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Procom Services, a professional information technology services firm and Microsoft Gold – Certified partner,
is working in collaboration with Granville County Schools in North Carolina to create a new program that will
provide a state of the art technology system for students at the School of Engineering and Applied Studies (SEAS).
"The goal of the partnership between Procom Services, Granville County Schools, and the Butner Federal Corrections
Center is to create a lasting benefit to the education system," says Kerry Stainback, an agriculture teacher at the
South Granville School of Engineering and Applied Studies. "This program will increase teacher productivity,
improve the value of instruction, improve communication and collaboration among the students, teachers and parents,
and encourage the use of information technology and education management."
As part of the program, the school received a new computer lab equipped with Unified Communication and Collaboration
(UCC) technology and Microsoft solutions for Agriculture students. This provides students with access to
electronic communication tools and the Internet in the classroom.
The technology and tools are the same software tools that that a Fortune 500 business uses.
Microsoft products that will be used in the UCC trial include:
- Microsoft Office 2007 ( Word – which includes enhancements to Assisted Technologies, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word Publisher)
- Small Business Server for the department which contains Windows Server, SQL Server, Exchange Server, and SharePoint. SharePoint
is a web-based collaboration and document management platform from Microsoft. It can be used to host web sites which can be used to
access shared workspaces and documents, discussion boards, as well as specialized applications such as wikis, blogs and many other
forms of applications, from within a browser. SharePoint functionality is exposed as web parts, such as a task list, or discussion pane.
These web parts are composed into web pages.
- Microsoft Live Meeting for conference calls and web sharing
- Microsoft Project Office for the SAE student projects
- Demos of VoIP integration with desktop software, and some SmartPhones with Mobility
- Flextrack (Microsoft based -3rd party tool designed by Procom) for Time Tracking for the Cooperative Education Program
"One of the courses that we are offering next years is a biotechnology course, which is the one of the fastest growing areas in the Research
Triangle area," explains Stainback. "In order for us to be able to offer this course we must have open access to up-to-date information,
meaning access to the web, which this new lab gives us."
By the time most textbooks reach the classrooms the information is five to six years old and in the case of biotechnology, the textbook
would no longer provide students with the cutting-edge information needed to stay ahead in the field.
Another component of the program was to create a web site that would serve as an information tool and a place for submission for the
semester projects each student enrolled in the school must complete. Some of the projects span several school years and can be
submitted for FFA State and National competitions.
When Abbie Gortner, the animal science and biotech teacher, first tried the Microsoft SharePoint tools within 15 minutes she was
manipulating and using the vast functionality of the user friendly web site. Web sites are set up to manage each class including
but not limited to the following components:
- Class daily lesson plans, assignments, and study guides
- Announcements and news bulletins
- Events calendar
- Projects (Student and Class) management
- Photo libraries and voice files
- Work flow, tasks, and list assignment
- Discussion boards for teams and topics, blogs, wikis
- Internal and external recommended websites and links
- Class and team members create and manage their own Web spaces
- Content and document management including on-line textbooks
- Surveys and real time progress reporting with teacher comments for students
- Security control and teacher monitoring of websites and content
"This will make my lesson plans much easier," said Gortner after a SharePoint training session.
The intuitive design of the web templates will enable many of the students to manage their own website and track their classes,
community projects, and activities. They can use these sites to journal their multiple activities, successes, and lessons learned.
Procom Services has previously worked with the school system providing an online timecard tracking service called Flextrack for
Cooperative education students who get released from school early to go to work as part of their curriculum. "Using cutting edge
technology that is being used in the real working world enables us to really prepare them (our students)," says Stainback.
"Employers always say when students get out in the real world they haven't actually seen what is going to be out there. I'm trying
to get them to see what companies are actually going to use as far as tracking working schedules, tracking their time, tracking
their wages. This way they can understand how things are really going to work."
The students will also be able to use the lab after school hours and the tools can be integrated with the SEAS FFA program and the events,
projects, contests, and leadership training and management.
This project and case study will be accessible to the public.
Contact: Donna Stainback
Tel: 919 688 1013
Email: donnas@procomservices.com
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