Mona Middle School is at 29% absence. Grand Haven is canceling school tomorrow.

MTA check in

• Beware 3 years out from a bond issue.

Beware 3com solutions, over-promise, under deliver problems?

There was a great webinar from Keyseya regarding remote control of multiple domains. Similar to our RD but multiple OSes and more expensive thant RD.

The Tech Academy for Admins is very successful. There are already plans for a second session because there have been so many requests already.

Start time: 10:10 am

Tech Plans

• Most that have been submitted have been approved. There are districts that are awaiting MEGS approval.
• Great efforts.

Updates

• AVG Purchase
  • 15,900 workstation $2.33/unit.
  • Ravenna is getting 100 units.
  • AVG Network Edition
  • Keycodes: Randy will share with group. On honor system.

• MUNIS
  • Rhonda Henry reports
  • Phase 1 districts: Rhonda has been out except Whitehall.
  • She’s been demonstrating on MUNIS self-service. Will be rolled out district by district. Web based for employees
  • Phase 2 begins in August. 8 districts. Must be installed by 1-Aug-09 by tech support.
  • Call Brett with install questions.
  • MUNIS goes down 6 am – 7am on Saturday mornings.
  • Jackson ISD, Concord, Dexter coming online.
  • Stockbridge and West Ottawa coming online in August.
  • Client base continues to grow despite losing northern districts to Lake ISD and Infinite Campus

• SMS
  • Most recent meeting yesterday with core team.
  • Narrowing down to Power School and Pinnacle.
  • Infinite Campus could be back in the game if they lower their price. Lowering the price is unlikely.
  • Power School is leader with Pinnacle a “close” second. Fruitport disputed the term “close” used by Randy L.
  • Power School seems to meet needs across the board.
  • Pinnacle’s support is worrisome. Other people report that Pinnacle was a distant third at their roundtable.
  • Phase 1 group starts Jan 1, 2010.
  • Two year implementation schedule

• IGOR
  • New report to see county wide reports.
  • R-P successfully piloted an upload.
  • Change in next year’s training to dig into reports deeply. Bring in school teams to MAISD. We need to get onboard this.

• e2020
  • Enough interest to move forward.
  • Curriculum directors piloted for about a year.
  • PO going out through OAISD.
  • Media box should arrive next two weeks.
  • Hosted at MAISD.
  • $470.00/concurrent license

Discovery Streaming

• Will bill in fall.
• Ravenna is signed up again.

Learn360

• A competitor to Discovery Streaming
• Presented last fall
• Demo’d for REMC board
• Put out RFP for 2010.
•  Significantly improved, but not approved yet.

8th Grade Tech Literacy Test

• The MAISD is no longer doing test for schools.
• Diane got a request today to come out.

MACUL Space

• Past, present and future members from all over the world.
• Don’t have to be current member of MACUL
• You can use to explore nings.
• For people interested in educational technology. No other limit to joining.
• William T. Waters is a little strange. Don’t befriend him.
• Upload youtube videos at home and play them back at school from MACUL Spaces.
• I exempted MACUL SPACES from filtering.

MOODLE and blogs

• Tim Brown updated on Moodle
• The MAISD will host individual MOODLE and blog servers if you have one.
• All blogs are on new server
• New requests for MOODLE will go through Tech Coordinator in districts.
• new blog server is here
• Each district will be asked if they want to upgrade and district will take over user management. Downside is teaches will have to deal with new site administration.
• Possible training in August for blog users.
• Diane will offer train the trainer sessions on upgrade or if we have 6 or more users, Diane will come to the district.
• All people on blogs.muskegonisd.org (Ravenna) will make the switch this summer.

Bilingual Resources Wiki

• Click on her MABE link to the left to see her presentation.
• Lots of free resources

2009-10 PD Offerings

• Diane is continuing tech integration. Her recently announced second “23 Things” online course filled in 2 hours.
• Too many teacher’s are still looking toward the Internet as read-only and are missing the social and collaboration aspects.
• PD registrations must be done online. The MAISD is going to refer disgruntled users back to their technology helpers in the district for help.

MP3 Project

• Fulfill obligation to get mp3 players
• If we have users that want to get involved, let me know and I will support (funds available) with iPod Shuffle.

Break (10 minutes)

Horizon Report – Technologies to Watch

• Horizon Project
• Horizon Report for 2009
• Horizon Report for K-12 education
• Compiled by educause
• Help you visualize the future through best guess based on studies. It gives examples!
• Randy highly recommends
• Yea! John recommends reading the report for K-12 education. This should be the first thing we talk about for the Tech Plan Committee.

Voicethreads

• Great collaborative tool and free to educators
• Students will love it.
• You can attach voice message to your blog and other stuff

Refreshed METS & NETS

• METS not approved in May. Ron Faulds expects passage in fall 2009
• More general
• More online, collaborative environment, creativity, how to use technology for critical thinking, not the specific skills and technology

Lunch (11:45-12:30)

Netbook Demonstration by CDWG – Jay Smith

• Field Rep for CDWG
• Mini-notebooks
• Why?
  • Cost savings: $5-$600. Goes up with upgraded OS
  • Flexibility
  • Sustainable
• Concerns
  • Size: kids used to texting
  • Durability: Over order for damaged
  • Battery life: Often schools have to upgrade
  • Wireless protocols
  • Grade level
  • Some support upgrade to WinXP
  • Microsoft Office bogs down
    • Jeff agreed this is an issue
    • Get a sample and put your image on it.
• CDWG offers a wide variety of netbooks
  • Specs similar
  • HP announcing new in near future
  • Touch screen coming (like tablets)
  • Enterprise configuration: customized images, etchings, asset tags
• AEPA contract
  • American Education Purchasing Agreement
  • New to Michigan (2 years)
  • Oakland ISD is agent.
  • Purchase without going to bid. Like remcbid
  • CDW’s full inventory under contract.
  • Compare to REMC and other pricing.

2009-10 Meetings

• Dates and Times
  • Third Thursday of every month.
  • Same as Curriculum Directors so we can have combined meetings if necessary

Tech Services Golf Outing

• June 24
• Location & Time: Randy to determine

• Jim and Jamie about Merit Mail & telephony
• Near sourcing: On our network, served by our partner.
• Merit backbone throughout MI. Unlimited bandwidth. Expand beyond Internet connectivity with layered services.
• Other services: Colocation, cloud services, CMS – Ziphos
• Merit backbone as robust, reliable and stable as telephone system
• Hosted/Managed PBX service from Merit. Removes the hardware
• Any IP phone works
• Offering PRI replacements. PRI is interface from VoIP to traditional system
• 911 works. e911 available at additional cost. e99v2 is being finalized. Muskegon kind of has e911, Ottawa does not, Detroit is struggling.
• If phone is off-site, creates 911 location problem.
• Volume based pricing. $31/phone/month
• Pure rent to own
• Merit Voice web interface
  • Every user gets a web portal with voicemail, call information, forward voicemails onward
  • Web based admin tool
  • Conferencing
  • Call management per user
  • Merit finds that most users use the web portal, not the phone, is how they manage calls
  • eRate eligible
• Merit Mail
  • backup, law enforcement requests, archiving, SPAM filtering, anti-virus, multiple points of failure in current systems
  • Student auditing: Higher ed can only use this within organization. Northern MI example
  • Replacement for GroupWise functions
  • $2.00/account/month. Students are $0.50/student/month. $20,000 for blackberry support. iPhone a lot cheaper, a lot more cost effective
  • Eliminates a lot of the archiving and access concerns with Google Docs
  • Uses Zimbra web interface. Must have Intel iMacs on Mac side
  • 300,000 users state wide
  • “unlimited” storage for staff, but no artificial additions allowed. 300
  • eRate eligible

• OAISD is going to this.
• Why not Google Docs at $0.00? University lawyers says if email leaves Michigan can be adjucated anywhere. Data location, data jurisdiction are still covered in state where data resides. Therefore, we’ve lost control of our data. How confident are you in keeping your confidential data anywhere. Merit resides in MI. Google is $0.00, but support costs are not free. Google brings giantness. Merit provides better support. You’re paying for Merit’s “high touch” option.

• Need to figure out what the MAISD charges us for email.
• Need to talk to Jeff Wykes on eRate eligibility
• Get Bret Emerson in contact to see if this is feasible, practical and cost effective for Ravenna.

Tech Plans

• Ravenna’s Tech Plan is approved at the ISD level.

AVG Licensing

• MAISD quote is for 5,400 user. $3.30/user.
• Ravenna needs to budget for 100 licenses in 09-10.

MUNIS

• A newer update was installed near the first of April.
• Tyler Content Manager is being implemented and users trained.
• Phase 2 begins in August: Montague, Holton, R-P and one more in-county.
• Added some customer’s, lost some customers.

IGOR Update

• Added reports from district requests
• R-P began piloting uploading district level
• HELGA tool being added: Allows cohort groups to be added. The report will run just for the cohort kids. Randy can demo it for you.
• IGOR is free for one more year

SMS Update

• Vendor presentations completed.
• Evaluation committee is trying to narrow it down to top 2. Meeting around May 7.
• Getting to top 2 going to be hard.
• Every vendor has pros/cons.

Office 2007

• Office 2010 will be out in under a year. Consensus was no sense in moving until at least then.
• Whitehall is only district to use 2007 district wide.
• No plans in other districts to move from their district wide versions. Muskegon districts run versions from Office 2000 Pro (Win, Ravenna), Office 2003 (Win), Office 2004 (Mac, Ravenna), Office 2008 (Mac, Ravenna) and XP (Win).

HelpSpot

• Help Desk software
• $170/technician/1st year, $50/technician/annual maintenance
• Help Spot hosting available from MAISD
• I recently implement the 1 user version of Web Help Desk. Deb and I are testing it currently.

MAISD Tech InventoryMIDPAC

• Date change to May 18 at 1:00 pm.

Shared Services – Next steps

• Get a committee
• Muskegon has Zimbra server. Having MAISD host it, could it make it eRate(able)
• VoIP: Cisco’s cost is on the backend with SMARTnet contract
• VideoIP. MAISD is investigating fiber distribution.
• videoconferencing: start with remote rural districts like Ravenna

May 21 Meeting Items 2009-10 Meetings

• Going to overlap with curriculum directors on 3rd Thurdays

Tech Services Golf outing

• Randy will Doodle the golf outing.

• New timeline: April 30 deadline for 3 yr tech submission.
• Must have in MEGS for Randy to review by 17-Apr-09.
• Beneficial for MAISD districts to be on the 3 yr timeline. Ultimately up to district. Can be amended at any time.

Premiere Internet Toolbar for IE

• Jim Kaupilla
• Newest version of full suite on CD-R. There may be training this spring.

Google Talk

• MAISD standard. Use it for Tim & Brent contacts.

Student Management

• Randy Lindquist
• The committee has selected 3 vendors for full day presentations
  

  • Power School
  • Infinite Campus
  • Excelsior

• No date has been set but it will be in March to beginning of April.
• The presentations will be broken down into various functions. Anyone can attend.
• Ravenna should send someone to each relevant session if we want to give input.
• Click here for SMS timeline and other details

MUNIS & Excel versions

• Rhonda Smith
• Direct deposits can be emailed instead of printing copies & stuffing envelopes.
  • Remind users to pick up any print outs they make. Don’t leave at the printer.
•  Some emails have been bouncing back.
• Need Excel 2003 or greater to download from MUNIS. Ann will have to upgrade.
• Compatibility with Open Office was raised. Rhonda will look into. She feels the response will be, “if it works, it works. Too bad for you if not.”
• PO printing
  • If POs don’t print it is likely to be a special character like the Register mark. Check the characters that are trying to be printed.
• The next phase is restructured.
  • MAISD will lead training in August. Rhonda will be the lead trainer.
  • 7 districts in next phase. Ravenna is not in the next phase.
  • Dividing the MAISD staff as point persons.
  • Point people are assigned specific districts. Each MAISD staff will be a point person for 3 districts.
• Business Managers will be given more details on 27-Feb-09.
• Jackson ISD is becoming a customer.
• MUNIS v7.2 will install the Saturday of spring break, if the test upgrade goes well.

Anti-virus

• Districts leaning toward AVG.
• Centralized control
• Must run on “old,” 6-10 years.

CIPA Filter Info

•  Randy sent vendor information out via email at the vendor’s request.
• Nothing Ravenna needs to consider

Sinking Funds for Technology

• Is true they are looking at it.
• Trying to change language to reflect bond language.

Technology Legal Seminar

• March 26, 2009 webinar 9-11:30 am
• email retention
• Lawyers & David Palme, Portland Public Schools

MOODLE

• The MAISD will still host the sites but provides no end user support.
• MAISD will be migrating districts to their own server.
• Ravenna’s MOODLE site is hosted by MAISD.
• The biggest issue is student email addresses. Getting them in and out is overwhelming the MAISD.

Reimaging computers

• Diane Zoellmer
• Add delicious buttons to toolbar.

Blogs – Update to 2.6.7

• Diane Zoellmer
• A teacher has a very active blog. It is a highly regarded blog.
  • Someone didn’t have their comment approved.
  • This person complained to the Superintendent.
• Teachers who use MAISD blog sign off to follow district policy.
• What is Ravenna’s policy on blogs?
• One district suggested blogger’s turn off comments. Duh. Defeats the purpose of having a blog.
• The update is overwhelming. The teacher’s will have an initial panic.
• If there are six (6) people wanting blog training, Diane will visit Ravenna.
• 23 Things
  • Diane’s 23 Things blog is here
  • Diane will be offering another session over the summer. Look for registration in May
  • Diane did this in a blog rather than MOODLE because of the complexity of MOODLE.

MAISD Tech Inventory

• We reviewed the different changes to this Google Docs spreadsheet.

Shared Services

• We brainstormed what we currently do and what we want to do.
• This is in a Google Doc that will be available to Tech-Cs and superintendents
• Virtualization is reducing the need for physical servers.