Technology Advisory Committee Meeting (minutes)
Meeting Date: March 5, 2007
Time: 2:15 a.m.
Place: Eureka 211
Members of this committee: Brandon Abell, John Cowan, Jose Chavez, Sheri Hembree, Stephen Lentz, Kristine Novak, Jonathan Porteus, Ka Va, Bill Vicars, Ex officio members: Virginia Dixon
Attendance at this meeting: Brandon Abell, John Cowan, Bill Vicars, Kristine Novak, Sheri Hembree
Business:
* Approval of last meeting’s minutes (concensus)
* Additions or amendments to the agenda (concensus)
Reports:
John Cowan: Faculty Director of Educational Technology
John discussed:
* The Career ITC position has been posted. This is the position currently held by Brandon Abell.
* John expressed a willingness to serve as chair of the TAC next year depending on the will of the committee.
* John brought up the idea of meeting on alternating days of the week. M/W vs T/H. The committee agreed that this would be a good way to promote faculty involvement with the committee.
Brandon Abell:
Director, Information Technology Center:
Item: Maintenance of the Computer Labs has been challenging due to incomplete software implementations. The IT office has been working very hard to update the Mac implementations and update all of the applications.
Item: Print service is now working. Some of the older print configurations lack “print smart” and thus allow unrestricted printing. This will be a focal point for the near future.
Item: Building Security: Brandon filled out a police report regarding transient activity in the computer labs. Additionally, John Cowan recently confronted a transient/bicycler in the building and alerted security. The person “fled.”
Recommendation: The TAC committee recommends that the college consider “electronic locks” for the labs similar to the lock system currently in place for Eureka 301.
Action Item: John Cowan will recommend to the Dean a review of “security policies” – specifically closure and locking of rooms at end of the day.
Item: The inventory survey is about completed to the extent which people will voluntarily comply. The next phase will be to escalate the inventory process. John will bring this topic to the Chairs committee meeting.
Continuing Business:
1. Stephen Lentz: Ed Tech Symposium
* In keeping with his earlier suggestion regarding the need to do sufficient investigative work and foundation building prior to proceeding with an Ed Tech Symposium (see minutes from the January 2007 meeting), Stephen (via email) requested that members of the committee start the process of looking for a journal article or part of a book
for review to use to kick off our discussion/brown bag starting fall 2007. This will give us time to get rooms arranged and time to read.
The committee discussed this and a potential article (suggested by John Cowan) could be “Tough Times, Tough Choices.” Authored by: the National Committee On Education And The Economy.
Advised Directions:
(continued from our last meeting)
It is the general consensus of the committee that we advise the college administration to move in the direction of:
1. Eventually create a full-time Ed Tech Director position.
Action Item: This committee members in general and John Cowan specifically will begin drafting a possible and/or recommended job description for the Ed Tech Director position.
2. Encourage the incoming Associate Dean to be engaged in and committed to the support of technology in the college.
3. Promote technology-related staff development.
* An aspect of this would include equitable distribution of technology resources.
New Discussion Item:
“User Group,” Some faculty and/or staff have indicated a desire to have a message board and/or user group where solutions to technical problems in the classroom could be posted and accessed by faculty and staff.
Action Item: Brandon will look into implementing a log system that will slowly evolve into an indexed database of solutions and procedures that can be accessed by faculty.
* We as a committee will continue to discuss the technology needs of the college and will use that information to inform the process of developing the College’s Technology Plan.
* Bill Vicars will post these minutes to the net (ASLpah.com/tac) and send them out in an email.
* John Cowan will secure a room for us for our next meeting.
Upcoming meeting dates:
April 10, 2007 at 2:00 p.m.
May 7, 2007 at 2:15 p.m.
Meeting adjourned: 3:00
Email list:
listserv
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Dear TAC Committee,
Our next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, April 10, 2007 at 2:00 p.m. (Room TBA).
Forward to me any agenda items you would like to discuss.
For convenient access to archives of our minutes you can visit: http://aslpah.com/tac/
Or for a user friendly interface, see http://aslpah.com/tac/_index.htm
(Note the “_” mark prior to the index.htm.)
Cordially,
Bill Vicars
(TAC chair)