As Cajon Valley continues to work toward a one-to-one initiative for all students in the district, many exciting developments have occurred.

Chromebooks

The next phase of our 1:1 rollout includes the purchase and distribution of 6,187 Chromebooks.  A Chromebook is a fast, lightweight laptop optimized for the web. Unlike traditional laptops, Chromebooks rely on Internet applications and online services rather than locally installed programs. The district has decided to purchase the Lenovo X131e Chromebook.  The Lenovo Chromebooks have a rugged design, offer excellent battery life, and startup in about five seconds.

The district expects the Chromebooks to arrive during the third week of February.  A team of three staff members will work diligently over the next three months to register, etch, and distribute the computers to our Innovation Grant teams.  Chromebooks will be delivered in an Aver TabChargeCT cart.  Distribution will be based on the Smarter Balanced testing schedule and will begin in March.  Sites will be notified in advance as to when they can expect their delivery.

Infrastructure and Network

Cajon Valley’s backbone network is slated for additional upgrades this summer to better support the growing needs of our learning community.  New core routers will be purchased and installed allowing us to increase our network bandwidth to each site and our Internet service provider.

Upgrades to Cajon Valley’s wireless infrastructure will continue this summer.  Anza, Bostonia, Chase, Crest, Greenfield, Home School, Johnson, Magnolia, Meridian, Montgomery, Naranca, Sevick and W.D. Hall will all receive the new Xirrus wireless access points.  In the meantime, additional access points have been purchased and will be installed to support our Innovation Grant teams and Smarter Balanced testing.

Office 365 Update

Over the winter recess, Office 365 received an upgrade.  Outlook Web App has a new look optimized for easy touch-access on tablets and mobile phones.  Additional features like SkyDrive Pro were introduced to allow users to sync their files into the cloud.  All files that you store in SkyDrive Pro are private initially – only you can see them – unless you decide to share them. You can easily share a file with everyone in the district by placing it in the Shared with Everyone folder, for example. You can also share files with specified co-workers so you can collaborate on projects.

Janie Bachman has been hard at work creating documentation and instructional videos.  Those videos can be found here.  Thank you, Janie!