~ Creswell
public schools ~
“Preparing
Students for success”
to: Creswell Board of Directors
and superintendent price
from: JOEL HIGDON, Technology Director
subject: March board report
date: 3/3/2010
.. .
· Our attendance at
the 11th Annual Instructional Technology Strategies Conference (ITSC) in
Portland was well received. Our participation was funded by a recently
received “Title IID Technology Readiness Grant” from the Oregon Department of
Education. This grant afforded us the
opportunity to send a small cadre of staff that included Anna Baltrusch (CMS),
Nancy Buchanan (CMS), Aaron Keo (CES), Ruby Price, and me. A wealth of information was delivered over
two days. Over the coming weeks we will
be sharing the ideas and information received with other district staff.
· Last month I
reported on our development of a Wiki webpage at our middle school. This month I am excited to be sharing our
development of a new virtual learning environment for our students – “Moodle”
(we techies across the spectrum can sure come up with some creative naming). We are working with the Oregon State
University’s hosted virtual school district to create these new interactive
online resources. Through the use of
Moodle we will be creating online courses that can be used by both students and
staff. The courses that are created can
supplement a classroom curriculum or be a stand-alone course. For example, we are presently creating Moodle
courses for three new software suites - Co-Writer, Write-Outload, and
Inspirations. The goal is to help staff
learn and be able to utilize these new resources in their classroom. Worth noting - these three software suites
are broadly used by districts to help enrich and raise student development in
writing and critical thinking. Staff
members have expressed an interest in being able to use them so consequently
the new Moodle courses are well timed.
· Are you a fan? Our district presence on Facebook continues
to be successful. Building from our initial
rollout at our Middle School we will be debuting Facebook pages for our High
School and Creslane. Look for them the
week after Spring Break. We are also exploring the possibility of
classroom or staff Facebook pages. I
have formed an in-house ad hoc
committee to help outline such an endeavor.
Thank
you.