Tech Facilitator Meeting March 2013

BYOD

http://todaysmeet.com/wsfcstfmar13--comments from today's meeting

Betty Weycker--Department of Technology Changes:

• Cory McCloud—promoted WAN/LAN engineer
• Kenny Flynn—network engineer now in the zone Cory vacated
• Brian Cooper—Had been a temp, now he is on the service desk
• Carla will hire another technical position

Mobile Learning Community (MLC):

• Considering being allowed for the 2013-2014 school year
• Chelsea from North been piloting the tablets and was to be here today, but could not make it
• Feedback from pilot—it was controlled—technology provided the equipment
• MLC is a "bring your own device"
• There has been some confusion—people wanting to sign up thinking they will get “stuff”
• to be clear—next year, there will not be "stuff" handed out
• Schools that had laptops are saying they were much more pleased with the tools than the schools that had the tablets
• The comfort level with the laptops was much greater than the tablets
• Pilot required 30-40 hrs of training—from the 6 teachers in the pilot—the feeling was that the training was essential.
• The training component is essential—it’s a non negotiable—if a school applies for the MLC next year, the training is a requirement, period!

Steven Anderson:

• To not be the smartest person in the room anymore is a big change for teachers in 1 to 1 classroom--It’s a difficult transition
• Marty Creech:  If a teacher says they don’t have time for the 35/40 hours, then they probably are not right for the MLC program
• Questions:  how to make it more student authentic?
• Building solid lessons first
• Stress—the pedagogy change
• Example:  pulling questions out of students to solve a problem verses giving them a power point with the facts ("all the curriculum to get through")
• It's a paradigm shift.
• People are successful because they know how to teach/masters of their content/do problem based learning, etc.

How do you maintain the same level of instruction when not every kid will have a device?

Betty—the results of the pilot survey did show that the device made a difference in the difficulty of addressing those situations (more difficult with tablets than laptops)

Adam from NORTH:  teachers are no longer expected to be the expert with technology but with the content.  Students are the experts—Students may even write a guide or make a You-tube channel.

So what’s going to happen next year? (based on what we have learned from the Pilot)

• Document coming out with an outline of what they expect including Strategic goals:
• Digital literacy/resources
• Online safety/ethical content—student responsibilities with technology from passwords to care of the devices, intellectual property, test taking, virus prevention and concerns about theft—all have to be discussed.

Teacher Considerations:

• Sign offs for student/parent obligations
• Instruction/pedagogy for every lesson has to be revisted
• Teachers need to be part of edmodo for learning community support
• No way we can manage/monitor the network if every kid brought in a device right off the bat
• A question Betty gets often: “how can we provide bandwidth if teachers don’t have adequet bandwidth now”?—that is NOT a bandwidth issue but aging equipment issue
• We have actually not peaked our bandwidth this year—We almost did with basketball games last week :)
• Normal day 40-50% of our bandwidth is used.
• MDM will register and monitor the devices (not "monitoring" what they are DOING, but who is and what is connecting.
• Kevin has vendors coming in to help us monitor and will be in place before August

Interest letter to join MLC

• Should be based on the whole school not individual teachers
• Perhaps groups of teachers by grade level or interdisciplinary
• They will not approve single teachers for a school—can’t invest so much for such a small group
• This is not whole district going BYOD!
• Another criteria—principal will have to sign off that they will provide to the tech facilitator the time to support the MLC program
• Another sign off--parents must acknowledge is that we will not be expected to support the personal devices
• Your support of devices “should” go away (may take two to three years—for devices to become the ownership of the students.
• Betty believes teachers who are part of this should have the "classroom solution" in their room
• sound becomes more important when collaborate groups is your predominate daily method
• Preference should go to teachers with classroom solutions
• Move to reinstate money from the state that was designated for technology (contact your representative)
• Discussion of cuts to tech facilitator positions
• Sometimes it comes down to choices in your schools

Timeframe for MLC implementation

• Truly looking at August
• Posting interest letter on Monday, and will need back April 19^th
• Need to know how many schools are interested and time-frame (not making exception for training)
• Training will be delivered some face to face/edmodo/moodle/summer training, starting in May.
• They will wave starting points to 9 weeks or natural breaks (end of quarter or semester)

Setting the Tone: 

• Establish bottom lines/procedures
• Create agreements
• mistakes become teachable moments
• There will be limitations on "operating systems" of devices brought in

Resources

• Iste for students and teacher
• Instructional technology page
• Video: “Katy ISD” (leader in BYOD):  http://youtu.be/LkiRWTJYPS0
• Opportunity for him to come and talk with schools that are interested
• would he be a value for us?
• Katy independent school district--Lenny Schad

Kids that don’t have a device?

• We have to prepare for it
• Some schools may make additional purchases to address this issue
• WFU laptops bridging the gaps?
• Discussion have already happened with Principals/TAC/

Steven Anderson/resources:

• Some great edmodo user groups--Steven is posting a list of the groups
• Bit.ly/wsfcsusergroups
• Edmodo new feature:  After a group is created they automatically lock after two weeks--Steven is trying to get that undone for our district
• Or you can join by url

Channel one was in the TBT this week and details will be re-posted next week.  http://wsfcs.k12.nc.us/channelone

Power School / Power Source

• Notice went out to 1000 teachers--Betty sent the email in last 24 hrs
• Have already pushed out to admin type folks in the schools
• The process is:  
• each group has to have all their accounts activated before they push out the courses.
• People are wanting to know why they don’t have the courses.
• If individual teachers can’t find their emails, give them two weeks, then submit a ticket
• Last group of teacher emails will go out by Monday
• Later she will ask for anyone else who needs a power school account
• They assign classes/sessions by the main role of the person
• Principals will be able to see what courses their teachers have taken
• Course dates are meaningless--don't worry about that
• Betty can not mandate these courses, they are recommended
• Teachers will have power teacher courses
• Delivery of information will not take place any other way

Credit for Power School Courses:

• We have CEU’s and AEOP (Office personnel credits)
• They have agreed to use honor code—trust the seat time.  
• So for example, If you complete 8 courses and that translates to 10 hours then you would get 1 CEU
• HR does not want your certificates
• Betty will set up in staff development called power source
• Every School has a designated staff development facilitator (that person might want to collect certificates—that’s the honor code)
• You also might compile a spreadsheet with members of schools who have completed
• Facilitator could mark a spreadsheet with the number of hours completed
• Tell your teachers to keep up with courses—whether it is a physical copy or a pdf of it, and they will get up to 30 hours of technology credit
• Completed by June 30^th? 
• Staff development has to be in by June 30^th for it to count on this cycle.
• All that’s needed for the system is the total number they have earned
• Can Teachers can take modules over again?—Yes, and there will be some additional user guides available (FAQ’s and some physical guides)

Homebase:

• “Ready”: Students and resources from homebase
• DPI has invested the money to Peasron to merge logo of Power school to Homebase
• So on the Main screen of power school it will say Homebase
• Homebase is still an online portal with resources for parents and students
• Student information system is power school for admins/ power teacher for teachers/power parent for parents
• Instructional Component:  School net may replace learning village?  Depends on the amount of content
• Professional Development piece--No more MCREL!!—same rubric—the tool will be TRUE North Logic—evaluation will be available in August.
• Moodle being replaced by “Open class”—will be available in the fall of next year—if it is free we will switch over—will abandon moodle (which we pay for now)
• Test NAV: There is state testing (will definitely be on it) and quarter testing will be decided whether or not to switch from blue diamond or not?
• SAS:  We are NOT giving up SAS. (really helps us with data getting to EC program in ws/fcs)
• SAS is a better performer than excel
• Open education Resources
• Video distribution—could revert back to discovery education, may come back to DPI, would still cost us but could be lower--Learn 360 may go away?

How is the build out going for Power School?  They are building it live—working on a "play with" environment on our own.

Computers in Office: 

• Where did the two computers issued to offices go?  
• Did financial secretaries get them?—They are moving to a new financial program and might be best for that second machine to go there

Wave 3 of computer deployment for this year:

• 1705 desktops to replace student desktops that are the oldest—coming to your school
• Tomorrow—you and the principal will receive the email stating how many computers we will receive based on a formul
• based on how many machines we have (from computrace)  and of which type—it’s a refreshing of 10% of those old net vistas
• Also looked at student to computer ratio at schools
• Betty weighted the two columns
• What to do with the old machines?
•  it’s at your discretion

• Betty Weycker:  Is not in the business of replacing a lab for you—these new computers are designated as classroom machines
• Originally district goal was for there to be four computers for student use in classrooms

Kevin Sherrill on the logistics of computer roll out:

• They started shipping yesterday!
• Monitors will come more quickly
• CPU’s should be within two weeks (lenovo M-72’s)

Naming convention:

• M516LD030501
• Inventories:  Leased Desktops:
• You need to start planning the locations
• Ethernet cables--Carla will be happy to send—next week's tech delivery—7 foot green cables
• Carla Miller:  
• In January, she sent a spreadsheet with two tabs--1) science labs and 2) teacher or science teacher laptops.
• Carla asked you to return with the names of those machines
• USe that spreadsheet and create an additional tab with these desktops that we receive now.
• For now you can email her the spreadsheet with the additional science and teacher laptops
• To Label or not label leased machines?
• Can not put fixed asset labels, 
• on the laptops they only could mark that one spot on the back where they have labeled with one number

Carla Miller/Spring Surplus pickup

• Piedmont e-cycling—Bill will be coming to pick up items
• Spreadsheet is on the webportal and the Deadline is April 15^th!!
• Tech meeting the end of that week, talk to Carla if you have a problem getting it done by that date
• Go to Tech Facilitator webportal:
• Info for tech facilitators
• Request for information
• Choose your level
• Drill into your folder
• Spring 2013 surplus pickup
• Check the form out
• Fill it out
• Save it
• Check it back in (out arrow will disappear)                                                      
• Only non working equipment
• Not TV’s
• Can do old smart boards (that do not work)
• Tell Carla about rolling stands and email Carla and she will come and pick it up

Side notes:

• Carla's team will come through to schools and look at places where there are less live drops
• Be careful that tickets are secured to laptops when you send them in
• Dibils discussion
• IP phone sites—call manager update over spring break
• Around April 1^st/2^nd voicemail will be turned off for a couple of days—asking ip phone users to purge old voicemails

Classroom Science rooms:

• Trying to finish (204 classrooms) by the end of this month—Angie Wallace is scheduling this—knocking out 2/3 schools a day.
• If anything was left undone, be sure to put a ticket in
• Trying to get smaller jobs done in April
• Smith Farm to be done in May

Weekly web-x still every Thursday (except tech facilitator days)

Strategic plan that impacts technology—

• Focus on indicators of success—strategies to develop online access to homebase
• Google form: http://bit.ly/wsfcstfform
• groups to post the comments: 

My Group:  Overall, we think they are good.

Why not have the goal be 100% access?  85% student access

Will the site be mobile friendly?  That may increase access

What additional course and what is the purpose of that one additional course listed in the strategy.