When students start school at the beginning of the year with their classmates, they have the
advantage of setting up their computers together. At my school, we take all of the students through a Mac and Me course which is a course designed to empower the students to not only set their computers up properly, but also works with the students to positively shape their digital footprint. When students start midway though the year, they miss the opportunity to experience this with their classmates. So, when students show up for the first time on a random Wednesday in February, I do all that I can to get them set up so that they can hit the ground running as they dip their foot into the pool of learning with technology. When new students dip their feet into the pool, their classmates experience a leadership role by becoming the teachers.
Today I spent nearly an hour with a single new student. From the moment I walked out with the computer, we hit the ground running.
Deciding on a Username
Our systems do not talk to each other. When a student changes their password in one
location (i.e.: on their computer), it is not automatically changed for the cloud computing system, Moodle, nor WordPress account. Therefore, the first order of business is to decide on a username, write it down and give it to my aide so that she can manually go set the password in all of our systems. Oh, and the password has to be at least 8 characters long with a number because of our Google Student Gmail accounts. We manually set passwords for:
- Powerschool
- Equitrac printing
- Student Blogs
- Moodle
- Student Gmail
- Video portacl
Usernames and Passwords on the Computer Accounts
We give students their username that they will use for all systems related to school so that they can sign into their computer. The naming convention has the student’s first name, a number, their campus, and their graduation year. We sign them into the computer with the most famous default password in the world and immediately go to System Preferences to change the password on their personal account and the secondary install account.
Repair Disk Permissions and Complete Software Updates
The computers at our school have an image that was built and updated either over the
summer or over the winter holiday. As a result, I show the students how to do Software Updates on their computer. The school image also hides the Sharing folder in System Preferences, but this can be corrected by repairing disk permissions. The students complete this step by creating a reoccurring event in their iCal, prompting them to do Software Updates and Repair Permissions once a week.
Connect to the Server
The school uses a server that can be used while students are at school so that teachers can
easily share files with students, and students can easily drop digital assignments into their teacher’s dropbox. I log the students in with the default password and have them change the password to match all of the other passwords. We then go to the math teacher folders so that the students can download their digital math textbook.
Set up Student WordPress Blog
Students who are already at school have been nurturing their blog for months if not years. I
log into the WordPress MU blog with the students and set up everything in the backend so that they can hit the ground running when a teacher asks them to post reflections to their blog. Within their blog we do the following together:
- Change title and tagline in Settings
- Activate EmbedIt, Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam, Unfiltered MU and WP-SpamFree in Plugins
- Change their theme in Appearance
- Add Categories, Recent Posts, Links, Archives and Meta to their Widgets in Apperance
- Delete the About Me Page
- Create a link to each of their teachers under Links
- Change the Uncategorized category under Post to Humanities and create a category for each one of their classes
I then show them how to write their first post complete with pictures and PDF documents.
Log them into Powerschool
I log students into the school’s Powerschool site to show them how to check their grades and how to register for After School Activities and sports.
Setup their Digital Portfolio in iWeb
All of the students in our school create a digital portfolio that can grow with them as the
move from grade level to grade level. Students have pages for their Student as a Learner Profile (SLP), subject areas, electives and special projects like Reading EXP and their NGO site. I let the students hit the ground running because teachers weave the portfolio into their daily practice as the portfolio has turned into a dynamic representation of learning. Student can publish to an FTP server at school and I ensure that their account is active by helping them setup all of their pages to publish.
Activate Smartmusic
Our band and orchestra students and teachers use SmartMusic to supplement their learning.
I wish I had SmartMusic when I was in school as it has been one of the best motivators and learning experiences for musical students. Basically, teachers assign a piece in SmartMusic and then students log into their account and play the piece into the computer with accompaniment. SmartMusic gives immediate feedback to the student by telling them if the note was early, late, sharp, flat, etc… Students then send the file and the score to teachers. Students, parents and teachers love SmartMusic!
Enter their Moodle Classroom
Our school uses Moodle to supplement what is happening inside the classroom. I make sure
that students cannot only login, but that they are registered for the correct courses. I show they how to interact with the Moodle environment with their materials and course discussions. Not all teaches are using Moodle with the school as it’s part of our smorgasbord of tech available, but we are sure that each grade level has exposure in at least one of their classes.
Sign students into the school accounts for IXL and History Alive
Students use History Alive as a supplement to their humanities
curriculum and IXL to practice specific math goals. The reports and graphs from IXL give detailed feedback to students, teachers and parents.
Discuss Digital Citizenship and Safety
Perhaps the most difficult part of student entering midyear is that they will not have benefited from the multiple class meetings and discussions about digital citizenship and safety. Before sending new students off to class, we have a conversations about what has been talked about all year at school around shaping online profiles. We openly discuss topics with students on that first day but follow up with conversations through the Mac and Me mandatory elective class that all new students take upon entry into school.
Before new students dip their foot into the technology pool, we do as must as we can for them so that they can feel successful within their first few weeks. They will hear phrases like
- Get the files off the server
- I’ve updated your iCal to reflect the new testing dates
- Write a reflect on the blog
- Send me your SmarMusic file
- Post to the class discussion in Moodle
- Access the decimal practice in your digital math textbook
- Log into your History Alive account to learn more about…
Of course, they will here things like:
- Greenscreen yourself in front of Mt. Vesuvius and report live from scene about what is happening in Pompeii
- Record you and a partner discussing this topic in Chinese and send me the raw
Garageband file so that I may leave digital comments
But they’ll get there in time! In the end, I spent over an hour with each new student individually when they come in mid-year. What is important is that the new students are ready to hit the ground running when they enter the classrooms of our school!
Photo Credits:
yellow by darkmatter

One of the most startling statistics mentioned was that 82% of students who have broken internet house rules have experienced something negative online. 























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