Media News & Important Dates!

BRAIN POP

This year, we purchased a subscription to BRAINPOP and BRAINPOP Jr. This site has animated lessons, activities,and quizzes for a variety of topice. These include subject areas of science, math, social studies, technology, and many others. To explore the topics visit :
www.brainpop.com or www.brainpopjr.com

Accelerated Reader

We are pleased to announce that Accelerated Reader is being used in all classes in grades 2-8. Teachers are using it with their basic reading series as well as having students improve their reading for pleasure.
Students have goals set by their teachers- these are based on GRADE Reading test results.
As parents, you can help by reading with your children or having a special time set aside daily for reading. Model to them by reading for pleasure each day.
You can find "AR BookFinder" as a link on our webpage. This site will help your child select books that are level appropriate. You can help guide your child in their book selections.
www.bookadventure.org will also help with book selections.

Tech News

What's New in Technology at SNA

We have just purchased a new server and domain controller for the school. It is much faster and more efficient than our old one (it was seven years old and still plugging along). It should meet our needs for the next few years. The servers have been put in racks and relocated to a more secure place. There is also a new backup system in place.

For your children's safety, we upgraded our filtering system. Web blockers are required for all schools. These filters block inappropriate sites, shopping,advertisements,gaming, and videos. The filter can be adjusted when new changes occur. The blocked sites currently include social networking sites such as My Space, Facebook, YouTube, and Hi5.

Each year, we upgrade our antivirus program. This not only protects the computers themselves, it keeps spam and pornography from infiltrating the
system. It detects tracking cookies, computer viruses, and worms.

We are finishing the mounting of projectors in every classroom. Our goal is to have this completed by the beginning of the next school year. We have received three new SMARTBOARDS from government stimulus money. These will be hung and ready for the fall as well.

While some of our changes are visible, many are behind the scenes. As we continue to strive for academic excellence,there are always improvements
being implemented to our technology at St. Nicholas Academy.

Visit
www.mmiddletonsna-panthersorg.weebly.com
for more news about our program.

New Guidelines for Computer Lab

In an effort to protect our students from unwanted information on the internet,
we have developed a set of guidelines for our labs.
The new rules are posted in both labs as well as the classrooms.

	Margie Middleton - SNA's Computer Teacher Email Address: mmiddleton@sna-panthers.org Click Here To Visit Margie Middleton's Website!
	Beth Strobel - SNA's Librarian! Email Address: bstrobel@sna-panthers.org Click Here To Visit Beth Strobel's Website!