Early today, the PM IT Team deployed a major upgrade to our Sapphire server. The new server hardware and software should prove to be significantly more robust than our current platform. Thanks to our Senior Engineer, Shawn Beard, the transition was smooth and nearly flawless. Often, a considerable amount of behind the scenes planning and work is required to bring these types of services online. Today’s successful deployment is the result of weeks of engineering and planning.
Shawn took a few minutes to summarize several “under-the-hood” enhancements behind our new Sapphire “engine”:
Through the utilization of load balancing technology are able to provide redundancy in the event of server failure and a faster user interface. The load balancing technology will also permits us to perform server hardware and software maintenance without the need to take Sapphire offline. The new server provides multiple webservers on a single piece of server hardware and each webserver will utilize it’s own bank of resources. This means that when a user is running a report or performing a resource intensive function, we can maintain a higher level of usability and stability for all staff and faculty.
A big thank you to Shawn for his time and energy on this project!
Have you ever longed for a quick way to catch all of the latest Penn Manor district news, Twitter updates and blog postings without taking the time to visit each of our individual sites? If so, check out the newly launched “Planet Penn Manor” website: http://www.pennmanor.net/planet/.
The Planet Penn Manor page automatically refreshes with the latest district postings every 30 minutes. Thanks to PM Network Engineer, Chad Billman, for his work on this cool news service!
Here is a great example of how a skilled teacher leverages technology to make a traditional “book report” assignment far more engaging and meaningful. For the past two years, Scott Hertzog, a member of Penn Manor High School’s‘ English Department faculty, has worked with students to create “Fireside Book Chat” podcasts. Students present, critically review and discuss books they have recently read. Each book is chosen and researched by the students and every student podcast is recorded in front of a live studio (classroom) audience.
Mr. Hertzog’s podcasts are a clever upgrade to a solid, yet traditional lesson. Importantly, his work fuses reading, research skills, writing, evaluation and creativity into an awesome learning experience. Plus, the student work is made available to a global audience.
The Fire Side Book Chat podcast is now closing in on 40,000 visits. Check out the student podcasts here: http://firesidebookchat.com. Also, if you are a science fiction fan, you may want visit Mr. Hertzog’s personal side podcast project: http://scifidinerpodcast.com/.
Once again, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) will be tracking Santa’s journey across the globe. Check out the NORAD Santa tracking website at: http://www.noradsanta.org/
Happy holidays from the Penn Manor Information Technology Team!
Larry Lessig’s recent talk at Educause is now available online at Blip.Tv. Lessig is an outstanding speaker and eloquently builds a compelling argument on why copyright laws have increasingly become caustic to education, science and the free sharing of knowledge.
Lessig, a Havard Law professor and expert on cyberlaw, is the principal architect of the Creative Commons movement. Unlike the “all” rights reserved terms of traditional copyright law, Creative Commons attempts to provide an open license framework where content creators may share their work while still maintaining some reserved rights of ownership, attribution and dissemination.
Creative Commons licensed works are growing rapidly. If you have ever accessed Wikipedia for a quick fact check, you’ve benefited from their Creative Commons license on content and material. For many additional, excellent examples, visit the Creative Commons Content Directory. The directory contains numerous audio, video and picture repositories which may be mined for high quality, free content. Recently Google image search began offering an advanced filter for finding pictures tagged for reuse.
Colleges and universities are increasing their public course offering under the Creative Commons license too. Check out the University of California’s free college prep course site or MIT’s Open Courseware for two exemplary examples.
During the fall of 1969, the foundation of modern Internet communication technology was quietly assembled by computer science students at UCLA and Stanford. At the time, engineers were working to interconnect computers at each campus via a phone line. To make the connection, a gateway device was required to facilitate the traffic between each campus’ systems. That device was know as an Interface Message Processor (IMP). IMPs later evolved into complex data traffic cops know as routers. Today, routers form the core Internet backbone and govern the flow of data between all Internet connected computers.
UCLA recently published a few short video clips detailing early Internet gateways and the first Internet connections. Embedded below is packet switching expert and Internet pioneer, Leonard Kleinrock, showing off UCLA’s first IMP. Dr. Kleinrock wonderfully exclaims that the IMP is “So ugly it’s beautiful.” A jumble of wires and steel, the first IMP clearly put function ahead of fashion:
Students in Penn Manor High School’s Video Production course have been posting morning announcements, video clips and mini documentaries to “School Tube” for the past few months. Take a moment and check out the student work on the PMHS School Tube Channel.Congratulations to Jeff Himes and his students for creating such great videos!
Penn Manor High School’s student newspaper, Penn Points, made history today as it launched the 1st 2009-2010 “edition” totally online. Students in Mrs. Susan Baldrige’s High School journalism class have been working since the start of school on a 100% digital, print-free news magazine. Their work and dedication has produced a truly outstanding student news site and blazed a trail for future high school journalism classes to follow.
Moving to a fully online digital news magazine has a number of advantages. Besides the obvious environmental savings gained from not printing tens of thousands of paper pages a year, the newspaper staff will also realize significant efficiencies in publication speed. Specifically, the concept of scheduled “editions” is largely gone; students may publish stories directly to the web as soon as the article is finished. The net result is a student news magazine with the flexibility to publish stories in a much more timely fashion.
Additionally, a fully online student newspaper provides digital delivery to the local community and the entire world. In the past, Penn Points readership was limited to students and staff at Penn Manor High School only. In contrast the online addition may be read by anyone with Internet access. Further, the Penn Points team has made the decision to permit story feedback via the blog comments tool. Comments are open for anyone to use, however, Penn Points editors will continually monitor and approve comments before they are posted live.
Congratulations to Mrs. Baldrige and her student team for taking a risk and trying a new approach to journalism. Check out Penn Points Online and let the student writers know what you think!
Google Earth fans take note: Several Penn Manors streets and roads have been included in Google’s Street View. Although the entire county has not been added, several major Penn Manor routes and portions of Lancaster City have been photographed and added to Street View. Additionally, a number of district school buildings have been snapped and added to the catalog of images.
If you are not familiar with Google Earth’s Street View layer, the tool provides a 3-d panoramic view from the perspective of a car driving along a given road. Google’s Street View has been available since 2007 and continues to slowly expand the number of cities, routes and landmarks included in the catalog.
Google Earth is currently installed on most district laptops. Besides being a fun tool for visiting global destinations, Google Earth can be easily integrated into lessons across multiple content areas. Teachers looking for a great listing of Google Earth lesson ideas may want to check out the “25 Interesting Ways to Use Google Earth in the Classroom” presentation online here: http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dhn2vcv5_175fp5qg9d3.
On Wednesday afternoon, Martic Elementary School suffered a major network outage due to a truck hitting the single fiber link servicing the building. Damage was extensive and repairs involved running new fiber cabling from the building to nearby utility poles. As of Friday afternoon, the Comcast fiber link has been restored and Martic Elementary School is once again connected to the Penn Manor School District wide-area-network.
The opening of school was a busy time for the Penn Manor Information Technology Team. During the first four days of school, Gina received 285 calls to the district tech support hotline. A total of 305 tech help tickets were submitted in the 4-day period of August 31st to September 4th; an increase of 100 tickets over the same time period last school year.
The volume of support calls is directly related to the large number of new technology projects and initiative for the 2009-2010 school year. Be assured that the IT team is working through the open issues as quickly as possible and will continue to work until all outstanding support requests are resolved.
Don’t forget to check out the growing number of self-help instruction guides available for download on our Tech Support Site: http://support.pennmanor.net/.
This September, Penn Manor High School students and teachers will return to several new classroom technology upgrades. We are pleased to be finishing work on smart classroom additions to 99% of the building’s instructional spaces. The new smart classrooms are the result of a $550,000 data and electrical construction project, which was originally conceived in response to Penn Manor’s Classrooms for the Future grant allocation. Approximately $80,000 in additional equipment purchases were made via district general and capital reserve technology funds. Here is a list of the changes and upgrades: Read the rest of this entry »
