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