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From the Director's Desk

Greetings Administrators, Teachers, and Librarians,

New and Improved Web Hosting Service for the 2009-2010 School Year

McAllen ISD is pleased to announce the award and approval of Web Hosting and Student Email services to Intrafinity/SharpSchool for the 2009-2010 school year. SharpSchool offers improved services and new features for schools, teachers, and students. This service will support the 2008-2009 District Requirement that every classroom webpage must contain specific content relevant to current week of instruction.
Click for full article and list of new features.
New Features:

  • Live Webcam Recording supported.
  • Wikis - allow groups of users to collaborate on publishable tasks and post and edit their collective writings online. Teachers can use this tool to conduct student research projects.
  • Photo Gallery - allows users to create gallery pages that feature multiple albums. These albums contain dynamic features such as slideshows and moderated comments. These galleries are a great way to capture and showcase activities and events that occur throughout the district.
  • Survey Tool - allows schools to gather feedback from staff, students, or parents about any number of issues relating to school life and educational culture.
  • Assessments Tool - allows students to take tests and quizzes online as well as submit assignments in a virtual drop-box. This tool greatly reduces the time spent marking tests as tests are automatically graded.
  • Document Management System - allows users to upload important documents, policies, notices and other school produced documentation on the website.
  • Release Schedule - allows content authors to create web pages beforehand and schedule their release date. Content authors can work on pages in the summer and set them to go live once school starts. Event or season specific pages can be set to be archived once the event or season is over!
  • Newsletter - helps school keep parents, faculty, and the community informed by simplifying the process of sending electronic newsletters. Authors can create mailing lists by inputting email addresses. A scheduler allows the newsletter authors to send out newsletters on specific dates. The system also archives all newsletters.

Carmen Garcia, Director for Instructional Technology