Add One More Technology to the Mix

Well, our group attended a sales presentation for yet another product - this time School Wires. School Wires seems to be very similar to School Fusion in that it is a web-hosting product that can integrate with Gaggle and has a variety of functionality including blogs, discussion boards, teacher web pages, etc. The nice thing about this product is that the pages from district level to classroom level have a similar look and feel, and employees can be given various levels of clearance that allow them to view more or less material, and make changes only to certain sites. Our group along with the technology facilitator for the county and the facilitators for other schools will continue to look at these different technologies. In all liklihood, we will invite two or three of the leading vendors back to Davie County for a final presentation, and some more specific price quotes on customized services. One thing that the representative from School Wires said repeatedly, was "we don't have this or that service at this time." This led us to believe that there are some serious upgrades in the works that may involove partnerships with other companies. The fact that things are changing so quickly will make the decision about what technologies our county ultimately chooses, that much more important. The final decision may not be made until the new year, but we will continue offering our input to the process.

Looking at Integration of Technologies

Well, my group has almost finished a comprehensive spreadsheet comparing different course management systems and content filters. We are ready to see how all of these technologies will work together, and which ones we should recommend to our school system. We have looked at Blackboard, Moodle, School Fusion, Gaggle, and Teacher Web. Each of these programs have their own set of strengths and weaknesses, and our county does not need to pay for all of these services, but we will be trying to determine which technologies will work together the best and give the county the best bang for their buck. School Fusion has definitely risen to the top as a resource for building websites, and Blackboard 9.1 is getting new looks because of its use at NCVPS. We want to be able to make an informed, intelligent decision that will benefit our county for years to come. We think we will be able to do that as we continue our discussions over the course of the next two weeks.