Tech & Learning Magazine - How We Developed A Mobile App for Our School District – You Can Do It Too

Tech & Learning magazine published my article on how we developed our Judson ISD Connect! mobile app for iOS and Android.


The article cover how we used Conduit Mobile to easily create a published app for our community.  The article is more in depth than the prior CTO Technotes blog entry.


The T&L article is available on their site at: http://www.techlearning.com/Default.aspx?tabid=67&EntryId=4041

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Judson ISD Featured in Cover Story of THE Journal with feature on "Ease the Budget Burden"

Returning from Spring Break, I was surprised with the latest issue of THEJournal, which featured Judson ISD in its cover story "Ease the Budget Burden..and Regain Control of IT Costs."

While we are far from the only district with great ideas and keeping costs under control and/or cutting them, it is nice to see our great Technology Services' team get some press for some of the things we are doing.

There are many great ideas from several districts featured in the article, which is available on THE Journal's web site at http://thejournal.com/research/2012/02/digital-edition_febmar/asset.aspx?tc=assetpg

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Taking a break from nerding out: My recipe for turkey & chorizo stuffed poblano peppers with cilantro pepper cream sauce

As I am on spring break and wanted to get back into the kitchen where I used to spend more time, I have decided to change things up and actually try to make a recipe for what I just cooked.  Here is my recipe for poblano peppers with turkey & chorizo, with a cilantro pepper cream sauce

 turkey & chorizo stuffed poblano peppers with cilantro pepper cream sauce

INGREDIENTS:

• 1lb ground turkey
• 1 tube turkey chorizo
• 7 large poblano peppers
• 4 jalapeno peppers
• 5 cloves garlic
• 1 onion
• 1/2 bunch cilantro
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 medium zucchini (not in picture but should improve the dish - other vegetables could work, such as mushrooms or potato)
• 8 oz half and half
• 2 T butter
• 1-2 T of flour
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tbsp cumin
• salt & pepper to taste 
• Cotija cheese to crumble over served dish  (not in picture but should improve the dish)

To get started, was and core the poblanos, then boil only six of them for 5 minutes, then drain and set aside.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Dice 3/4 of an onion, four cloves garlic and two jalapenos and cook until softened in a skillet with light oil.  Add  diced zucchini, ground turkey and chorizo, breaking up to cook evenly.  Add all the spices, including salt and pepper to taste to the mixture.  Once cooked, spray a glass baking dish with cooking oil, stuff the poblano peppers with the meat & vegetable mixture.  Lay the stuffed peppers in the baking dish and place in over for 45 minutes.

Ok - time to get saucy. Start this with about 15 minutes left in baking. For the sauce, dice remaining jalapenos and one poblano (would be awesome if this one was blackened), remainder of onion, one clove garlic, and place in lightly oiled skillet and cook until softened. Place the mixture in a blender with the milk, cilantro and blend until smooth.

Melt butter in skillet and add about one and half TBSP of flour, then add blended mixture, half & half, and stir until thickened for nice rich sauce texture. Salt to taste.

Remove baked poblanos from the oven.  Plate one per plate with copious amounts of the sauce (us Americans are way to afraid of good sauces - drown them.)  Sprinkle with crumbled mexican cotija cheese and some fresh cilantro sprigs.  Enjoy.

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Department Productivity Enhancer - Using an Electronic In & Out Board

Our department had been using a rather old school system for knowing where our fellow staff members are: We had a white board that staff members wrote where they were going and marked themselves as out.  But with a fairly dispersed number of staff and ones that often get pulled for emergencies to 30 remote sites, we often ended up with a board of largely inaccurate data.


We investigated some options and ended up demoing and installing a product called EIOBoard.  With this our staff has a convenient icon residing in their system tray where they can click to see a fellow employee's status and find out if that person is available at the moment.  There is also a very useful version of the client that embeds directly in Outlook, which really enhances Outlook as a center of communication.  At any time an employee can quickly see if their co-worker is available, initiate a quick chat, or send them a text message.  This can really speed up workflow and allow for much quicker synchronous communication.  


We also extended the system to allow persons visiting our department, a screen which shows all of our employees and their current whereabouts and status.   Being an IT department, people often come searching for assistance, and this should make it easier for them to find someone available to assist them.  This screen also doubles as a quick badge in/badge out station for our staff.


For our mobile staff, they will be able to update their status & location from a web browser or from an iOS or Android app.  This will help keep the EIOBoard much more accurate and should help us know where staff are located and who is nearby to handle emergency requests.

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Judson ISD February 2012 Technology Services' Newsletter

We have published our Judson ISD February Technology Services Uplink newsletter at this link.  Featured articles include:

• Wireless - Now District Wide!!!
• Opening Up the Web for Teaching and Learning
• Self Service Password Manager
• Automated Screen Locking

And more!

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Judson ISD Classroom Excels with iPads and iPods

Ms. Kellogg's Crestview Elementary Students working

Yesterday, I had a wonderful time visiting with Judson ISD's elementary iPod and iPad pilot at Crestview Elementary School.  One might think that managing the mix of iPods and iPads (plus computers) in a classroom might be overwhelming and end up being counterproductive.  But from what I observed in the classroom, students were engaged and focused on their individual learning, as the teacher monitored and coached the students.  Their teacher, Ms. Kellogg, writes:  

The integration of iPads and iPod Touches into my first grade classroom has given me the opportunity to provide individualized instruction for the students that is both multi-leveled and multi-sensory. I utilize various iPod and iPad apps to differentiate for each student’s unique learning needs. I have been able to more tightly align my instruction with innovative, meaningful, and engaging lessons and activities.  My students get continual feedback on their progress as they work on the iPads and iPods. I am able to retrieve and analyze real-time data on my students, then adjust their level of instruction as needed. One of the biggest rewards that has resulted from this pilot program is that all of my students are able to experience success, no matter their strengths or weaknesses.

 This classroom works so well because of a teacher who was willing to fundamentally change how her classroom works and to investigate, learn, and experiment on a daily basis to keep improving the implementation and the students' learning.  She admits to spending many evenings researching and preparing for the next day.   To make this work on a larger scale, many teachers would need to have sustained and ongoing professional development and support to succeed.   I look forward to seeing the progress this class makes this year and to see if the success can be broadened beyond this one classroom.   


Some photos from my visit are available in my photo gallery.

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Judson ISD Connect Mobile Application for iPhone, iPad and Android

After talking with a fellow technology leader about a rapid development tool for easily creating iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android applications, I decided that I would investigate just how easy, or how difficult, the actual development of an Apple iOS and a Google Android application might be.  I was not sure of what kind of challenge this might be, given that I have only developed web pages and ColdFusion applications in the past.

I created an account at Conduit Mobile to investigate the process and after trying ideas out for about an hour, I knew that given the high number of great news, photo, video and other social media feeds that Judson ISD has, I could easily develop a great mobile application for our community. 

So I set aside a half day with my fantastic web team ( and one giant pizza to feed great minds ) consisting of a webmaster and web application developer and we mapped out a plan for the few hours we had put aside to work on our mobile app.  I focused on configuring the app, while the webmaster created couple of custom RSS feeds and the web app developer worked on some graphics.  We had most of the app ready within that afternoon, with everyone spending a couple more hours on their part in the next day or so.

Here is where I spent a lot of time putting the app parts together in Conduit mobile:

The most difficult parts of this project was the registering for becoming and Apple and Android developer and the associated application submissions and approvals.  The time from account creation to our application being published took no more than three weeks time, but would have been quicker had I not encountered some application build errors with Conduit Mobile.

I am very excited we were able to create such a useful app with so little time and money.  I think the end product is professional and very usable for our staff, students, and community.   

Below is the info from our Judson ISD mobile application page:

Judson ISD Connect Mobile Application for iPhone, iPad and Android

Using the freely available Conduit Mobile application platform, Judson ISD has leveraged its existing news, social media activity, photos, sports schedules, sports scores, video and bully reporting to offer our community a convenient iPhone, iPad, and Android application where they can conveniently browse our web content. We know today's mobile users like to consume web content via apps, rather than traditional web pages. The application is free of charge for anyone wanting to use from their existing smart phone or tablet.
This application was entirely built in house and the only cost besides some staff time, and the $499 Conduit Mobile premium lifetime subscription, was the $124 spent for Judson ISD to become approved developers for Apple and Android.
While there are no definitive plans for what might be added to this app in the future, we have many ideas about what we might add to this application in the future.
Please visit the links below to the Judson ISD Connect mobile application in the iTunes App Store and the Android Marketplace.
Here are some application screen shots - please download the latest version of the application to see the most current screens:

For more information about our application and our development experience, please contact Steve Young, Chief Technology Officer for Judson ISD at (210) 945-5562 or by email at syoung@judsonisd.org 

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