11/7/13 Tech Cabinet Minutes
Carlsbad Unified School District Technology Cabinet
District Office, Conference Room, 8:00 - 10:00 am
Attendees: Bryan Brockett, Margie Giordani, Rick Lewis, Chad Lund, Cesar Morales, Aaron Nelson, Rob Nye, Sharon St. Clair, Maggie Stanchi, Richard Tubbs
Old Business
- Typing program used at Valley is Microtype 3 and is loaded on the school’s server. Typingweb.com may be the way to go for the secondary schools. Richard Tubbs has used it at Hope and, while it does have ads, students can certainly still learn to type using the program. Any secondary sites interested in using it can let Sharon St. Clair know.
- Google Apps for Education (GAFE) at AOM - AOM will be piloting the system for the district, with Ashley Crawford at the helm. An AUA/BYOD policy has been completed and will be distributed to families beforehand. Approximately 12 teachers have indicated a strong interest in participation and Ashley will hold trainings after school on Mondays or Tuesdays. See GAFE for Jefferson below for more.
- SPMS - Sharon sent the login information to Tech Cabinet, but there is no feedback at this time.
- BYOD resources:
- Aeries Portal can be opened for elementary families - maybe shoot for 2nd semester.
New Business
- Type 2 Learn - The webinar was successful in that it was the first time every elementary teacher in the district received the exact same message at the exact same time. Handouts would have been very helpful for the teachers to take notes on - keep in mind for future webexes or webinars. All students Grades 5 and below and all elementary teachers have been loaded into the system. Teachers will have to create their own class groups though.
- GAFE for Jefferson as an elementary pilot
- A comprehensive system is needed to help Jefferson be in compliance with IB. The collaborative projects and digital portfolios components lend themselves well to GAFE.
- Sharon will talk with Ashley about rolling 4-5 grade Jefferson teachers and Sage Creek (about 4) into the system to broaden the pilot.
- Jeff Heil at SDCOE (Margie and Bryan suggestion) may be able to help with the deployment.
- iPads for the Smarter Balanced Assessments
- Purchase wired keyboards via Expenditure Committee? Sites will have to decide if they want to apply for them.
- Rob will share the testing times and the link for the hardware requirements
- Rick Lewis will meet with each principal to determine site-level needs
- School Loop Parent Survey
- How parents are using it?
- Is it friendly?
- Enough info?
- What do parents want?
- TAC can assist with generating the questions
- Speak Up Survey
- Sharon will place a button to the survey on all School Loop homepages
- Sharon will generate language principals can use to advertise to parents and encourage teachers to take their students to the lab to complete the survey.
- New District Website
- Is it possible to keep current School Loop sites live while changing templates? Sharon has confirmed that it is not possible to change the template while maintaining the original website. If a site is interested in experimenting, we do have a demo school and Sharon can give access to it.
- Ed Tech Site Visits
- Sharon St. Clair has been doing Ed Tech Site Visits at interested schools. The purpose to to provide direct support to teachers and staff with Ed Tech related issues. She spends about 3 hours at the site either helping the staff or doing her other work on her laptop (She’s actually updating this from BV right now). It has been pretty well received thus far. AOE, BV, Hope, Jefferson, Kelly, and Valley have all scheduled visits. Interested principals should contact Sharon to schedule a time.
- Chromebooks
- This will be a district wide review to decide if these devices will work for our needs
- AOMS is pretty happy with theirs so far
- NOTE: Chromebooks require wi-fi printing
- Ads in homework
- Sharon will generate some language regarding ad blockers and share across the district. This is a direct result of a parent complaining about an ad on an external website from which a teacher assigned reading.
- Prop P Update
- Board Action item to approve $600,000 for the computer labs next week
- If approved, installation will occur over Winter Break (hopefully)
- New servers will also be purchased
- Decent lab computers will be redistributed among sites. They will be tagged by Julie and Saul.
- Upgrade of DO servers and communication systems to support school systems
- Still to come
- Refresh 1/3 of current computers
- Summer 2014 - install AP units in every classroom
- What does the wish list look like since William and Curt have meet with all principals? Rick will speak with them to help prioritize the list.
- Aeries Parent Portal - can middle school do course selection this year? When can we get the elementary parents set up?
