New Technology Elective - Phone App Design

In our continued efforts to bring new technology electives to Blair, we will be offering our first course in phone app design next year.  This one semester course will teach the use of development software to design and create apps for smart phones.  The course will cover introductory computer programming concepts as they apply to the creation of phone apps.  Students are required to have their own laptop, and will produce working phone apps during the class.  The course will be taught by the members of the Technology Department, and will have an online learning component.

Wireless Video Projection and ChromeCast

One of the requests we get every year from teachers is to continue to expand the wireless capabilities of the technologies used in the classrooms. Teachers want to be able to connect to projectors and audio-visual systems wireless from anywhere in the room, and put class content on the screen from their laptops or tablets.  The Epson projectors and proprietary software we have put in place has worked well for many applications, but bandwidth limitations still make streaming video and audio choppy. Wireless video transmission is still an emerging technology, but we have been testing ChromeCast as a solution to this need, and the preliminary results seem positive. A test version is up and running in the technology training room, and we are deploying our first pilot run of this in Clinton now. If feedback is positive, it is likely that we will continue to deploy this solution in other classrooms during the summer.

Dealing with Cyber Attacks

Keeping the school internet online is always a primary focus for the Technology Office.  When it goes offline, the cause is usually a power loss, a failed network device, or problems with the telecommunication lines to our internet provider.  But, sometimes, the problem is caused by a form of cyber attack called Distributed Denial of Service.  We have lost internet for several hours at least three times in the past two years for this reason.  In response to this problem, our internet provider has been working with us to put software in place to quickly identify when such attacks occur, and to respond quickly to them to minimize downtime.  Today such a problem occurred right before before school meeting.  The attack was identified and mitigated with less than two minutes of downtime.  This represents the next step forward for us in providing stable, reliable internet service at the school.

Large Area Printing

The Fine Arts department has been utilizing a large area printer in Weber for several years. Recently, we have started to promote the use of the printer for other groups at Blair. In the science department, Ms. Schuster's class created digital posters which were printed in large format. The Technology Office used it to produce large, framed images to decorate the office. Ms. Maine from the Advancement office used the Weber Mac lab and the printer to provide visuals for a special Blair-themed event. The use of this printer is available to any teacher or staff member at the school for class or office use, and training on the printer software is available from Ms. Angiolelli.

Faculty and Staff Training Site

We have been developing a website dedicated to providing training resources to faculty and staff.  Barbara Angiolelli, our Instructional Technologist, has been gathering and posting information there for the last six months.  Topics and questions often come up in one-on-one help sessions and workshops, and gathering it all online is a great way to let people refer back to content later.  Contents range from using Google Apps for Education, connecting to devices in the classrooms, and mastering Excel in the office environment.  Blair users may view the site directly by clicking here.

Where Do Blair Users Spend Their Time on the Internet?

Two years ago when we analyzed internet traffic at Blair, the amount of traffic going to Facebook was larger than the sum of all the other sites put together.  Now Facebook is a distant follower to other sites.  The big change in internet use since then has been towards sites with video content.  People spend a lot of time watching TV shows and movies online.  People also use real time streaming video applications, such as Skype.  The amount of bandwidth needed to support this has increased substantially and quickly.  In two weeks we will be tripling our available bandwidth, which is consistent with what we are seeing happen at other boarding schools.  The graph below shows the top web domains visited by Blair users in the last 24 hours.

VoiceThread: Conversations in the Cloud

VoiceThread is the newest addition to the toolbox faculty can use to increase interaction with media in the classroom. VoiceThread brings together classroom content, such as video clips, slides, and images in new and interesting ways. Students can view content and comment directly using laptops, tablets, and smartphones. Instead of typing comments, faculty and students can post audio clips. A few teachers have begun experimenting with the software this year. An interactive demonstration of this software is available here: VoiceThread

Taking the Chinese Advanced Placement Exam Online

The Advanced Placement Chinese students spent time this week practicing for their AP test. The AP Chinese exam is entirely digital. Students take the exam on laptops, with headsets and microphones, and submit their tests over the internet. Practice exams were administered in the classroom so students were able to interact with the software and get help and directions before going into the actual test room next week. Students took advantage of having both the proctor and their AP teacher in the room during the practice.

Responding to Network Problems

On Tuesday of this week, around 7:45AM, a power fluctation knocked out a primary network device.  The device was a Cisco ASA firewall, which bridged the gap between the Blair network and the internet.  We identified the problem, brought a replacement device on campus, and brought the network back online around 12:15PM.  Total downtime was 4 1/2 hours.  This was an unusual event this year at Blair, all other causes of loss of internet have been due to telecommunication problems outside of the school.  Increasingly, everything we do, from payroll to classroom assignments, relies on internet access.  Behind the scenes, we been quietly upgrading systems for some time.  We have been installing redundancies to critical systems, and connecting systems to uninterruptable power supplies and circuits with generator back-ups.  The result has been a network which is vastly more stable and dependable.  There are a lot of network systems at Blair, and we still have work to do.  We understand the importance of reliable internet access. Two brand new firewall units are on order, with larger capacity and a full redundancy, which will be installed as soon as they arrive.

New Technology Elective - Design Thinking: Designing and Building Innovative Products

In this year-long course, students will work in teams of 3-4 to design and fabricate innovative objects, online games, and apps.  Students will engage in “design thinking” as they discover and research real-world problems, observe a problem first-hand, brainstorm solutions, and prototype.  Students will use 3D modeling software and a 3D printer to create functioning and aesthetically considered prototypes of their product solutions.  This class involves significant collaboration and experimentation.  Students will examine and deconstruct existing designs as well as read major texts on design thinking, such as Tim Brown’s Change by Design.  This course satisfies two semesters of the art requirement (fine art).  Taught by Ms. Blatt.