Tag Archives: technology

Mayday, Mayday, The LAUSD School Finder Is Lost!

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Tues, 10/31 UPDATE: The School Identifier is back up, thankfully!

Dear LAUSD,

You couldn’t have picked a worse time to have your Resident School Identifier go down. It’s been 4 days now. We are at the height of school admission frenzy as we make our final sprint towards that November 9th eChoices deadline. People are trying to look up their “zoned schools” to determine their options, or if they have suddenly become zoned into one of your 35 new (!) magnet schools, or a dual language program, or your newly created “zone of choice” areas, and/or if they will have residential priority (aka “Continuous Enrollment”) at one of these new magnet schools or other programs, and right now your link is completely dead. DEAD. Nada. And has been since Friday. And this other page you send us to, to “find a school” in the above matters, is frankly, USELESS.

Leader in technology?  Not so much. This is basic stuff here LAUSD. C’mon. Folks need to find their zoned schools right now. It’s rather critical. And time sensitive. If you refuse to  publish the actual maps mapping out school boundary lines, and insist we use your digital Resident School Identifier, but then even that doesn’t work, parents got nuthin’!

Hope you get on it and fix it, like, stat!

Thanks so much for letting me vent…

…on behalf of all of your dear parents who are feeling the squeeze!

xo

UPDATE: Monday afternoon: I called LAUSD and was told they are aware of the situation and are “working on it.”

Incubator School Town Hall This Thurs 6:30p Venice

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Have you been hearing about the new Westside middle-high school pilot school, The Incubator School? Want to learn more?

Come to their introductory Town Hall!

Thurs, October 25th, 6:30-8p

826 LA/Sparc Building
685 Venice Blvd,
Venice, CA 90291

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-a new, tuition-free, public LAUSD pilot school supported by Future Is Now Schools led by Rock The Vote pioneer and Green Dot founder Steve Barr

-opening in August 2013 on the Westside with grades 6 & 7, and adding a grade per year until they reach 12th

-real wold project-based learning

-creative, entrepreneurial, design thinking-based instruction

-committed to nurturing children’s social drives and ethical inquisitiveness

-utilizing rich, vibrant technology to facilitate collaborative social learning

-partnerships with Silicon Beach companies

-college- and world-ready curriculum, with an interdisciplinary approach
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“Just as an incubator nurtures hatchlings, and a business incubator grows ideas into ventures, The Incubator School will provide kids with the skills, mentors, resources, social connectivity, and ethics to help their fledgling ideas fly. The school’s focus will be design thinking, a process-oriented way of looking at problems, generating ideas, and finding solutions.”
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Come with your questions to the Town Hall this Thursday. Read more about their vision here:  TheIncubatorSchool  Or, Join their FB Page.

Parenting In The Digital Age – Appropriate Use of Technology Talk

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Upcoming free talk about Parenting In The Digital Age – Appropriate Use of Technology

Featuring Yalda T. Uhls

Weds, Oct 10th at 7:30p

WS Pavilion, Community Room A.
10800 West Pico Blvd, LA 90064

(located on the 3rd Floor, just behind the Food Court near the Restrooms)
Free 3 hour parking!
Consider yourselves invited.

PS Smart Tip: Teen/Tween Netiquette

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Between the iPods, iPads, laptops, mobile phones and reading devices there’s a plethora of digi-fun at our fingertips. Apps, games, digipix, videos, shopping, texting, web-browsing and social connecting…it’s a whole new world that’s sucking in more and more of our time and becoming a way of life. We love it, so why shouldn’t our kids get in on the fun?

I’m all for tech toys but when it comes to our children, we still need to exercise good judgement and set age-appropriate boundaries. Put limits on screen time, use the parent controls and timers, and monitor the sites your child is visiting. As for texting, it seems like a free-for-all especially with the free texting apps that don’t require a phone, but it’s important to teach good manners and remind your children that every text leaves a digital footprint that can come back and bite you if you’re not careful. Texts can sometimes be misinterpreted and over-texting, sending multiple texts in a row without waiting for a response, is annoying at best and invasive and downright rude at worst. There’s a time and place for our gadgets. Let’s teach our children to use them respectfully and judiciously.