March 11, 2004

Notes:

• Discussed the grid that shows what the ESD training for Skyward will be.
  
• TRT’s will support Educator Access(used to look up student, attendance, grading, student information, schedule) and Educator Gradebook only. Everything else is run at administrator, secretary, and counselor level. Skyward cannot be customized. We only get what the district decides such as the grading scale, etc. Ludicrous for the standard based grading system.
  
• An hour is fine for secondary, but elementary teachers might need more because they have not used Web Wise.
  
• Cabinet is recommending K-5 use educator access, but use whatever grading system they currently use. They are recommending that 6-12 teachers throw out all other grade books and use Educator Gradebook only. We will not have parent access to grades until we have 100% buy in using this grade book. Rather than doing this, we could put the quarter/semester grade into Skyward.
  
  We recommend that we use this system(Educator Access) for attendance and K-5 lunch counts, but grading should be left up to the individual teacher until there is something written in the contract concerning this issue. Then the teacher would put the grades in at the end of the quarter such as we currently do with WebWise.
  
• As it is, even with Easy Grade Pro, the file has to be exported into a file that needs to be uploaded to Skyward by someone at the district office. We don’t know if anyone is willing to do that.
  
• Expectation is that all teachers be ready to use Skyward in September to do attendance, look up student info, and final grading(6-12).
  
• Follow-up training: through the web, pdf’s, and e-mail. Skyward has no online help system, or e-mails that are currently in the system. We will need resources with which to work. TRTs will need the curriculum created to teach to teachers. There is a manual for the Gradebook part, but not sure about the Educator Access.
  
• Upgrade discussion: District license for Panther, iLife, etc. It is an all or nothing deal. All schools need to agree to do it for any school to buy it at this price. Can upgrade any existing Mac(G3) to these programs. This would allow us to standardize our operating system.
  The Instructional Technology Coach and Operational Technology Coordinator would like to see Panther be the operating system we all use. Any new software that comes out now is made for osx(Panther). Unfortunately, at this time in the year , our hardware monies have been utilized for staff upgrades and infrastructure. Gary made a motion that the TRTs talk to their Tech Committee to see if they would want to do this. See how much money we can contribute to the pot plus how much money we owe per FTE. Tell Ron what we can do. He will go to the district to see if they will help if we are short. It is instructional software.
  
• Next fall all e-mails will change. Everyone will be on the same server. Also, there will be no district client e-mail software standard. Ron’s suggestion is that we all use Apple’s Mail.
  
• Extra hours for TRA’s: There is no money. Will need to be addressed when the next levy is run.