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Baarsjes Informatie en Communicatie Jaargang 4 - week 15 - 2005 (15 april)
Wat is er deze week op de Rosa Boekdrukker op ICT gebied gebeurd?
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This English issue of our IT weekly newsletter is larger than normal and specially made for "The Christ School", Orlando, Florida, USA.
For further details, please read on.

Assistance  by the Educational Facilitation Service [1]
This week two groups in our school were assisted by the EFS in working with a program with which children learn to search in web pages and on the Internet. Our problem is mainly: how to organize the activities in a school day in a way that computers are integrated in the regular curriculum.

E-mail project
In our group 4 the e-mail project is ending. Soon the bears will go back to their own classes.[2]

Letter Fun
The “language” software program for our youngest pupils, that causes us so much frustration, is waiting for its final test. All names have (for the umpteenth  time....) been put in the database. We are all going to make a new, but final start. If we again come upon new difficulties we are going to look for a new program.

Notice board.
This week the ICT dept. received  -at last- our notice board. We have quite some lack of space on our desks and we needed this board to keep track of our missions. Here you can see it:
http://www.rosaboekdrukker.net/index.php?page=615&navpath=,
4371&contents=4372&section=15&ID=4372&gallerypage=1


Font Size
In the image for our computers we had an irritating issue. The standard font size of the browser was very large. That way our own website ran out of the screen. This week it was altered, so that also the pictures on our site can be totally seen.
(Dirk: my fault, I set the font size to maximum enlargement).

Mathematics Software
We bought a new software program for kids that have difficulties with arithmetics. It’s a remedial program.

Printer-jamming
The printer on the second floor of our school was out of order this week. Our technical support was able to reset everything from distance.

Save your old documents!
Since september 2004 we have the new ServerAtSchool. Your old data were made available for you to copy them to your new location.
WHEN YOU DID NOT DO THIS, YOUR OLD DATA CAN GET LOST!! At the 5th of May (Liberation Day, when  the  Netherlands were liberated by the Americans in 1945) we will delete the old server data. When you have trouble recovering your data, ask Karin or Dirk

Workstation in Koen's class
We use P2 400, donated by a municipal service. One broke down, Dirk replaced the power supply and thanks to SABRINE, immediately a new image.

APS IT services
It is virtually impossible to understand the fine print in the contract of our National Schools Microsoft software supplier. Of course, illegal use is forbidden, but legal use of Microsoft in schools is almost impossible without APS IT Services. So, annually, we report the number of computers, how many full-time jobs we have in the team, etc. In total we pay about €700 (about $ 900) for 50 computers per year.
When you got your computers as a donation, they make problems, when they are better than P2 they make problems, etc.
Gradually we come to the conclusion that it's cheaper to buy normal licenses and forget about APS-IT services. Or would that be forbidden? Karin pulls her magnifying glass and starts reading the super fine print.

ServerAtSchool
The server system that is developed at the public primary School Rosa Boekdrukker had a two page article in the Dutch Linux Magazine of april 2005. The editor was enthusiastic about the system and its possibilities for primary schools. Buy this issue of the Linux Magazine! You also find good article on Open Office.org 2.0; the replacement for Microsoft Office 2003. We will start using OOo after the summer holidays.

This weeks activities:

- We were at a school in the northern part of Amsterdam to 'sell' SAS. They like our approach to use second hand workstations and the simplicity of our approach.

- A school in Hilversum will deploy ServerAtSchool. They have a lot of Mac's and Peter has some extra work to do to integrate the Mac's in SAS.

- When restoring an image on a client we found a strange error message in the log files. A call to the help desk, and Peter in Bussum connecting to the client revealed the problem; a misconnected harddisk cable. It's the strength of this system that problems can be solved over the phone.

- Last Friday we had a meeting of the cooperation of schools that uses SAS. The name of the group is now, (thanks to Ton):
STRICT: Scholen Tezamen Rijk met ICT (English: Schools Together Rich with Information and Communication Technology). ICT is a common name in the Netherlands for what the rest of the world names   'IT'.

Site@School
At this moment pupils in the 8 th grade of 'The Christ School' in Orlando, Florida, USA,  are proofreading and correcting the S@S manual.
Thanks to the precise work and sharp eyes of Alex, Alice, Amy Morgan, Angela, Ann Kallyn, Chelsea, Julie, Matthew, Micah and Taylor the manual of the 2.3 version will be in correct English.
The S@S team expresses its gratitude to the pupils and the teacher (Rich Magee) who all made this great improvement possible.
Maybe it's also an idea to have a look at the English in S@S itself for the next version?
And, last but not least, Dirk learns a lot too. Hopefully his English will improve, at least his 'its' and 'it's'.

The
S@S TV module is now operational. In the hall of our school we have a television set. With an old computer, a cheap tv video card and Site@School we have a message system that is low-cost and easy to manage (from home). We can show messages, pictures, videos, etc.

The release date of version 2.3 is slowly approaching. We released a new beta version for our testers. At many places in the world people are working now on the translations. We are grateful for so much help and encouragement.

Have a nice weekend,
Karin,
Dirk

[1] Educational Facilitation Service: A foundation that helps schools with integrating new methods, school plans, learning disabilities, and all kind of problems trhat schools run into.

[2] The Bears Project: A teddybear from a school in the  Northern Part of Holland stays a couple of weeks in our school. Every afternoon the bear goes home with another pupil and spends the night there. The bear tells her/his adventures by email to the other school.
And vice versa. It helps children to write texts and communicate by email.



Reacties op deze nieuwsbrief graag richten aan de afdeling ICT