New Tech Support Specialist Selected

We are pleased to announce that Mattias Rahm has been selected to fill the vacant District Technology Support Specialist position. Mattias has been working as a Building Technology Support Specialist at Roseburg High School since February of this year and has a number of years experience providing technology support. He is a welcome addition to the district tech support team who has demonstrated his talent in working with people and equipment over the past several months. 

In addition to his tech support duties, Mattias will take over responsibility for maintaining the district web site as well as helping schools with their web sites as needed.

Please join us in welcoming Mattias to his new position.

Where has the time gone?

As is always the case, the days of August are a whirlwind of activity leading up to the start of a new school year. Late summer and fall of 2009 have been at least as busy as any year with the network transition continuing and multiple training sessions offered to help people begin using the new e-mail system.

Computers for teachers, administrators and other staff members have now all been updated to the new network. Some speed and performance issues are still being worked out, but overall the new network is working well. Once these computers were finished the technicians focused on computer labs to get them ready for general student use and fall assessments in particular. The final part of this process was to work on student computers in individual classrooms so that these computers could be used for online research, Accelerated Reader tests or other instructional activities. With around 2,500 computers throughout the school district this was a tremendous task that the technicians worked long and hard to complete.

In the training department, several classes were offered during the week of August 10th to introduce users to the new Outlook e-mail system. In addition, most schools also opted to schedule on-site training sessions during the inservice days of late August or soon after school started. Classes continue to be offered as part of the Tech Tuesdays series or can be scheduled by request.

Work Continues at RHS

Technicians continue to work on office staff and teacher computers at the high school. Computers in the main office and counseling center are finished and teacher computers in Vo-Tech, Heritage, Fine Arts and the Main are in progress. Media Center staff computers have also been updated. One thing is for sure, RHS has a lot of computers!

In addition to the network and e-mail transition, a transition is also underway for the Schoolmaster Student Information System. Previously Schoolmaster has been site-based with each school using its own separate version of the program. Beginning this school year we will use the district version of Schoolmaster making it easier to maintain and manage student data while becoming more accessible to staff across the district. Schoolmaster data has been converted to a single database and training will soon begin on its use at the secondary schools.

Ahh, the high school office… air conditioning!

The main server at RHS is done and the techs have moved to the high school.

The teacher and office staff computers at Fremont are done. They’ve also finished the office computers at Jolane. However, with the principals and office staff returning to work at the beginning of next week, they’ve moved on to RHS to focus on the office computers there.

Progress is being made… one computer at a time!

Additional Information About Passwords

Many users have changed their password to something other than the default password. Normally it is highly recommended that a user’s password not be easily determined by others so changing the default password is a good idea. We have found, however, that in the course of setting up computers to work with the new network that technicians sometimes may need to reset a password back to the default. If you have changed your password and later find that it does not work, this may be the reason. If your password does not work please try the default password. Normally once the techs have worked on computers at your school it is safe to change your password and, in fact, you are encouraged to do so.

Besides the guidelines previously given for choosing a password (7 character minimum with at least one capital and one non-alphabetic character) we have also learned that Outlook is not fond of your name or user name being part of the password. When picking a password don’t try to use one that contains your name or user name. It is OK, though, to substitute numbers or other characters in place of some letters in a word. For example, instead of using password you could use P@55word for something easy to remember that also meets the system requirements.

Moving on to the Secondary Schools

All server updates are complete for the elementary schools and for both middle schools. The first pass through the elementary schools is also now complete with teacher and office staff computers ready to use the new network. Technicians are currently working on teacher and office staff computers at Fremont Middle School.

Steady Progress

Technicians continue to make steady progress with school servers and workstations. Server updates are now complete for Fullerton IV, Eastwood and Fremont. Teacher and Office Staff workstations are finished for Green and Fullerton IV, with Eastwood workstations in-progress.

Progress Report

It’s been a busy summer so far, as we expected that it would be. The Tech Department is working steadily to update the servers and computers throughout the district to enable them to work with the new network and e-mail software. It has been a few days since my last post so I thought that I would give a general update of our progress over the past few days.

Servers: Upgrades to school servers are complete for Hucrest, Melrose, Fir Grove, Winchester, Rose, Sunnyslope, Green and Fullerton IV Elementary Schools. The Eastwood server is currently in-progress and should be finished tomorrow. These upgrades include a new network operating system and new backup capabilities for each server.

Teacher and Office Staff Computers: A team of techs have been busy updating available teacher and office staff computers by removing unneeded software (like GroupWise) and setting these computers up to work with the new e-mail program, Outlook, and to connect to the updated school server. Schools completed so far include Hucrest, Melrose, Fir Grove, Winchester, Rose and Sunnyslope. The technicians are currently working on computers at Green Elementary School.

Reminder: Please remember that we can’t upgrade your computer if it is not available when the technicians come to your school. If your computer missed the upgrade please contact Gary unless you have made previous arrangements with him.

Winchester Workstations, Servers Elsewhere

Yesterday and today technicians have been updating teacher and office staff workstations at Winchester Elementary and finishing up a few computers at Fir Grove. Rose is up next for these workstation updates, starting either Thursday or Friday.

Server upgrades are complete for Winchester, Rose and Green schools. The Sunnyslope server is currently in progress.

Importing a GroupWise Address Book into Outlook

If you followed the steps to save an Address Book from GroupWise before that system was turned off you can import that Address Book into your Outlook Contacts. Please note that the steps listed below apply only to the full Outlook application and not to the web-based Outlook. If you are using the web-based Outlook please contact Gary McFarlane for assistance.

Follow these steps to import an Address Book into Outlook:

• Click here to go to an online vCard conversion site
• Click the Browse button and locate your Address Book file
• On the Format line choose CSV, Comma and check the Add Header Line box
• There is no need to change the Encoding or Filter options
• Click the Convert button and wait for the process to complete
• When the conversion is done click the Save button and indicate where you want the file to be saved (the Desktop is usually a good choice)
• You can close the conversion window now
• Locate and open your converted file (it should open with Excel)
• Edit the file to make any needed changes or to remove names you don’t need
• Re-save the file (it should remain a CSV file); note that you must do this even if you made no changes or you will not be able to import the file
• Launch the Outlook application (do not use the web-based Outlook)
• Click the Contacts button in the lower left corner of the window
• From the File menu choose Import and Export…
• From the list of action choices, pick Import from anther program or file and click the Next button
• Choose the Comma Separated Values (Windows) and click the Next button
• Click on the Browse button and locate your file (this should be the converted file, not the original file)
• Select the option for dealing with duplicates that you prefer and click the Next button
• Contacts should be the destination folder and should already be highlighted
• Click the Finish button and your Address Book will be added to your Contacts