How to Download Textbooks to Your Laptop

Teachers, please read this carefully.  I have placed any textbook that you provided to the Instructional department on the district server.  I have loaded ninth grade Math, Science and Foreign Language textbooks.  If you do not see your textbook, then it probably wouldn’t run from the hard drive and has to have the CD in the computer to run.  You can hand out the CD’s in class and have them install the program in lieu of doing this over the network.  BUT, even though you might have received 1 CD for every textbook, CD drives are a great drain on the laptop battery, so running programs from the hard drive is a better solution.

FOR A CURRENT LIST OF TEXTBOOKS THAT ARE AVAILABLE, GO TO SOFTWARE.DCPS.NET

            Many of these programs on the server are VERY large. I would recommend the following procedure before you begin student downloads.

1. If students have high speed Internet access at home (Adelphia, OMU, BellSouth DSL), have them download the textbook for homework.

2. Designate a day per teacher for downloads.  You DO NOT want to be all doing this at the same time!

3. Stagger the download (i.e. first row downloads and completes, then second row etc)

Now, with that being said, here are the directions:

1. Go to software.dcps.net

2. If your textbook is used at both high schools, click on “Common to DCPS High Schools”.  Otherwise click on your school. 

3. LOG IN WITH YOUR USERNAME AND PASSWORD.

4. Click on the textbook or program that you wish to download. The number in forint of the title tells you how LARGE the file is.

5. You will see a screen similar to this:

6. Click on “Run” and you will see a screen similar to this:

7. Then a warning will pop up:

8. Click on RUN.  WAIT until you see the next dialog box.  It will tell you how to find an run your textbook/program.  The larger the program, the longer the WAIT.  I have had to wait up to 20 minutes for a program like “Passport to the World”.