Tech Coordinators Meeting Minutes
October 10, 2011 9:00 A.M.
ESU #10 - Kearney, NE
9:15 AM Introductions
9:20 A.M. Facebook Policy
How many other schools are using Facebook pages in classrooms.
Louisville’s Drafted Policies
Bennington has unblocked Facebook for teachers so they can use with their students.
Papillion-LaVista has a Facebook presence for all it's schools
9:25 A.M. Scheduling PT conferences
● Most districts are still scheduling via paper/letters
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9:27 A.M. erate Update - SuAnn W.
● Districts not required to maintain documentation trail
● Are employee discounts from Verizion forbidden under e-rate?
9:38 A.M. Facebook as comm. tool between home and school
● Some larger districts (Denver) unblocked during non-school hours, blocked during the
day.
● PLV has had good luck with it, most posts are defended by other parents
● Admins have to be comfortable with content being posted
● If you don’t grab your own ‘name’ on FB or any social media site, someone else will grab
it.
● Better to start the page and have control or direction over the content.
● Milford has Twitter and Facebook, game nights admins update scores. No issues
reported.
● Seems to be the easiest and most effective way to communicate
● Birdsville, TX - presentation from school that is very involved in social media http://
www.facebook.com/birdvilleschools
● A few schools have FB open during the day for students
● More staff member issues vs student issues in some cases
● Centura PS - Prepare for opening FB if you decide to do so, student handbook policies,
etc.
○ Teaching time management, can only be on if it is for a school purpose.
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10:00 A.M. Apple VPP Program
● How do you manage which apps go where to which devices to who needs them?
● Need ability to reclaim from Apple ID that it is assigned to
● Apple ‘best practices’ says to give redemption code to the individual user, does not work
for schools...students leave, too many devices, etc.
● Heard that people who go w/iPads for 1:1 revert to laptops?
○ Teachers are getting used to the change
○ Depends on what expectation is for what the technology is in the classroom
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■ Ex: not tying student into one note taking program on iPad
Still having same problems of teachers who will not adopt the technology
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Duschene Academy is using iTap that allows remote terminal services so student has
Word, Excel, etc. available to them.
○ Teacher transition plays a huge role in a transition process, student transition is
very smooth
○ Sonic Wall for filtering devices
■ Unfiltered outside of the building
Some schools using Lightspeed, this filtering solution has an agent for the iPad (browser
that replaces Safari) that will check back with Policy server in the building for allow/deny.
Question for schools deploying to teachers: Are you allowing them to sync those to their
iTunes accounts?
○ Kearney - Possibly allowing them to use own Apple ID with KPS e-mail address,
with the agreement that KPS will take over the Apple ID when that user leaves.
Any non-school related content needs to be purchased via personal Apple ID.
VPP takes time to put together and get into
Break 10:50 A.M.
11:08 A.M. - Continue with iOS discussion
● http://www.mobicip.com/ - Mobile Broswer
● Department discussion (breaking iPads up into departments) Don is basically doing this
but by grades.
○ Don is creating images by school/grade
● Webdav - has made it very easy to transfer and move files back and forth between
machines. (Lion server)
● Also with Lion server we are using profile manager, changes apply instantly. This
management piece was a big help in Don’s 1:1 iPad program.
● Google Apps - using as a method to transfer information from student to teacher, once
setup it has been working well. (Make sure to do Education edition when applying for
Gapps domain).
● Have carts been investigated or cases? - yes, but limited to 10
11:30 A.M. Chuck W. - PlanbookEDU (lesson plans)
● Online lesson plan book that allows staff to do lesson plans online.
○ Don’t have to be at their computer, no printing, always accessable
○ Standards can be linked inside lesson plans, can go back at the end of the year
and see how many times they have been touched
○ Can load in district ‘custom’ standards as well
○ Free version vs paid version - free does not do objectives. Talk with company
and they will most likely work with you on pricing
● Other programs available (FileMaker has a solution)
11:45 A.M. - Document management/project management
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Wikispaces has rolled out a product called projects
○ free with edu account - apply for a free upgrade to any wiki for K-20 educational
use
○ http://blog.wikispaces.com/2011/08/projects-a-better-way-to-work-in-classroomgroups.html
CMap - build a map of project, drag and drop documents in and out of the project
○ Linux based server, all open source
○ User rights management
Bennington - Curriculum Mapper (Collaborative Learning Inc.)
File Maker
Xerox DocuShare
11:50 A.M. - Document retention
● Bishop in Omaha, Online Imaging, Konkia (edocument solutions)
● Around $100 a drawer, each folder is one file and can be retrieved that way
● If Network Nebraska were to offer some sort of document storage, would this be a
benefit for districts to buy in and host?
○ Depends on ease of use, interface, etc.
○ Direct this question to the supts.
12:00 P.M. - Lunch Break
12:45 P.M. - Notebook discussion
12:50 P.M. - Consolidate/share IT resources
● Has anyone thought of sharing or pooling IT resources?
● Can we come to a point where if an application is needed (ex: anti-virus) we can pool
resources to have that hosted in one place (virtually, etc.) to reduce the burden of local
IT people.
● Are we replicating costs that we don’t have to?
● If anyone is interested in exploring an option to co-op some resources, Cozad is
interested.
● Some districts are hiring private companies to support their technology needs.
1:28 P.M. Disaster Recovery Plans - What are other schools doing?
● All on a budget
● Cozad - Backing up to local disk, dumping to ESU
● Westpoint - Similar situation, off site backup is at ESU, NAS between buildings
● Gary (Kearney) - If you find something that does de-duplication you save bandwith and
is easier to restore that way as well
● Robo copy, crash plan pro, sync back
1:40 P.M. - Google Apps
● Who is using Google Apps and how is it going?
● Norris is using the suite (docs, e-mail, etc)
● Angel > Moodle conversion, conversion thingy 2
● Is anyone using users and groups in Google Apps?
○ Broken down into staff, students and students are broken into 10th and younger
and then 11th & 12th are separate
○ Staff, students, student teachers. Students are broken down into grad year.
Helps by sorting/searching for grade levels. Manage staff mailing groups
(divided up into buildings as well).
1:55 P.M. - Group Issues
● Discussed open listserve, vendors are available to join. Lucas goes through list
occasionally to clean up vendors that may have joined.
● Discussed February meeting locations
○ Looking into GIPS, ESU 10 is not open the 15th of February (next scheduled
meeting date).
2:05 P.M. - Online Scheduling Solutions
● Eventbrite.com - what was used for this system
● ESU 10 has a event registration system - ODOIE
2:15 P.M. - Break
2:30 P.M. - Anyone using VMWare? - Bryan W.
● Norris and Centennial are using it
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