EduTech Steering Committee

The Lodge at Woodcliff

EduTech Steering Committee
October 6, 2000
The Lodge at Woodcliff

8:30 to 12:00

Members Present:

Joe Backer, Superintendent Letchworth Bev Ouderkirk, District Superintendent GV BOCES

Gary Hammond, Assistant Supt GV BOCES Tiffany Phillips, Superintendent Bloomfield

Chuck Kortz, Superintendent North Rose-Wolcott Camille Sorenson, Director EduTech

Chuck Kortz, Superintendent North Rose-Wolcott Camille Sorenson, Director EduTech
Joe Marinelli, District Superintendent W-FL BOCES Steve Uebbing, Superintendent Canandaigua
Jack McCabe, Associate Superintendent W-FL BOCES

Members Absent:

Members Absent:
Phil D'Angelo, Superintendent Warsaw
Bob Smith, Superintendent Elba

Presenters:
Ray Wager, Ray Wager Associates
Chris Eckhardt, Ray Wager Associates
Chris Saxby, EduTech Office Manager
Ed Turkowski, Coordinator of Computer Training

1. EduTech Training,
Ed Turkowski presented to the committee the focus and challenge of the training team.

The Challenge: To promote effective technology integration into the curriculum to enhance student
performance and deliver the skills necessary for the 21^st century.

Current State Nationally
� 95% of schools and 72% of classrooms have Internet Access.
� 86% of teachers report using the Internet for email and finding curricular materials
� 66% use the Internet to enhance classroom instruction
� 30% leverage the Internet for student research
� 27% teachers use the Internet to solve problems or analyze data
� 16% use the Internet for lesson planning
� More teachers participate in basic skills training versus integration training
� 20-40% of teachers feel they are adequately prepared to use technology
� 56% teachers indicted they believe integration promotes student achievement
� Lack of release time is a barrier to accessing training opportunities.
� Lack of follow-up and instructional support

Current State Regionally

Current State Regionally
� 41% took advantage of skill training
� Basic skills workshop have higher participation rates
� Substitute teacher shortage and other initiatives sited most frequently as an issue.
� Increase in after school training requests
� Integration workshop cancellation rate high
� Lack of follow-up and instructional support
� Local data to be obtained from Snapshot Survey

Ed shared information on the number of workshops offered. He also compared the number of workshops that were integration related to the number offered. Integration is moving the teachers towards using technology as a tool. Shared number of integration workshops offered, compared to which actually ran and the number cancelled. Shared breakdowns of how trainers spend their time. 17% organization, 19% office, 30% workshops (attending 6 hour workshops), Support 34% (outside support)

What we are seeing with the training team, everyday workshops attendance is dropping off for a number of reasons. Want to push integration, but yet have a cancellation rate that we would like to see decrease. This is the next step towards getting teachers to use the technology as a teaching tool.

2. EduTech Cost Study, Raymond Wager, Chris Eckhardt
Ray Wager from Wager Associates presented the EduTech Cost Study for the Budget Year 2000-2001.

Discussion:
Camille stated that the next step is attempting to estimate where our revenue comes from. Some of the categories are generally constant. There is the district charge and other sources of revenue. Miscellaneous income is the hardest for us to estimate. We have to ballpark how much technology the districts are going to buy in the coming year.

The original concern that led to cost study is to what extent do we want to cooperatively share certain costs and to what extent do we want to focus on billable costs compared to sharing these costs. (Steve Uebbing)

Some districts feel they have the people doing the work in-house compared to districts that are using EduTech service. (Joe Backer)

To what extent do we maintain a service for when you might need it. Is there a sliding scale for when you might need the service and actually use it. Do we maintain services at everyone's expense so that they are available or do we maintain on what we need, or is there something in the middle.

Whatever decision is made we need to support it.

Helpful to look at the trends. Districts are becoming more independent. Need people at the higher level that can support in house staff. (Gary Hammond)

Agree on a % that is distributed through Camille’s office.

If you look at the nature of our work, 15,000 calls to help desk, 60% student Finance, 40% remainder. Tech staff used the majority of the time on installations. (Camille)

How do we proceed from here? We need advise from the people within BOCES. (Chuck Kortz)

We can proceed as we have in the past with presenting different ways to bill. (Camille)

Does the group want to look at doing the cost differently? (Dr. Marinelli)

Bev Ouderkirk asked for how many years do we have the breakdown? [3 years (proposed and actual)]
Needs actual costs compared to proposed to make a decision.

Steve then would like Camille to say we have so much budgeted for PC, we think that Y is for installation, Z is for rep person. X gets directly billed to districts. Rule: X % we distribute Y% we bill.

What is the list of criteria that we measure against? What makes the most sense over time, stability, customer satisfaction.

Take a portion of fees as overhead remaining portion as you use it.

The pricing is not as clear as it could be to the Superintendents.

Policy decision - what percentage is carried, what percentage is billed.

We are both vendor and cooperative.

Joe Backer stated there should be different levels of service. If I'm having a project this year, I should be paying more than the year I don't.

Here is the vendor side of our business and here is the cooperative side. (Jack McCabe)

Camille asked if the intent is to make the pricing clearer and more reflective somewhat of actual use.
      Camille will coordinate presenting different options of pricing that both provide for a clearer pricing
as well as reflective somewhat of use but also allowing for overhead and a base level of income.

    (Joe Marinelli and Tiffany Phillips left the meeting at this point.)


3. Steering Committee's Role in Promoting Effective Use of Technology
Past 3 years 30,000,000 spent in hardware. How do we integrate all this technology into the classroom?

How do we make the administrative decisions as we go and how do we get the guidance and input as we go.

Is this where we want to be and where do we go from here.

We should be promoting technology and showing districts how they can move ahead. (Joe)

Not as much a policy issue as a leadership issue. Administrative use and instructional use. Would like to see us take a lead on instructional use. What is the cause of the lower enrollments for integration? If we are going to promote, we need to lie out some models. (Chuck Kortz)

Joe Backer asked is EduTech the only way teachers can get training or are they getting it somewhere else.

Generally Information Tech people are over controlling the technology in the districts. (Jack McCabe)

We are holding our teachers back. We don't let them download anything onto their desktop because our techs can't fix what we have now. Not necessarily do we want to do it, but we can’t afford to have the whole system crash. (Chuck Kortz)

After discussion, it was decided to keep as an ongoing discussion on the agenda.

4. Online Courses for Students

Liverpool School District is working on on-line courses for students. We talk about online courses for teachers, but we could also do online courses for students.

Through the Title III grant we have students taking online courses. Dundee district is teaching their physics class with an online course.

Does this region want to create content for the student? Would it be accepted by the state?

Steve Uebbing recommended having Laura (Liverpool) doing a presentation to the committee.
Does BOCES see a role in this area?

New Title III grant does have money in it for this purpose.

Jack McCabe will look at what is available for online courses and arrange for the demonstration of the
Liverpool product.

5. 2000-2001 Meetings
      November 3 - 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. - The Lodge at Woodcliff
December 7 - 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. - Thruway Marriott
February 2 - 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. - Thruway Marriott
April 6 - 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. - The Lodge at Woodcliff