Bill MacKenty

Technology strengthens, deepens, and broadens our learning...

2004 Professional Goals:

1. To develop a website for the Edgartown School

Status:  The website is TECHNICALLY complete.  However, it is not PROCEDURALLY complete.  Who will add school lunches? How will teachers add information and assignments?  I am actively developing the second generation of our website. 

2. To create and distribute training materials for OS X

Status: This is an outstanding success.  There is an increasing buzz about the training CD’s I made, and we purchased a program to allow making the training videos easier and easier.

3. To continue to assist and support faculty in integrating technology into their teaching

Status: We witnessed several very positive developments this year; teachers are using the mini-labs, and I’ve seen science, art, and even social studies trying new things with technology.  The tech survey provided us a great opportunity to understand what teachers want. 

4. To bring Open Source software into the school

Status: We are using Linux as a webserver, and are enjoying the benefits of a stable, secure, and very inexpensive operating system.  We’d like to bring another linux server, and use it to help us cache and filter web content (squid)

5. To survey the entire faculty about their feelings and thoughts regarding technology use

Status: This was a landmark event for the year.  I personally met and interviewed over 70% of our faculty & staff and discussed their feelings about technology and education.  The results were intriguing, and I have already begun to address some issues.  I will repeat this survey next year. I think the single most important aspect of this survey was our faculty felt listened to.

6. To develop a website where I can share my thinking around instructional technology in education.

Status: I am pleased with the progress of http://www.mackenty.org.  The site is far from finished, but I am slowly making progress towards something I hope will serve as an effective means of communication with my students and their parents.

7. To construct an immersive, educational simulation game.

This has been the most fun I’ve all year!  The game is coming along nicely, and has been a genuine stretch for me.  I am happy with the look and feel, and hope to continue working on it over the summer.  I remain convinced educational games can provide an important place in learning and teaching.

Personal Goals:

1. To learn Polish

Status: Dobrie.  My Polish is coming along slowly.  I know about 150 words, and I continue to learn about 5 or 10 more each week.  I meet with a teacher every Wednesday, and listen to Polish music when I can.  I have visited Poland twice, and plan on going next Christmas.  Of course, finding people to talk with is difficult.

2. To learn the programming language PHP (with MYSQL)

Status: There has been very satisfactory progress this year in this area.  This learning continues to hold potential, as our school website runs on a LAMP (Linux, Apache, Mysql and PHP) platform.