridge the ICTS Department is ramping up many new projects and initiatives. In this issue of our newsletter you will find articles on Google Apps deployment, CRLS Teacher Exhibition of Learning, Cloud Computing, an e-reader (Nook) pilot project, CPS Templates, & Logos, Media Literacy & Production Workshops, as well as two new on line projects at CRLS; parent conference scheduling and student on line course selection.
ICTS is also working closely with the Curriculum Coordinators and new Heads of the Upper Schools to deliver the best mix of technology tools to meet the diverse needs of the new Upper Campus Schools. At the same time we are working closely with the upper campus building administrators to design and designate the new “Learning Commons” spaces to support teaching and learn-ing. There is a lot of work ahead of us but we are all excited about the vision for technology use in the Middle School grades.
Finally, as many of you have heard, Bill Mangone, Senior DBA, has retired after 26 years of service to CPS. Bill has left his mark on CPS through his data manage-ment practices and will be missed by all. We hope to have Bill’s replacemanage-ment on board by May 1. In the meantime remaining members of ICTS will assist with a transition plan.
Along with spring comes rejuvenated excitement over our work in ICTS through-out the district. The next 6 months will be very busy and exciting for all ICTS staff.
Sincerely,
Steve Smith
from
the
chief
information
officer
Steve Smith
On March 7th, the TRC hosted the sixth annual CRLS Teacher Exhibi-tion of Learning, Who’s Behind the Data: Making Our Diverse
Learners Visible. Participation in the production of this event is one of the many ways the TRC sup-ports the professional development of teachers. The exhibition group is a cross-disciplinary group of CRLS teachers, including the TRC library media specialist, committed to collaborative inquiry into their own and one another’s professional practices and a strong belief that they learn best from and with one another. Throughout the year, they meet to explore presenter’s student documentation and guiding inquiry question.
The documentation brought by group members consists of student work products, student self-assess-ment and reflections, videotaped classroom segments, and video-taped teacher protocols. One of the
group’s perennial guiding questions is: how does being a cross-disci-plinary group shape our inquiry process and the insights and under-standings we derive from it? Each year, they produce an exhibi-tion of their learning that invites students, teachers, administrators, former CRLS educators, and the community to respond to their work to deepen their own under-standing and facilitate broader dis-cussion amongst the various stake-holders in the educational process. Central to their efforts has been the use of protocols to broaden and deepen individual and collective thinking; documenta-tion to re-launch learning moments for the group’s further learning; and structured sharing sessions to ensure that all group members can give and get the intellectual and emotional support such work requires. The first two
teacher-learning exhibitions were created to advance and spread the learning that more than twenty-five CRLS educators developed over two years through participation in Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero. Views on Under-standing Summer Institutes and or Making Learning Visible retreats. Since then, the exhibition group has continually expanded to embrace new innovative ideas and applica-tions—and to respond to CRLS priorities such as the Enhanced Senior Year Initiative and 21st Cen-tury Skills focus. Over the years, the exhibition has increasingly sought to include student voices as well as student work, as authentic attempts to understand teaching and learning must be informed by students’ perceptions and ideas, and to provide an opportunity for CRLS faculty members to think and learn together in a comfortable yet stimulating environment.
CRLS Teacher Exhibition of Learning:
Who’s Behind the Data
library
media
services
Marjorie Berger, Assistant Director
617.349.6478 n [email protected]
An exciting “twist” this year is the inclusion of student exhibitions that explores their experiences as Teaching Assistants this year. This year’s exhibition group has been trying to see CRLS students really clearly—to understand what their students think, feel,
and believe about school and learning. The group chose this focus because all of its members have at some point been curi-ous about –even mystified by—the purposes, beliefs, and expectations that may
be shaping their students’ learning behavior. More than previous years, this year’s exhibits present mid-inquiry rather than post-mid-inquiry moments. This is due in part to Interim Principal Damon Smith’s request that the group create an exhibition that would involve more CRLS faculty members in profes-sional inquiry and dialogue. It is
also due to the exhibition’s focus topic and the group’s genuine need for other educators’ perspectives related to the following questions: What do CRLS students feel that they want and need, and what do we, their educators, feel that they want and need? How do they
understand their roles as students and our roles as teachers? How do we contribute to their understand-ings and misunderstandunderstand-ings? How do they think about learning, its purposes, and its quality, especially in different subject areas?
This year, exhibit titles include Intersecting Inquiries: The
Honors Option in Physics and ELA, Conducting the Conductor-less Rehearsal: Empowering Students to Look and Listen, How Can We Help Our Students to Think Historically? Teaching and Learn-ing at CRLS: LearnLearn-ing from the CRLS Teaching Assistants’ Final
Projects, Unpacking Their Bags: What Do English Language Learner
Students Bring With Them to the American Class-room? What’s Cooking in the Minds of Pre-Calculus Students? The exhibit is on view until April 25th in the TRC. The exhibition group mem-bers welcome your contributions to their work and to the broader discussion of these important issues.
The TRC is located on the 3rd floor of CRLS and is open Monday – Friday from 7:30am - 4:30pm. We look forward to seeing you!
One of the group’s perennial guiding
questions is: how does being a cross-
disciplinary group shape our inquiry
process and the insights and
Last April, I went to Italy. Deter-mined to pack light, I loaded up my Barnes and Noble Nook with an Italian dictionary, magazines, and novels. A week’s worth of reading in my small purse! Bellissimo! It occurred to me once again that in order to keep my library on the cutting edge, I needed to test out e-readers with kids, and work toward answering questions buzz-ing around the library profession: what is the best way to use e-read-ers in schools? Can they support learning, save money, or motivate readers differently - or better - than their print cousins?
King Open is one of the future middle school campuses, a perfect home for a pilot program. The ICTS department and Principal Darrell Williams supported me and Technology Integration Special-ist Ingrid Gustafson as we mulled over the options and reached out to vendors. With information gleaned from an online School Library Journal conference, we decided to plunge in with a guinea pig group.
Selecting Students
I gave all 7th graders an online poll that included the question: “Would you be interested in participating in an e-reader program (e-readers provided)?” Sixteen students responded “yes,” turned in per-mission slips, and each of them is now the proud borrower of a Nook SimpleTouch, a charger, and a case. While most are eager readers, they represent a variety of reading levels, socioeconomic backgrounds, and home “digital environments.”
Curl up with a good...Nook?
Selecting the Device
We chose the Barnes and Noble SimpleTouch Nook. For $99, it’s an easy-to-use reader without dis-tracting apps or games. The E-Ink screen means the battery lasts a long time, Barnes and Noble has bricks-and-mortar stores to provide support, their e-book selection is strong, and their replacement plan is friendly to accident-prone kids.
How’s it Going?
Students took the Nooks home during the last week of February, loaded with a few of the Cambridge Middle School Book Award titles. I met with them a week later. As digital natives, they eagerly picked up the new gadget and they figured out the bells and whistles quickly - including social networking op-tions I didn’t know existed! Their observations after one week follow.
Pros
• It’s easier to turn pages and read “one-handed” than with a regular book
• You can pack many large books on a small device; it doesn’t weigh down your backpack.
• It’s nice to be able to change the margin and font sizes
• Everyone had used the dictionary “word look-up” function, and admitted they didn’t do that with “real books.”
• Taking notes is easy and convenient for reading response assign-ments later on.
• Navigating to the “widgets” just takes a single tap.
• The books stay in nicer shape than a yellowed paperback.
Cons
• Every single student had experienced technical issues, including screens freezing, books temporarily vanishing, and the device skip-ping ahead a bunch of pages.
• You have to charge it. You don’t have to plug in a book!
• It’s hard to quickly flip back a few pages to clarify something in the story.
• The momentary “blink” while the page turns jolts concentration and reading flow.
• It’s harder to physically feel your progress.
• Graphics and illustrations don’t look good or aren’t in the right place.
• The NookBooks cost as much as a paperback; some kids thought this wasn’t right because it’s “just a little file, it’s not like you actu-ally get a THING.”
• Students make a distinction between e-reading and “real reading.” “It doesn’t feel like reading an actual book. It is to reading a book what playing a Wii basketball game is to real basketball.”
The $150 Question
When asked, “Do you prefer read-ing a paper book, the Nook, or have no preference?” the result surprised me: not one of these supposedly digi-addicted teens preferred the Nook. 50% strongly preferred “real books,” and 50% didn’t have a pref-erence. Their reasons were just as likely to be emotional as they were practical, which revealed a great deal about their reading behavior. Books “feel cozy and natural,” the art on the cover draws you in, you can physically feel your progress, and “there’s nothing like opening a brand new book [sigh].” Your baby brother can spill on the paper pages and it will damage them, but you don’t worry about losing 100 books. Kids were excited to learn that they could check out public library e-books, but they also expressed a deep connection with going to li-braries - being surrounded by walls of books, browsing the displays, and most importantly, consulting with the librarians to find out about great new books. Reading is a social activity - students were dismayed that they couldn’t pass the Nooks to a friend the way they would with a favorite paperback. Our biggest technical glitch occurred when someone figured out how to “lend” a book to a friend - thus making it disappear from her group’s Nooks!
What’s Next?
As we continue our pilot through April, I will ask students to reflect on a second question: what is the best use of e-readers in school? These early adopters will inform e-book purchasing and programming at the four middle schools.
educational
technology
Gina Roughton, Assistant Director
617.349.6478 n [email protected]
Google Docs Fosters CPS
Collaborations in the Cloud!
In the autumn of 2011, the Cambridge Public Schools issued Google Docs accounts to all staff members, and already, hundreds of CPS staff members have begun to use their accounts, and many CPS academic depart-ments and committees are now using Google Docs as a strong means for productivity and collaboration in their work.
Google Docs is a web-based suite of productivity software, including a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation editor that allows you to create, store, share, and collaborate on documents online, or, as some say, “in the cloud.” You can also easily upload documents you’ve already created in Microsoft Of-fice and convert them into “living” Google Docs. All Google Docs are accessible and editable from any Internet-connected computer, anywhere in the world, which eliminates our dependence on keeping track of email attachments and fumbling with flash drives.
Various schools and departments are using Google Docs to create and collaborate on curriculum units, school policy documents, “Powerpoint”-style presen-tations for meetings, memos, and other co-authored documents.
Across the district, the Science department has been finding great value in collaborating “in the cloud.” Lisa Scolaro, JrK-12 Science Coordinator, describes their Google Docs integration: “This year the science de-partment has had groups of teachers working in small groups developing curriculum using the Understand-ing by Design format. The only way we have been able to solicit feedback from the larger middle grade group between meetings has been to house our work in Google Docs. This has allowed us to hear the voices of all our middle grade teachers, even when they cannot all be at the same table.”
Jan Tingle, English/Language Arts Curriculum Co-ordinator has found Google Docs to be a useful tool for collaboration across her department: “This year smaller design teams have been creating Reading and Writing Units of Study in grades 1-8. Google Docs has been a useful tool for teams to post their work in between meetings as well as to share the units with all teachers in the ELA department.”
“Google Docs allows us to share teaching ideas, strate-gies and resources within our department and with other departments, collaborate on curriculum, policies and management issues and share highlights and feed-back from professional development opportunities”, reports Marjorie Berger, Assistant Director of Library Media Services.
The Educational Technology department will continue to provide support for Google Docs through work-shops, school-based trainings, integration projects, and more. We are excited to see this technology tool change the way we collaborate!
web
services
Lisa Waters, Web & Online Services Manager
617.349.3056 n [email protected]Haggerty School Launches
New Website
Haggerty now has a new web site that features up-to-date news and information for the Haggerty School community and prospective families.
Check it out at http://haggerty.cpsd.us.
Stay tuned for the launch of the Cambridgeport, Tobin Montessori, and the Baldwin School web sites.
Be part of the growing online CPS
community. Stay plugged into the
latest news, events, and stories.
Join us on Facebook
at
www.facebook.com/cps.schools.
Follow us on Twitter
@cambridge_cpsd.
Get Connected!
Templates, Logos & More
Cambridge Public Schools strives to ensure our branding is consistent and incorporated into all CPS web and print materials.
To make things easier for staff, a new page has been created online under the For Staff tab that allows you to download CPS logos, letterhead, business card templates, PowerPoint presentation templates, flyer templates, and more. We even include a Quick Response code (QR code) for you to incorporate into your printed materials.
Not sure what to write in your email signature? Well check out this page for our recommendation.
Take a look! Get branded today!
Streamlining with the Web
March was a big month for CRLS when it comes to online practices. CRLS launched a new online parent-teacher conference scheduling system this month. It allows for parents to create appointments online and for teachers to digitally download their appointment schedules. This is an effort to streamline the registration process to allow for conferences to run smoother and to eliminate chaos.
CRLS also implemented online course selection for current freshman. Using SIS Express, freshman students were able to login and select their courses which would then would be reviewed later by the parents. Parents were also invited to a Parent Night which allowed for parents and students to complete the online selection while having immediate support from faculty, if needed.
technical
services
Kevin Keegan, Manager
617.349.6814 n [email protected]
One of the major “Cloud” applications that Cambridge Public Schools implemented is GoogleDocs for Edu-cation. This is a full-featured Office Suite of applica-tions, which can be accessed from any location where the Internet is accessible. It allows collaboration with others around documents and projects. A project team can edit the same document at the same time while performing live chats regarding these documents. The “Cloud” is very handy on a personal side, as well. There are companies that offer the ability to sync files, pictures, and videos to multiple locations with the ease of a simple install on your technical device. The “Cloud” is a place that no matter what technical device you are using, you are able to access your content. The term “Cloud” is a simple concept and the func-tionality of the “Cloud” appears simple although, in actuality the “Cloud” is a highly complex, redundant, centralized virtual environment. The “Cloud” is con-figured in such a way that it is highly upgradable and configurable. Users are often unaware of the continu-ous improvements occurring in applications, such as GoogleDocs.
The “Cloud” saves institutions time and money. There is no need to invest in new infrastructure, training, or licensing of new software for these services. Most services in the “Cloud” are subscription or pay-to-use based services.
Cloud computing is still in the early stages. It is excit-ing to see what the future brexcit-ings to the “Cloud”.
Concealed Computing
Cloud computing, in regards to networking, has existed for many years. It has been the symbol that represents the Internet for some time. Anything past a networks firewall was considered the cloud. Like a cloud you really don’t see what is on the other side, you just use your best judgment and hope there is nothing in the cloud that can be harmful.
These days the “Cloud” represents a place of conve-nience and ease of use. The “Cloud” has a lot to offer. Corporate and educational environments are using the cloud for several purposes to include software (Soft-ware as a Service, SaaS) and utility filtering (Web and SPAM Filters). Using the “Cloud” for these services is a cost effective approach to software management and ensures the latest versions are always being utilized.
media
arts
Ginny Berkowitz, Manager
617.349.6744 n [email protected]
It’s spring! And Media Arts Studio classes and clubs are in full production mode. Media Tech, Media Journal-ism, and Experimental Media classes, along with after school clubs, have created a record number of student productions – assemblies, drama, dance, documenta-ries, music, narratives, news, science, sports, and more! Tune in to CEATV Channels 98 & 99 to see these programs. To view the channel schedule click here. Or visit our web site for viewing on demand.
• Please see the CRLS Course catalog for FY13 course and club offerings.
• Stay tuned for our Annual Media Fair, May 22, 2012 | 5:30PM which will feature student work from our school day and after school classes, clubs, and work-study program, and productions from across the district.
New Initiative: Middle School Media
Literacy and Production Workshops
The Media Arts Studio is piloting a series of Media Literacy and Production workshops to support stu-dents in developing new ways to learn, present, and share their knowledge through mastery of new tech-nologies. In 12-week workshops, students will learn to deconstruct media messages and construct their own. Gaining valuable communication, presentation and technical skills, students will create short pieces employing various media including animation, audio narration, original music, still photographs, and video. Completed work will be distributed throughout the district on CEATV’s channels and on the CPS web site.
Graham and Parks PSA Workshop
Graham and Parks’ 5th and 6th grade Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) class is collecting Box Tops for Education so that they can buy books in many languages. Library Media Specialist Ann Niederkorn, Teacher Kate Harrington, and SEI students wanted to create Public Service Announcements to reach a broad audience in the Cambridge community. Through the workshop led by Media Club Assistant Rachel D’Erminio, the class created two PSAs, one targeting kids, the other adults. The class went through all of the stages of production, from writing scripts and making costumes to learning to use a camera and recording their pieces. The final PSAs are a great example of this group’s drive and creativity.
Media Literacy Workshops are currently in progress at the Kennedy-Longfellow School with Library Media Specialist Susan Moynihan and Grade 7 ELA Teacher Carol Worsham; and at the Baldwin School with Technology Integration Specialist Ingrid Gustafson and Library Media Specialist Nancy Rial.
In February, the Media Arts Studio covered the story of a memorial project for the one-year anniversary of the devastating earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown in Japan. Kristin Knowlton, a Special Education Liaison and Math teacher at CRLS, worked with her classes to fold 1000 origami paper cranes (called senbazuru) for the town of Namie in Fukushi-ma, where she lived and taught English for three years. Media Production Instructor Nicole Hart and her Experimental Media Class participated in a two-day recording of Kristin’s Block 4 class and documented the making and completion of the cranes. The piece can be seen in Episode 508 of Youth View Cambridge or by clicking here.
Youth View Cambridge (YVC) is a bimonthly student news magazine produced by the Media Journalism Club. YVC producers create segments as they learn the fundamentals of broadcast journalism, while develop-ing production skills and practicdevelop-ing reportdevelop-ing tech-niques. Episodes combine current events with local and school news in an engaging, dynamic format that includes guest interviews, field reports and news analysis. Each episode is aired on SmartTV98 and archived online at www3.cpsd.us/mas.
The CRLS Drama Department approached the Media Arts Studio to create projections for their
production of These Shining Lives. This seemed a perfect fit for our Animation Club. Students worked together using Illustrator and After Effects to create the artwork. They then brought the final pieces into a program called Isadora, which is a management tool for coordinating projections. The projections set the tone for the beginning and ending of the play and provided information to the audience about the time and place. The project was a great collaboration between drama and media arts students, and the result was a beautiful production.
The play was performed for the Massachusetts High School Drama Festival and CRLS Junior Behrrisferd Windross won an award for Technical Excellence for his work on this animated stage projection!
Animation Club members have been meeting weekly to create their own 2D animations and video art. Students have been experimenting with After Effects, Flash, Photoshop, and stop-motion animation. This collaborative project gave club members the chance to apply their newly acquired skills and see their ideas come to life before a live audience.
