We have a large county, and now, all purchasing is done on the computer--no
more of those pesky 6-sheet forms! All of our county film ordering will
eventually be done online, too, which will be great. The program they are
going to use has a good search engine built in.
The children's immunization and many school records will be online, also.
All of these programs can only be used if a person has a password, etc.
On my side of the issue, we now have a library network which connects to the
building one. On my office (workhorse) computer, I can get onto internet
and WWW, and the secretary can do purchase orders right here instead of
going to the business office. Then, I can switch over to my library
network, and search for things in the catalog.
Each student station out on the floor offers access to the library cat as
well as Internet and WWW, also. Teachers are loving it.
Oh, another nice feature of the WAN is that when we want new software that
the county has a license for (WPWIN, for instance), they no longer have to
send someone out to install--instead, we download from the main server! As
Martha Stewart says, "it's a good thing".
That's my 2 cents worth!
Lorna J. McCloud Media Specialist
King Elementary Woodbridge, VA
lmccloud@pen.k12.va.us