• 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.

Time: 3:00pm at the District Registration Center, Conference Room

Schools Represented: Carter, Eisenhower, Fitzgerald, Frisbie, Henry, Hughbanks, Myers, Trapp

 

Cyberbullying:

New legislation, AB86, authorizes schools to take disciplinary action against students who have been cyberbullying another student(s).  It was discussed that our district may need to revise our AUP and may want to add a note defining cyberbullying and warning students that disciplinary action may be taken, even if the cyberbullying was not done on the school district’s network. To train teachers and administrators in identifying and addressing cyberbullying, Noelle presented two online courses currently available to our district. One is in the Keenan Safe Schools System and the other is in the Professional Development System. Committee members will review these and make a recommendation on their use.

 

Technology Plan:

The proposed district technology goals, #1-11, for the revised district Educational Technology Plan were passed out to the members. Each member was asked to take one of the district technology goals and provide feedback and revisions on that goal. The first four goals were presented and suggested revisions were discussed. Since the hour of allocated meeting time was drawing nigh, the rest of the members passed their suggestions/revisions to Noelle Kreider, and Noelle said she will present those later.

 

Electronic Gradebook System

The last item discussed by the committee was the need for and lack of a district gradebook program that would meet the needs of teachers and would integrate with the eSchool management system. Matt Kelly discussed the prior recommendation, from the Technology Committee last school year, that we review the gradebook program that is part of eSchool. It was agreed that the committee should use meeting time next month to begin this gradebook review. Matt will make arrangements with the IT Dept for a demonstration and review of the gradebook component of eSchool. Matt said that the Middle School Grading Committee would also be invited to the evaluation meeting.

  

The meeting was adjourned at approximately 4:05 p.m.