Digital High School Grant Committee Meeting Minutes
Friday, November 21, 1997
 

The meeting began at 6:20 in F4

Present:  Joyce Daubert, Steve Eisler, Mike Maguire-Carroll, John Earnest, Karen Lafferty, Jeff Wenger, Rosemary Anderson, Jason Anderson, Tim Sager, John Holmes, Harold Dorr, Douglas Nicoll, Chris Morris, Li Chen, Pat Walsh, Bea Rodriguez, Aimee Santos, Aileen Parel, Pat Miller, Nancy Gray, Al Weiner, Nori Hepler

1.  Steve Eisler reviewed Goal 1 and 2 of the Technology Plan for new members:
Goal 1:  School network - increased communication between staff, students, parents.
Goal 2:  Students will demonstrate learning using technology.  The technology committee and MCHS staff must decide what the application will be to demonstrate student learning.

     Steve continued the committee perusal of the Tech plan by briefly summarizing Goals 3 and 4:
Goal 3:    Teachers, students, parents, and the community will be facilitators of learning.  Students will be problem solvers and communicators.
This goal will follow the implementation of Goal 1 and 2.  May imply changes in scheduling as we move from a traditional teaching/learning format to a less structured (perhaps), problem-solving environment where students might work in groups and tap into community resources (parents, colleges, businesses, government).    At this level, the school's communication system  (like a web page?) will be open and available to parents, students, and teachers for accessing (and editing) information.

A question was asked about the process for reviewing software.  Mike Maguire-Carroll responded that we will first need to identify learning needs, then choose the direction we want to follow, and set up criteria to meet those needs prior to reviewing software applications.  Pat Walsh recommended including ETIS personnel in receiving the minutes of our meetings and to invite Charlie Garten to our meetings so that we coordinate with the district in our planning.  Steve Eisler pointed out that once a student learns a "type" of application, the "platform" can be changed, but because the student will understand the basic concepts of the database, word processor, spreadsheet, etc., the switch to a different platform won't be difficult.

A question was asked about where the students will learn the application(s).  Pat Walsh responded that all teachers could be the facilitators for the students, but we will have to work on involving the entire staff.
 
 
 
 
 

Goal 4:    Technology will be used to facilitate the change process.
     Technology will be the "way we do business".  Our schedule may be different than it is now; our communication methods will probably be different.  For example, we can have meetings on-line, minutes on a distributive data-base (where readers can change/add/make comments to a document).  We will not be locked within the confines of the school; we can tap into experts around the country.

2.  Pat Walsh commented that the work done in producing MCHS Technology Plan by people over the last 5 years has been instrumental in helping MCHS acquire the Digital High School grant money; these people showed foresight and vision.

3.  Pat Walsh said we need to write the grant application, and previewed the presentation to be shown to the entire staff.  Some comments made were:
*  The grant provides a set level of funding per student over 3 years.  Will current data be used to determine student numbers, or will the numbers be those in 1997/98?   Pat commented that the money is Prop 98 money, not additional money over and above that designated for education by the state.
     Jim Mathison (SDCOE) will be helping us fill in grant/ he'll review and send it in to the state.
     Staff training is not going to teach us how to use the software, but rather how to integrate the technology into our curriculum.  We will need to learn to use the applications on our own.

4.  Pat pointed out that WASC focusing on student learning, and our need to include standards in our decisions of  spending the grant money dovetail nicely together.  We will be fulfilling tasks on both of these issues.

5.  Pat suggested that we break into subgroups to work on parts of the grant application, and report out at Friday morning meetings.  He asked the group what we thought, but no clear decision was reached.  

Agenda for next meeting:
1.  Discuss how we can communicate to and with all our staff (and the community).  (A suggestion was made to use the newsletter and the staff bulletin board.)
2.  Discuss the structure of the grant.