Textbook demonstration video
We have created a short video which shows how to get access to the online textbooks.
Direct questions to powerschool@stregis.org.
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video.Apple issues with online Textbooks
Some issues have been experienced by Mac users with viewing the online textbooks. The instructions below should resolve these issues for most Mac users. If you continue to experience problems after following these steps, send an email to powerschool@stregis.org and indicate the MAC OSX version you are using.
General steps to resolve issues on all versions of MAC OSX:
- Download and install Adobe Reader (here)
- Open Adobe Reader, if prompted allow Adobe Reader to be the default PDF program
- Go to Edit -> Preferences - > Internet. Make sure "Display PDF in browser" is checked
- Open Safari (browser), if prompted allow the Adobe Reader plugin to be installed
- Login to PowerSchool and launch a textbook
Online textbooks!
In an effort to (1) extend the life of textbooks ($$) and (2) decrease the weight of books being carried home by students, St. Regis has begun purchasing only classroom sets of new textbooks.
To replace carrying the books home, all textbooks will be made available over the Internet (through PowerSchool). See image.
Can I also consider this another green effort?
Watch a short video about accessing the textbooks.
Goodbye Unity
We have completely transitioned from Cisco Unity to Microsoft Exchange 2010 Unified Messaging.
What does this mean?
Staff have a single point for Email, Voicemail and IM. See the short video for more information.
Green can be dangerous
Here is the story...
In an attempt to be "green" we deployed a shutdown script to all desktop computers which will force a shutdown at 11:00 p.m. each evening. It worked well in the lab and it should save some money given we have close to 100 desktop computers.
Here is the problem...
Most of the computers sleep after 2-3 hours of inactivity. The script wasn't set to wake the computer up from a sleep to run the shutdown. So...users would wake their computers up in the morning, get something started, then their computer would shutdown.
Oops!!
Waveform LLC upgrades St. Regis bandwidth
St. Regis first started it's relationship with Waveform in the late '90s. Owner Noel Montales is responsible for bringing most of the local Catholic schools online -- Holy Name and Queen of Martyrs in addition to Marian, Brother Rice and St. Regis.
Sharing infrastructure costs with Marian and Brother Rice -- this summer we built out a 1/4 mile of fiber from the 14 Mile/Lahser Rd intersection to Marian.
This allowed us to connect into Waveform's privately owned fiber network. The private fiber feeds each school with 100 Mbps of bandwidth. Wow. See the two speed tests that I ran during the school day! Just need to tweak the upload speed a little bit...
Read the full press release at The Great Lakes IT Report (GLITR)
Windows 7 was my idea
It's official, we have standardized on Windows 7 (with Office 2010 and Communicator 2007 R2).
We used SCCM 2007 R2 to deploy close to 100 desktops and a handful of laptops.
We will see how the staff and students deal with the changes when they report next week. It shouldn't be too bad right? After all, Windows 7 has been out since July 2009!
Where do you see God? 2010
This is my favorite posting to the web all year!
Singing "Me and God" by Josh Turner, the 2010 Kindergarten class presents Where do you see God?
Office 2010 aka Version 14
We have a few users that have tried the beta version of Office 2010. So far so good.
The most frequent comment so far is that the Ribbon interface has been simplified and is present in every application (even Outlook and Publisher). See this article on the MS Office Team blog for a good side-by-side comparison.
The only test left are integration with SharePoint 2010 (don't have the beta yet) and which version to buy. They have narrowed down the product versions, so it looks like we need Professional Plus.
Here is a good article from TechCrunch outlining the changes in Office 2010.
Did You Know 4.0
This is an update to the Did You Know or "Shift Happens" video that made the rounds a couple of years ago. If uses current stats from Fall 2009. Worth the 5 minutes to watch!
