Tech Facilitator Meeting April 2014

Tech Meeting Notes April 2014:

https://todaysmeet.com/wsfcstfapr2014

District Meeting Notes:  http://wsfcstechnology.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/april-2014-tech-facilitator-meeting-notes/

New staff: 

• Brad Chambers:  Working at Wiley and Jefferson
• Adam Seipel:  New district technology facilitator replacing Michael who they ran off
• Jim Mendoza:  Blast from the past,been back for a month working on Home Base
• Andy Smith is new technology network support, was at Jefferson and Wiley
• Steven Anderson is our newly departed director of instructional technology, working to get that position filled
• Data Management position and another tech facilitator position? to be filled also

Gilliam, Natalie, NTGilliam@wsfcs.k12.nc.us

• Donuts are from Sue Albertson (has cancer) living in PA commuting to  New York—tumors are shrinking!  She thanks everyone for their love and support!
• Natalie has a way to contact her-

PC Refresh/Classroom solution finish up/wireless upgrades

• Kevin met with county managers on the budget
• Much of it is driven by sales tax—bad weather affected income this year
• There is an unfunded plan is now in place:
• Will be sharing with principals
• Based on the Interactive projector set up
• Room inventories—he planned to have today to share, but will get to us.
• Where we have been and where we are going?
• Many full classroom solutions have gone into new construction
• We also had matching funds program—rolled out another 276 rooms
• Been about 1300 partial ones via school monies—like PTA, etc.
• Total 18.6 million spent over 7 years—pretty huge investment
• Rooms to go:
• Middle Schools- 689
• HS: 225
• Needs about 9.9 million to finish off all of them

Based on the survey:

• In red cost on Kevin's spreadsheet are the costs to finish or install in each and every room in the district—it’s an estimate to finish the job
• The numbers are based on the interactive projection system which are about $7500.00 per room
• Another Chart shows school by school—and cost to complete each school
• Schools that are part of construction or are not title one are in huge deficits

Wireless infrastructure:

• Race to the top gave us 1:3 ratio of wireless access points per classroom
• 2013-2014—we had the EC department upgrades and high school upgrades
• Another million dollars invested in that
• Now need to focus on middle and elem schools

Device life cycles

• Kevin and Chris have developed a "Dashboard of plans" A/B/C
• There are roughly 20,000 windows XP machines to retire ASAP
• Plan A
• K-2 classes —put four devices in every classroom –not sure of the best device yet—but not desktops
• 3rd and 4th grades: 15 units as part of mobile cart/room
• Same concept for middle schools: 20 units each for middle school classrooms
• High schools perhaps BYOD will fill in some of the gaps, so perhaps a little less spending there?
• He took all this information and playing around the different scenarios
• 1500 laptops at HS
• For 6th and 7th: 6800 units in MS
• Elementary:  8500 devices
• All told, this matches roughly the number of machines we need to retire—20,000
• There are roughly 41,000 out there—are there units not being used?
• May not be a one per one swap for old
• If every room in school is equipped, then maybe reclaim the labs, CTE?
• Maybe reclaim classrooms and remove some pods?
• 3^rd grade will get those t-400 laptops that teachers recently turned in
• Parent advisory council and teacher advisory want to hear about what they are doing about this problem.

Timeline for the Plan

• No perfect solution:  but to deploy mobile devices, then the prerequisite is to have wireless in place
• He’s got a proposal for the timeline—it’s a starting point.

IBM models 6792, and 8305 desktops

• Send Carla an email with the quantity working or non working
• The CRT monitors—only surplus if you don’t have a need for them—You will get nothing in return right now for them
• Get a quick quantity that is accurate…
• Carla Miller—separate pickup in later June
• Provide a separate quantity—for desktops and monitors
• Carla will send out a separate email asking locations of equipment, etc.
• They shred the hard drives

Chris Corbin: Power Point Presentation: Project updates:

Elementary Security Cameras- 

• Directed by operations dept.
• 2 schools completely done, cash and smith farm
• 2 different vendors working on it
• Requirements for the cameras from tech department is adding infrastructure to support 16 cameras (running wires, pulling cable—need to be on a GB interface)
• Carla’s staff will be installing GB switches in the closets.
• Only for camera connections at this point—new server at school serving DVR purposes, etc.

IP phone update:

• Money saving measure with multiple lines per school but only pay AT&T for one line
• 12 sites remaining to finish
• The school phone number you have now will remain for emergency purposes—tied to 911

HS Wireless:

• Working on a 1:1 ratio for access points:classrooms, and new switches in the closets

AS 400 cloud migration:

• DPI is working with SAS to be able to use
• 24^th district in the state doing this—we are not a guinea pig
• I series client will need to be installed on the workstation
• File that points to an ip address to point to Raleigh
• Principals and lead secretaries mainly will be affected by this

Work order system:

• Our finance KACE ticket system--$40,000 to maintain the system
• School Dude—been used by maintenance
• Cheaper than KACE, and friendlier user interface.
• Maintenance gave them a demo—especially from teacher perspective
• It is question based
• Routing will be done the same
• Will continue to use KACE while we slowly switch over to School Dude (we own KACE so no big rush)
• Should save money over the long term
• Perhaps by next meeting they will show us a demo

Server refresh for Middle Schools:

• Will start in August to refresh DELL 2600 servers
• You can image across the WAN, but it is problematic, so better to keep a server in the schools
• Consolidating all the print servers isn’t such a good idea either with all the crashes
• Will slowly start to go out to the middle schools, and make the switch.  
• Doesn’t take long and no interruption or down time, will start in late august
• Installing VM-ware to run virtual servers, and a sole print server for the school,
• Also will serve  dhcp services and imaging, & software deployments,
• Can schedule multi machine imaging

Student Email:

• It is happening
• Piloting at East Middle (piloting School net—this is driving this need)
• Attorney will not allow us to continue to use current ID’s for security purposes
• First four digits of first name, first four of last name and last four of student ID @wsfcsstudents.net
• Will change everything—log-in to the computer and email
• Email will start in 3^rd grade.
• Will K-2…have the same old log-in?
• Account provisioning will weigh out the options?
• Email Address books:  students will have separate book.
• If teachers want to search for students they can choose the student address book separately
• The groups will be provided for the whole school
• But other groups for clubs etc. would have to be maintained by individual teachers
• No real e-mail monitoring other than the regular webfilter
• The whole need for this is for logging into power school for school net assessments.
• Browser issues will creep in again. 
• Students will also have sky drive access (50 GB)
• Whole new possibility for collaboration
• There will be an APP for smart phones/tablets
• School based decision to help students with set up on those devices or not?
• OWA app for apple for the email right now

Office 365 updates:

• Connect authenticate—School Dude uses same kind of authentication as email now
• Single Sign On:  SSO enabled for School dude. 
• When teachers access the Staff icon on desktop it will automatically login to email
• Been some Calls to help desk with problems with teachers who share some devices
• Problem also when you switch users
• APP called credential manager in windows 7 (have to clear out if teachers have checked the box to save credentials)  I am attaching those instructions and also put them in Kace Article 111
• They will get screen shots for us to clear out those saved credential issues.

SHAREPOINT 2013 cloud hosted solution:

• Working with a local vendor to get everything in webportal migrating to the sharepoint 2013 environment
• Workflow for folders and permissions, etc.
• Integration with skydrive, blogging, social networking features
• At some point all the current webportals will migrate and be able to be seen on email

Image Updates:

• They have started working on them already.
• Lenovo showed them some new things and have revamped their imaging center
• Smart imaging—we built a single image and don’t have to add any drivers
• Then they store our basic programs and they update drivers before they ship
• WSFCS will still have to maintain an image library for re-imaging
• Lenovo will help us with maintaining and updating images
• Adding FireFox and java and flash updates to the new images.  
• Updating to office 2013 with sky drive app
• Hopefully have them done and updated by end of May.

Memory model  is changing—

• default 8 GB of memory with the new devices
• Need to switch to a 64 bit operating system to accommodate for that
• Some 32 bit apps don’t work with that
• There may be some issues with print servers to accommodate for 64 bit machines
• Depending on the model, you will need to know if 32 or 64 bit series to select the correct image.

Windows 8.1 testing

• An x series and x 11-e
• YOGA hinge:  laptop becomes a tablet—disables the keyboard

Office 365 –we are on A-2 version—the free version, have to be on the A3 version to use any of those apps to be able to edit office docs—too expensive

Jennifer Ellington:

• Volume Apple purchasing—for APPS
• Process was ordering through the price list
• Apple now forwards the code via email—those go to purchasing…no longer send out the "gift cards"

Computrace:  

• vast majority our theft reports deal with this
• Computrace gives us compensation if they can not find the machine
• Has to have a police report within 14 days ..report to include whether or not the power cord was also stolen?

Joan Proffitt:

• AMTR: Don’t have to start yet
• Joan will start enabling the NCID accounts and resetting passwords, and it will generate an email to let you know to login and reset
• Disables account over night again--so need to go in after 15 minutes
• Joan will go ahead and start next week
• You will need to reset the password.
• There is a 2^nd process for new people to subscribe

Book untangling the web—Have one for each school

Jim Mendoza/Home base:

• It’s the state of NC tool kit of software products to get students ready for careers, college and life
• School Net—does three different features but big one integrating common core based tests and give those tests
• Tests can be taken electronically
• Students have to have an account in school net and in turn an email account
• Teachers can issue those tests in written form.
• To score it, you had to use test scanners
• BUT Toshiba brand e-studio –the copiers in most schools can be utilized to SCAN IT
• Teachers can print out answer sheets for those tests, and use them to scan and results can go directly in to the grade book
• Jim will send out a survey and track down the Toshiba model in your school and whether it is networked or not?

Another Tool in that tool kit:

• Gradebook in Power Teacher:
• Browser dependent, different versions of JAVA
• Once per month the products get locked down for maintenance—25^th
• You can download stand alone gradebook version.
• Power Source site:  you login in with your email address and can get support
• You will have to add software to machine where they will be scanning from the SCAN IT software.
• May have to move copiers to be near a drop or may have to put in a ticket for a new drop (but move first if possible)
• Email Jim with questions

Instructional Resources:

Melissa Edwards: queen of Learning Village

• Hello from Marlo…
• User name and pw for learning Village is same as AD login
• Learn 360 had a major upload of resources several months ago but also recently added other new resources that she is going to highlight
• Email Meliisa Edwards if you have questions
• Full email address is their user name, and pw: ws….
• Instructions for KACE data base #65 for how to change pw in Learn 360
• Brain pop and netrekkar are now linked…(side note)
• Learn 360:  Calendar has links to videos and resources for a date
• History teachers were recently told about these resources
• If you go to the ADVANCED SEARCH area
• Can ALSO look things up by publisher or series
• Total training areas for things like Office 2007, and send someone the link (similar to atomic learning)
• Also pictures and sounds

Photo pin ( http://photopin.com/ ) is one of her favorite place to search for images for creative commons and gives you a url to copyright site

MARTY CREECH:

• BYOD and mobile learning:
• Have created 2 RESOURCES for parents/staff

CLASSFLOW:  https://classflow.com/

Technology Tool box page:

http://wsfcs.k12.nc.us/Page/80879

Brian Pikarski contact for curriculum pathways

Digital Safety curriculum:

http://wsfcs.k12.nc.us/Page/82963

• Each months will highlight a different ITS theme (via common sense)
• Will ask schools to submit plan of how teachers will teach the plan
• Digital Safety Curriculum is now part of the WSFCS policy and part of e-rate funding and will be renewed effort this fall.
• Policy 6161 has been revised and updated—will be covered in student responsible use agreement
• Timing is just bad for this to come out in the spring
• Will send out in the fall RUA (responsible use agreement) references policy 6161
• Kevin will post this document for us to look at
• Purple paper and electronic document for staff will have links to policy
• No user will have access until they have an RUA back. 
• Student will not have access until they have training in digital safety.
• Statement about using 3g and 4g—they have agreed not to use those.
• Kevin will post this document on the blog site (shows changes to policy)
• Where’s the cross reference for high school students? 
• An electronic flag in power School possible?
• Needs to be a streamlined process and may discuss at next month’s meeting
• Possibly a list of students who can’t get on and change their passwords—
• We will work next month on ideas
• End goal to follow policy and communicate with parents
• If you are not subscribed to blog site, can resend the link to subscribe to the  blog site.

May 8^th next meeting