I’ve been fairly busy with meetings and the like. Among the various tasks I’ve attempted is the creation of a new site. The purpose of the site (still sort of tentative based on board desire) would be to act as a repository of documents made available to the school board.
A couple of board members have expressed interest in having documents available electronically, primarily for storage and historical use. Of course, audiences other than the board – such as the public, press, potential employees, etc – could also take advantage of the site.
As with any technology-oriented effort, there are questions and issues touching on the time, technology and cost associated with the effort.
To assist with this, I developed a “draft” site of sorts. The site can be found at
www.acsddocuments.wordpress.com
The site is designed as a no-frills site as of now, with a focus primarily on making documents available. Though I have been keeping documents on the AmesCES site for months, it is necesary to keep personal commentary separate from the document storage component.
I’d welcome thoughts, feedback and ideas any readers might have regarding the test site.
I still am not sure if the site will make it to ‘full functioning’ status or not. Only time will tell.
Dr. Dave
Dave,
this is great. I’ve thought for years that the ACSD should put these documents up on their site before the meetings so if we can’t attend or want to watch from home we have the option of having the documents that are being discussed.
J
Comment by Jeanne Wiebke — November 13, 2009 @ 12:34 pm |
J,
Thanks! Of course, folks will have to remember what ends up in front of the board at the meeting is subject to change/modification.
Dr. Dave
Comment by amesces — November 15, 2009 @ 4:12 pm |
A few years ago I suggested doing exactly this, but providing documents in electronic form was shot down by the administration as too much work. The reasoning was that different departments use different programs and formats and so a common file type was not possible, and none of the printers that we had just signed rental contracts for had the capability to scan and e-mail documents (which completely shocked me). It seemed to me that this was an easily overcome management issue rather than a real problem, but the board leadership did not care about this issue to push it so it never went anywhere. Good luck getting it through! It would be a great benefit to the board and the public.
Mike
Comment by Mike Murray — November 18, 2009 @ 8:13 pm |
Mike,
To date the total investment is ~$65, a borrowed flatbed scanner, and the time to upload the documents. The software I have can create pdfs from multiple formats. If issues of time or large documents were involved, a scanner with the a document feeder of some sort would obviously increase performance.
I plan on continuing this as long as makes sense. Much of what is on the acsddocments.wordpress.com site is duplicated here so there is a little extra work at this point.
Comment by amesces — November 20, 2009 @ 5:47 pm |
I think it would be good as well, which is why I am investing the effort at this time.
Hopefully a good solution can be found.
Dr. Dave
Comment by amesces — November 20, 2009 @ 5:48 pm |
110907
Dear Dave,
I use your AmesCES all the time to find information that I can’t find on the ACSD website. However currently I need a little help: how can I find how many are bused to the different Ames schools? I have a theory that the number bused to a school correlates with the number of free and reduced lunches. I can get the free and reduced lunches from the connection you have on AmesCES BUT all I can find, ALSO on Ames CES is the 2008-9 busing contract…and that is a confusing document…how many buses going to Mitchell do I count? Further, busing now is out of date.
Help!
Holly Fuchs
515/231-8996 c
Comment by Holly Fuchs — September 8, 2011 @ 8:45 pm |
Holly,
At this time more recent busing information has not been made available to the board.
Dave
Comment by amesces — September 11, 2011 @ 5:56 pm |