Technology Committee Meeting

October 14, 2009

2:15 p.m.

Justin reported on current Cyber Safety program options. Justin has forwarded a link with some good topics and options for the elementary to Kathy Davis to possibly implement with her classroom programs. The Cyber Safety initiative is a K-8 program and free link for people to use.

It was also noted today that the Michigan Educational Technology Standards (METS) were updated and released. Reference is currently made to these standards in our Technology plan, and it is noted that teachers are addressing these within the curriculum.

The group held a lengthy discussion about options for uniting the district’s email systems and for looking at programs that would allow everyone in the district to view “shared” calendars, and options for sharing district wide data and documents through a “network” such as GOOGLE, or Yahoo. We talked about pros and cons and what that type of system would offer teachers and staff in the district and how we could better support “professional development” if the entire staff was working from some common system. It was just a matter of dialog for our group and to start to think about what we might want to do and how we might go about making some changes, if the group thinks it is in the best interest of the district and staff on down the road.

Cheryl mentioned and almost all of her third graders are now logging in with usernames and passwords, Justin has a couple of students to help iron out a few issues with, but all in all that is going well. A new Academic Learning link was added this month to the Elementary web page as well. It was an academic gaming site for reinforcing math and language art skills for elementary students.

The Middle School and High School discussion centered on new educational links that have been added for teachers and students to utilize. Penny reported on how she has started implementing her blog this year and that several staff members from the high school and middle school have approached her about setting one up for their class too! Justin mentioned www.dirpy.com site for assisting staff with uploading video clips and things from sites that might otherwise not be able to be directly accessed from school, but would be good things to share with classes and staff.

It was mentioned that the Computer Lab schedule was a bit of a concern. There is a binder now available for teachers to sign up, but it was noted it would be nicer if this task could some how become an on-line component or a way to electronically check and monitor it!

Respectively Submitted,

Penny Bearden

Technology Department Co-Chair