March 21, 2007 Minutes

EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY
COMMITTEE

3/21/2007, 1:00-2:30 pm

ATTENDEES: David Gillett, Jeanine Hawk, Scott Heffner, Stan Judkins, Chuck Lindauer, Kent McGee, Sherri Mines, Mike Murphy, Fred Sherman, Alex Swanner

GUESTS: Sharon Luciw, Chien Shih

Convened: 1:05pm

1. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING

· For the exception of a correction to the number of the edge router, from 5400 to 4500, the minutes will stand approved as posted

2. GENERAL NEWS (ALL)

· To date, have had two successful demonstrations on wireless, one on the FH campus and one on the DA campus

A captive page shows up on your web browser and that’s where you log in, using your e-mail address
Next week will be training the library staff at each college

Will be shown where the AP’s are located in each library
Will demo logging in
Will provide them an electronic version of the poster that has been created, for posting throughout the library

Chuck Lindauer mentioned that Kurt Hueg was at the meeting and suggested that his marketing office create a prettier version of the current poster

Sharon is developing a question and answer sheet that can be handed out to users that are having trouble connecting to the wireless network

As ETS gets more questions and develops more answers, they will update the document

If the library staff encounters many users coming up to them saying that they’re unable to connect to the wireless network, the staff will escalate the problem to the Call Center, ETS will then deploy staff to trouble shoot the issue

A six-month test will be conducted in the libraries before moving forward with additional installations
According to Jeanine, the DA Campus Center has to be wireless, one way or the other, for the start of fall term – because part of the expectation is that the renovation included wireless

According to Sharon, after fall term begins, ETS plans to begin deploying in other Phase I buildings on each campus

After ETS’ time is freed up from all of their summer commitments, if DA wants the Campus Center first in line, wireless would get deployed there first, right after the start of the fall term
Jeanine is willing to provide the financial resources to make wireless happen for when the Campus Center opens

· FH Campus Center and Book Store will not have wireless when it opens during the summer

Sharon needs to see which buildings on the FH campus were in phase I and talk to the management to see if they want to change the order in which Phase I is deployed

3. PARALLELS AND BOOT CAMP SUPPORT (SHARON)

· Currently if you want Parallels (an equivalent to Virtual PC) installed on an Intel MAC, you can purchase it and ETS will do the install

This product is not a standard
This product does not require you to reboot the MAC and allows you to have both operating systems operating at the same time
Need more RAM to support this product
There are problems running VISTA as well as other 3G type systems (something that requires 3 dimensional graphics)

You do not want this product of you have 3G applications that you want to run on a MAC and WIN environment

Good if you need something up and running and available all the time and can’t wait for a reboot

· Boot Camp (makes the computer a dual boot machine), since it is still in a beta form at this time, it is not part of our image or district standard

There are some labs throughout the colleges that are experimenting with it
We are currently waiting for the next version of the MAC OS (Leopard), which Apple promises to incorporate some iteration of Boot Camp/Parallel that ETS will evaluate
Good when you need a lot of computation power and/or 3D processing

· A third available product for running WIN on the MAC is WINE by CrossOver

Will run without Parallels or Boot Camp native to the Apple environment, with about 85% of the applications out there
Good for running one or two windows applications in an Apples environment

4. VOLUME PURCHASING PROCESS & DEPLOYMENT (SHARON)

· Several months ago started working with the purchasing department on how the large volume of purchases were going to be handle

First documented what the original process was and identified the following problems with it

1)    Storage
2)    Timing of orders
3)    Surplusing of old equipment

· Came up with a process were vendor services could be leveraged from a factory imaging standpoint and also deployment – for Dell products, this is covered under WSCA (Western States Contracting Alliance); for Apple, although under WSCA, it is being held up because the state of CA has a problem with the original contract

By going through WSCA we can leverage the contracts by getting good pricing and won’t have to go out for bid
This will be done in phases, starting with the factory imaging first
Next we would have the vendor services deploy the equipment into the classrooms and labs

This would include delivering, unpacking, taking away all the cardboard, hooking up the equipment, doing some basic testing and moving the old equipment to a place ETS designates
Sharon needs to get back to Apple & Dell to get the pilot going

The final phase with the vendors would be to have them surplus our old equipment – not covered under WSCA

· There are multiple funding sources of multiple millions of dollars

1)    Measure “C”
2)    One time money from the colleges
3)    Grants where equipment needs to be purchased and invoice by the end of this FY
4)    End of year budget money

· The colleges, along with CS will have one consolidated workbook with a list of all the equipment, to better understand what is wanted and when

Meet weekly to decide, based upon current resources and what is being ordered, what the deployment of equipment will be
Have a calendar on Meeting Maker called FFE that shows what has been planned for both campuses and will include CS

Currently have everything planned out for FH & DA until the end of June
After June, on the FH campus, the planned deployment is Campus Center and Lower Campus

· Original plan for Measure “C” included the refresh of all district computers (over 5,000 computers)

5. PERSONAL INFORMATION SECURITY (FRED)

· District currently has several areas of vulnerability
· There have been a couple situations that have occurred where the District/colleges had to do some damage control or cleanup or resecure information
· Personal information – the kinds of things you would not want divulged on yourself that might lead to identity theft, such as a SSN, drivers license #, medical records, credit card information
· Four areas that are real sensitive:

1)    Passwords – need to choose strong passwords (a password that can’t be easily broken – alphanumeric, upper & lower case, with characters and at least 8 characters in length)
2)    Retention of records (i.e. Faculty grade lists)
3)    Improper safeguards on data – both paper and electronic format
4)    Critical information that might be stored on laptops or thumb drives

· When you get a breach into your system or you disclose information, of a personal nature, you are required, by law, to notify all the people whose information was contained on the servers or disclosed or obtained through breach – notifications cost about $300’s per record
· Need better training to let people know what they should be doing and how they should be keeping their information and for how long. Need some protocols in place, so that when we do have an incidence, we can take the kind of action that is needed in a timely fashion to manage the situation.

1) Will be posting some best practices on the web
2) Setting up some training

· This is an area where we are especially vulnerable. It has implications for our students and our employees in terms of protecting their identity. The fiscal implications incase when we have to make notifications or get sued.
· Going to be putting together a program to try and get a handle on this as well as educate staff and go around and take a look at systems that might need a little tuning up
· Stan questioned how ETS was going to handle all the File Maker Servers, in various locations, that may have sensitive data on them<>

According to Fred, the first round of attack is going to be training

6. EDUCATIONAL INFORMATION SYSTEM (EIS) STATUS (CHIEN)

· There was a kick off meeting on March 13th ``

The vendor, Advantiv, gave everyone a briefing of how to use the tool, and an explanation of the process

· Opened the forum for brainstorming from March 13^th – April 13^th

The purpose of the forum is for individuals to give their opinion, thoughts and requirements
Before the opening of the forum, Kathy Kyne and Chien held individual team meetings, to go over the content, called Knowledge Packs, that is in the forum

· Have all the team leaders and team organizations identified
· Will begin the business process review on April 16^th – two weeks prior to this, the different teams will go over the knowledge packs
· On May 7^th, will have the requirement-gathering forum open
· In June, will have the validation of all the requirements with the team leaders and the steering committee
· On target to get the RFP or Invitation To Bid on July 2^nd
· There are 18 knowledge packs that have already been condensed and divided and given to the 8 teams

The contents has been done by the vendor based upon CA Community College requirements
Eventually the Knowledge Packs will be uploaded into a forum for general participation

· The tool and process that was chosen for soliciting requirements and making the selection of a vendor is a very open process and the tool invites large amounts of information being put into it

Both colleges and CS will have the opportunity to use this tool to put in our perceptions of what we need and what the system should look like

7. HARDWARE/SOFTWARE STANDARDS (SHARON/FRED)

· Had a meeting on March 6^th
· At the last ETAC meeting it was recommended that the Standards committee be made an official subcommittee of ETAC, such that all recommendations for HW & SW standards would come back to the ETAC committee for discussion and further recommendations

The standards committee accepted this procedure

· Discussed the process used to identify standards

Currently, Sharon brings in a group of models that Dell & Apple are offering for sale
There is a general discussion by the committee in terms of what the particular specifications are
There is a process of matching the specs to the models
Then identify the standard as a particular model
In a couple of weeks when the models change again, Sharon begins the process all over again

· The above-mentioned process not being a good use off time, Fred proposed that the process is gone through once a year for each major item

i.e. Would bring up the issue for HW standards for laptops at one particular meeting. Would discuss what particular specs they should be (HD, memory, what kinds of cards, etc.)
The standard would not be specified by a model, but by the component values
ETS would take that set of specifications and find a model that closely matches those specs and post it to the standards website
If the models change during the course of the year, in between the reviews of the standards committee, ETS would take a look at the new models that are available and find the closest match

· Revised the standards at this last meeting

Came up with a standard that was lower in cost and much more affordable than the previous standard and would still meet the criteria for 90% of the users

These are the standards for the staff of this district
Each lab and classroom might have different needs and may not stick to this standard and may modify it based upon the application in that lab

The prices that are gotten off the Dell website, tend to be a little more than what we end up paying. The quote we get remains until the model changes
The prices posted for the Apple computers come off the website and are negotiated each time an order is placed

· The standards committee makes a recommendation, which now comes to ETAC

The Standards Committee doesn’t set the standard
Based on the information submitted by the Standards committee and discussion, ETAC, will make a recommendation
If need be, that recommendation goes up to senior staff level

· Chuck feels that the standards we choose ought to be adequate so that the people who need the computers can do the work

Since there isn’t enough money in Measure “C” to afford all the computers, no matter how we configure the standards, to what extent does money come into play to make the decisions or do we just make the right decision and some how find the money we need?

· It was recommended to do some research to see if the cheaper machine breaks more often

The larger the variety of machines we have, the more images we will have to manage
Before making a decision on what platforms we are going to buy, we need to look at the architecture of how we do the desktop imaging. We need to look at the current technology available for us to do that and maybe we will determine that the architecture is the way to go and maybe there is a cheap platform, regardless of chipset, platform or operating system that can be used

8. ADJOURNMENT

· Adjourned: 2:32 pm

Next Meeting: Wednesday, April 18, 2007, 1:00 – 2:30, via video conferencing

Last Updated: Tuesday, April 17, 2007 at 11:59:35 AM
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