September 6, 2017 at 12:00 PM - Technology Committee Meeting

Technology Director reviewed the SmartSheet for the Innovative Grant.

Data? ?Privacy? ?and? ?Security? ?Policies Based on initial discussions, the legal team has drafted a scope of work and issue memo listing legal items for consideration as policy development begins. Dave and Scott will be meeting with the legal team in September to review this document and refine the scope of policy development work to be accomplished during 2017-2018. Hosting? ?Infrastructure The NOC hosting and sustainability work group has been meeting over the summer to develop and evaluate options for our future hosting needs, including in-state and commercially-hosted options. There are more options yet to be evaluated and a significant question about Microsoft licensing to be answered so that costs can be optimized. We are setting up a meeting with Microsoft representatives for later this month to ask licensing questions specific to our situation and determine the correct licensing solution. The work group will continue until completing the evaluations and then develop recommendations to present via the NOC affiliate. Hosting work has been transferred away from a number of our older servers, and these are ready to be removed from the Nebraska Hall data center soon. One virtual server is remaining and after that is migrated we will be able to remove hardware and consolidate to one equipment rack from the current 2. Single? ?Sign-On? ?(SSO)? ?and? ?App? ?Launch? ?Portal As of September 5th, 222 districts and ESUs (85%, up 21% over the summer) are listed in the production single sign-on framework. The Innovation grant includes work to enhance the portal and single sign-on experience. Due to problems contracting for development of the portal software enhancement work over the summer, updates to the app launch portal are delayed and now projected to be ready for production roll-out at the semester break.

The council and working groups met via video conference over the summer and in person at the Administrator Days conference at the end of July. The council, involving about 30 people from a broad cross-section of NDE, ESU, school district and external partner representatives, will meet again in person in October in Lincoln to continue work toward a statewide digital learning plan. From the vision document: "The Future Ready Nebraska Council provides intellectual and practical insights toward the development of Nebraska’s Digital Learning comprehensive plan for PK-12. This digital learning plan will build a coherent long-term strategy that sets directions and priorities, supports innovation, and provides resources to enable Nebraska educators and students to benefit fully from digital-age teaching and learning." The Future Ready framework is helpful in discussing technology planning and useful for the council to discuss priorities in 7 areas:  Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment, Use of Space and Time, Robust Infrastructure, Data and Privacy,  Community Partnerships, Personalized Professional Learning, Budget and Resources.

Project goals for the 2017-2018 year are: ? Have all EAP 2 Districts with certified vendor publishing by October 15, 2017 ? Have all districts publishing by December 1, 2017. ? Have up to 2 or more Ed-Fi workdays at each ESU ? All districts and appropriate staff members can successfully view the Dashboard by February, 2018 ? All districts have done a data check and review utilizing the ADVISER Validation site and other tools that are available. They have addressed any errors/issues by June 1, 2018.

Single? ?Sign-On? ?(SSO)? ?and? ?App? ?Launch? ?Portal As of September 5th, 222 districts and ESUs (85%, up 21% over the summer) are listed in the production single sign-on framework. The Innovation grant includes work to enhance the portal and single sign-on experience. Due to problems contracting for development of the portal software enhancement work over the summer, updates to the app launch portal are delayed and now projected to be ready for production roll-out at the semester break.

Major updates to SRS were rolled out during the summer, as well as the AAP software went live with interim program schools. We are progressing through the ADVISER certification process for SRS. The software has completed certification in the sandbox environment which uses test data. We are now progressing to the staging environment where we will work with 2 or 3 districts’ live data to complete the certification process this month. The conversion of the SRS software to the Zend framework is nearly complete. After that, our focus will be on modernizing software further to incorporate and accomplish the 5-year plan being developed by the SRS advisory committee.

Work continues with pilot districts in the use of BlendEd strategies and the NROC EdReady software. BlendED/Distance Education director gave an update of the BlendEd and the pilots schools.  Notes from her report:  

• Three schools have chosen to no longer be part of the pilot: Wood River Public Schools and Elm Creek Public Schools and Hershey Public Schools 
• Nancy Movall and Beth Kabes are scheduled to visit all pilot schools this fall. After the initial visit, the two will divide the sites.
  • Visited so far: South Sioux City, Bancroft-Rosalie, Clarkson, Bennington, Ashland-Greenwood, Broken Bow, Shelby-Rising.
• Statewide Webinars for sharing and learning from 3:45 - 4:15 CT the last Tuesday of each month.
  • Shara Johnson from ESU2 and Crystal Hurt from ESU10 are developing videos to share with the teachers on LMS usage (providing a Canvas and Schoology view)
  • August 29, LMS Features
  • September 26, Discussion Boards in an LMS
• Seeking teachers that participated in TLT Special Project for BlendEd Learning to present to ESU 9 Teaching and Learning Conference (conflict with Beth)
• Completed 5 workshops across the state for Pilot schools, providing PD for teachers in the schools that are joining during year 2. 158 attendees registered.
• TLT Special Project for BlendEd Learning was successful. The Canvas course is populated with exceptional posts to the observation tool indicators.

BlendEd/Distance Education Director shared the NROC/Edready updates.  Notes from her report:  

• Continued planning with NROC staff through virtual meetings
• Presented EdReady resources with Millard Public Schools Math Team on August 10, 2017.
• Nancy Movall is working with EdReady pilot teachers

The version 1 web application is live. Pilot ESUs meet regularly and additional ESUs have joined these meetings to collaborate on the process of service planning and implementation. Additional enhancements to processes and the software are in progress.

Committee chair shared notes from a task group meeting that was this past summer.  

ESUs 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17 have transferred billed entity for all Layer 2 transport circuits from individual ESUs and school districts to the Office of the DEO for the FY 2018-2019 E-Rate year.  They will not get involved in Category 2 or any circuits that are not contracted with the State of Nebraska.  Does not include and school district (or ESU) that prefers to keep status quo.   Contract "privity" prevented the State of Nebraska from effectively enforcing state RFP/contract terms and technical requirements on Providers.  Using ESU and State E-rate "consultants" should reduce filing errors and provide a more enterprise approach to E-rate filing.  They will pay bills in full each month which will reduce indirect costs borne by providers, which could lead to lower services costs.  Transferring financial responsibility to the OCIO should tighten the relationship between circuit inventory, purchased capacity, contract terms, and RFP/contract management.  They will create one Form 471 for each school district rather than one Form 471 for each discount band (e.g. 40%, 50%, 60%, etc...)  They shared the timeline with the committee.  

Inventory set for disposal is attached, review and vote for disposal in October.