Meeting Notes, Tech Team,
October, 2009
Jeff gave an update on tech priorities:
1. Bandwidth
2. Virus solution
3. Projectors—300 mounted by end of school year
4. New rotation of techs—all techs will rotate; expect new faces at your school and on a regular schedule.
5. Email (one email client will be decided upon, one that is stable)— Discussed email needs for teachers: stability, access from home and school (web) without duplicate messages, calendaring options, groups—easy way to create them. Search is handy but if common groups are pushed out to all and personal groups are easy to manage, it might not be necessary although many are used to using them.
6. New solution for phones—cannot add any more—can add lines but not phones, and need stability
7. Wireless—non-enterprise solutions being put up now endanger the network. Please help control this situation and do set up access points or particularly do not set up rogue routers. We are looking into a solution but it is pricey ($650,000 to do entire district. West elementary was the test school—cost was $25,000 and principal used building funds for entire project. That’s why West was first. (It is working very well, but it is not secured –yet.)
8. Ordering and supported hardware/software lists. There will be a new system for ordering which will include a list of supported items and standing quotes on those items. There will be a process for requesting items be added to the list)
Jeff explained that until we develop the virus solution, we cannot deal with elevating teacher rights, even though this was a number-one priority for teachers. Please continue to help with the elevated rights utility.
We have heard from 5 of 6 anti-virus vendors, with prices ranging from $16,000 to $50,000 per year. Cost will not be only criteria we go by: features are important. AVG, Sophos, Kaspersky, Panda, Symantec, McAfee.
Question for Jeff: Where is server space
for students on the list? It used to be on it? Answer: It is a number-two right
now. We have enough number-ones on our plates—see above. This will probably be
tackled next year.
Jeff and Katie explained about the Tech Ten (or Two?), that Katie and Jeff would like your principal to give you for time at meetings to cover tech issues. We did discuss this at the principal meetings, so they are aware of it. Please prepare something for the faculty meetings or PLCT and get with your principal to implement this process for disseminating information.
Katie reviewed TAGLIT—We did it! We increased in all four areas:
70% Basic Tools (low areas were spreadsheet charts and calculations)
59% Multimedia (low areas video and photo editing)
63% Communication Tools (webpage, web authoring (wikis, blogs etc)
65% Research and Problem Solving (low areas: graphic organizers –all; graphing calcs and probes for MS/HS teachers).
All teachers must be proficient by 2014. Next survey is spring 2010. Please feel free to offer classes at your school in our low areas. Contact Katie before hand, please.
Reviewed tech resources on the webpage—Notes from meetings with videos tutorials, web resources, Control Z blog.
Reviewed Teacher Items area and how to do elevated install.
Everyone practiced installing the USB scan. Please have your teachers install this. Send an email with your server address. Example \\scserver\teacheritems\USBscan
Please make sure to
cover the following with your staff
·
Good news
about Taglit, but practice needed in video/photo
editing, webpages/blogs/wikis, graphic organizers
(can use Word), graphing calcs, probes, spreadsheet
calculations and charts
·
USB scan—see
above
·
Passwords
to computers, email, Powerschool—continue to push
this.
·
Ordering
process (principal, secretary, tech team) have
ordering sheet. Otherwise, put in a work ticket for a quote.
·
District
priorities: anti-virus solution, bandwidth (in after Christmas break),
projectors, email, phones, new tech rotation, wireless