Technoflash

Bellevue Public Schools, Bellevue NE

December 18, 2014 Volume 8

From Consuming to Creating

Several of our Bellevue Public Schools students K-12 participated in the hour of code last week as part of a nation wide hour of code project. The goal of The Hour of Code was to involve 100 million people. Our students were engaged in critical thinking, problem solving, and creating digital content. Check out this video on kids coding in Bellevue.

Going Google in K-2

All K-2 students now have access to Google Docs! By providing Google accounts to every student in our district, sharing and collaboration can become part of their every day lives at school. Our students in K-3 will not be able to use the gmail, but they are able to work and share inside of Google Drive. Google Drive is vital to our paperless, collaborative, learning environment in Bellevue Public Schools.

Amazing Learning Opportunities

Coming to our office January 10th!

Kent Steen from Lincoln Public Schools will be providing six hours of training on a coding curriculum that participants will have access to after the session. We are excited to announce the session is full! Thanks for all the interested teachers that signed up. We will be tweeting out throughout the day using the #codebps.

Online Classes for Second Semester

We are starting the new semester with 12 online course offerings. From Fun Formative Assessments with a Techie Twist to Using Social Media in the Classroom, you are likely to find a class that meets your needs. Classes begin January 12th. Register for online classes here. Remember we need 10 people to make a class a go so ask a friend or colleague to join you to make the learning adventure fun!

Oh What Fun it is to Tweet and Share: Twelve Days of Twitter

Check out the 12 Days of Twitter Pinterest board for all the great resources shared. Thanks to all our BPS teachers who participated in this activity.

Books and Blogs Worth Reading

Teacher Tech by Alice Keeler - An excellent resource for Google inspiration!

P is for Pirate: Inspirational ABC's for Educators by Dave Burgess - In this book Dave and his wife encourage and inspire educators to make their classrooms fun and exciting places to learn.

Mind Shift-How We Learn This site covers the future of learning and includes technology trends, innovation, and research.

Internet Filtering (Shared by Greg Boettger, Director of Technology)

“Why do we even have a filter?”

“We just need to teach responsible internet usage.”

“Is someone watching what I do on my computer all the time?”

These are just a few examples of what we hear about utilizing the internet, computers, email and the filter we have in place to restrict certain sites from being used. I wanted to explain just a few things about the filter. In the next T-flash, I will explain the concept of email archiving.

First and foremost, Bellevue Public Schools does not have anyone actively watching what everyone is doing on the internet. Secondly, we do not actively look for sites and block them. The filter we have in place does this work for us. Inside the filter, it is set to look at every website anyone goes on the internet. It then looks at who you are and what rules are in place to decide if it should allow or deny the website. If you log into the filter daily, it will know that you are an adult and can access many more sites than a student. If you do not log into the filter, it will always view you as a student and limit what sites you can get to. Here is how you log into the filter:

Go to a blocked site such as craigslist.org
If the site is not blocked, you are already logged into the filter
If it comes in as blocked, click on “not you” in the upper left
Type in your firstname.last and your password and craigslist should become unblocked
Go to your website again and see if you have access

If you log into the filter and the site you are trying to get to is still blocked you can request for it to be opened. This is done through the help desk. Once you add it to the help desk, we will review the site and decide if we can open it up and then we will let you know. Not all sites can be opened, as some sites can be potential threats to our network and/or computers because of viruses and malware. For staff, most sites are opened up. For students, we have to be very selective, as opening up sites that contain inappropriate content can affect CIPA compliance and the amount of money we receive for internet services through e-rate. As always, feel free to contact me with any questions at greg.boettger@bpsne.net.

Check back in January when I write about email archiving.