9-30 Meeting Notes

Attending: Sean Crowley, Doris Parker, Tammy Quinn, Michael Hauck

• Reset/Recap from June
  Michael provide a brief overview of what the Committee was up to last June, key decisions and issues at the time. Student account name was decided but we were unable to have students activate their accounts before the end of school as originally planned. We would terminate mail through AdditionsNet in August (we are still routing mail through Additions, however. Why?). We had anticipated the need for a parental consent form and parent opt-out for student email accounts, but that has not happened. Google Groups memberships are still not all visible to users
  
• Current Status of Google Apps Deployment
  Teacher and student accounts are all activated and appear to be working. Everyone is over onto GMail. We are still routing mail through Additions for some reason.
  School website is up and running, all the appropriate editors are in place and have access; numerous edits and corrections have been implemented and it appears to be pretty solid now. Next step is to link teacher websites or other resources.
  Community calendars and resources have been implemented, most people are using them and teachers now really like the ability to reserve computer labs on their own. We need to add a Mini Bus 4 and Library Meeting Room. Doris will handle.
  Implemented a Teacher Dashboard for ease of use. Many are using it and finding it helpful. It will continue to go through revisions as we get feedback from users.
  Need to implement a similar dashboard for students.
  Most all teachers have embraced the change of moving to Google and are working to build sites & blogs, create Classrooms, migrate their data to Drive. It's a slow and evolving process but we're making good progress. Training needs to continue and the afternoon seminar series will be started in October.
  
• Teacher Tablet Replacement?
  Doris discussed how the tablets have become a problem for many teachers - poor performance, storage issues, and others. Michael expressed the concern of spending scarce technology funds for replacements without a well thought out technology infrastructure plan in place.  Short term, we might re-purpose some machines that are in storage and distribute to departments to share. Tammy will request from Suzanne and Doris will look into how many machines are available and effort to clean-up/refurbish.
  
• Revisit/Review School Tech Plan
  We'll use the next two meetings to discuss the current tech plan, revisions, and explore strategic planning moving forward. Please review the current plan in preparation for next meeting
  
• Major Initiatives for 2015-16
  Michael listed a number of ideas that we had discussed in June
  Digital Citizenship curriculum integrated across all curricula
  online learning
  home access (ensure every student has computer and internet access from home)
  changing the mindset (think digital, not paper; think online, handout).
  Digital devices for everyone (going 1-to-1)
  Streamline, automate, simplify (re-look at administrative and managerial processes to make them simpler, easier, less time-consuming; also building document and template libraries)
  Sean suggested we focus on grant writing to generate funds and support for significant tech projects
  We also discussed the issues with iPass and the need to get a better understanding of the features and functions we can tap into that have not been explored.
  
• Set up standard Meeting Times
  Nothing works great but we settled on Wednesdays, every other week. Next meeting will be Wednesday, October 14 at 2:30.

submitted: M Hauck