Thursday, January 19, 2012; 1:00 PM CT
Lincoln Executive Building, 521 S. 14th St.,
Room 103
Remote: Wayne State College, Library Room #31
Remote: Alliance High School, 100 W. 14th, Alliance
Remote: Omaha State Office Building, 1313 Farnam, Room
207
Remote: ESU 10, 76 Plaza Blvd., Kearney
PROPOSED MINUTES
VOTING MEMBERS/ALTERNATES PRESENT:
Mr. Clark Chandler, Nebraska
Wesleyan University
Mr. Ken
Clipperton, Midland University
Mr. Ron Cone,
Educational Service Unit 10, Kearney
Dr. Terry Haack, Bennington Public
Schools
Mr. Steven Stortz, Christ Lutheran
School, Norfolk, alt. for Stephen Hamersky
Mr. Leonard Hartman, Alliance Public
Schools
Mr. Jeff Johnson, Centennial Public
Schools
Mr. Lyle Neal, Southeast Community
College
Ms. Mary Niemiec, University of
Nebraska
Mr. Randy Schmailzl, Metropolitan
Community College
Dr. Bob Uhing, Educational Service
Unit 1, Wakefield
LIAISONS/ALTERNATE MEMBERS PRESENT: Ms. SuAnn Witt, Nebraska Department of Education; Mr. John
Stritt, Educational Service Unit 10, Kearney.
MEMBERS/LIAISONS ABSENT: Mr. John Dunning,
Wayne State College; Mr. Ed Hoffman, Nebraska State College System; Ms. Yvette
Holly, UNL-Medical Center; Dr. Mike Lucas, York Public Schools; Mr. Jeff
Stanley, Conestoga Public Schools; Dr. Marshall Hill, Coordinating Commission
for Postsecondary Education; Ms. Brenda Decker, State Office of the CIO; Mr.
Gary Targoff, NET.
CALL
TO ORDER, ELECTRONIC POSTING, LOCATION OF OPEN MEETING LAW DOCUMENTS, ROLL
CALL, INTRODUCTIONS
Co-Chair, Dr. Haack, called the
meeting to order at 1:05 pm. There were
8 members present at the time of roll call.
A quorum existed to conduct official business. Meeting notice posted to
the Nebraska Public Meeting Calendar on 11-14-2011. Agenda posted to the NITC web
site on 11-14-2011. A copy of the Nebraska Open Meetings Laws was on the wall
of the Executive Building Conference Room and at each of the remote locations.
OTHERS
PRESENT
Dave Hahn of Nebraska Information
Network introduced himself to the Council.
CONSIDER APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA FOR
THE JANUARY 19, 2012 MEETING
Mr.
Neal moved to approve the January 19, 2012 agenda as presented. Mr. Hartman
seconded. Roll call vote: Clipperton-Yes, Cone-Yes,
Haack-Yes, Stortz-Yes, Hartman-Yes, Johnson-Yes, Neal-Yes, and Schmailzl-Yes. Results:
Yes-8, No-0, Abstained-0. Motion
carried.
Dr. Bob
Uhing, Educational Service Unit 1, joined the meeting at the Wayne State
location.
CONSIDER APPROVAL OF MINUTES
FROM THE November 7, 2011 MEETING
Dr.
Uhing moved to approve the November 7, 2011 minutes as presented. Mr. Stortz
seconded. Roll call vote: Clipperton-Yes, Cone-Yes, Haack-Yes, Stortz-Yes,
Hartman-Yes, Johnson-Yes, Neal-Yes, Schmailzl-Yes and Uhing-Yes. Results:
Yes-9, No-0, Abstained-0. Motion
carried
PUBLIC
COMMENT
There was no public comment.
LEGISLATIVE UPDATE
Mr. Rolfes
gave a legislative update. He stated that today is the last day to introduce
bills for legislation. The first link in the agenda is a link to the NITC
website that tracks all technology related legislation across a number of
different sectors. The legislation is listed for both sessions of the biennium.
He requested that members bring to his attention any legislation they would
like the NITC to track. Mr. Rolfes
highlighted two of the bills: LB 735, broadens the
ability of community college board of governors to hold their meetings by means
of video conference and also audio conference, which is a special exception in
the open meetings laws. Most recently the 17 ESU boards were added in a similar
fashion. LB 782 is a very lengthy bill requiring
all statutory reports to the legislature to be submitted electronically. This
includes three reports from the NITC, the annual report, the prioritization of
information technology projects as well as the Network Nebraska annual fiscal
report, as well as any other OCIO reports from any other statutes.
Clark
Chandler, Nebraska Wesleyan, joined the meeting from
the Lincoln Executive Building location.
PRESENTATION: “ESU 10 ELEARNING RESOURCES” BY
RON CONE, ESU 10
Mr. Cone
referred to the slides which were provided electronically. He explained that the
Greater Nebraska Educational Network Consortium (GNENC) involves the cooperation
of five service units: ESU 10 in Kearney, ESU 11 in Holdrege, ESU 13 in
Scottsbluff & Sidney; ESU 15 in Trenton, and ESU 16 in North Platte and
Ogallala. ESU 13 had been doing some
good work with Moodle in their district. The possibility of the consortium doing
this collectively was brought up. What started out as a learning management system
grew to be e-learning thematic services. They are training schools to use it
and working with teachers in that capacity. There was a question of how to
train teachers and districts to use the learning management system and how to
get students to connect with it to really improve their learning. They found
that it became a question of instructional strategies using technologies. It
was decided they would try to find a piece to link those products together from
an instructional standpoint. The instructional design model called UBD,
Understanding by Design was selected. This is a backward design model which
seemed to help the developers look at the desired results and find out then how
these tools can be used to achieve those results. Some of the pieces of
technology that are included are single sign on and an active directory that has
all their accounts in it, all built on top of that same authentication, then it
interfaces with each of the software products. Since there is a Resource
Warehouse, they hope to fill it with authentic resources or other resources and
manage it. Most of the focus right now is on Google, and the Google
applications, and the Understanding by Design processes. In the future they would like to have a state
wide directory, at least for K-12, comprising a federated network on Network
Nebraska. A question/answer period
followed the presentation.
Mary
Niemec, University of Nebraska, joined the meeting at the Lincoln Executive
Building location.
NETWORK NEBRASKA UPDATE
Mr.
Rolfes referred the group to the links in the agenda, the first being the Network
Nebraska Report. There is an update on the federal reimbursement program, E-rate.
On December 9, last year’s funding of $181,000 was awarded. Network Nebraska is
now in this year’s performance year requesting funding for this year’s
backbone, and they are just setting the stage for a new set of applications for
reimbursements by March 20 which will get into 2012 – 2013 backbone and Internet.
Two key elements on the K12 side:
· In order for the OCIO
to act on their behalf, every single school district, ESU and library has to
submit what is called a “Letter of Agency”. This gives OCIO the ability to act as a
consortium lead to bid on their behalf, to contract for Internet, and to
operate the backbone. The Office of the Chief Information Officer is going to assume
a new responsibility for next year with buying and rebilling for Internet for
the K-12 entities on Network Nebraska-Education. Up until now every school, ESU
or library could buy off the State contract and the vendor would bill them and
then the local entity or regional entity would file for their own E-rate.
Through discussions with the vendors, it was learned that if the number of
rebilled entities was limited, costs would go down. The responsibility and also
the cash flow of carrying those purchases into the next year will fall on the
shoulders of the State Office of the CIO. The financial solutions team is comfortable
with assuming the extra cash flow. The
state cash flows about $200,000 of e-rate funding for sixteen months on the
backbone, then gets reimbursed. The statewide reimbursement on internet will be
about $90,000. This will require the OCIO to collect a new E-rate form called the
479 which declares at the local level that they have met all the Children
Internet Protection Act responsibilities for serving internet.
· Concerning RFP 3827,
this procurement was released in October 2011, bidding was opened on December
9, and they are currently working through the awards. Out of 235 K12 circuits, they
are awarding 204 to nine providers, with an overall cost reduction of 40% from
what it was in the previous 48 months. They are staging a second round RFP
which was released on January 18 to rebid all those circuits that were
unacceptable. They rebid the backbone that has been in place for the past five
years. If they would relight the circuits they have this year at the same
bandwidth they have had, they would see a drop in cost of 67%. The other option is to extend the backbone
and increase the bandwidth in some places, which would increase the
reliability. The demands that the members place on the network will be reviewed
and they will try to scale the backbone accordingly and try to keep it at the
same cost or less. The cost of Internet off the state contract through June
2012 is $6/Mbps/month. The bids for the new contract are in and if we would
rebuy the same amount as we are buying this year, that rate would go down to
$2.75/Mbps/month, which is a 55% cost reduction. These are among the lowest
rates anywhere in the country. An indirect benefit of being part of this state
contract is IPv6, the new dynamic routing scheme in millions of addresses as
soon as the entire Internet switches to this. During the transition to IPv6, if
you support websites, you have to support all of your websites in IPv4 and then
when you switch to IPv6 you have to support that also. You will need to do dual
support until the entire world that would visit your website gets changed over
to IPv6. The advantage to the Network Nebraska members is that the entire block
of addresses through Network Nebraska will be systematically released to all of
its members.
· The next round RFP
3886 there will be 50 circuits bid or rebid, plus 9 K12 circuits from potential
members, and rebidding an element of the backbone.
A
question and answer period followed. Mr. Clipperton offered congratulations and
a thank you to Mr. Rolfes for his work and the results that came out of this
RFP.
Continuing
with the Network Nebraska update, John Stritt, co-chair of the Network Nebraska
Advisory Group, said that as outlined in the action items there are a number of
things that pertain to Network Nebraska and the Advisory Group as it relates to
the Education Council. One of the things listed on several of the items is the
aggregation of entities and/or providing services and to whom those are
provided. Nebraska Statute 86-5,100 describes Network Nebraska as serving local
government, state government, and education entities. A subcommittee was set up
to look at what should take place in terms of additional membership, extending
to others that could qualify, and if that is done, how these services are to be
implemented. It has opened up some discussion. The recommendation at this time
is to maintain the K-20 network membership qualifications ‘as is’.
Another
item deals with the OCIO MCU Bridge that the Network Nebraska members can use
for meetings. The intent was to see if these kinds of bridges could be valuable
in terms of use. The cost is about $1.26 per member per month to have almost
unlimited access to 10 simultaneous connections anytime of the day or week.. The next question that needs to be looked at is how many
Network Nebraska members know about this service and how many used it.
The
Network Nebraska Advisory Group is working with the web development team of the
OCIO in redesigning the www.networknebraska.net
website. The purpose of the website is to make information available to the
Network Nebraska members and other interested parties.
ELECTION OF HIGHER EDUCATION CO-CHAIR
Tom Rolfes
reported that the higher education
members have completed a compressed virtual caucus and wish to bring forth the
single nomination of Ed Hoffman to be elected as the higher education co-chair.
Mr. Hoffman is willing to accept the position if approved by a vote of the council.
Mary Niemec nominated Ed Hoffman for co-chair
of the Education Council. The nomination was seconded by Lyle Neal. Roll call vote: Chandler-Yes, Clipperton-Yes, Cone-Yes, Haack-Yes, Stortz-Yes,
Hartman-Yes, Johnson-Yes, Neal-Yes, Niemiec-Yes, Schmailzl-Yes and
Uhing-Yes. Results: Yes-11, No-0, Abstained-0. Mr. Hoffman was elected unanimously.
TASK GROUP REPORTS
There
was no report from the Emerging Educational Technologies Task Group.
There
was no report from the Governance Task Group.
There
was no report from the Network Nebraska Services Task Group.
SuAnn
Witt reported from the Marketing Task Group. The survey closed in
mid-December. When Ms. Witt has all of
the data compiled she will send it out by e-mail, prior to the next meeting.
TASK GROUP MEMBERSHIP
Co-Chair
Haack asked that each Education Council member be assigned to at least one task
group. Members and Alternates who are
not currently assigned to a task group were reminded to let Mr. Rolfes know which
group they are interested.
NITC ACTION ITEMS
Co-Chair
Haack stated that each of the Advisory Groups of the NITC is responsible for
advancing action items that address the eight strategic initiatives of the
commission. Documentation provided in the agenda link includes the action items
that address the NITC initiatives of Network Nebraska and Digital Education,
for which the Education Council is most involved or if they include Education
Council as either a participating or lead entity Dr. Haack asked the members to
discuss how the Council will be contributing to that work. The four Education
Council Task Groups seem to match well with the action items. Following
discussion, the Council assigned the action items to task groups as follows:
·
Governance Task Group – N1A, N1B, N2A,
N2B, D2, and E1.
·
Emerging Educational
Technologies Task Group – D2 and D4.
·
Marketing Task Group – N4C, N4D, D1, and E1
(monitor and advise).
·
Network Nebraska
Services Task Group
– N3, N4A, N4B, N4E, D3, and D5.
N4F was
included in the documents, but the Education Council is not listed on it, so it
was not assigned to any of the task groups.
Dr.
Haack stated that it is the responsibility of the task group leader or
co-leader to schedule a meeting during February and make progress related to
those tasks and bring back a report to the March meeting.
DISCUSS THE POSSIBILITY OF A REGULARLY
RECURRING MEETING
This
will be kept on the agenda for March.
AGENDA ITEMS FOR THE NEXT MEETING
Task
Group reports, Network Nebraska update, and the Network Nebraska Marketing
Survey Report will be added to the agenda.
CONSIDER LOCATION FOR THE MARCH MEETING
The
March meeting will be a face to face meeting. It was decided that the next
meeting will be held in Lincoln, March 15, 2012 at 1:00pm CT. The NITC staff
will reserve an appropriate place for the meeting and notify all members,
alternates and liaisons. Mr. Hartman volunteered to check on the NSEA Building.
Mr. Johnson moved to adjourn. Mr. Chandler
seconded. All were in favor. Motion carried by voice vote. The meeting was
adjourned at 3:06 p.m.
Meeting
minutes were recorded by Jeanine Yost and reviewed by Tom Rolfes of the NITC.