Questa Technology Program

What’s New in Technology

Links on Questa Schools Tech Support Page
The Questa School District Technology Program will be providing technology forms online. The forms include; Staff and Student Surveys, and Staff and Student Policies. The surveys can be completed and submitted online. The policies can be printed out, signed, and then handed in.

Distant Learning Classes
All locations have the capability to utilize video conferencing. All school sites are open to students, staff, and the community to take college level courses via video conference.

Students
Questa Schools worked in collaboration with Microsoft, NNMCC, and REC #2 to offer three college courses this past school year.. During second semester, fifteen students from our district completed course work which included Introduction to Video, Introduction to Audio, and Gaming. Students earned four college credits for each course they completed.

Instruction for these courses was taught online and instructors used blackboard to communicate with their students. Students watched various videos to learn concepts for their course work. Students in the Introduction to video course learned how to film and use windows movie maker to create movie files. The students from the Introduction to Audio course learned how to use an audio recorder and use Pro-Tools to create and modify sound files. Gaming students used the program C# to create and modify X-Box games which then they were able to deploy and display through an X-Box to a TV screen.

As a final project, students from the video and audio courses made films that incorporated what they had learned throughout the course. Students from the video course wrote a short story, made it into a screen play, created a shot list and storyboard, filmed, and created a movie file. Students from the audio course learned how to film in the last four weeks and inserted music with mixing and voice over in their films. On May 8, 2009, film presentations were held at the Alta Vista Lecture Hall. Randy Guthrie from Microsoft came and spoke with the students on the importance of having technical skills for college and the work place. We invited all sophomores and juniors in hopes to recruit them for next year. We decided to make it interesting and have them compete with each other. There were eight students in the introduction to video course and their instructor selected 1st through 4th place. Introduction to audio had five students and their instructor selected 1st through 3rd place. All students cheered on each other and appeared to be interested in these courses for next year.

The students in these courses set a trend. All of a sudden I noticed that other classes here at QHS were doing group filming final projects. Clara Adam’s students made various commercials. Diane Leon’s classes were doing Spanish filming projects too. The students from the video and audio college courses were assisting their classmates in creating interesting final projects.

Staff & Community Members
Staff members use the video conferencing system to work on their dossiers to be able to achieve a higher level of license. Other staff & community members are using this system to finish their degrees.

Telemedicine Grant
Through the REC #2 we applied and were awarded the telemedicine grant. We were able to purchase the following equipment for the Distant Learning classroom at Questa High School:
1- Polycom video conferencing unit with 2 cameras and a microphone
1- Elmo document camera
1-Smart Board
3 classrooms wired to use satellite feed for Distant Learning network

ERATE Funding
2007-2008 School Year
Questa Schools was awarded 279,340.05 in Erate Funding for the 2007 school year. Percentage rate varied from 85 to 90 percent that SLD would pay and the balance for Questa Schools to pay. These funds helped to pay for switches, ups, servers, Internet, video distribution, radvision, and telecommunication.

2008-2009 School Year
Questa Schools was awarded 406,557.86 in Erate Funding for the 2008 school year. The percentage rate will also vary from 85 to 90 percent that the SLD would pay and the balance for the Questa Schools to pay. Funds will help pay for Internal connections, Internet, and telecommunications.

Annual Technology Committee Meeting held on May 21, 2009
The technology committee meeting went well.
• Other technology items discussed were:
1. Help support whatever is needed for the online class requirement for graduation.
2. Locking down wireless units. We are having issues due to individuals accessing our network that do not have virus protection. Plus we are wide open to hackers being able to access personal information and or bringing down our network. Best practice to secure our network would be to configure each one of our wireless units to ask for a WEP key which only tech department will have. Tech department will program WEP key in all laptops that are protected by district.
3.A couple more video camcorders and recorders for QHS library to support college courses.
4. Check into cost for new library automation software to support Windows Vista.
5. Additional surveillance cabling & cameras district wide.
6. Scanner for Rio Costilla Lab.
7. Scanner & digital camera for Alta Vista Library.
8. Create High School Students email accounts.
9. Maintenance on technology equipment district wide.
10. Determine how many battery backups are needed district wide and purchase.
11. New Phone systems district wide.
12. Purchase one document camera for each school site district wide.