11-5-09+notes

November 2009 ** Huntington North High School 450 MacGahan Street Huntington, IN 46750 November 5, 2009 [|Google Map] __ “1-to-1 Laptops” __ I. Morning Refreshments ........ 8:30 – 9:00 a.m.
 * NEISSC Study Council ****

II. Greetings and Introductions .... 9:00 – 9:10 a.m. Host: Tom Ashley Director of Technology – (260) 356-7812

III. Roundtable Discussion .... 9:10 – 10:15 a.m. Questions for the group? Have you looked at [|The Learning Connection] from DOE? How did your Acuity testing go for Diagnostic Round 1? What workshop are you taking at HECC?

IV. Break ........ 10:15 – 10:30 a.m.

V. Best Practices for Laptops and 1-to-1 Computing .... 10:30 – 11:45 a.m. Please bring copies to share from your district of policies or procedures that apply

VI. Lunch .... 12:00 p.m. – ? Don Rafaels Restaurant

VII. Next Meeting Southwest Allen County – January 7, 2010 http://neissctech.wikispaces.com/Meeting+Schedule

Meeting Notes
Braden Mullett – Columbia City HS, Assistant Principal
 * WCCS has signed to create a New Tech HS (funding with a $1 million bond, another grant for $450,000). Looking to place it offsite – old Scott’s building or Marshall Center. Focusing on a voluntary group of freshman for first year, about 6 staff members, then expanding each year to include all grades. May also partner with neighboring Whitko and/or Churubusco. Have sent many teachers and admins to visit other New Tech schools before committing.
 * For technology, each student would have a laptop assigned to them, serving also as their textbook. Take home use would only be for good behavior. Laptops may be leased and allow students to purchase at end of lease.

Tom Ashley – Huntington
 * Also considering a New Tech School, for about 100 of the HS kids, housed within the current HS. Have one grant to get started, hoping to get more through the DOE Cadre III monies. May look at textbook adoption fees/electronic textbooks to assist. An advantage of going the New Tech route instead of trying to do something similar on your own, is that the program comes with a lot of support materials, contacts with experienced users of the program, help to be successful. These things are often lacking in other programs that district bring in, so having that included in the purchase can help make it work.
 * Technology for New Tech: Pebble is a content management system similar to Moodle, but not quite as advanced at this point. The hardware implementation is flexible, desktops or laptops. HNHS plans to reconfigure some rooms to be larger spaces, adding laptop carts as well as desktops along the walls for student use.
 * Does anyone use ENA’s voice over IP solution or another E-rate-able solution ? Four County and Wawasee have explored ENA but couldn’t get service in their areas.
 * Exploring Centurion product – allows power management, lab control, …

Eric Kelliher – Huntington

Dee Stitt – Madison Grant
 * Will have lots of questions later as she moves into the Director position effective January. Having come from the tech side of the house, she’s eager to learn the education side!

Cindy Cash – South Adams
 * Have considered New Tech school, but lack community support right now, so it has been tabled. Considering trying something similar on their own.
 * Is there a way for students to share files with each other via Moodle? Tom suggested those collaborative projects be done in the Wiki section of Moodle.
 * Are you using cell phones to communicate to custodians, or radios? (Most are radios.) Many districts are going to a stipend model for cell phones instead of providing, to avoid IRS headaches.
 * How are you cleaning keyboards and how often? Some answers – maintenance cleaning on a regular basis, BacOff pump bottles in labs, specific cleaning if a kid sneezes on the keyboard, etc.
 * Online ISTEP testing this year? The group here is all waiting to see more pilot testing.

Phil Germann – Region 8

Dave VanLue – Wawasee
 * Who is doing thin clients, and using what? Wawasee has thin client, X330 models with one workstation running 6 users. Works very well. Plymouth has some thin clients running XP.
 * Have moved from OpenSUSE in their 1:1 desktop labs to Resara. Haven’t had to work on those labs at all now that it’s setup. Still Linux based. Doesn’t require beefy hardware.

Jan Lehman – West Noble
 * How many schools on trimesters? (a lot in the room)
 * Who has K-8 math coordinators?

Don Chase – SACS
 * Has NetStorage for student access to network drive from home, but no options for collaboration, hence the Google Apps research.
 * Have been hit pretty hard with viruses on flash drives, at HS relying on Lightspeed’s Secure Agent. Tried to stop exe running on flash drives, but that also stops CD exe’s.

Adela Dickey – NACS
 * What are you using for lab monitoring, like SynchronEyes (now SmartSync), NetOps, ABTutor, etc?

Gary Bates – DOE
 * Has seen during state travels that places where the technology is being used well and consistently, students take better care of them.
 * Learning Connection has about 500 people signed up already – John Keller doing a session on it at HECC. It’s a blend of Facebook and Moodle applications. Students can work on collaborative projects there, in a community setup. School can decide which tabs students and parents can access. There are discussion forums (closed to selected communities), wikis, blogs, …
 * The LC will be a great vehicle for teachers to share the things they are doing with colleagues – lessons, ideas, etc.
 * Student ISTEP data will be accessible to teachers through LC, seeing scores back to 2004. This is only available after superintendent signs paperwork assuring FERPA will be followed with the student data.
 * Curriculum mapping was originally planned to be a part of this tool but was dropped due to cost.
 * The group requested that Gary do a demo of the LC site at our meeting on January 7 at SACS.

Bruce Johnson – Plymouth
 * Studying whether students can bring their own laptop or other devices from home to help get to a 1:1 access.

Janice Curtis – Plymouth
 * Looking to partner with someone for the Cadre III grant. Asked for clarification on what criteria landed a district on the list. Gary said it is based on federal stimulus dollars and past AYP status (low).
 * Is anyone using iPods in their classrooms for learning? South Adams has a 5th grade class using their teacher’s device. Students use the apps on the iPod Touch, but no Internet access. Plymouth has a lot of them but is struggling with a way to easily sync just the things they want, and not the entire library.

Kyle Smith – Four County
 * Any one have a good document management system, for storing business office records, student records, etc. – virtual filing cabinet ? Lakeland uses Docuware. Central Noble had one (when Don Chase was there), but the problem came down to manpower to process the documents and fill in the database with keywords for each document. Phil Germann has seen a presentation by Perry Corporation.
 * What are others doing for redundant Internet connections? Plymouth formerly had a secondary link through Cyber Link but no longer. The majority agreed that the ENA links have been extremely stable, and support has often been the first to notice a problem and contacted the school.

Mel Glick – Lakeland
 * Their New Tech School will start with freshman/sophomores who will all take New Tech classes. As Junior/Seniors, kids will go into a career path, for vocational/AP/etc options, some of which would move them away from the New Tech program.
 * Their visits to Decatur’s school noted greatly improved student discipline. Desktop computers are in excellent shape since students realize the computer is critical to their work.
 * Being pushed to go to Google Apps and to work “in the cloud”. Concerned about security if going that route. SACS has been trying to apply for a domain name through Google, but the process has not been easy. Google allows import of student names for account creation, so each student has a secure storage place. Both districts want to allow document sharing with the apps but does not want to allow access to the e-mail.

Jim LeMasters – Warsaw

Aletha Dobbins – Warsaw
 * Visited a New Tech school while in Denver, a program which had been in place for several years. Area businesses are now very on board with the program, having seen the skills of the kids who have graduated with it. Desktop computers were used since laptops weren’t affordable when the program was implemented 6 years ago. They are working with an area business to fund netbooks in the future.
 * What Datawarehouse are you using? Are your teachers using it? Madison Grant is rolling out Inform in January. Plymouth being trained on Inform now. Huntington uses Inform, but recommends that nothing be done until there is a designated person who will be in charge of uploading and maintaining the data, despite vendor assurances that it’s easy and fast. SACS has Inform, and agrees someone has to study that data before it goes into the warehouse – garbage in, garbage out. Once teachers see incorrect data, they’ll lose faith in it and not use it. West Noble says you not only need the data loader person, but also an expert/trainer for helping staff with the reports and interpreting the data. NACS uses TetraData (Follett) but is exploring options this year along with their move from SASI to PowerSchool. Carmel and Kokomo are using Pinnacle.

Lisa Deutscher - Dekalb

Laptops and 1-to-1 Computing Policies
 * Those with written rules will forward those to Adela or Tim for posting to the NEISSC Wiki.
 * Students take same laptop (numbered) each day, so if there is damage it can be narrowed down. Students are to immediately report damage. Having to quickly move a kid to a different computer if the first one isn’t working, makes tracking damage more difficult.
 * If students take the district laptop home, how do you control what they’re doing with and to the laptop when it’s away? Lightspeed’s security agent can be installed on those machines so that even home Internet access is filtered and logged. Other network software can help determine if programs or other files are on the laptop that shouldn’t be.
 * If a student tears a page out of the textbook, do we take it away? Will we take away the laptop if there is a discipline issue?
 * Wisconsin district that LeMasters observed included a Lojack program on the laptop, so if it was stolen, it could be found. Those districts also have moved to self-insurance for the laptops, charging $20-125 per year per kid.
 * If a laptop is funded with textbook adoptions, how do you handle the FRL kids who are only partially funded by the state, assuming the funding won’t be enough to cover the actual cost. (Districts normally plan to absorb that cost, but keep it in mind when going that route.)
 * Allowing students to bring in their own equipment? SACS, NACS, Plymouth are researching. SACS is considering a separate Lightspeed firewall/filter for those connections. Shut access except for certain websites. NACS (Adela only so far) is considering requiring outside hardware to be registered with the tech department, MAC is recorded and paper signed allowing school personnel to inspect hardware if needed for compliance with AUP.