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Summary of Standards committee meeting - January 7, 2004
Attendees: Wayne Chenoweth, Stan Judkins, Allison Lenkeit,
Drake Lewis, Tom Lindstrom, Willie Pritchard (via telephone), Jose Rueda,
John Vandercook
There were four items on the agenda:
- Review of peripheral standards
- Should the standards committee set the multimedia classroom standards?
- Plan for implementing XP in the district
- Impact of MacWorld announcements on Macintosh standards
Initially discussion centered on the Macintosh standards<span
style='font-weight:normal'>. It was decided that there were no announcements at
MacWorld that created a need for reviewing or changing the standards.
The committee then talked about peripheral standards<span
style='font-weight:normal'>. John Vandercook provided information indicating that
the current standards for ink jet printers and scanners were no longer being
offered. He suggested that we change the ink jet printer standard from the
HP DeskJet 5550 to the HP DeskJet 5650. After discussion about cost and cartridges
it was decided that John would investigate to see if both printers used the
same cartridges and if so, then the 5650 would be our new standard. Similarly,
the current scanner standard is no longer available so the recommendation
was to shift from the HP 3570 to the new model, HP 3970. Prices on both products
do not change. The committee approved both recommendations.
Discussion then shifted to whether the committee should be the entity for
setting standards for multimedia
consoles throughout the district.
Some concern was expressed that a problem often occurs for budgeters when
they donÕt have enough funds to pay for a standard multimedia console so they
compromise and go with something lower in cost and capability that is not
standard. This causes support problems that make it difficult to keep such
consoles operational. It was then mentioned that this was the same problem
we had before we went to desktop standards, but that over time people came
to accept and support those standards and that the same process will likely
occur here. After more discussion the group did decide that there needed to
be standards and that they were the group that should determine those standards.
Discussion then moved to what should be in the standards for consoles. It
was suggested that the group come up with a minimum standard of what devices
should be in all consoles. The following items were considered to be minimum
needs for all consoles: secure mounted video projector, computer, amplifier
and speakers for audio, a network connection to the computer, a combo VCR/DVD
player, and a control system for all these devices (which implies that each
system must have the electronics to be driven by an external controller).
In addition, it was felt that there should also be the capability for faculty
to bring their laptops in and connect them easily to the console. For that
reason there should also be external connectors for the network, audio, video,
and electricity. Other devices that may come at additional cost would be slide
and film projectors. There was not agreement on whether a document camera
should be part of the minimum standards so it was suggested that we do further
research on faculty use of such a device.
The conversation then moved to a discussion about when we would move to implementing
Windows XP as a standard<span
style='font-weight:normal'> supported by ETS. Several problem areas about XP were
brought up, as well as the reasons for supporting a move to XP. It was
decided that a subcommittee of the standards committee should be formed to
do some research between now and the next meeting and report back on their
findings. The following individuals volunteered to work on doing that:
Jose Rueda, John Vandercook, Stan Judkins, and Wayne Chenoweth.
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