Students and Social Media

The following article (12 Things Students Should Never Do on Social Media) was passed around EO Smith because it so comprehensively describes the constraints that students absolutely must be aware of when using social media.

The short list follows, the details are in the link.

1. Post Illegal Activities

2. Bullying

3. Trash Your Teachers

4. Post Objectionable Content From School Computers or Networks

5. Post Confidential Information

6. Overly Specific Location Check-Ins

7. Lie/Cheat/Plagiarize

8. Threaten Violence

9. Ignore School-Specific Policies

10. Unprofessional Public Profiles

11. Never Rely on Privacy Settings 100%

12. Post Emotionally

Professional Development Update

At last evening's Board of Education Meeting Alan gave an update on yesterday's Teacher Professional Development day's activities and reported that it was a very successful event.  These were all teacher driven, collaborative activities and all of them involved self-improvement activities having to do with enriching the technology fitness of the teaching pedagogy or curriculum offerings.

Kudos to the entire staff!

Additionally, in response to a question from Willington Board member Bob Jellen, Alan reported that Moodle had been successfully installed at E.O. Smith and that all the existing Moodle implementations that had been migrated wholly and without incident.  Woohoo!

Jan Poland, her staff, Bill Green, Jon Swanson, and all their collaborators deserve congratulations.

Moodle is an upgrade to a teaching framework that involves some front-loaded effort on the part of our teaching staff that will pay big dividends with every following semester freeing the staff from numerous redundant and eye-watering administrative tasks.  This is a big step forward for those who put the effort into it.  And this opens up a universe of learning opportunities for our students.

Finally, the progress on upgrading our school website and its platform is launching soon!  Details to follow.

What Professional Development looks like when our teaching staff drives the content:


November 13, 2012 PD Afternoon Options:
Below are the PD options available for the afternoon of November 13th. Each workshop has a description below. The workshop leader(s) are listed below, as are the meeting places.
**Each faculty member should sign up for either one 2 HOUR WORKSHOP or two different 1 HOUR WORKSHOPS. The 1 hour workshops will be offered twice, so you can mix and match the 1 hour workshops as you wish.

Be sure to read the requirements of each workshop to ensure that you bring the appropriate materials, and/or create accounts if needed.

I-Pads- Bochicchio – Rm 113 (1 hr)

SmartBoard- Palmberg – Rm 100 (2 hrs)

ELL training- Bissonnette – Rm 155 (1 hr)

Moodle- Green – Rm 110 (2 hr)

Eboards- Magner – Rm 212 (1 hr)

Cooperative Groups- Bent -  Rm?

Google docs- Wilson-Holton/Meshanic – Rm 151 (Language Lab) (2 hr)

Microsoft- Trotochaud—136

Rubicon/Curriculum Writing- Hannon – LMC Lab (1 hr)

A)  (1 Hour workshop)
“Improving Teacher Productivity Through the iPad”This is a beginner iPad workshop.
If you have an iPad, please bring it to the workshop.
If you attended the first iPad User Group, this workshop will be a direct repeat of that meeting.

This meeting will cover the following topics:
- how to connect to the wireless network at EOS
- how to connect your school email directly to your device
- how to find free textbooks through iBooks
- how to use PowerTeacher to enter grades through your device
- how to take attendance on your device
- how to find free college assignments through iTunesU
- how to grade student work through your device and email them back their results
- how to upload PDF files and "write" all over them
- how to create notebooks for all your meetings
Plus much more...

B) (2 Hour workshop)
“Formative Assessment using the SMARTBOARD”

Objectives of the Activity (this will appear on evaluation form):

1.Use the SMART Response System to assess students 2.Use the Lesson Activity Toolkit to check for student understanding 3.Create an activity using the Activity Builder to check for student understanding

C) (1 hour workshop)
“ELL Taking a Deeper Look into ELL Strategies”

The participant will be able to utilize strategies and modifications relevant to the student’s level of language acquisition.
The participant will be able to differentiate instruction to easily include the ability of the ELL students.

D) (1 hour workshop)
“Moodle workshop”

Get started with E. O. Smith’s new Moodle virtual learning environment in this 2 hour workshop! The first 21 people to sign up will get a spot. Moodle is a flexible, powerful, open source online course management system through which you can create a course webpage, post and receive assignments, grade online with customized rubrics, communicate with students, create forums and wikis, deliver online quizzes, and more. To see a demo, click here or check out Bill’s site here with the guest password -snip-

E) (1 hour workshop)
“Introduction to Eboards”

Objectives of the Activity (this will appear on evaluation form):

1. Familiarize teachers with the capabilities of an eBoard 2. Demonstrate how to use functions of an eBoard 3. Assist teachers with setting up and managing an eBoard

F) (1 hour workshop)
“Learning in Formal, Cooperative Groups”

This workshop will demonstrate the inquiry-based learning methods used in group activities. The learning method I have used for my 10 years is to give only short lectures and use most of the period for group activities. I have used formal, cooperative groups in which students are assigned to groups; each person in the group has assigned roles. These groups are changed every two to four weeks, so students should get a chance to work with everyone in the class.
The use of formal, cooperative groups has allowed me to “flip the classroom” and differentiate my lessons without a huge increase in workload. Group exercises to learn how to work effectively in a group will be demonstrated. A variety of group activities will be explained. Most of these can be used in any classroom. Methods for dealing with hitch-hikers will be explained.

G) (2 hour workshop)
“Google Docs”

"This workshop will introduce you to Google Docs. Google Docs enables teachers and students to easily create and share documents, Powerpoint presentations, surveys, and more. Everyone can work on documents together at the same time and from different locations. The workshop will be interactive in nature, so please make sure you have a Gmail account before you attend the workshop. Also, make a list of your students’ Gmail addresses (if they have them already) and bring that list with you. In order to get started it is not essential that you have a complete list of Gmail accounts. The more you have, the less work it will be for you late on. You will be able to work on setting up Google Docs within your classroom during the second half of the workshop."


H) (1 hour workshop)
“A Differentiated, Cooperative, Collaborative Workshop on Microsoft Office 2010”
Just when you thought you had Microsoft Office 2003-07 figured out what do they do? They “upgrade” it of course. Unlike most “upgrades” and version updates that computer programs go through where the changes are subtle and many times unseen by the user, Microsoft Office 2010 is a major rethinking of many aspects of the user interphase. This workshop is designed to be an opportunity for you to receive an overview of these changes but most importantly, give you the participant the opportunity to get specific support and answers to your questions on how to utilize the following Office 2010 programs:

· Word

· Power point

· Excel

Individuals who sign up for this workshop should take a few moments to fill out the following Pre-PD survey in order for the presentation team to best prepare for the workshop:

-snip-

(1 hour workshop)

“Rubicon- Curriculum Writing and Adding Assessments”

Objectives of the Activity (this will appear on evaluation form):

Participants will learn how to align assessments with CCSS as well as other state standards. Participants will be allotted time to work on their curriculum.

Brief Description of Activity

Participants will be provided with the instructions for aligning assessments with the Common Core Standards and other state standards.  A brief review of adding the standards into the curriculum will also be included in the presentation.  Participants will also have time to work on their curriculum and update it.  Participants can sign up for both workshops and work on curriculum for 2 hours.

I-Pads- Bochicchio – Rm 113 (1 hr)

SmartBoard- Palmberg – Rm 100 (2 hrs)

ELL training- Bissonnette – Rm 155 (1 hr)

Moodle- Green – Rm 110 (2 hr)

Eboards- Magner – Rm 212 (1 hr)

Cooperative Groups- Bent -  Rm?

Google docs- Wilson-Holton/Meshanic – Rm 151 (Language Lab) (2 hr)

Microsoft- Trotochaud—136

Rubicon/Curriculum Writing- Hannon – LMC Lab (1 hr)

Oct DLIC Meeting Minutes

In attendance: Herb, Sue, Bruce, Frank, Denise, Nancy, Alan

E.O. Smith will privately host Moodle for the staff and administration to use.  Moodle is an open source school and classroom administration tool that has gained popularity with a number of teachers at EO Smith who currently use it from a hosted site.

It is a superior alternative to our current eBoards and will allow teachers who take advantage of it to reuse and refactor their coursework from one semester to the next.  For students it offers the ability to time-shift their assignments to convenient times to perform the lesson or to review assigned coursework as often as needed.

There is no roll-out time frame but the resources to support this software have been identified.

The BYOD conversation discussed the need for our teaching staff to describe the online and classroom activities an ideal device might support.  This will be accomplished during faculty meetings in the coming weeks so that we can recommend a minimum set of requirements a parent or student can look for as the holiday sales season approaches should they decide to prepare for having a device that can be used in the classroom or study hall.

A key point is that we will not advocate specific brands and we are not proxy salespeople for any device or manufacturer.  We will propose guidelines that are baseline recommendations only.

Bruce will be advocating for a budget item for purchasing a sufficient number of devices that the school can leverage toward either specific classes or for students who may need temporary lenders to fully participate in certain classroom activities.

A conversation about our website discussed the need to migrate to a newer Joomla version.  It included the need for a designated webmaster and more timely updates of the site.

A survey will be distributed by Department Heads to teachers who are interested in helping this committee understand the scope and breadth of digital teaching activity already practiced at EO Smith.

We also discussed the potential to leverage Professional Development time toward having Technical Coaches provide Primers on technologies already available, soon to be available,  or already in use at EO (Moodle, Smart Boards, Google Docs, Wikis, and more).

The promotion of preparing students for digital learning in the classroom will happen in three theaters of discussion; the PTA will receive a presentation that outlines what is becoming available, the website will announce to the community the fact that EO Smith is wireless and students and teachers can take advantage of it , and a Board of Education discussion will take place next week to ensure that there is consensus about our direction and handling of the many issues involved.

Our next meeting will be in January 2013.

October Digital Learning Committee Agenda

REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT #19
BOARD OF EDUCATION
DIGITAL LEARNING SUB-COMMITTEE MEETING
TUESDAY OCT 23, 2012
6:00 P.M.
ROOM 101
E.O. SMITH HIGH SCHOOL

1. Update on Moodle

2. Discuss BYOD policy information and timelines

3. Review proposed staff survey instrument

4. Discuss Professional Development Activities

5. Other

September DLIC Meeting Notes

Attending:  Bruce Silva, Lou Deloretto, Dr. Green, Sue Palmberg, Frank Krasicki, Tim Nolan

Topic 1: Digital Learning Inventory

There is no longer a need to update the smart board inventory or to worry about its classroom use - we have a good faith understanding that our teaching staff knows how to use the classroom technology.

We discussed the merits of understanding what is taking place in the classrooms this semester in terms of pedagogical planning and curriculum roll out (for January).  Bruce and Frank will develop a survey that will be distributed to the teaching staff.  The goal will be to aggregate those things that are of greatest interest and begin to promote them as central digital learning initiatives.

We talked about being proactive with budget considerations and foundation requests to front load and propel our most promising initiatives.  

SubTopic 1: BYOD Paradox

Dr. Green discussed the teacher's dilemma, they can't go digital until the students have devices.  

Frank has added an information page to this blog that informs parents of the January digital classroom transformation and it includes a rough guide about preparing the EO Smith student for participation.  All students and parents will be expected to participate.

Concurrently, some existing digital learning initiatives will get seeded with appropriate classroom loaner devices that can later be repurposed to serve as loaners to financially challenged students.

Topic 2: The Mobile Website Initiative

Bruce and Frank have located a programming resource who can begin developing a new mobile option for the school website.  Bruce followed up by contacting Orlando (our resource) and putting him in touch with Jan our school technology resource.

Topic 3: Rules of the Digital Highway

Principal Lou Deloretto discussed his belief that sufficient conversations are taking place with faculty and students as to BYOD expectations. Adding admonitions is not something he is advocating - this is something that will be played by ear and recalibrated as we go. 

Topic 4:  The Summer School Experience and Lessons Learned of Dr. Green's class

Dr. Green provided an educational post-mortem on a class he conducted this past summer that consisted of a flipped classroom approach.  His experiences provided a lively discussion about the issues that the rest of the staff will encounter as they go.  

This includes underestimating the digital learning curve that these new techniques require of students and how to correctly adjust the course content to compensate for the fact that students are learning not only content but how to navigate the digital classroom.  As more teachers and students try this, much of this learning curve is reduced considerably.

Another observation of interest is that we cannot expect all teachers to flip classrooms at once without some co-ordination to ensure that the students aren't expected to do nothing but watch instructional videos, one after another, contiguously every evening.  The online learning aspects of the flipped classrooms will have to be tempered by reasonable viewing cadences.

Subtopic 2: Class assignments on Moodle

Dr. Green's demonstration of the superior power of Moodle over EO Smith's current eBoard program stimulated an action item to pilot the broader use of this teaching tool  Bruce will be evaluating the potential to seed a twenty teacher pilot program in the near future.

Details will follow.

Our next meeting is scheduled for October 23 at 6:00 pm and will last approximately one-half hour.  Agenda tbd.

September 2012 Digital Learning Committee

The September meeting will be held on Tuesday. September 25, 2012.

We will be getting a post-mortem on this summer's digital learning forays.

We will meet in Alan's room again.

Update:

Greetings Everyone,

Our next meeting will be on Tuesday, Sept 25^th at 5:00 p.m. in Alan’s room!    Hope to see you there!

Meeting Agenda

1.         Discuss idea of creating informal inventory of known classroom initiatives

2.         Update on school website mobile progress

3.         What are we doing to prepare students for BYOD - rules of the road?

4.         Discuss summer initiatives!

5.         Discuss what is happening in classrooms as a result of wireless access.

6.         Other

Individuals interested in attending can contact Bruce Silva at EO Smith

MAY DLIC Meeting Minutes

REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT #19

BOARD OF EDUCATION

DIGITAL LEARNING COMMITTEE MEETING MINUTES

FOR MAY 29, 2012

E. O. SMITH HIGH SCHOOL

1235 STORRS ROAD

STORRS, CT 06268

Present: Denise Abercrombie, Lou DeLoreto, Bill Green, Frank Krasicki, Tim Nolan,

Nancy Silander, Bruce Silva, Alan Trotochaud

Absent: Sue Biren, Sue Palmberg, Jojo Phillips

1. BYOD – we should be fully wi-fied by the middle of summer.

Concern of IT is how much students will continue to use school’s technological resources and on which different platforms. Students need to have clear understanding of expectations for products they produce. We will need to decide on minimum requirements for acceptable devices. Discussion centered on various potential difficulties due to different operating systems, battery problems (need power strips in each classroom), etc. While we can anticipate some problems, we will need to remain flexible.

We will need to have a parent forum and student forum in the Fall to discuss issues, problems and pitfalls. We would like to begin with a student meeting for late August.

We need to realize this will be a long 3-5 year process.

2. Policy – what rights does staff have on personal spaces? Current board policy addresses harassment, etc. so that we probably do not need to regulate it further. Policy for students will be changed if needed to reflect the BYOD changes. Need to check to see if Internet use and agreement that students currently sign to see if it is still needed. Lou will take care of this with Jan and Jamie.

3. On-line science course: Bill Green and Jon Swanson are piloting a course on-line this summer: 6 weeks, 24 motivated students who will get ½ independent study credit. Using Moodle platform; different open source software e.g. Google Earth. Alternative assessments e.g. narrative tour on Google Earth.

4. Still continue to need to maintain computer labs for accessibility. We would like to know what sorts of software teachers need and use, including open-source. Through PLC’s they can do more faculty sharing. We need to make sure faculty knows that there is support from the board.

5. Next meeting will be in early September.

Submitted by Nancy Silander

June 6, 2012

Updated: May DLIC Meeting Agenda

We are meeting on May 29, Rm. 101 at 5:30 to 7:00 pm-ish, no later than 7:30

REGIONAL SCHOOL DISTRICT #19

BOARD OF EDUCATION

DIGITAL LEARNING SUB-COMMITTEE MEETING

TUESDAY MAY 29, 2012

5:30 P.M.

ROOM 101

E.O. SMITH HIGH SCHOOL

AGENDA

1. Review District Technology Plan as approved by EASTCONN 5:30 - ~5:50

2. Update on wireless installation ~5:50 - 6:00

3. Review “Private Technology Devices by Students” Policy ~6:00 - 6:45

Tentatively these topics are a starting point;

Who Teachers Aides Students
Privilege vs right
Acceptable use policy for school computers
Monitoring and privacy issues
Educational Goals
Ethical behavior standards
No plagarism Do not publicly disclose confidential information Do not abuse other people’s digital content - no deleting of other people’s files, no malicious edits, no hacking of applications or data that does not belong to you. No sharing or disclosure of private information such as usernames, passwords and so on Refrain from pornography, obscenity, and unwholesome material - report the intrusion of such material to the school environment immediately
Protecting identification
Objectionable material
Harassing Threatening Intimidating
Copyright law
Fair Use
Thresholds and Consequences 

Also this recent case in Mancester is worth understanding;  http://tinyurl.com/ACLU-Mancester 

4. Summer online course initiative update – Bill Green ~6:45

5. Other

April 2012 DLIC Meeting Minutes

24 April 2012 Region 19 - Digital Committee

Present: Frank Krasicki, Denise Abercrombie, Bill Green, Sue Palmberg, Sue Biren, Lou DeLoreto, Doug Melody, Nancy Silander

Absent: Bruce Silva, Alan Trotochaud, Jojo Phillips, Tim Nolan

Opened at 5:15 p.m.

PD for teachers and options for helping them access programs. Using PLC’s (Personal Learning Communities) will allow for more collaboration. Encourage teachers to go to SECA and other technology conferences.

Wireless project – P.O.’s have been initiated for all necessary building wi-fi. Worked on over spring break. Equipment will be put in place once it arrives. On target for timing of September.

Saving paper – Faculty needs to be encouraged to save paper. Possibly a copy center. Lou will organize a sub committee to look into this.

Flipping a classroom: need to model for others. If have BYOD, teachers will begin to experiment. Some content can be watched on-line at home; some teachers will be comfortable doing this, others less so. Curriculum dependent. Discussion on how students develop knowledge of credible sources.

BYOD – policy probably not needed - do not want to have policies just for outliers. Health, safety and privacy concerns need to be anticipated. Perhaps could work with a retailer for discounting prices. What will happen if not every student has a device: share? Give out? Lend? Can expand current policies to include BYOD. Administration can develop guidelines as needed.

Teachers need to be backed up appropriately by administration. Board needs to see comments from faculty meeting after the PD technology day – Frank and Nancy will present at next board meeting. Need to protect teachers’ willingness to experiment; board and administration needs to reduce risk for teachers by backing them up.

Policing what students watch – with BYOD, firewall non-existent. It would be difficult to police students and what they are watching. Do we need to be able to control some of this?

Meeting adjourned at 6:50 p.m.

DLIC March 2012 Minutes

Region 19 Board of Education: DIGITAL COMMITTEE Meeting: March 27, 2012

Present: Denise Abercrombie, Sue Biren, Lou DeLoreto, Bill Green, Frank Krasicki, Brad Martin,
Doug Melody, Sue Palmberg, Nancy Silander, Bruce Silva, Alan Trotochaud

Absent: Tim Nolan, Jojo Phillips

Bruce opened the meeting at 5:35 p.m.

1. Technology plan – Jan Poland and Jamie wrote the technology plan for the state. They determined we have enough student computers for all grade 10 students to take the CAPT on-line (297). Students currently take the Perkins and Accuplacer exams on-line – they get immediate feedback from Accuplacer, but Perkins is delayed. Discussion centered on the various Goals and Action Plans that state has delineated. The plan now goes to EASTCONN who reviews it for the state and will let us know if there are problems or if something is missing.

This committee needs to look it over (a copy was sent electronically) and give comments to Bruce by April 5. It will also be posted to the digital committee’s blog.

2. PD – March 25 – Speaker from Litchfield RESC – Jonathan Costa. The day was generally well-received by the faculty – speaker and then interdisciplinary workshops. The following comments and concerns were noted:

BYOD(device): there will be challenges if/when this occurs. The building should be wired by September, 2012.
How comfortable will teachers be?
What will they ask students to use in their classroom?
How frequently – daily, weekly, quarterly?
How will they integrate more technology into the curriculum?
What will be the phase-in time? How do we teach students to be good digital citizens?
We will need to determine steps so that students don’t buy devices they don’t need. Need an open forum for parents so that they are not surprised budget-wise or device-wise.
Need to plan for: policies, for wi-fi connecting issues, for battery charging in classrooms (electrical strips?), for lack of robustness of devices – i.e. do we provide ones for students to use?, for PD for faculty.
Students having their own device allows for more individualized instruction.

3.Other discussions: E-boards vs. individual web sites; paper vs. digital copies (hand-outs, hot links); Gmail vs. Outlook; on-line courses.
We need to get back to the basics – integrating technology into learning.

4. Actions: Bruce will set up a conference call with Ridgefield or Chester to talk about BYOD for the next meeting once a date has been set.

Meeting adjourned at 7:30 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Nancy Silander

Inexpensive Video Editing Software

At our last meeting JoJo had mentioned an interest in locating some inexpensive video editing software. This product seems to fit the bill quite nicely with a free baseline product and inexpensive month by month upgrade option. Far more inexpensive than buying a high-end machine with expensive video editing suite.

Whiteboard Hack that Saves Thousands

Tuesday Evening's Meeting Agenda

Digital Learning Committee Agenda - March 27, 2012

We’re meeting in  Alan Trotochaud’s room (101)

1. 5:30ish Introduction of new members (briefly)
2. 5:45 Discussion:
1. Discuss the Digital Learning Activities held this month for teachers at the school
2. Bruce update on Wireless initiative and implications. (2 min)
3. Survey 
1. "Do you regularly incorporate the use of the Internet in your classroom activity?"
2.  "Do you have a class-specific blog that your students can author on?"
3. "Do you recommend youTube videos as supplementary or alternative sources of teaching like subject matter?"
4. "Do you have a teacher blog of your own?"
5. "Do you use a wiki for your grade level?"
6.  "Do you maintain an academic wiki across semesters?"
7. "What are the websites you most often use in your teaching?"
8. "Do you assign homework that requires the use of the Internet?"
9. "Do you use cloud-based documents for student collaborative assignments?"
10. "Do you use cloud based documents such as Google docs for classroom material?"
11. "Do you instruct your students as to the best way to use search engines?"
12. "What browser do you use?"
13. "Do you use youTube videos to supplement in class material?"
14. "What browser plug-ins do you use at home or in the classroom?"
15. "Do you maintain a wiki for a particular subject?"
16. "Do you tag your classroom assignments with keywords the students can research independently?"
4. Prioritize a few policy issues
3. 6:15ish Supporting existing initiatives
1. Flip a classroom
4. after 6:45  Hands on with Smartboard (Getting us up to speed on basics)
1. Sue short tutorial on smartboard nuances
2. GMail
3. Google docs
5. Round table discussions on current and future digital learning initiatives.

We’ll try to conclude by 7:30 at the latest

Very Inspiring

A Committee of Hands

This TED talk is very much in the spirit of this committee;

The Flipped-Mastery Approach

It turns out the flipped classroom and the mastery approach are like two peas in a pod. Chemistry teacher Jonathan Bergmann has "flipped" his classroom--putting the lectures online and using class time to help students with assignments. And he has found that this approach not only allows more one-on-one and small group-teacher contact, it also facilitates the mastery approach to learning.



As Bergmann summarized elsewhere:

"The technological progressions led to the introduction of another transforming instructional adaptation. With such a large library of lessons available, the two teachers decided there was no reason every student had to watch the same vodcast on the same night. They implemented what they named a "mastery learning model," which allows their students to work through the material at their own pace, and when they are ready-- having finished all the assigned worksheets, done all the labs, and completed the small-group demonstrations with their teacher-- take an exit test at the end of each unit to prove comprehension. "They have to do 75 percent or better," Bergmann says. "If they don't, they go back until they get it.""

With this approach, is there any reason a student couldn't take more than one year to finish a course? Is there any reason he or she couldn't finish in less than a year and move on to a new course?

And the power of the mastery approach was established by Bloom in 1984. Students under the mastery approach did one full standard deviation better that students in the traditional classroom.

February 2012 DLIC Meeting Minutes

Attendees: Frank Krasicki, Bruce Silva, Nancy Silander (early departure), Lou DeLoretto (early departure), Bill Green, Doug Melody, Jojo Phillips, Brad Martin, Tim Nolan, Alan Trotochaud


Bruce Silva opened the meeting by talking about the initiative to introduce WIFI throughout the school.  The Request For Quotation is done, the narrowing of vendor candidatesis in process, and a preferred vendor is identified.


Hopefully this will result in a Summer WIFI install.  This, however is not a given.


We took a look at the teacher survey on the DLIC blog.  More questions are needed and those that already exist need to be vetted by the committee.


We took a look at the Technology inventory spreadsheet and discussed how we might identify the quality of usage of the equipment.  This may require the intervention of a standing school committee.


Policy issues:  Alan asserted that the school needed policy to govern digital practice.  The committee intends to harvest existing policies from other school districts to formulate our own.

The strong consensus was that we prefer teaching and advocating responsible internet usage rather than creating unenforceable rules and regulations - in other words, build better digital citizens rather than cyber-handicapped teens.


We had a discussion about what teachers think important policies might be.  Lou promised to deliver an existing survey that might prove useful.


Access issues:  Jojo raised the issue that the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) strategy might discriminate against less fortunate students.  Bruce’s research indicated that this is historically not the case.


School phone use:  In a rather humorous aside, Doug responded to a discussion about cell phone manners of students by pointing out the committee’s own cell phone dependencies.



We watched this Will Richardson inspired video:




Learning:  Doug reminded us that we were losing sight of the intent of the committee - to address the issue of learning.