Minutes of the EdTech Committee meeting Tuesday, Sept 9, 2003

 

Attending: Mike Battig, David Boynton, Nick Clary, Mark Lubkowitz 

 ad officio members: Bill Anderson, Susan Breeyear, and Joanne Schneider

 

1.   David Boynton was appointed scribe. Minutes from 09/02/03 were approved subject to correction of Joanne Schneider’s name.

  

2.   Sue Breeyear gave a presentation on the laptop workshops offered from 8/18 through 8/22. The mentors included M. Birger Benson, Doug Green, John Hughes, and the participants included Barb Sargent, Anne Judson, Ann McConnell, Jeff Adams, Nick Clary, and Kirk Everest. IT staff included Cynthia Kelly, Jim Millard, Sue Breeyear, and John Graves. The facilitator was Tom Patterson of UVM. The workshops were successful. Follow-up monthly meetings are also to be conducted to continue the learning that took place during these sessions. Training included using scanners, SmartCard, Inspiration, Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, Powerpoint, among other things. Highlights included digital photography, scanning, effective presentations, and PhotoShop elements. Results of questionnaires completed by participants were distributed.

 

3.   Bill Anderson addressed (a) the Blaster computer virus problem, and thanked people for the commendations IT has been getting on their dealing with the problem, but also mentioned discussions of preventative measures; (b) proposed the idea that spam filters might be a good idea; (c) mentioned that access to color printers will remain restricted, and that IT is considering pay cards for black and white printing; (d) a list of budgetary priorities will be distributed soon; and (e) there is no permanent budget commitment to IT workshops—do we want to build support?

 

4.   Mike Battig reported that he received responses from all grantees from last summer’s online learning experiment. He will get the committee members copies of the executive summaries so that these reports can be read for discussion by next meeting. Mike will send an informal pre-call for proposals by email.

 

5.  Next meeting time is Tuesday Sept. 16th, 10:00.