SmartBoard+Comments

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 * Hi All, First of all Karen, great job! I looked at all the quotes, etc., they look great. A couple of things......when I look at the "whole school quote" I can already hear the questions raised by some at the BOM. They are going to want to know what classrooms could be cut (for one year) in order to keep the cost down. For instance, I can see someone bringing up Spanish rooms, gyms, both the library and the library classrooms, Guidance, Speech room and STRIVE room. What is everyone's feeling about possibly eliminating a couple of classroms? If it comes to this, we need to have the rooms we would want cut first, prioritized so at least we could guide this. Does this make sense?
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 * So Kathy, do you need us to do anything - or is the APTA taking charge of this. I will caution that you have to be careful to ask if a teacher wants this, when they maybe didn't see the demo. I wish ALL could have seen this...it is easy to NOT WANT something, when you don't know what it does. I really have no idea who came to that demo, and who didn't. Maybe everyone saw it, so they do have an idea about what a SMART board is. Karen
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 * Hi Everyone......let's see, where to begin........just had a pta board meeting and there are lots of questions about technology. Let me tell you that all the concerns are good and valid, they are ones that any parent would ask and I think it's important to address them. I going to go all "stream of consciousness" on you, so bear with me. First of all, the APTA board says that any "software" requests must be "approved" by Lee. We need to know that whatever is requested will work with our current hardware. All hardware requests should come directly through the tech committee. This means that Lee will need to approve software requests from Linda Lightbourne and Lyndsy Hammil (STRIVE room). Hardware requests need to be turned in on the tech request. These would include Linda Lightbourne's SMARTpad, Jackie Holt and Sue Thomas' "clickers", Ellen's MacBook Pro, and Jan Broyles SMARTboard. The board is also very concerned (this is APTA board only, not the BOM) about how "we" know we want the SMARTboards and not something else. Is this going to be what the students and teachers are using in upcoming years? How did we go from Intelligent Classrooms to this? They also want to know whether or not the teachers really want this. They want to know __**from each teacher**__ if he/she is really excited and is ready to train and implement this SMART technology into their classroom. I think they are open to funding a couple of "test" classrooms to make sure this is just what we want. They also mentioned "putting aside tech funds" until we are absolutely sure. This could be "rolled over" (I believe) into next year's budget if we decide this is where we want to go tech wise.