WWPS Technology

Using Pando & Aspen to Manage Our 1:1 Chromebook Program Aspen is our district's Student Information System, and we use it for almost every aspect of our business as a school district. We use Aspen and Pando together to run our helpdesk. Pando is one of the built in tools in Aspen that helps us manage our 1:1 Chromebook environment.  Everyone in our district uses Aspen, and can submit a helpdesk ticket within the application. How to Submit a Helpdesk Ticket: The video clip below illustrates the simple process of submitting a Helpdesk ticket. Using Pando: A Quick Overview Using Pando for our district means that a relatively small work group can organize, evaluate, and attack our Helpdesk needs for approximately 4,500 end users.  All of our tickets are concentrated in one area, and our end users receive automated updates as their ticket is processed. Our district has been using Aspen/Pando as our helpdesk solution since August of 2010. This short video expla...

Using Aspen to Run a 1:1 Chromebook Initiative: How We Saved Ourselves and Possibly the World! Post One: What's the Big Deal? The West Warwick Public Schools started our 1:1 Chromebook initiative in the spring of 2012-2013 school year. We outfitted a single kindergarten classroom with 25 Chromebooks that they brought back and forth to school each day. In the next school year we outfitted an entire K-4 elementary school with over 400 units, and our district was off and running. In addition to the one school we added close to 800 units across the district in individual classrooms. We called our initiative, "One to One, One Classroom at a Time". The plan was to use the next couple of years to ramp-up the rest of our students using the one classroom at a time model. Early on the school committee, building level administrators, and central office staff felt a lot of pressure to really get things moving. In September of 2014, the West Warwick School Committee, decided to g...

Creating the September Re-Issue Assessment Definition in Aspen: Supporting a 1:1 Chromebook Initiative The West Warwick Public Schools has been a K-12, 1:1 Chromebook district since the spring of 2012-2013. Our district uses Aspen to assist us with our management of over 4,200 Chromebooks for students, and every staff member. This blog post will explain how we use Aspen's Assessment tool to manage the process of re-issuing Chromebooks in September. As you can well imagine it is a tremendous task to move each student's Chromebook from their previous year's classroom to their new classroom in time for the new school year. What makes it even more difficult is that in the last weeks of August it's not uncommon for student to be shuffled from classroom to classroom, and sometimes moved to another school within the district. Why Use the Assessment Definition All of this movement demands that we have an easy way for teachers to communicate with the helpdesk in an easy a...

Reflections on the Aspen Institute 2015 It's been a little over a week since the conclusion of the Aspen Institute that brought Aspen users to Providence, Rhode Island. The theme of this year's conference was "Unlock the Superhero Within: Saving the World One Student at a Time". I love the theme, and the important message that it conveys. The message that we're all superheroes, and it really is our job to ensure that we protect our students and staff "one person at a time". I think that's what attracted our district to using Aspen over five years ago. Of course it came down to the capabilities of the student information system, but it was more than it being a robust SIS. Aspen allowed us to customize the system so we could collect the data that we valued, and could tell our own story as a school district. Ultimately that meant that we could tell the individual stories of our students, and our staff. In today's education reform environmen...

The Aspen Institute It's the weekend before the Aspen Institute in Providence, Rhode Island, and I'm looking forward to one of the best SIS/IMS two day conventions around. Each year the conference grows, and participants travel from districts nearby and far away.  I'm excited about this year's theme, "Unlock the Super Hero Within". It really is the perfect metaphor for everyone connected with implementing Aspen in their district. Our district chose Aspen a little more than 5 years ago, because of its out of the box power as well as its ability to be customized. My department consists of both curriculum and traditional IT staff. We are involved in professional development, curriculum development, educator evaluation, and traditional IT functions. I know the people in my department understand the incredible responsibility we have in protecting our students and the adults that serve them.  When I talk with my staff about protection they know that  I...

Add Shared Documents to My Drive Since Google has made the switch to the "New Drive" users have struggled with shared documents. It is difficult to search for documents in the "Shared with Me" portion of Google Drive. Don't fret because there are some easy solutions to getting documents that are shared with you into your Drive so they can be easily searched. In our district people usually share a document or folder using the email notification option in Drive. Often a shared document or folder will look like the screenshot below. Once you've opened the folder it allows you access to documents, but sometimes the documents behave as if they are in view mode.  Recently when I open a shared folder the documents were displayed in the following manner. Clicking on the document allowed me to access the information from items that are shared with me, but I often struggled to locate the document in the future.  We have over 3/4 of a millio...

Use Your Chomebook to Make Phone Calls Since the district has moved over to a new phone system many of our classrooms no longer have the ability to dial an outside line. One way to get around this problem is to use your Chromebook to make a phone call. You can access Google Voice through your gmail account, or use Google Hangouts to make a call. There are several ways to initiate a phone call. Follow these simple directions to place your call. Click on Google Hangouts or Google Voice Simply click on either the Google Hangouts icon, or the Google Voice icon once you've accessed your gmail account. If you haven't setup your Google+ account you will have less features when using the Google Hangouts option. If you click on the Google Voice option you can simply type in the phone number that you want to call, or search for a number in your contacts. Phone calls made in the United States are free, and you can add money to your Google Voice account for international cal...