Right after the holidays, many of us are eager to purchase new gadgets due to some of the best sales of the season. However, this article is suggesting that we wait. Here’s some food for thought as you are tempted to make post-holiday purchases.

Summer and holiday breaks are the optimal times for much of the technical work we do to avoid extended disruptions when school is in session. This holiday break, we upgraded the district Internet Filter, Lightspeed’s TTC, to provide faster speed to the Internet and access to new features described below. This upgrade requires new software, which you probably noticed as it automatically installed on your computer when you logged in this morning. Please contact our Tech Helpline, ext. 1310, if technical issues arise. Your patience and understanding are greatly appreciated as we fine tune the system over the next few days.

The good news is:

• Web pages will load faster now!
• A new YouTube Education channel is now available to students. This section of YouTube is a new channel recently created for schools by Google and includes the entire Khan Academy channel.
• A new San Luis Coastal USD YouTube Channel is also available. This year’s videos that are in the district Educational Video Library are also available here.

Additional Details:
With this upgraded Internet filter, these two new sites listed above will replace the district’s Educational Video Library (formerly known as EVL or the YouTube Safe Portal). The Lightspeed company no longer supports the EVL on this version of the filter. To allow for a transitional period, the former EVL will be available temporarily until January 15th.  (To access the videos, teachers need to use their “override” to YouTube as the first step.)

Note: Please do not add any more videos to the former EVL. To add a particular video to the SLCUSD channel, request a regular work order (if the video is not already in the YouTube Education channel). In addition, your “teacher override” is still available to access any YouTube video. Remember to switch the video view to “full-screen” before projecting it for your class on the big screen. This will avoid embarrassing moments as non-school friendly videos and/or comments may appear when not in “full-screen” view.

Sneak Preview: We are in the process of setting up My Big Campus, a new educational social networking site also created by Lightspeed. In addition to a large video library similar to the former EVL, this “facebook-looking” site provides blogging, wikis, quizzes, social networking, learning communities, and much more in a safe and secure educational online environment. My Big Campus will not replace Moodle; it will simply be an additional resource available to interested teachers. This video provides a sneak preview.  Once My Big Campus becomes available, detailed info will be forthcoming from our District EdTech Teacher, Jennifer O’Hagan.

Let us know if you have any questions and on behalf of all, we wish everyone a very Happy New Year! ~ IS&T

I’m always looking for ways to improve communication. Some people are open to new ideas. Others like to think that everything is their idea. There are ways to make recommendations that leave them thinking that they thought of it and more open to suggestions.

Instead of:

• My advice is…
• Obviously you should…
• Try this…

  Use phrases such as:

• Have you considered…?
• Something you said the other day got me thinking…
• Help me understand how you reached that conclusion.
• I wonder if we have the same information. My information leads me to a different conclusion.

Always look for something to agree about and remember to acknowledge the person’s thoughts and perspective. These and other ideas to improve communication with powerphrases can be found on Speak Strong blog by Meryl Runion.