Monday, March 9, 2015

Meeting Tuesday March 10

Agenda
Tuesday March 10, 2015
2:30pm
Trustees Room, McFarland Hall


  • Provisioning Users
    • quick review of past discussion/ open issues
    • wrap-up and final decisions
    • handout
  • Migration of user documents
    • current Google users are outside the domain
  • Edline: Keep it or Leave it?
    • if we leave, what functions will need to be duplicated in Google?
    • what needs to be done?
  • Roll-out Timeline (broad strokes) Timeline handout
    • Objectives
      • fully functional by 6/25/15 (last day)
      • all admin, faculty and staff have received basic training for Mail, Calendar, Docs&Drive
      • all faculty have received basic training for Sites, Classroom
      • User and Public document migration to Drive
  • Housekeeping
    • 3/17 is Faculty Meeting; meet afterwards or another day
    • New England Google Apps Summit 3/14 & 15 in Burlington

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

meeting notes 3/3/15

Tech committee meeting
March 3, 2015 2:30-3:30 trustees' room
In attendance: M. Hauck, D. Parker, P. Conis, K. Roos, B.J.Chauvin, T. Quinn, R. Fitzpatrick

Set a standing date and time for meeting?  We need weekly meeting in the short term because we have a lot to do to be ready for Sept.  Tuesdays at 2:30 starting 3/10/15.

Provisioning users:
- email for everyone
- blogger available within domain
- sites available within domain
- classroom available to students, faculty, alumni

Review of answers to questions from Educator U
With the presumption that faculty will have access to everything listed below here, discussion around student access to the following items was had.

- allowing students to email outside the domain?  just juniors and seniors (they need to) or all grades? All members present at the meeting vote to allow ALL students to email outside the domain.  Final decision should involve Supt.  We recommend to her that all students be allowed to email outside domain.
- Drive, calendar, sites on for all student groups
- Discussion regarding whether or not students can be allowed to use Hangouts.  Educationally sound or potentially dangerous? Mike raises the point that comments are not anonymous.  We can find out who is saying what when and where.  BJC talks about teaching students use it safely, much as we do with other tools and equipment.  Group members present vote to approve opening hangouts to students within domain. Decision should involve supt.  We recommend to her that students e alowed to use hangouts within domain.
- Discussion of opening up chrome store for student users.  Students can add extensions to their chrome.  Many educational services.  Again, group votes yes on this.  Recommendation to supt to say yes.
- Google+ is a non-issue, as it is "going away"
- Google wallet- NO
- Allowing students to receive emails from outside domain? same decision as above for students sending emails outside domain
- YouTube? Open up  youtube for education for students.  Teachers have full youtube access.  Teachers can add what they want to their channel (outside of youtube for education) and then kids can access the videos.
- Google groups- allows users to set up groups for discussion, sharing documents, etc.  Clubs and sports teams could use it.  Students only have access within domain.  Teachers have access outside domain.
- Google keep- simple application for taking notes.  clip things from websites, emails, etc.  Kind of like sticky notes.  Teachers can share notes with a class/group-  Yes
- Google books- Yes
- Google scholar- Yes

Next steps: HOW DO WE TRAIN PEOPLE?

- traditional inservice training does not work
- designate "go-to> people who get google certified on certain apps, who are then resident experts that others can go to for help/traiing
- Tammy brings up the point that teachers need an incentive to be trained.  We struggle with getting people to learn something new
-Mike asks group to think unconventionally about how training can happen
- Create project-specific seminars that have a project at the end and build the training around that (student portfolio idea)
- adoption begins at the top.  we have to take on the challenge of maximizing the use of digital technolog Set the tone that this is the way we are going.

Do we need to keep edline?  Google can do this stuff, but we need to make sure this is all set up

Monday, March 2, 2015

March 3 Meeting Agenda

Meeting Agenda
Thursday, Mar 3, 2015
2:30 PM in Trustees Room, McFarland Hall

  • Decide on standing meeting time
  • continuation of Provisioning Users discussion from last meeting:
    • initial proposal
    • review what we've done (see minutes from 1/20/15)
    • Educator U worksheet comments
  • User Training
    • getting creative to make it happen effective and comprehensive
    • approaches from other schools
  • Do we keep EdLine?
    • What functions does it fulfill
    • cost saving
    • if no, migration/transition issues
  • Migrating User and Public content to our Google Domain

Friday, February 6, 2015

2-12-2015 Meeting

Meeting Agenda
Thursday, Feb 12, 2015
2:30 PM in Trustees Room, McFarland Hall

  • Provisioning users discussion:
    • Educator U worksheet
    • continuation of discussion from last meeting
  • User Training
    • getting creative to make it happen effective and comprehensive

Friday, January 30, 2015

Network Testing

Stumbled upon this article in the recent ASCD SmartBrief.  Districts are deliberately overloading their networks to see if they are truly prepared to implement online testing for all students.  I learned that Burlington, MA used a similar approach when they did sample PARCC testing last spring.

http://thejournal.com/articles/2015/01/29/to-prepare-for-online-assesments-some-schools-try-to-break-their-own-networks.aspx

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Meeting Notes 1/20/15

Minutes of Committee meeting

Attending: S Green, T.Quinn, R. Fitzpatrick, BJ Chauvin, L. Lynch, D. Parker, M. Joyce,  M. Hauck

Network Consultant: Rick reported that he, Suzanne and Tammy have met with two consultants - FTG and EOS - and are awaiting proposals from each before proceeding.  We should receive responses from these firms within a few days.

EducatorU: contract is signed and executed; Michael will contact them to set up a meeting and get going on implementation planning.

Blog: Michael has set up a private blog for the committee to use as a discussion forum regarding key planning and implementation issues with Google Apps.  It is private to ensure security of our conversations.  Each committee member should have received an invitation to become a member & author of the blog (sent to their gmail account).

Domain organization:  we agreed on the organizational scheme that was initially proposed:


User provisioning: we discussed the proposal that Michael had put forward, with 12 key applications. Google+ was dropped from the list because, supposedly, it is not available in Google Apps for Ed. [Will this impact access to and usage of Hangouts?]. The initial proposal also stipulated that email service would not be accessible to alumni, but it was determined that email would be need to transfer Drive files [Need to investigate further the process for changing ownership of files]. We also agreed that both Sites and Blogger would default to accessible only within the norfolkaggie.org domain.

There was a general feeling that there was insufficient understand of many of these applications to make definitive decisions. Michael took the action item to present a brief overview and demo of many of them. Laura will set up Michael's account in the new domain to use for this exercise.

Task teams to tackle key issues: we began discussing several of the key issues that are ahead and the idea of forming small task teams to investigate, analyze, and propose solutions. No conclusions were made and this is an open item for next meeting.

The meeting was adjourned at 3:15

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Committee Meeting 1/20/15

Tech Committee Meeting
Tuesday, January 20, 2015  at 2:30pm
Trustees Room, McFarland Hall


  • Network diagnostics consultant status update - Rick
  • EducatorU contract status update - Rick
  • GAfE planning blog (gafencahs.blogspot.com)
    • another invitation sent to your gmail account
  • Google Domain user organization
  • User provisioning - which apps and privileges
  • Key decisions moving forward (form 1-2 person task teams to investigate, analyze, propose solutions):
    • email migration (incl group & personal address books);
    • do we keep EdLine?  How long?
    • user training - how do we find the time? One size does not fit all.
    • document migration (users, public, administration)