Meeting+Minutes+Oct+27,+2010

**  Wednesday October 27, 2010   ** Members present:  Kyle Tammen, Heidi Dudley, Diane Frank, Kent Sauls, Jill Schrader, Kevin Keena, Barb Bolen, Mike Schreiber  1) **   “Tech Byte” concerning Google Apps (setting up students)   **    Heidi showed everyone how accessing Google Apps as a student looks. She went to the Heritage website and used the link for lpsk12.org at the top of the home page. There is also a link to Google Apps on the Academics page. Over this last weekend there was an update to LPS Google Apps (all district staff were sent an email on this). The blue splash screen that used to be the opening screen for LPS Google Apps is no longer there. After you sign in now, your splash screen is the iGoogle screen. We have noticed some problems with this update. It is hard to navigate from the iGoogle screen because many of the students cannot see how to get into the various services that they use (like Google Docs). Heidi has found a way to get the Docs to display in an iGoogle window. For a student to fix this, they would go to the “Home” drop down and choose “add tab” and “Docs.” There are ways to get around this and get things to display in the iGoogle window, but there is some frustration with the apparent “bugs” in this new upgrade. Hopefully updates will be made so that these “bugs” are ironed out. In the meantime, Heidi or Diane can be prevailed upon to come and help any classes that are trying to get started in Google Apps. Just send Heidi or Diane an email about when and where you have a class that needs help and we will work it into our schedule. If you are having trouble getting into Apps yourself, please contact Joe Burnham at the district since he is in-charge of Google Apps for LPS. Since Google Apps is what our district is going towards, (it might eventually replace our school servers) Heidi is working with the English department to get all freshmen working in their Google Apps Account. 2) **  Technology refresh/budget update and assumptions  **      Our school server is going out of warranty within the next 2 years. Google provides more room for free than our server can currently provide for each student. Since the server may become obsolete, but not in the foreseeable future, (it is still very much needed for bigger and more secure files like yearbook, newspaper, and other shared folders) Heidi has found out that we can secure another 2 years on the extended warranty. This will give us almost 4 years total before we have to worry about making another server purchase. Since servers run 10,000.00+, and the extended warranty will cost 1500.00, this will save us from having to use major funds for a server purchase (at least for another 4 years).      Heidi had two handouts that dealt with the budget. One shows the first part of the budget spreadsheet that we went over last spring. She is working with Ken to try and get this budget to balance out to the same amount needed for each year. She also handed out a sheet that lists ideas on how we could handle the budget with assumptions listed that Ken and Heidi have been working on. Everyone was asked to go over both the balance sheet for the budget and the technology assumptions list, and provide any feedback at our next meeting on how we might accomplish the replacement and maintenance of technology here at Heritage. 3) **   Building-wide printing issues (will also be discussed at DC meeting)   **    We handed out a list of recent printer issues that have been developing in the library this year. Basically we are noticing that the types of documents that are being printed may be something that we could re-think in order to save the stress that is being put on the printers in the library.       Some of the types of printing jobs we are seeing recently that we could look at are; ** handouts ** ** that are required ** for the class, ** research ** from various online sources (often these are in the form of a web page or online criticism or editorial that the student prints out, not realizing that the web page may have 10+ pages to it!), online activities, like ** online surveys ** that the teacher asks the student to print out when finished (can be 3+ pages long).      We understand that printing of certain documents is necessary for class and is not something we expect to go away. However, last year when we implemented the “3 pages are free” policy in the library, printing went down by 75%. This year the numbers are heading back up again. So we need to re-think how and what we have students print. Some of this could be avoided by having students and teachers access documents in Google Apps. We asked the committee to help us think of ways we could reduce our printing, whether it would be inventive ways of not printing (taking a screen shot and emailing it to the teacher instead of printing out the proof in the online activity example, or looking before they print and copy pasting to reduce the print to 1 page). We asked about the idea of replacing all of the white paper in the library printers with gray paper so that we could easily identify and track how many printouts are coming from the library. The committee thought this was a good idea, so we have implemented that. Now that all printouts from the library are being printed out on gray paper we would like teachers to take note of what they see in gray and then think of ways we could reduce printing either by what we have the students print out or by accessing Google Apps to view and grade some student work. 4) **   Follow-up on IE7 and Outlook Personal Folders updating   **    Heidi asked how everyone was doing with their departments on getting all computers updated to IE 7 and getting everyone’s personal folders moved within Outlook. She asked each member to give her a checklist of who has had the updates done and who hasn’t so that Heidi and Diane could go through the lists and help whomever has not made these changes yet. Heidi reminded everyone that Personal Folders for Outlook are going away when we leave for winter break so Personal Folders for everyone in Outlook must be moved by that time or any items left will be gone forever.      5)  **   TIE conference / presenter request   ** TIE is currently requesting presenters for next summer. Heidi asked that if anyone was interested in presenting at this year’s TIE Conference in Copper Mountain, that they please let her know and she can get any information to them on how to do this. There should also be scholarships available for attending the conference from LPS this year, so be watching for that and make sure you apply if you are interested. Presenter’s conference fees are waived (but you would still be responsible for room and some meals). 6) **   Cyber Bullying   **    Heidi has been looking at ways we could get the message across to students about the hazards of cyber bullying since Ken and the other admins have been seeing an increase in this type of harassment. Some instances of texting and Facebook postings that have targeted particular students have been brutally mean and malicious. All members were invited to the Rachel’s Challenge Group Meeting on Thursday, November 4 after school when they will be talking about this issue. Heidi found an interactive gaming program which helps kids understand how to deal with this problem. There is also a video on Discovery Education which deals with stress and has a segment on cyber bullying. Anyone on the committee who can come to the Rachel’s Challenge meeting could be of help in coming up with ideas/solutions to this problem and ways we could get the message out to our students. **  *Next meeting Wednesday, December 1. **
 * HHS Technology Committee Meeting Minutes  **