CUESD InfoZone

Each teacher in the CUESD District has a webpage with basic contact information. All administrators and key support staff have a webpage. Each school has its own webpage, and the District Office has its own webpage. All school service components have their own webpage (e.g., food services, libraries, GATE, nursing, grants, counselors, DAIT, etc.). All web pages have a consistent format, color, and font.

We have worked consistently to expand and improve our school web pages, and add web based educational services for students (e.g., Study Island, Follett Destiny) and these improvements have resulted in increased usage over the past two years. Our CUESD web host, SIRNET, reported the following usage of all our web pages:

Indicator Jan-Dec 2008 Jan-Dec 2006 Change

Unique Visitors 125,945 37,676 + 234%

Number of Visits 222,187 73,598 + 201%

Web Pages Served 527,033 196,424 + 168%

Number of Hits 1,509,620 599,438 + 151%
Bandwidth 39GB 10GB + 290%

Currently, there are 13 people who have “professional blogs” amongst the CUESD staff. Most use Typepad, and some Blogger. Mike Garofalo set up Typepad blogs for Maywood School. Blogging information can be found at this blog and the school website.

Mike Garofalo continues to provide webmaster and blog support for the District and School websites. He has provided ongoing training and support for Jeanie Stout, Kevin Mathiesen, and Jeanine Quist.

Labels: Websites

Corning Union Elementary School District
School Libraries
Annual Book Circulation for 2008-2009

Total Circulation: 69,283
Average Monthly Circulation: 7,785
Annual Checkouts Per Student: 30.85

Book Titles: 46,676
Book Copies: 57,407
Students: 1,880

Circulation by Library:

Maywood (6-8): 13,836
Olive View (K-5): 22,127
Woodson (K-5): 22,607
West Street (K-5): 7,917
Rancho (K-5): 2,796

Our students and teachers set their thanks and best wishes to Donna Anderson, Sondra Hall, Christina Morales, and Erin Pritchett.

Labels: Libraries

We have finally completed all work on the new Olive View Library. All the new shelving, 6 computers, furniture, artwork, equipment, and new books are now in place.

Mrs. Morales, Library Clerk at Olive View, now has all the tools to help our K-5 level students.

The new library has 11,700 books in a 1,900 square foot building. We serve 600 students. Our Follett Destiny Library Catalog is now online.

Labels: Libraries

At the present time there are 13 professional blogs that have recently been started by teachers or staff of the Corning Union Elementary School District. Three teachers and one staff member have been posting to a professional blog for over two years.

We also have webpages for every teacher and school, and numerous web based services for students and parents, including our library catalog.

Maywood Middle School and Olive View Elementary School will be using Typepad for blogging in 2009-2010.

I am often asked "how do you find the time to go to all the blogs you are interested in reading." I use a feed reader, RSS Reader, or blog aggregator. Many of these are free, like the Google Reader, and others are commercial products. A few years back I purchased and now use the Windows desktop RSS reader called Feed Demon. I click a button in Feed Demon and it goes out and automatically and quickly collects posts from all the blogs on that topic that I am interested in, and have subscribed to the RSS feed, and assembles the posts or webpages in a convenient newspaper format, excluding any posts I have already marked as read. Many websites now have RSS Feeds so you can subscribe to updates to those websites.

To "subscribe" to a blog or webpage just click on the RSS feed button in a blog or webpage. When you click on the RSS feed icon it will automatically add it to your feed reader. Then you can get posts to that blog automatically into your chosen RSS Reader. The RSS feed button displays in the URL line, or in the blog itself, and looks like this:




Here are some suggestions and tips for professional blogging by CUESD educators, written by Mike Garofalo.

Here are some informative links about professional blogging:

Middle Web A good selection of blogs by Middle School Teachers

Net-Etiquette

Copyright Kids

Guidelines and Resources for Internet Safety in Schools

Internet Plagiarism: A Teacher's Combat Guide

Tips for Better Blogging

One useful book I purchased a while back for my home office on this topic was "The Rational Guide to Google Blogger" by Wei-Meng Lee (Rational Press 2006). The blogging world, however, is changing rapidly so new features are introduced on a regular basis.

So you have a blog. Your going to take your students to the computer lab for some research work. You find four websites that have exactly what you want your students to use. You put links to these four websites in your blog. Your blog is, of course, linked on your school webpage. The students then can quickly go to your blog post, click on your links, and focus on curriculum work, not on surfing the Net ... Google-eyed. Of course, a colleague teaching the same curriculum could also use your blog post ... maybe you could collaborate and divide up the area, e.g., 6th grade ... one teacher posts about good Ancient China links, another Egypt, another Greece, etc. Here is a good example: simple, direct, efficient, focused.

Labels: Blogs, Technology

Maywood Middle School Library Information

14,900 Books
Open 30 hours each week
35 new computers in the lab

Labels: Libraries

The new 1,900 square foot Olive View Library.



Members of the community team that supported this new library.




Laura Crane, CUESD Board Chairperson, officially opens the new Olive View Library.

Information about the Olive View School Library.

Labels: Libraries

We have two full featured computer labs at the Olive View School. We have 30 new computers in each lab.

We offer a full range of educational software for students and teachers to use at Olive View, as we do at all CUESD schools. Each CUESD teacher, of course, has their own computer in their classroom and is accessible by email for students and parents.

Labels: Computer Labs