Wednesday, May 27, 2015 at 9:00am CT
Host site: Varner Hall Board Room, 3835 Holdrege, Lincoln
Remote sites: ESU 13, 4215 Avenue I, Scottsbluff, NE; Metro Community College,
Bldg 30-Suite 252, 30th & Fort Streets, Omaha, NE
MEMBERS PRESENT:
Mr. Burke Brown,
Palmyra School District OR1
Mr. Mike
Carpenter, Doane College
Mr. Matt
Chrisman, Mitchell Public Schools
Mr. Steven
Hamersky, Daniel J. Gross Catholic High School
Dr. Dan
Hoesing, Schuyler Community Schools
Mr. Greg Maschman, Nebraska Wesleyan University
Mr. Gary
Needham, ESU 09
Ms. Mary
Niemiec, University of Nebraska
Mr. Randy
Schmailzl, Metro Community College
LIAISONS/ALTERNATES PRESENT: Dr.
Kathleen Fimple, CCPE; Ms. SuAnn Witt, NDE
MEMBERS/LIAISONS ABSENT: Mr. Derek Bierman; Mr. John Dunning; Ms. Yvette Holly; Mr. Steve Hotovy;
Dr. Mike Lucas; Mr. Darren Oestmann; Ms. Brenda
Decker; and Mr. Gary Targoff
CALL TO ORDER, ELECTRONIC POSTING,
LOCATION OF OPEN MEETING LAW DOCUMENTS, ROLL CALL, INTRODUCTIONS
Co-Chair,
Mary Niemiec, called the meeting to order at 9:02 a.m. The public meeting notice was posted to the Nebraska Public
Meeting Calendar on May 19, 2015. The agenda was posted to the NITC Web site on
May 19, 2015 and was amended on May 26, 2015.
The Open
Meeting Statutes were located on the south wall of the Varner Hall Board Room.
Ms. Lopez-Urdiales called the roll and found nine voting members or alternates
present. A quorum was reached in order to conduct official business. Members
and guests introduced themselves.
CONSIDER APPROVAL OF THE AGENDA FOR
THE MAY 27, 2015 MEETING*
Mr. Brown moved to approve the
meeting agenda as presented. Mr. Carpenter seconded. Roll call vote: Brown-Yes,
Carpenter-Yes, Chrisman-Yes, Hamersky-Yes, Hoesing-Yes, Maschman-Yes,
Needham-Yes, Niemiec-Yes, and Schmailzl-Yes. Results: Yes-9, No-0, Abstained-0.
Motion carried.
CONSIDER APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES
FROM THE FEBRUARY 18, 2015 MEETING*
Ms.
Niemiec moved approval of the February 18, 2015 minutes. Mr. Carpenter seconded. Roll
call vote: Schmailzl-Yes, Niemiec-Yes,
Needham-Yes, Maschman-Yes, Hoesing-Yes,
Hamersky-Yes, Chrisman-Yes, Carpenter-Yes, and Brown-Yes. Results: Yes-9, No-0, Abstained-0. Motion carried.
DISCUSSION WITH THE NITC CHAIR, MR.
FELIX DAVIDSON
Mr.
Davidson thanked the members for volunteering to serve on the Education Council
of the NITC. Mr. Davidson provided
information about his background and work history. The Education Council members introduced
themselves. Mr. Davidson described his role as assisting the Governor in
assuring that the engine of state government operates smoothly. He would like the Council to focus their energies
on what the Council sees as the most important initiatives. The strategic initiatives for the Statewide
Technology Plan were approved at the last NITC meeting. Two new initiatives were added – IT Spending
Analysis and Cloud Strategy. Mr. Davidson asked the Council members to provide
feedback regarding information technology in education and barriers facing
their educational institutions. Some of
the issues and barriers discussed were as follows:
·
Getting adequate
bandwidth in rural areas
·
Lack of
technology at the personal student level - no computer at home
·
Developing
better internal infrastructure to better utilize the available Network Nebraska
bandwidth
·
Funding for
renewal of computer equipment
·
Getting
students interested in computer careers
·
Technology
playing a huge role with Spanish speaking population
·
Involving communities
in information technology
·
Students’
need for Wi-Fi and being on the same page with educators as to how best to use
technology
·
Frustration
when there is duplication of efforts – the state needs to do more collaboration
with federal, state, local and private endeavors.
·
Educational
Service Units listen to K12 needs to assist with accomplishing their IT needs -
growing your own expertise is difficult to accomplish in rural locations.
·
Network Nebraska
has provided a terrific foundation for collaborative efforts. Now the project needs to think outside the
box; how do we breakdown silos; is one learning system good for the state and
will it be cost-effective method?
·
The Coordinating
Commission for Post-Secondary Education promotes efficient use of resources. The CCPE is the Point of Contact for SARA
(State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement).
SARA
is an agreement among member states, districts and territories that establishes
comparable national standards for interstate offerings of postsecondary
distance education courses and programs. The barrier is that there is no statewide database
of higher education institutions for data collection requested by the public or
other states.
·
Equity for
each student in the state, including the quality of education, is a barrier.
Mr.
Davidson appreciated hearing members concerns and issues and again thanked the
members for dedicating their time.
Joe
Kinney, with Dell, recommended putting together some kind of consortium for
cost savings when purchasing technology.
Dell was awarded the 1-1 contract with Lincoln Public Schools and now
have 1,000 employees working in Lincoln to serve its customers.
A REVIEW OF NETWORK NEBRASKA AND
DIGITAL EDUCATION STRATEGIC INITIATIVES
Last week,
the NITC held a working session on the strategic initiatives. One common theme prevailed – the inclusion of
metrics for each of the strategic initiatives.
A Vision Committee discussed the Education Council’s goals and action
items and successful measures. The
Vision Committee members included Mike Carpenter, Burke Brown, Steve Hotovy, Dan Hoesing, John Dunning
and the co-chairs. The question was
raised as to whether it is just about the technology or how the process of
education is changing because of technology.
It was recommended to conduct an assessment of educators’ interests and
needs. Nebraska needs to leverage its
strengths as a whole and establish a foundation. Council members asked if there are projects
already in place that the Council needs to be aware of for inclusion in the
Statewide Technology Plan. Developing
metrics will be challenging and difficult depending on what is being
measured.
Co-Chair,
Ms. Niemac, had to leave the meeting. She recommended the council form work groups
to address goals and develop action items and metrics for the next meeting.
NITC ACTION ITEMS
Task
Group Membership.
Due to the new action items, there will be lots of task group changes. Some existing task groups could be dissolved
or radically changed. Co-chairs want
meetings to focus more on the mission, goals and action items of the Statewide
Technology Plan.
Review
of 2014-16 Action Items
Recommendations
and observations:
·
Provide
commission with more information as to the benefits of collaboration – costs
and resources. The cost of printed
textbooks versus online learning digital.
·
Start with
an assessment of what is most important and focus on that initiative. For example, now that Network Nebraska is a
success focus on “Digital Education”.
·
Recommended
to change Emerging Technologies to Digital Education Task Group or Curricular
Infrastructure Task Group. This would
include the current tasks but the decisions on how best to use technologies
would still be at the local level.
·
Promote
collaborative purchases.
·
Explore
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for potential funding. If we are looking at common platform, we will
need standards.
·
Address
the “whys” of technology implementation.
For example, being able to move curriculum across school districts that
works into the higher education course needs is a vital need.
The Vision
Committee will take feedback and come up with a plan to address task groups.
NETWORK NEBRASKA UPDATE
Project
Management Report (5/1/2015).
The project is in its 9th year. On July 1, the project will reach 99.6%
public education entity participation. The
Education Council has worked hard and should feel proud of its accomplishments. The State of New Mexico has contacted the
OCIO and will be meeting with them in June about Network Nebraska. In Idaho, the
state network lost a substantial share of its E-rate funding. Idaho has also contacted the OCIO about Network
Nebraska. Fourteen Nebraska school
districts from ESU 3 will connect to Network Nebraska on July 1. The Lincoln Diocese has joined as a single
school system. The Lincoln City
Libraries will be joining Network Nebraska mid-year at the higher education fees. This should expand library patrons’ Internet
bandwidth by over 1,000%.
NNAG
Meeting Notes. There is an
estimated dozen entities getting Network Nebraska Internet through an existing
Network Nebraska Participant but are not paying any fees. The Office of the CIO
has asked the NNAG group to develop a fee structure for these types of
entities.
FCC
Fiber Build Workshop.
Mr. Rolfes attended the FCC workshop in Tampa, Florida to learn how Network
Nebraska fiber development could be funded by E-rate. In FY 2016, the FCC will allow
self-provisioning of fiber but will also incentivize this effort – with an
additional 10% discount if each state comes up with their 10% match. Network Nebraska would be eligible and then
would be able to extend dark fiber to increase the capacity of the statewide
backbone.
RFP
4862 Update. Cogent
Communications was awarded the state Internet access contract replacing Unite
Private Networks. This second Internet
provider out of Omaha will enable the Network Nebraska engineers to load
balance bandwidth between the two Internet egress points. This begins July 1st. Mr. Rolfes encouraged the council sectors to
get this information to their colleagues.
SUBSECTOR UPDATES
State colleges.
No update.
Community colleges.
No update.
Independent colleges. No update.
University of Nebraska. No update.
Coordinating Commission. Dr. Kathleen Fimple reported that SARA now has 16
institutions in Nebraska participating - 11 public and 5 private institutions. Nationally, there are 23 states participating
with more waiting to be involved. She
will be presenting Nebraska’s Transfer Portal at a future Council meeting. Having a common student information systems between
the University of Nebraska and the State College Systems is proving to be very
effective for students.
K-12 public & private.
Mr. Brown reported that their regional consortium of schools just
finished their first successful year of online testing by being on Network
Nebraska. Last mile transport has
reliability issues in southeast Nebraska.
Dr. Hoesing informed the Council that Schuyler Public Schools just held
a 2-day discover education symposium and broadcasted from Schuyler Public
schools to show how technology is being used in middle school. He will share more at the June meeting.
Nebraska Dept. of Education.
A legislative bill was passed that provided reduced funding for schools
to exchange distance learning courses starting next year. Innovation grants may be available for school
districts and NDE will keep the Council posted.
OTHER BUSINESS
Membership Renewal. Eight EC membership terms expire on June 30th,
four from K-12 and four from higher education.
Emails have been sent to the sectors informing them of expirations and
membership renewals
GIS
Data Agreement. Nathan Watermeier, State GIS Coordinator,
worked on an enterprise contract with ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute) to provide GIS data via the NebraskaMAP
website. The Office of the CIO is
extending an offer to any public schools to participate in the free licensing agreement.
Mr. Watermeier is also willing to provide a NebraskaMAP
demonstration to the Council.
AGENDA ITEMS FOR THE 8/19/2015
MEETING
Digital
Education Initiative
Task
Groups
Legislative
Recap
Demonstrations
for future meetings:
·
Transfer
Portal
·
GIS
Demonstration
·
BlendEd Update
CONSIDER LOCATION(S) FOR THE
8/19/2015 MEETING
The Office
of the CIO will research potential locations for the next meeting.
ADJOURNMENT
Dr. Hoesing moved to adjourn. Mr. Carpenter seconded. All were in favor. Motion carried by unanimous voice vote.
The
meeting was adjourned at 11:30 a.m.
Meeting
minutes were taken by Lori Lopez Urdiales and reviewed by Tom Rolfes, Office of
the CIO/NITC.