Your @cfsnc.org account: A Google account with access to email, calendar, Drive file storage, and more
Veracross: The school's Student Information System (SIS). All staff have access to the Staff Portal, which allows access to HR forms, classes, attendance, schedules, contact info, and more. Some staff will also have access to Axiom, the back-end administrative side of our SIS.
Magnus: Our health records management platform that also houses important forms sent to families. Health & administrative staff will have access to Magnus to review these forms.
Amazon Business: Just like a regular Amazon account, but linked to school purchases for those staff with purchasing roles.
Contact the Tech Team if you need immediate help or are stumped on an issue that you have tried to solve.
If you have a wondering that can wait, visit us in the Upper School Tech Lab during our Office Hours: Tuesdays and Fridays 3:15 - 4:15pm.
Wonder how we solve most of the problems? Check out this flow chart from Randall Monroe. It is comical but it really does encompass many issues we regularly deal with.
Yes, we provide devices to almost all 75%+ and full time staff. If you aren't sure if you qualify, please contact your Unit Head or department head or reach out directly to the Tech Team.
We can provide a PC, Mac, or Chromebook depending on your preference and/or need. These devices are for your use here at school for the duration of your employment at CFS. We do try and stick with a five year lifecycle for devices so you may go through a variety of devices during your time at CFS.
Please reference the Staff Handbook for the latest version detailing options, responsibility, and expectations -- The staff handbook can be found on the Veracross Portal.
If a CFS device is ever damaged, lost, or broken in any way, please let us know. While normal wear and tear are expected, we will want to know how it happened. We do occassionaly ask staff to reimburse the school for the current value of the lost/damaged device if that loss was clearly based on negligence. For those instances, we use a simple depreciation schedule that we are happy to share if you are curious.
When equipment is being retired at the school, we either sell off the excess items via the Friendshare group list or donate items to the Kramden Institute, a wonderful local non-profit that aims to bring technology and training to underserved communities in the Triangle.
Reach out to the Tech Team and we can talk through your idea(s) and options. Our tech budget will cover certain items while others may need to come from outside budgets. Usually those types of projects will also include a discussion with your Head Teacher to explain the classroom needs and approximate costs involved.
Yes! Henry and Chip love to get into the Classroom and work with staff and students alike. Have an idea? Please let us know and we can try and make time to visit your classroom. We are also happy to be a thought partner of how you might better integrate technology into your current curriculum.
For staff that we know are departing, we try to communicate months in advance to create a plan dealing with their @cfs account. Google Takeout is a wonderful tool to assist with migrating data, preferrably to a personal Google account. The tool allows the user to select which data to export and which to ignore so you aren't innundated with copies of everything.
Our goal is to suspend all staff accounts at the end of the month of someone's departure... for most staff, this is June 30th. Those suspended accounts are then mothballed and put into storage for seven years, just in case their are shared items that need to be retrieved. Please reach out to us if you have any questions about any part of this process.
It depends....
Apple devices rarely come up for us with significant discounts, especially if we are only buying a single unit. You can always get a discount going to the Apple Education Store and they run promotions at least twice a year (usually in August and November) where you can get additional equipment bundled with your purchase.
Chromebooks: talk with the Tech Team. When we do our bulk purchasing, we usually get significant deals on whatever model(s) we are currently purchasing. For the past two years, we have been buying the touchscreen Dell 3120 2-in-1 with 8gb of RAM.
PC's: These are a bit hit or miss and you will often have better luck if you search for deals yourself. That said, we are happy to provide recommendations base on our experience.