Schools

Concern Raised Over Mineola Technology Plans

District offering support for teachers on school website pages.

A number of questions and concerns were recently raised over several of which the Mineola School District has thrown its weight behind for the 2011-12 school year, most notably with the .

Following a series of questions from parents over how to log into the new Mineola School District website, Superintendent Dr. Michael Nagler reviewed the procedure for those still having difficulty at the October 6 meeting of the .

Once on the site, parents should navigate to either the high school or middle school links and click “eSchool portal” on the bottom right hand corner under “links.”

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If the child has just been enrolled in or entered the fifth grade parents will have to contact the district for a username and password. Once they are logged in, parents can check the attendance, schedule and report cards for their children. The system is used only for these student management capacities.

Aside from the fifth grade, username and password from last year will work on the site.

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Dr. Nagler said there is “no reason” to sign in unless the teacher is using the webpage where projects and assignments are displayed. “It’s really a kid resource.”

While it is the district’s aim for every teacher to have a working webpage and all teachers have pages created, only about 50 percent are making use of all the features at the time of the October 6 meeting. “For some it’s not second nature for all of our teachers to use webpages,” Dr. Nagler said, adding that the district is offering training for teachers. “It’s not where it needs to be.”

The superintendent also attributed part of the delay towards the being “overwhelmed” due to the number of changes in the building, including the new digital devices as part of the one-to-one initiative, a new curriculum and a new evaluation system with new report cards, all of which were rolled out simultaneously in the last three months.

“I don’t believe it should be a waste of money I believe it should be a tool that should be utilized and highly successful is a waste when they’re not used,” board vice-President William Hornberger said. “That level of difference is the frustration that im sharing now.”

“There’s a reality to what we ask (them) to do. That group of teachers in particular, I think we have to cut them a little slack,”  Dr. Nagler said, adding that the teachers were being asked to adapt to the program changes “all simultaneously which is incredibly difficult to accomplish.” The superintendent said that it was his expectation that fifth and sixth grade class webpages would be up the week of October 10.

The meanwhile is “ahead of the game” with webpages and the seventh grade is seeing “movement with the webpages” because they are continuing last year’s practices. The superintendent said that teachers can update the pages during their time at home when asked by Trustee John McGrath if instructors would be given time to do the work during their time spent at the buildings.

“What we’re talking about is the simple stuff,” McGrath said.

Dr. Nagler gave an example of a high school teacher who may have five classes with a different page for each class.

“If teachers see the value in using this, she would have to go and update every single class every day to make it worthwhile,” he said, explaining that his vision for the site when combined with using the , by the time the current sixth grade reaches the eighth grade, high school students using smart phones can see their schedule and assignments on one page.

“The parents have already purchased some type of phone for the majority of the high school kids anyway, so if we leverage that we don’t have to hit our budget to buy a device and we can leverage the device that they already have,” Dr. Nagler said.

The mobile interface would be a platform which would not be tied to a single operating system and be able to be used on a Mac, PC or Android mobile device. “The reality is you can’t buy a device for every student. if you bring your own devices you have to get a platform,” Dr. Nagler said. “Kids will get engaged; its the way they live, they live with these devices, they’re with them all the time. We want to leverage that and make it work for us.”

Several concerns were also shared at the meeting that the improvements were also not coming fast enough with another of the district’s for the sixth graders. 

“It’s not taking what you did yesterday and making it digital,” Dr. Nagler said of having teachers move from a blackboard/ whiteboard/ Smartboard setup in the classroom to the netbook computer. “I want lesson designs that are having kids collaborate using the tool we gave them.”

One of the lesson plans from sixth grade teacher Vincent Interrante, , involves a collaborative lesson/ competition between his own students and others from Australia, England, Texas and Washington state to create, design and launch a water bottle rocket.

“I understand its not coming fast enough, but its coming.” Dr. Nagler assured the board.


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