Summer 2013 Technology Work at Westridge and Valley High School

Each summer there are locations impacted by various summer construction work.  This summer, we’ll have both Westridge and Valley High School heavily impacted by construction.  Here’s a look at the specific technology outages that will happen at each of these locations.

Westridge Elementary……………………..

Everything is being moved out of Westridge, as the entire facility is under renovation this summer.  Here’s a look at the timeline for what’s moving out of the building and when.

May 30th:  The computer lab will be removed, and then the techs will start removing classroom computers as well.

June 3rd and 4th:  ceiling mounted AV systems will be removed starting on June 3rd.

June 5/6th,  In the afternoon of June 5th,  wireless access points will removed.

June 6th work will include…

1. Remove all printers
2. Move office to temp location
3. Remove all phones
4. Move copiers out – they will be stored for the summer.

Valley High School…………………………………

This summer a significant portion of Valley is closed due to construction. Basically, the new 3 story (science, cafeteria, etc) and the 2 story are open and everything else is closed.  Here’s a list of dates/tasks that we are aware of…

June 6th – move offices out, also moving technology of classrooms in the NE section of the school

June 6th – the wiring closet that is north of the field house will be dismantled completely, which will disable phones, computers, wireless, and all network traffic in that area of the building.  In addition, the wiring closet that services the west end of the building (band and athletics) is also being turned off for renovation work.

June 6/7th:  The wiring closet on the east side of Valley (room 137) is being dismantled due construction in that area.  All classrooms on the far east side of the school will be without network access throughout the entire summer.

June 6th/7th:  Access Points that provide wireless internet will be removed from the classrooms in the NE corner of the building, as well as from the far west end of Valley.

NOTICE: July 8th:  Network outage for all of Valley High School.

Due to construction needs, there will be a building-wide network outage of all computer, wireless, and phone access that will cover all of Valley High School starting on July 8th.  We are expecting that phones and computers will be back in service for the school offices sometime on July 9th, but the rest of the building will get services back over the next 7 days.

What our staff thinks of our district technology services… 2013 edition

Each year we conduct a satisfaction survey with our school district staff.  It’s a relatively short survey, and we’ve used many of the same questions multiple years in a row. Our goal is to track customer services.  For example, we don’t ask questions related to the latest gadget or gizmo… instead, we focus on fundamental customer service points –  as our belief is that quality customer service will always be needed regardless of the device.

View/Download the full staff survey results (pdf file)

Summary of the results…

Satisfied with response time and communications.

“The guys are great. They are helpful and in good spirits when they have to
come into my room. They never make me feel as though my questions are silly,
though they probably are. :)”

“Repairs are handled in a timely manner.”

“I also appreciate the new and innovative ideas presented at
professional development. I have worked in other districts before where the
technology department was somewhat a mystery – I very much appreciate the
transparency of the department in WDM and the efforts to move forward with
technology in a timely manner.”

Desire for more iPads at elementary level..

“Teachers should have more than 3 iPads.”

More training needed…

“We are way behind other districts. We need tech integrationists to help teachers
integrate tech. Jackie does a great job, but 1 person is not enough.”

“More WED collab day trainings. I think we are severely lacking those.”

“I would like to see more time given to the technology department during staff
development to share new ideas.”

NOTE FROM BRIAN:  In regards to Wed collaboration days, most collab. day topics are decided at your building level.  Talk to your building staff that oversee your Wed collab days, as we’d be glad to help you out!

Fair isn’t equal

“Bluntly, I don’t feel like access to technology is allocated in an appropriate
manner. However, I don’t feel like that is the technology dep’t’s fault. I really
think the board and TLS need to examine which schools are in the most need of
district contributed funds to purchase and update technology. We really need to
get out of this mindset that fair is equal.”

Access

“still not enough computers in our building. Much much better since we got a cart
for each team, but still hard to plan lessons if you don’t know if the devices will
be available”

More information about updates…

“Updating technology i.e. IC Revtrack, Paypal it would be nice to know what the updates are before we go in and find that something has changed.”

NOTE FROM BRIAN: We certainly agree that it would be great to have more knowledge of how the updates will impact, unfortunately, this isn’t always possible as we are reliant on what information is given by our vendors.  We also have a significant amount of our own customizations in things like Campus and RevTrak – that makes it hard for vendors to tell how their updates will impact our customizations.

Dedicated staff for K-6 technology integration

“Other surrounding districts have technology teachers for each building and are
implementing classes that teach technology skills to their young people. This
should not fall on the shoulders of regular classroom teachers.”

NOTES FROM BRIAN:  This concern has been raised over the past few years, however, it is significant to note that Waukee this past year moved away from this model and the elementary “tech teacher” is now dedicated towards training staff members how to integrate technology into the grade level classrooms.

How do the results compare to prior years?

How does the survey work?

All staff receive a short on-line survey. Each question is a positive statement such as, “When members of the district technology departments visit my building, they are courteous and treat the staff and students with respect.”   Users are asked to rate the statement as: Strongly Agree,   Agree,  Disagree,  Strongly Disagree, or  I don’t know.

For the summary charts below,  % Strongly Agree + % Agree =  Approval rating (which is the blue bars below).  In other words, we only count if they positively agree with a statement.  If we scored a 90% approval rating, that means 90% of the responses were Strongly Agree or Agree.

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For the charts above….

Overall = How we did based on all survey responses

Teachers = How we did based on classroom teacher responses only

Support = How we did based on support staff responses only