In addition to ensuring 24/7 access for students, staff and community to our school’s technology resources and providing professional development to our staff, creating and maintaining our school websites is one of my specialties. Here are some websites I created:
Andrean High School – Merrillville, Indiana
The Instructional Technology Services (ITS) Department Website provides resources for:
- Students
- News announcements
- Homework resources
- Responsible Use Policy
- Student Handbook
- And more…
- Teacher
- Help Desk
- Professional Development Opportunities
- Gradebook
- Teacher Portals
- And more…..
- Parent Resources
- Pay for School Lunch
- Check children’s grades and attendance from home
- And more…
- Resources for ITS and the Technology Advisory Committee
- Local Technology Plan and National Technology Plan
- Social Media
Guitar Club at Andrean High School – Merrillville, Indiana
The Guitar Club was one of the many clubs offered to students. This website was created to facilitate online resources that students could access from home.
Stamford Public Schools – Stamford Connecticut
Education Technology Services (ETS) Departmental Website that provides links for:
- Support
- News
- Training
- information about the roll out of the new electronic Gradebook from PowerSchool
- Education links for teachers and staff
- information about the Advisory-Connection which contains a curriculum component that houses 300 instructional videos for both teachers and students
- Contact information.
Stamford Public Schools – Stamford Connecticut
Resource Page for Smarter Balanced Assessment Testing.
One of my primary responsibilities as the Chief Technology Consultant at Stamford Public Schools was to prepare the district for the first year that the state of Connecticut mandated statewide online testing from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.
I created this website for all staff that Includes:
- Resources for administrators
- Resources for teachers
- Resources for technology department
- Training modules for teachers
- and access to a dedicated help desk for any issues during testing.
Merrillville Community School Corporation
Main website for the Merrillville Schools
I believe that a school’s website establishes the preferred image to the community and is essential for stakeholder communications. Our previous website did not fulfill that goal. Therefore, I undertook the challenge of the total conversion of our existing school district website to a content management system (SchoolWires) that serves as teacher/student/parent portal. No import options were available from the previous site so the entire website had to be created from scratch.
- Each school’s site was created and then the local webmasters were trained on updating/maintaining their new site.
- Every teacher was provided with a template page for their classroom site and were trained on how customize and maintain their site.
- The websites contains sections for Parents, Students, Staff and Community, and also functions as a private intranet resource for staff members with school usernames and passwords. Also contains a staff directory and departments for each school.
Department of Information Technology Services
Main website for Information Technology Services (ITS) at Merrillville Schools
- Contains professional development for all technology used at the district
- Overview of the technology resources offered to staff and students
- Staff profiles
- Links for support and training
- Provides documentation of the mission and vision of ITS,
Pirate TechKeys
Website for professional development and one-to-one project. Includes:
- Tech Tips
- Teacher Portals
- One-to-one Research papers
- How to contact support
- Help topics for school software
- Info on Learning Management Systems
- Summary of Project Red research
- Information on Flipped and Blended Classrooms
- Internet Resources
- Teacher Tools
Another website created for our one-to-one iPad group was the database of iPad apps. This was an interface where teachers could share their apps and view summaries. The interface I created was also designed to sort and filter apps anyway the teacher wanted.
Freelance Websites
In addition to the websites I created for schools, I have also created other websites as a freelancer. One of my freelance websites I produced is a documentation on the history of live music from my hometown of Oelwein, Iowa. The HubCityMusic website contains stories about musicians and bands, local venues, pictures, music and video clips. Below are two pages from HubCityMusic.
One of my favorite and most popular stories was about my childhood friend Randy Landas who traveled around the world playing with Rita Coolidge, Burt Bacharach, Engelbert Humperdinck, Andy Gibb, Rickie Lee Jones, Johnny Mathis, Marilyn McCoo, Helen Reddy, and Little Anthony and the Imperials.
Another interesting read is about a childhood friend of mine Jay Sieleman who is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the internationally known Blues Foundation in Memphis Tennessee.
