Oct 16, 2006, Monday, 9:00 am

We meet at Cherokee H.S., in the High School Conference room.

There are two major items on the agenda.

1.  Discuss technology developments at Cherokee High School and how WNC EdNet can/will play a role with those developments.

2. Discuss plans for our WNC EdNet technology conference.

July 25, 2006, Monday 10-10:45 am

Present: Bob Houghton; Regina Ash; Karen Cook; Dennis Keough; Charles George

This meeting was recorded and can be played back online via Centra.

AGENDA

NEXT MEETING September 11, 9:30 am. , Monday. TAC meeting, Macon County. Need table with web resources to share, such as Unitestreaming.com (things that require bandwidth).

What are the assessment questions related to the needs of the grant?

Dennis: When do we have to make a report to ednet executive committee?

Do we want a formal assessment of teacher and administrator skills?

If so, what form would that take? Online in computer lab or paper?

From grant proposal -

WNCEdNET Proposal – Short Version

Determination/Resource Assessment (these bulleted items taken from WNC EdNet proposal). Our questions and comments are underneath.

o Each LEA evaluate current situation i.e., Needs assessment and identify

What needs? Hardware, software, training? staffing?

What are some possible examples of assessment tools that we can use? Isn't there an online site that Regina and others mentioned earlier?

Charles (Added 2:37pm): This document  WNC EdNET Needs Assessments from participating LEAs (scanned original docments -Microsoft Word);  

WNC EdNET Needs Assessments from participating LEAs (scanned original docments -Acrobat pdf)

was added to the WNCEdNET page http://www.wresa.org/wncednet/wncednetinfo.htm today. It iconsists of the scanned originals submitted to WRESA from each of the LEAs. The information as far as I know has never been disaggregated. -

Regina Ash: re: TAC: Are we talking about standardizing needs aceross LEAs and IHEs?

Regina Ash: re: TAC: Are we talking about standardizing needs aceross LEAs and IHEs? Are the some needs that are in-common standards and others that are not?

o Each LEA to determine existing connectivity costs and identify preexisting
budget dollars that might be committed to their own connectivity.

What are current connectivity costs and current budget that can contribute?

o Each LEA to verify facilities and existing infrastructure data, including
known future facilities.

Is this not already done, annually? Karen Cook: We do an AMTR for the state each year which answers these questions.

o Each LEA to identify priority as to need for connectivity between facilities
or connectivity to Internet, applications. (Probably both, but prioritize)

Regina Ash: Wouldn't that be different for each LEA or are we trying to standardize? Karen Cook: I think that relates to something we have already done; some LEAs needed connectivity between their schools, some needed connectivity to the outside world and everyone needed applications-we were asked to prioritize these three for each LEA.

Between what facilities - within institution or between institutions? This objective needs greater clarity; others need to comment here.

June 12, 2006, Monday

Present: Dea Cox; Tim Burrell; Bob Houghton; Jason Hartness; Linda Potter; Dennis Keough; Regina Ash; Karen Cook; Charles George; Libby Abbott; Heather Gibson

AGENDA

Libby Abbott & Heather Gibson - teacher communication tools.

How can one integrate Dreamweaver (web editor) and Contribute in school practice? They first worked thru principals to get buy-in all for teachers to have a web page. Next step was to get an inservice day and ideas to excite teacher interest. Asked them to bring calendars and assignments and pictures. Taught them a bit about web design, security. Everybody had unique and tough password but currently can only access from within school building; this will change with new systems this summer.

Heather has been in charge of building templates in Dreamweaver that will be accessed by Contribute. Starts with building layers of non-editable and editable regions. The teachers will access in making changes to editable regions. Document heading and  document body used as areas for editing. Then save as template.

Heather distributed 3 page handout and will send it to me to upload and link. Heather and Libby were applauded by the teachers who attended the workshop, pointing out how important the simplicity of design of Contribute is to busy educators.

Are Content Management Systems like the Plone software that runs our WNC EdNet site even simpler for teachers?

Schools do not have job specialty area of webmaster so this task is among many hats worn by  technology facilitators. Teachers were excited about web page development and this has led to many accesses by parents.

This group will have to have  evaluation measurements. There is a potential here to use server logs to find a way to count parent and community access. We need a utility that can help us analyze the logs to find this data.

This is an example of web site that uses this Dreamweaver as template maker for technology facilitators, Contribute teacher access to these template pages. http://ccsweb.ccs.bia.edu/ccs/ccs1.htm

Jason Hartness - School Center

http://www.schoolcenter.com/

A contracted service that E-rate eligible, $18,000 for 14 sites (yearly), after e-rate about $3000 a year for the district. The same system handles email via web access though now switching over to Outlook. See examples pages that are still under construction. They have provided great service and editing of pages as needed, even if moving item in template over just one pixel.

http://cherokeecounty.nc.schoolwebpages.com/education/district/district.php?sectionid=1

Integrates with Easy Grade Pro so teachers can upload grades for parent and student access (password protected views of grades). Training sessions are constantly open to parents and news of that is distributed via radio, newspaper and notes home.

Bob Houghton - "National Geographic" Presentation Strategy

Many school web sites have logically optimized their web sites to maximize the numbers of community people who can see them, that is setting design limits that make it possible for those with dial-in connections to display the web pages crisply. This is good design. It is not, however, design that shows off the capacity of high-speed networks. Modeling what a high-speed network can do will increasingly become important to our TAC effort. This suggests that we consider a "parallel universe web site" that assumes home broadband connections and the capacity to hear audio, see larger sets of images, watch video and animation and the product of many other multimedia composition tools. Perhaps there would be a link on site home pages that simply said broadband. That is, much of the content of the web site might be the same, but the look and layout would be quite different.

What percentage of your family homes with Internet access have broadband? What percentage of the citizens of your school district that have Internet access (whether children in schools or not) have broadband? If we don't know, how can we find out? The TAC needs this data. What percentage of broadband users should be considered the tipping point that would justify beginning the design of a broadband site for your district? 30%? 50%?

How should a broadband web site look? For answers, look at the pros who have maximized what the technology will allow - on paper. Look at the covers of major publications. Now open of a copy of National Geographic. How does it open an article? It often opens with a 4 page foldout, and then follows with a two-page spread, then as one gets further into the article, the amount of text becomes greater and the space for images shrinks as the article continues. This suggests a model for early presentation of information on web sites, maximizing multimedia. You'll notice that major stories in almost all the major publications on the news stand follow this same page, highly visual cover pages, then concentrating visual display at the beginning of major stories. Computer networks let us have so much more to work with than still images.

How can we use the increasingly multimedia work of our students and teachers in the years ahead to build multimedia broadband sites? How can these broadband sites build community support for our application of the high-speed network when grant money runs dry?

Bob Houghton - Science and Math Curriculum Innovation - Robotics

  http://ustream.wcu.edu:8300/university/robotics-independent-thinking

In cooperation with the Science-Math Center of the College of Education, we are now building towards a summer course for 2007 on using robotics curriculum to motivate application of science and math using Lego Logo (FIRST League) technology. We need the names of interested teachers, especially those with science and math focus at the middle level and high school, but applicable to elementary teachers as well.

The engineering at WCU program has been working in tandem with engineering faculty at UNC-Charlotte using many tools from Centra to videoconferencing facilities and other network tools. This suggests a model for WNC EdNet to develop work groups on robotics project teams across classrooms and schools as technology application projects.

Dea Cox - Committee Evaluation Needs

Assessment Survey - we need to be prepared to get surveys out. This is in district tech plans, but there is little overlap on questions being asked.

http://ustream.wcu.edu:8300/university/wnc-ednet/next-priorities/possible-survey-questions/

Are surveys ready to go for fall? Some do surveys at the end of the year and some at the beginning of the year. Holding teacher meetings in computer labs to fill out online surveys has worked effectively in Swain County.

Dea Cox - ACTIVote tools - decision making

Dea demonstrated screen capturing pictures from a story from United Streaming, then asking students to put them or order, and to vote on their favorite scene by letters.

Regina Ash - General Comments

Check resources on George Lucas's site. Great stuff for educators.

Dea Cox - Next Meeting Dates

July 25, Tuesday, Centra Online, 10 am., agenda Evaluation needs of the grant.

September 11, 9:30 am. , Monday. TAC meeting. Need table with web resources to share, such as Unitestreaming.com (things that require bandwidth).

Teacher training events Coming Up

July 17-21 is Intel Essentials workshop in Macon County Technology Center.  Need more teachers to help this workshop make.

Gale Thomson training at Training Center, Aug 29-30.

WNC EdNET - Face-to-face

May 8, 2006

9:30 a.m. – noon

Macon County Schools Technology Training Center, Franklin NC

 In preparation for the meeting, please visit: http://ustream.wcu.edu:8300/university/wnc-ednet/   to update any missing information.

9:30 a.m.-9:45 a.m.	Welcome	Dea Cox
9:45 a.m. – 10:15a.m.	NCDPI Update	Mary Lou Daily [had meeting conflicts and will join us next time.]
10:15-10:25 a.m. 10:25-10:45 a.m. 10:45-11:05 a.m. 11:05-11:30 a.m.   Project TNT: Teachers and Teamwork, initially 2 wireless labtop labs.  A  Community Technology Learning Center. Grant was written to grea tly expand teacher access to computers.	Demos and Modeling                  Remote Access Project with 1 to 1 grant   Using Online Training Video Clips   Using Skype   CTLC Grant –Community Involvement    Some parents felt less threatened by student helpers than adults. Also bought and allow checkout of digital still and videocameras. Some 80% of teachers have a multimedia cart (computer and projection system). Now have about 27 computers in PC setting and 24 that can be checked out nightly. Work on reducing computer anxiety of community members. It has been a very enabling project.	Karen Cook Marjorie Tucker Jason Hartness Chip Carringer
11:30 a.m.	Wrap Up TAC Document Updates Q&A      Set date for next meeting	Bob Houghton  Co-chairs

Online Meeting - May 1

Monday, starting 9 or 10 a.m., May 1, 2006. Online using Centra.

Please email houghton@email.wcu.edu if this meeting date works for you and your flexibility for starting 9 am or 10 am. Current preferences are tilting towards a 10 am start time.

Suggested Agenda

Review elements of the online documents in the progress of completion at this site.

Presentations by committee members about software currently in use. Majorie Tucker will present sample online videoclips as first steps toward developing short and handy training tutorials for teachers on the software and resources that are being used by our region's teachers. Who else?

Discussion of documenting relevant features of these programs.

Review of another strand of the types of software currently in use on Internet2.

Please login, find the edit tab, and add your agenda suggestions here for the Apr. 17 meeting. If suggestions are made, please also email them to one of the committee chairs.

Past

TAC April 3, 2006 Meeting Minutes

15 Present: Dea Cox; Tim Burrell (Macon); Regina Ash, Karen Cook (Swain); Bob Houghton, Bob Orr (WCU); Chip Carringer, Chris Wyke (Graham); Dennis  Keough (SCC); Marjorie Tucker (TCC); David Proffitt (Jackson); Andy Gibson (Clay); Jason Hartness, Amanda Crisp (Cherokee); Mary Lou Daily (DPI)

Refreshments and meeting leadership were provided by Dea Cox.

Dennis Keough provided a Powerpoint demonstration of their Tandberg network along with numerous handouts. In the discussion that followed grant solutions for covering the expense of the units was addressed. (Dennis, you are encouraged to upload and link the Powerpoint slides and handouts if you would like.)

Dea Cox used their interactive whiteboard to support the meeting's presentations then reviewed their features and the major role this system is playing in Macon County classrooms. Over 110 units are now in use and their vision is to eventually have one in every classroom. In the discussion following the concept of 1:1 classroom computing (in contrast to 1:1 laptop computers) was mentioned as a critical need. If teachers were to make effective instructional use of the WNC EdNet network they must have a way for teachers to present their resources of the network to the whole class.

Bob Houghton gave a short presentation on the differences between Internet2 and Web 2.0. The former is a computer network, and the latter is a concept and practice that is a "stampede" of new activity and systems towards "user generated content" using software that runs on the net and data that stays on the net, in contrast to software and data that reside on the personal computer itself. Web 2.0 then is about the net that you write on, not just search and read from.

A long list of applications the generally fit the Web2.0 description can be found here.

http://ceap.wcu.edu/houghton/Learner/evokeoptions.html

A detailed look at Internet2 and the five unique kinds of computer applications being researched and offered can be found here.

http://ceap.wcu.edu/houghton/I2/

Note that many of the videoclips that demonstate I2 applications are behind a password. Check your email for the needed log-in data for those clips or ask to have it resent if necessary.

Mary Lou Daily provided a document of some ideas for school's use of the network and invited others to contribute more. This table is in the Next Priorities folder.

broadband applications brainstorming list

During the meeting this document was entered into this site and converted to a table. Please log in, type and indicate which of these practices you are currently using in your district.

TAC March 20 Meeting Minutes

14 Present: Dea Cox (Macon); Regina Ash, Karen Cook (Swain); Bob Houghton, Bob Orr (WCU); Kim Carringer, Chip Carringer, Chris Wyke (Graham); Dennis  Keough (SCC); Marjorie Tucker (TCC); David Proffitt, Linda Potter (Jackson); Andy Gibson (Clay); Jason Hartness, Amanda Crisp (Cherokee)

Please click the links in the agenda to jump to and work on our documents in progress and to see the data of others. To add things that I left out in the minutes, login and click the Edit tab.

Agenda

• Greetings, audio check, slide on Centra features
  
• Regina - needs assessment options as first steps in designing the training steps for getting from non-user to Internet2 user. Regina demonstrated an online survey tool and suggested that principals hold staff meetings in computer labs to help facilitate survey data collection. She has requested that committee members edit the page for Survey Questions in the Next Priorities folder (Possible Survey Questions).
  
• Dea - wants to demo school district uses of applications in use now that can potentially make effective use of the faster WNC EdNet gigabit network. Please edit the survey in the Next Priorities folder in indicating the applications that you are using and to what degree they are being used! (Survey: Identifying and Prioritizing of Possible Uses of Technology for Learning). She also requests tech plan web addresses atSurvey: Tech Plan web address. It is important to learn from each other.
• Bob H - Internet2 part II - What can WNC EdNet do with a high speed network? Examining K12 uses of Internet2 for answers and implications. Bob requests information on school bandwidth availability. Please see the survey in the Next Priorities folder which enables us to determine who can experiment with I2 while the network is being built. (Current Bandwidth Margins by District)
• Open discussion on any topic. One of the issues that arose was Karen's concern that ISP costs per megabyte may greatly restrict members use of the network once it is built. Robert Orr will bring back ideas on how to address this concern.
• Playback of the session is available for online or downloading and playback. Once it begins to run, by clicking the pull-down to the right of the playback controller, a click on a slide or event title will jump to that part of the playback and play from there.

 The front door of our Centra site can be reached at:

http://pilot.uncc.edu/SiteRoots/main/index.jhtml?default=true&domain=/wcu

In preparing for future Centra meetings, send PPT slides or web addresses that you wish to use during your presentation so I can put them in the agenda for faster access and to make Playback more useful as well.

      An email was sent to all TAC participants with the link to the online Centra Meeting prior to the meeting.   An initial set of slides was posted as of March 7 for the Mar 20 agenda. Remember that as with this meeting, one can check the agenda slides at the Centra meeting site ANY time prior to the meeting by logging in and clicking Browse Content or Attend for the next meeting date.

Other Past Events

March 6, 2006, 10-11 am. Thirteen were in attendance. Playback of online Centra meeting available to participants at the Centra site. Unanimous vote to also hold next meeting online using Centra.

February 20, 2006, Macon County. Elected co-chairs Dea Cox, Regina Ash & Bob Houghton.

February 10, 2006, Brief online demo of Centra software for live meetings.

January 25, 2006, Initial charge of the TAC. Clay County.