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The New York State Distance Learning Consortium
www.nysldc.org
Meeting Minutes
For
January 11 & 12, 2001
Binghamton, NY


The following is a summary of our most recent meeting. Please let Steve Smith know as soon as possible if there are has been anything omitted or reported in error.

Day 1 (January 11)
  1. Review and Approval of October 5 & 6, 2000 Meeting Minutes
    • There were no changes to be made to these minutes. A motion was made by John Barry and seconded by Tony Abbatiello to approve the minutes. All were in favor.

  2. Review of NYSCATE Conference.
    • Mike Bayba lead the discussion reviewing the outcome of our presentation at the recent NYSCATE's Conference. He also indicated that he had received some feed back within their BOCES from people who had attended the conference. It all seemed very positive. Mike proceeded to discuss the positives and room for improvements if we are to do this again.

    1. The Positives
      • Sky cam with a blizzard in Buffalo that attracted a lot of people and gave them an idea of what live full motion video was like.
      • Partnering with Verizon and Univision was very positive. Verizon gave us a link to Buffalo over fiber, and Univision gave us the technical support for four days to set up the distance learning classrooms and take them down again, as well as Dale letting us use the equipment destined for one of his schools.
      • Tony Abbatiello did an outstanding job spearheading the connections to the OnCenter being the local person on site. He had a van, carts, things for the booth, he was near Bernie Tomasso, the chair of the conference, and we were very lucky to have him as our local connection.
      • Booth location-We were in a high traffic area that was a great advantage.
      • Our video connection from the booth location down to the distance learning rooms was good for people to observe what was going on while they were passing on the conventional floor.
      • If we decide to do this again, we need to determine what we would like as an outcome of our conference and whether we will continue to do it with NYSCATE's or on our own each year.

    2. Room for Improvement
      • Next time we have a booth we will not allow the vendor to take over so much of the booth, or not have a vendor at all.
      • We didn't get to see our evaluations.
      • Our two rooms downstairs were much too small for what we wanted to do, as well as too warm.
      • Teaming of sessions, one person in each room to keep a high level of activity.
      • Technical support-Need to stay on top of it but need local administrative and technical involvement from the BOCES where the next location will be.
      • Financial support-Every region of state benefits marketing, promotion, etc. We need to talk about what information to provide and how to organize it.
      • Have Internet our NYS Distance Learning Consortium web "canned" on booth PC's so we don't have to worry about connectivity provided by the conference.
      • Need more help manning the booth. Too few people were involved making those whom were available spending a lot of time at the booth.
      • Need more information about us in the booth.
      • Must go to NYSCATE's to stay viable and in front of our target audience in the state.
      • After considerable discussion we decided we wanted to do the NYSCATE's conference again this fall, which would be in Albany. We would need some members to go to Albany with the NYSCATE's people sometime this spring to take a walk through and determine if this site is appropriate for what we would like to present. Tony will be in touch with Bernie regarding when we can make this trip.
        For the NYSCATE's conference in Albany, Mike Sylofski indicated that he would provide the technical support help. Jeff Elliot also indicated that he would be able to provide local support there. As a result, Mike Bayba will add Mike Sylofski and Jeff Elliot to the list serve for these conferences. The NYSCATE's conference in Albany is scheduled for November 17-20. Steve Smith indicated that he still does not know how much the NYSCATE's bill will be because we have not received all of the costs as yet. A budget has been established for our consortium that will cover these types of expenses in the future. We currently have a list serve set up for the NYSCATE's conference that Mike Bayba manages. Anyone interested in helping to support that again this year should contact Mike off our website to have your name added to that list serve.

    3. School Board for 2001
      • We also discussed the possibility of having a presence at the next School Board meeting that would be held in Buffalo. We thought this would be a good audience for us to be in front of to promote distance learning. Penny Lester and Andy Verdon are going to check with the School Board to see if they would be interested in having us as part of their conference. Penny and Andy will then find out what we need to do to prepare for the conference. We are establishing a list serve for those working on the SchoolBboards conference that will be headed by Penny and Andy. Stay alert for more details on that. The School Board's meeting is October 18-21.

    4. Videoconference Conferene Next Year
      • This would be a conference on video conferencing that JoAnn Schlachter and Andy Verdon will work on for the spring of 2002. We will have more details on that when we have our May meeting.

    5. Roundtable Discussion
      • New logo-We decided to adopt a new logo using the one on our bookmarkers that were made up for our conference by Bonnie Nizamis. A motion was made by Bonnie Garner and seconded by Rita Wissinger to adopt this as our new logo. All were in favor. Please note that the logo appears on our minutes and will appear on our web site.
      • Mike Sylofski indicated that Kay Michelfield is in the hospital. Her home address is on our web site if you care to send her a note.
      • Bill Naab left Erie BOCES to start his own company called William Naab & Associates. He will be working with Classroom Connect consulting direct with schools in the region. Norm Plezia has been hired to replace Bill on a interim basis at Erie BOCES.
      • Kris Biazzo replaced Pat McGuire at Jefferson Lewis BOCES.
      • Genesee Valley will have two new networks; one Verizon and one Frontier connecting to each other this year.
      • Jennifer Lawless indicated she is looking for the following courses and a host: Applied Chemistry, Sign Language, and Pen Pals for English.
      • Tony indicated his BOCES was hosting a ten (10) week refresher program for people interested in sharpening their interpreters certification program skills. Tony also indicated that he has a vacancy available at his BOCES through the end of June this year.
      • Mike Sylofski indicated that he is continuing to have a great deal of problem with the Parkervision cameras. They are very expensive to repair. Customer service indicated that the system two cameraman units are the better units they have at this point. Mike indicated the system two is entirely different than the originals. He is working on trying to set up some regional training for technicians on use of these cameras. Mike also indicated he is planning to host a regional technical training half day session. He will be in touch with our list serve when he has that schedule. He distributed the current NYS Distance Learning address list to be updated so we can have it correct on our website.
      • JoAnn Schlachter asked what was the role of our technical subcommittee. Are they supposed to find the most up to date technology and tell us about it? Their role is to do that and deal with current problems with technology in rooms and try to find a resolution to them.
      • Shelley Rossitto indicated the teacher list serve was done and she will be in contact with us individually on the process for subscribing to that list serve. This list serve has been set up so that distance teachers can converse with each other to discuss concerns, problems, ideas for new courses, and sharing their resources.
      • Carol Brown had questions regarding the aidability of electronic field trips. Basically if BOCES is paying for these electronic field trips they should be aidable. If the district is paying for these on their own, then they probably are not aidable. Carol asked if anyone wanted to meet over video conferencing to discuss how these aidable situations are resolved. No one volunteered.


Day 2 (January 12)
  1. Subcommittee Reports
    • Bob Fraley discussed the Lucent upgrade that is taking place within their region. There was considerable discussion on if anyone else was doing an upgrade in their region or if they were using Lucent for that support.
    • Steve Smith indicated that in their region he is stock piling used parts since the analog equipment can no longer be purchased new on the open market. Broome-Tioga BOCES is going through an RFI process to evaluate other potential solutions, which would also include ATM.
    • Tony indicated they are looking toward going to ATM as well.
    • Rodger Oesterle discussed the distance learning program out of the state of Minnesota where the whole state is running the support for schools in that state. Again we had discussion regarding we need state support in order to have leverage to make things happen as we need them to with distance learning.

  2. Teacher Database Review
    • Andy Verdon reviewed off our web site the current teacher database and asked if anyone had updates to contact Dale Hollmen at Duchess BOCES. Dale can be reached at dhollmen@beta.dcboces.org. If you can't get through to Dale, give Andy a call and he will help you.
    • In further discussion regarding the courses listed there, we will work on linking the course names back to the BOCES that is providing those courses so that people can get a break down of the course descriptions.
    • We had some discussion around IP based distance learning. Robert Bone from OCN BOCES gave us an overview a project underway at his BOCES. Basically, distance learning over the web from remote locations at this point and time has some serious quality of service questions associated with it. There may be a better opportunity for a web based distance learning within each BOCES region.

  3. NYeNet
    • Pam Lacey from NYS Dept. of Technology was present to discuss the current status of NYeNet. We were interested in how we might be able to use that network to connect the various BOCES consortiums around the state. After considerable discussion it was decided that Andy Verdon and Bob Fraley will be our two pilot BOCES to work with Pam Lacey and her team to pilot this kind of activity to see how well it works. It is anticipated that it will probably be this fall before they will be able to start the pilot. In the mean time, they will be meeting to plan out all the to do's to make this happen. We will be anticipating a report out on status of this pilot at our May meeting.

  4. Next Meeting
    • Our next meeting is scheduled for May 3 & 4 at the Binghamton Regency in Binghamton. We decided that we needed more time for roundtable discussion and other issues we needed to deal with. Therefore, our meeting on May 3 will start at 10:00 a.m. You may look for advanced agenda and reservation information in the March timeframe. Any questions regarding these minutes, please let me contact me.