April STOPiT--Are you a Good Googler?

April STOPiT for CHS students will be held on Wednesday, April 9th, at 2:30 pm in Room 121. This month's theme is "Information Literacy".  Information Literacy is the set of skills students need to find, retrieve and analyze information. This month's STOPiT is focused around "Are you a Good Googler?"

Students will complete a project using SMORE (www.smore.com) to create an online flier to share googling tips with other students. CHS Students will be collaborating with GINW STOPiT students and share projects. The April STOPiT project assignment can be found at: https://www.smore.com/6pt19-stopit-april-project

For more information visit our STOPiT website at http://www.stopitclass.org

Gradebook install fix for Mac users

When installing the PowerTeacher gradebook on a Mac, the install may fail with a message about the download being damaged and that it should be moved to the trash.  This is due to a setting in OSX that prevents downloads from anywhere other than the Apple Store from being installed.

Luckily the fix is very simple and has been provided by another school techie here:

http://www.mbusd.net/11/post/2013/08/mbusd-powerteacher-gradebook.html

Student Printing from Autocad LT in the Wellness Center DL Lab

If you need to print from Auto cad LT 2004 in the distance learning lab in the wellness center, please follow these instructions:

Choose File - Plot
To print directly to the HS library, choose Default Windows System Printer as the plotter.  Your plot will print in the HS library.  You should have your name on the plot.

OR

To save your plot as a PDF file so you can print it later, upload it to ebackpack or google drive, or email it to your instructor, choose Adobe PDF as the plotter.

If the "Save file" dialog box does not pop up, click on the dialog in the system tray at the bottom of your screen...

In the left pane, choose computer, then your home drive.  Type a name for the file and choose save.

Now the PDF file can be accessed from any student computer and can be printed, saved to eBackpack or google drive, or it may be emailed to the instructor.

iPad Printing

When we updated the printers and printing program at CCS over the summer, a new feature that was available was printing from iPads.  Since one of our main goals was to use mobile devices to REDUCE printing, we did not enable or publicize this feature.

However, many of our students and staff have been clever enough to discover a "loophole" that was left in place to make it easier for Mac users to print, and this loophole has allowed some people to print from their iPads.  My observation is that people who have been printing from their iPads have been pretty responsible and it has not been a large volume, and I actually commend those of you who figured out how to do it.

While it is convenient to be able to print from your mobile device, as a 1-1 district we rely entirely too much on printing and we must all work together to reduce this expense.  While our "loophole" is still open, it will be shut in a few weeks, and we will continue to work with everyone in helping them to find alternatives to paper printouts.  We also do not officially support printing from iPads (unless you get specific permission from your building principal).

We know that you will still have printing needs, we just want to encourage everything to think of and use alternatives when possible. Here are some suggestions which will help avoid printing, or if you must have a printout, to make it easier for the student:

1. Use eBackpack for assignment submission and grade the work online.  You can actually mark assignments on your computer or iPad and turn them back to the student without ever printing.
2. Have the students save their documents in google drive and share them with you.  You can easily add comments to google docs.  You could even create a folder in your google drive and share it with students so they can save their work to this location.  This can get complicated since you have many students and classes, which is really why we pay for eBackpack to automate this.
3. Ask the student to email the work to you (the teacher) and print it for them if you must have a printout.
4. Students can log into a computer in the lab or library and open files from either eBackpack or google drive and print from the computer.

If we could all cut our printing in half, we would save the district nearly $20,000 per year, and would be helping the environment at the same time!

Thanks for your cooperation!

Mr. E

Graduating Seniors - iPad Announcement

CHS graduating seniors:

Congratulations on your upcoming graduation!  As your final year at CHS comes to a close, you will soon have to part with your iPad.  We want to remind you that you will not be allowed to check out unless you turn in your iPad, and that it must be in good condition.  All buttons and ports should work, the screen must not be cracked or broken, and there should be no major defects to the aluminum body.  In addition, you must return your charger and your case/cover.  We understand that these will be worn.

If you have NOT had a repair this year, we will repair your iPad for you.  If you have already used your repair, we will get it repaired for you, but YOU are responsible for the cost and you will not be checked out or released from school until you have paid for that repair.

In either case, it is to your advantage to have your iPad repaired or at least the damage reported to us BEFORE May 1st.

So, if you iPad needs to be repaired, PLEASE let us know by May 1st!

Welcome!

Welcome to the Haymaker Tech Cafe!

This is the place for student, staff and parent tech announcements and information.  Check our posts for the latest news regarding all things tech, including iPads, school computers, network and account updates, and anything else related to technology use in our schools.