Fife Schools Technology

Starting sometime during the night, Hedden lost its network connection to the district and beyond. Qwest believes it is a failed piece of hardware used by their fiber optics.

This affected Internet, email, and a few other services for Hedden.

Connectivity should be restored soon.

We apologize for any inconveniences.

Update: Qwest finished the repairs and the network is back up.

In an effort to conserve resources (dollars and environmental), we are making steps towards technologies that will help us to reduce costs and to use less energy and materials.

Virtualization is a computer technology that allows multiple computers or servers to run on the same hardware. So, for example, we can take three servers and “virtualize” them, allowing all three servers to run on a single piece of hardware but still act as three separate servers.

Imagine if your family had one car but three family members could use that one car at the same time to go different places. You would spend less than if you purchased three cars, spend less on fuel, etc. That’s a little like what virtualization can do in the computer world.

As a result, we can reduce costs by needing less hardware, less electrical power, less air conditioning to keep server rooms cool, etc. It’s also easier to manage virtual servers in the long run.

We’re also looking at ways to create virtual desktops and virtual applications. This would allow us to use smaller, more efficient, and less expensive computers in classrooms yet still deliver the power students and teachers need for their classwork.

In future posts, I’ll give some specifics about how we are doing this. 

Kris Haines, teacher at Endeavour, discovered a nice website to assist with spelling practice. I wanted to pass it on.

www.spellingcity.com

Includes a function that speaks the spelling words.

I’d like to hear feedback on how this site works for teachers and students.

 Using a RSS reader? Now you can get grades from GradeChecker delivered via RSS. This means that whenever a grade is updated by a teacher, the RSS feed with that updated grade will be delivered to your RSS reader. You don’t need to visit the GradeChecker site to check grades.

To use the RSS feed, visit the GradeChecker site and do a search for your grades. Then at the bottom of the results page, there will be a link to your custom RSS feed. Cut and past that link into your RSS reader and that’s it.

This is still in beta because I’m not sure if all readers will work correctly. Please give me feedback if you find any problems.