• The two online courses available for training teachers on this issue were reviewed. The committee recommends that all teachers and site administrators be required to complete the Keenan Safe Schools course. This course takes approximately 25 minutes to complete and can be completed online anytime, anywhere. Completion can be monitored by administrative reports in the system.
   
• Noelle Kreider presented a variety of free curriculum materials teachers can use to instruct students in the topic of cyberbullying. NetSmartz is linked on all schools' homepages and provides games and songs for elementary and video vignettes for secondary. CyberSmart provides lesson plans with related worksheets and online resources. Teachers who complete the online iSAFE training can also access this organization's curriculum materials.

• Jerry Sturmer and Floyd Braggs recommended the student AUP include clear language explaining the cyberbullying law to students.

District Technology Plan: The revised plan for 2009-2012 was approved by the state and will be presented for board adoption this month. This plan is required as a condition of various technology funding from the state and federal level. The plan is available on the Educational Technology Committee website.

• Technology Scope & Sequence: The most significant task identified in the plan is to integrate a technology scope and sequence into the core content area timelines with key lessons at each grade level. These will help us meet and show evidence of achieving the NCLB goal for students to achieve technology literacy by the end of 8th grade. This will be the primary focus of this committee next year.
   
• Electronic Gradebook Program: The plan also requires the committee to continue evaluation of gradebook programs next year. eSchool's gradebook feature was evaluated in February; Easy Grade Pro will be evaluated early next school year.

New Helpdesk System: The IT Dept has implemented a new helpdesk system. This system will require users to indicate their computer name when submitting a problem - Noelle showed how to locate this information and recommended teachers label their computers with this information for easy access. Teachers will receive an email when an incident is reported for them and again when it is resolved. They will have 3 days to respond to this notice if they feel the problem was not resolved.
 
Kidspiration 3.0: K-12 Voucher (aka Microsoft settlement) funds were used to upgrade to this new version, which includes math tools. IT Dept is pushing the installation out across the network to all teacher and student computers at elementary schools. Secondary school teachers can request installation as needed (ie: for Special Education). Noelle has provided multiple training sessions and will continue to do so next year. Training videos are also available online.
 
Other:

• Student file security was discussed. Secondary students are encouraged to store their electronic files in eChalk to prevent tampering. Each secondary student has 50mb of storage in their eChalk account. Concerns about large media files were discussed and suggestions were offered for compression. Questions or problems regarding the use of eChalk should be directed to Noelle Kreider.
   
• Noelle reported that IT Dept is currently evaluating a product by NComputing that allows one computer to serve multiple users. This could help address the age of our computers - 56% of student computers are over 4 years old.

This was the last committee meeting of the year.

• Four schools provided the requested input using the online form presented at the last meeting - thank you to Garcia, Frisbie Jehue, RMS for doing your homework!
• Representatives provided input on curriculum component of district technology plan - the attachment below combines this input and responses from the online form.
• Concerns and ideas were shared about the instructional time needed to teach technology, providing opportunities for student access and use, teacher training, parent training, and more.
• A sub committee will review the input and previous goals to create a draft of suggested curriculum goals.

• District is currently working on installing a fiber optic network to increase bandwidth. Garcia was recently brought online.
• eRate funds will be used to replace servers as needed.

• Handout was provided on how to access online teacher editions.
• Information regarding the online student edition will be provided soon.

• The plan must be revised and submitted to the state by December 5th in order to maintain district eligibility for technology grants and funding.
• To increase stakeholder involvement, site representatives were asked to seek input from their schools. A brainstorming worksheet (see attachment below) was provided. All responses are to be submitted online by October 1st. Input may be from site leadership team, department, or grade level groups.
• Representatives were encouraged to review the National Technology Standards as a supporting document for technology plan input. The profiles link on the website provides grade level examples.

• The policy needs to be taught, not just passed out.
• The AUP Classroom poster should be posted in every classroom above the computers. The poster includes your school's login information for Grolier & EBSCO. You can access the poster from your eChalk account - login to your account and click My School in the left sidebar. The poster is attached to the Grolier login message.
• The NetSmartz link on every school's eChalk website provides lessons on Internet safety. iSAFE.org provides professional development and free curriculum materials addressing all Internet safety topics, including cyberbullying.

• www.CLRN.org (Noelle Kreider): This is a state-funded database of software and websites aligned to state standards.
• www.ThinkFinity.org (Noelle Kreider): This is a rich collection of the best educational resources on the web.
• Blogs (Noelle Kreider): eChalk now has a blog feature for teachers and administrators. For more information, login to your eChalk account, click Support Center, and click the Teach with eChalk tab. You'll see the blog handout listed.

RUSD must revise the District Educational Technology Plan, effective for 2009-2012. This revision must be completed by December 2008 in order to maintain the district's eligibility for various technology funding. Please join us in this endeavor - your input is valuable to us.

Things you can do to participate in creating a vision for technology in Rialto:

• Click the RSS Feed link at the bottom of this post to subscribe to the Tech Plan Revision blog so you can receive ongoing updates about this process.
• Use the comment/contact links on this page to provide input.
• Participate in online surveys, available on the Educational Technology Committee website.
• Review the current technology plan, the National Technology Standards, and other planning resources, all available on the committee website.
• Join our committee meetings - see calendar on committee website.