Sitting between two parents of South Coast students at a nonprofit dinner event in Half Moon Bay, Reece heard one tell the other that her daughter wasn't sure what her homework was recently. So the young pupil logged onto the La Honda-Pescadero Unified School District's Web site and saw she had a test the next day. She studied that night and nailed an "A."
Reece built that computer system. School Central, as Reece and school administrators call it, is a digital hub for teachers, students and parents that debuted early in the school year. It's separate from the district's standard Web site, which merely provides basic information about the district.
 Left to right, Pescadero Middle School eighth-graders Anna-Lesa Sukkestad, Jessica DeHaro and Cristina Landeros work on their music papers via a new Internet site established for the district. |
Beard said. "School Central provides both those things and more."
There are three sites in all. Pescadero High School's site can be accessed at http://phs.lhpusd.net and features links to the system's other sites.
Beard sought approval from the district's board in the summer, and asked Half Moon Bay-based Reece Computers to build the system. La Honda Elementary Principal Kristen Lindstrom served as the project liaison between Reece and the district. Reece said that her company had done previous projects for the district, including networking and helping to build out computer labs, and only charges the district half of its standard business rates.
The site for Pescadero High School, Beard said, is the "most developed" of the three sites. Many teachers have uploaded biographies on the site, and homework assignments, class descriptions and due dates are viewable in multiple subjects. Beard also said that the Web sites are "more for when (students are) away from school," as opposed to on school grounds.
"A lot of parents have no Internet access and (School Central) doesn't address their needs," Beard admitted. "But a lot of people do." He said a wild guess of Internet penetration in the district would be around 50 percent.
Beard and Reece agree that the Web sites are only in their first phase. Future phases include uploading standardized test results for parents to examine and adding ways for students to submit content and possibly interact within the sites.
"They'll grow into it and they'll plan it," Reece said. "They're very smart people. They have a very evolved technology plan in La Honda-Pescadero," she said.
The Cabrillo Unified School District was early to the party with a rising school communications system called School Loop.
The district has been using the system for three years to link communication between teachers, students and parents at Cunha Intermediate School and Half Moon Bay High School. School Loop gives each student and teacher a built-in homepage and automatically updates them with e-mails, assignments and materials posted throughout each day.
Parents are informed of homework assignments, students can post assignments to teachers and receive comments and corrections, and, starting next semester, a grade book feature of the program will be visible so that assignment grades can be seen by all users at any time, said Anne Bailey, Cabrillo director of technology. School Loop also has its own internal e-mail system that does not allow anonymous communication.
Based in Burlingame, School Loop was created in 2004 by Mark Gross, a founder of Business 2.0 magazine. Gross turned to teaching as a second career. Cabrillo was one of the first three school districts to adopt the system, said Gross. The system is now in five states and about 220 schools, including some of California's largest districts.
"It's been quite exciting," said Gross. "We've grown tremendously without any sales or marketing at all." The strength of the system is in its ability to save time for teachers and that led to rapid adoption as word spreads, he added.
"It's all about the teachers in the end, because if the teachers don't play, nothing else happens," Gross said.
Cabrillo came in early and signed up for a year from the outset, so it operates at a discount.
"They're paying $3 per student per year," said Gross of the two schools. "Nothing, basically. It costs me $15 a month so my kids can play World of Warcraft."
The district has recently updated its school Web sites, in an effort led by parent Betsy Gallagher, Bailey said. More online forms and information have been included.
For information on School Loop, go to http://www.schoolloop.com.
w