ASCS Technology Committee Meeting Minutes
4/21/2008
Attendees:
Kathy Thompson, Angela Bowman, Chris Ganus, Dam Lemcke, Pam Fox, Marie Pishko, Hank Caruso, Carol Mayo, Frank Banul, Steve Diller
I. Carol and Hank reported on Maypearl school visit to look at Thin Client solution in use.
- Appears to be a good, cost-effective set up.
- Set up has master computers with 3 slaves card attached and 2 cards per master.
- Students file servers should be independent from teachers'.
- Product literature from NComputing was distributed.
- Literature shows no USB connection on the clients. This is a problem for ASCS application. Carol to verify on 2nd visit to Maypearl.
II. Technology Plan Review
A. Goals/Objectives must be simply stated and measurable.
1. Goal 1: Professional Development - notes/comments
- SBEC is used by Region 10. We could also used ISTE.
- There is no diocesan standard set for teacher development.
- The diocesan standard for student skills was written in 2004. For now we must focus on getting teachers to the point at which they can teach to this standard.
- STaR Chart -
- Teacher self assessments completed.
- Focused on Educator Prep, Learning, and Leadership/Administration sections. Less focus on Infrastructure section.
- Hank and Marie are analyzing the STaR results.
- Looking into grouping teachers according to assessment and making corresponding plans for trainings to be held by an outside trainer.
- Need to define what a technologically competent teacher is and then set training plan.
- Suggested to use STaR as a baseline and measurement tool.
- Enterprise Licensing - Need to find out if this comes with educational credits? Pam to work with Angela to sort out.
- Mentor program should include substitutes for teachers to enable teachers to go out for training.
- Technology/curriculum integration, cross-curriculum pilot programs in process. Need write up of results including 3 positives, 3 negatives, and student feedback.
- Dan to generate letter for parish to solicit technology resources/talent from parishioners.
- Teachers to generate technology wish-lists to tie to parish resources.
- Need to include Safe Environment Cleared statement in letter.
2. Goal 2: Acquiring and Using Technology in ASCS
- Need to implement and enforce a Service Request Form policy to track service requests in order to justify support personnel.
- Inventory list -
- April 27, 3:00 - Dan, Angela, Chris, Mike, Frank, Pam to meet at school and review current inventory.
III. Next meeting: May 19.
- Please review Technology Plan draft and email goals/measurable objectives to Kathy.

thin comment

Well, for all you techies, I actually did read the article and the subsequent comments. They don't seem to support the claims of cost savings or relatively few problems. So, definitely something to consider. Celine has also been looking into leasing PC's as an option. More on this later.
Thanks to everyone who attended last night!
Kathy

NComputing Info

I was doing some searching on the internet and the nComputing website. Following is some info that is encouraging:

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Infrastructure/NComputing-Spreads-IO-Wealth/

http://weblog.infoworld.com/sustainableit/archives/2008/02/ncomputing_gree.html

In the above article/blog, they reference how the L230 has USB memory device support. This looks like a good solution that is used by many schools. I think the only important thing to understand with this is the Microsoft licensing requirements we would be held to.

Chris

All Saints Technology Committee
3/10/2008 Meeting

Attendees:
Kara Waterman
Hank Caruso
Kathy Thompson
Pam Fox
Steve Diller
St. Monica School visit
Kara, Hank, and Kathy visited St. Monica School and reported the
following:
- St. Monica uses Interwrite Learning tablets, a wireless tablet used by teachers in the classroom to allow them mobility around the classroom.
Reported cost of these is $480, but the lowest price Hank has found is $520.
- St. Monica does not use Smartboards.
- They have a lab with 56 PC's, and have 6 mobile labs with 15 laptops per.
- All teachers have desktop PCs.
- They have a research room with 8 PC's, which are video editing stations (faster, bigger hard drives, etc.)
- All PC's are from Dell. They pay ~$37K for a 3 year lease for all ~100 machines. As machines are upgraded, they trickle down the older machines from labs to teachers to classrooms.
- Kindergarten through 2nd grade use 42" flat screens instead of projection.
- They have 3 computer teachers, 1 full time and 2 part time.
- They also use a mobile cart/package of writers (keyboarding, etc.).
The cost of these is ~$6K for the cart and #? of writers.
- They are testing an iPod program using the iPod Shuffle - Spanish lessons, audio books.
- They are moving their videos to ISO files and putting them on a master server.
Pam attended a technology conference at Fort Worth Christian School.
The conference leader is available to attend one of our meetings.
Alternatives to Smartboard were discussed.
- Mimio - uses sensor array on each end of a regular white board.
- Polyvision - generic version of Smartboard. Less expensive.
It was suggested that we look at www.futurekids.org to investigate grants.
Kathy passed out an example of a Technology Assessment from Jesuit.
Kathy requested a list of inventory and licenses that we currently have from Pam.
The Diocese has a revised curriculum available on their website:
http://cso-dallas.org/instruction.htm.
Other good websites:
SBEC - http://www.sbec.state.tx.us/SBECOnline/default.asp
TEKS - http://www.tea.state.tx.us/teks/
ISTE - http://www.iste.org/
Pam agreed to supply curriculum guidelines at next meeting.

Please check the ASCS Technology Committee Blog for latest meeting notes and info. Hank can set up access if you don't already have it.
Address: http://ascstechcom.blogspot.com/.

Next meetings April 21 and May 19, 6:00PM.

Please do not forget that there is a Technology Committee Meeting Monday, March 10, 2008 at 6:00 PM in the library.

See you there!!!

Technology Committee Meeting Munutes - 25 Feb 2008

Minutes from Meeting: 2/25/08

I. Opening prayer and introductions of neww members: Angela Bowman QZBowman@tx.rr.com
Celine Fynes Celine.Fynes@ps.net

II.Mike Moline explained Star Chart results

III. Dan gave details of his tour of Jesuit: Steve forwarded his results from the visit.
Jesuit expectations for incoming freshman-
navigation of Web, use of MS word, excel(secondary),.
Utilize "moodle" as communications suite
Utilize "Razor's Edge" for school admin.(similar to Renweb)
2 dedicated computer labs with 50 computers each
Library with multiple computer stations and a total of 12 computers for student use(first come first served)
2 full-time technology people:
1 non-teacher(support and service calls)
1 teacher who teaches only 1 math class
1 part-time tech. support as well

*Committee to obatin resumes on tech. positions- ???Needs immediate attention

IV. Rough draft of initial objectives presented and copies disseminated. This will be ongoing.
Multiple discussions about curriculum and professional development needs. Continual ssessment.
Recommend steering Committee as separate entity for curiiculum needs.

V. St Monica visit : Hank, Kara, Kathy scheduled 2/29/08 9:30 am

Ursuline visit: Steve, Angela,Kathy: before 3/10/08 TBD
Closing:
Past agendas and minutes to be forwarded to new members to bring them up to speed.
Thankyou to all who attended.
If I missed anything, please forward it on to all memebers.
Please update your contacts list with the new members.
Kathy