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2012-10-10 Meeting Minutes

Parents » Technology Committee » 2012-10-10 Meeting Minutes

Technology Committee Meeting, October 10, 2012

Attendees

  • staff: Mary Helen Bever, Deb Werner, Leslie Bartlett, Stephanie Gravenkemper
  • parents: Marc Dellisanti, Steve Kauffman, Beth Kunz, Stephanie Lorentz, Vincent Lucero, Ed Ringness

Agenda

Logistics

Co-chairs for 2012-2013 will be Deb Werner and Vincent Lucero.  Secretary will be Steve Kauffman.  Meetings will be held on the 2nd Wednesday of each month in the computer lab, at 7:00 pm.  (Next meeting: November 14th)

Update on work completed over the summer

Ed Ringness: Windows Server upgrades from WS2003 to WS2008 were done, in order to support Win7 desktop systems and take advantage of other WS2008 features.  Domain servers and other servers were updated.  The firewall server and others that work with it were not, as the firewall server has software (ISA server 2004?) that depends on WS2003.  Plan to upgrade the rest at the end of the school year.

Windows 7 / Office 2010 upgrade planning

After discussion, it was decided to upgrade laptop/desktop PCs to Win7/Office2010 over Christmas break.  We will start with the teacher laptops, then move on to the lab PCs.  Ed, Marc, Vincent, and Steve indicated they’ll be around and able to help.

This upgrade depends upon getting the required software licenses.  Six StC parents who work at Microsoft have made cash donations to the school; Microsoft is matching those contributions “in kind” by donating software licenses to us.  Deb to look into the details – MS should have already have provided us with login information to their store to order the software.

Planning to deploy via Norton Ghost.  This will be easier if we get one volume license for all systems – but according to Marc it would not be too bad to script the installations to deal with individual licenses if that is what we end up with.

Wireless access

A number of concerns were brought up relating to wireless network access (Wi-Fi).  After much discussion we have prioritized them as follows:

Relocate access point from basement lab to 1st floor hallway

There is a wireless access point, but it was located in the basement computer lab, and coverage was spotty.  After the meeting, Steve, Ed, Marc, and Vincent relocated it to the first floor hallway near the main stairs.  Deb tested access throughout the school and it looked much better.

“BYOD” (Bring your own device) planning for staff access
Staff would like to be able to connect (to the internet, and to the school network) using Mac, iPad, or other devices.  This should work, but does not currently.  Marc will look into the required network configuration, and work with Ed to see what needs to be done.
Backup plan, if that doesn’t work like it should, would be to add another wireless access point directly to our Comcast router.  This would provide direct-to-internet access, totally separate from the StC school network.  It would be secured by standard wireless password (e.g. WPA2) security.
Open wireless planning for visitor / volunteer / student access

We would like to provide wireless access to professional visitors, parent volunteers, and perhaps eventually students.  From a technical point of view, it’s pretty straightforward – for fully open access, we could do the WAP-to-Comcast-router plan as above.  (For student use, we would probably want to put the WAP behind our firewall and using our web filtering server.)

The other issue is a policy issue – who do we want to provide access to?  What are our responsibilities and liabilities?  Provide a “Terms of Use” page on first logging on?

BYOD (Bring your own device) for students

Some schools are starting to implement policies where students are allowed to bring in devices (phones, tablets, laptops) of their own, and use them for school work.  We need to start researching this topic.  We agreed that a parent survey would be a good idea, as well as having the tech committee work this in to our technology roadmap.

Technology roadmap

Vincent to bring a draft of a roadmap to our next meeting.

Website

Stephanie Gravenkemper and Mary Helen Bever need training on how to edit the website.  Provided a link to the guide that is on the website, and suggested setting up a session with James Reyes for questions.

Stephanie wants to setup a “Development” section of the website.

Mary Helen has noticed some dead content, and wondered who updates what on the website?

Answer:

  • Teachers update their own pages
  • Amanda Peterson has done the updating of the newsletter
  • Nancy Matthew updates the calendar (based off of information in the newsletter)
  • webmaster@stcatherineschool.net (James, Juli, Steve, …) can take care of problems if you send an email
  • we need to identify staff owners of specific areas of the website and perhaps set a schedule for reviewing and updating content

Copier

Copier keeps breaking down, and printers too.  Some schools have gotten free printers thrown in with their copier lease.  Vincent to look into our current lease and see what can be done.