4-16-2012+Minutes

April 16, 2012

PD Committee meeting notes: Discussed the Microsoft TechNet training site. Three of us had the opportunity to give it a quick look. Derrick says a user has 2 years to use the site before their account becomes inactive. We agreed to keep evaluating this training site, but on first glance it looks like it could be very helpful to our tech department to use for training purposes. It has separate modules for OS, Office, etc. It is dependable information, it is well organized, and a certification could be obtained if someone wanted to pursue that avenue. A long-term goal might be to get key individuals at sites interested in using it so they could better train/help staff at their site.

Discussed the Promethean board training Steve Schmidt will be giving at our department meeting on Wednesday of this week. It will be a good opportunity for us to observe a different training method. We will discuss what we thought about the methods used at our next meeting.

Discussed having an iPad training in the fall when technologists come back. Reasons for this training include, but are not limited to the following: This would be a 30-minute discussion or training.
 * 1) We are currently having some issues with deployment and setup procedures
 * 2) There is currently some confusion over how to purchase apps. What is the District policy? How is it done?
 * 3) Questions arise about syncing and such.

Began discussion on new-employee training and orientation. We will have many new people next year and we feel this is a priority for the remainder of this year. We would like to gather resources and documentation. We discussed how we could each take responsibility of a particular area that we think new hires might need to know. Follows is a list of what each of us agreed to gather information on.

Derrick will work on network and FirstClass. Don will work on Mac and PC (consulting with Andy), Web HelpDesk, Promethean boards, and iPads Angie will work on ERC and Surplus Liz will work on printers and equipment deployment procedures Liz, Angie and Dawna will keep a log of 'a day in the life of a technologist' so that we can make sure we are covering the daily, ordinary activities that a new employee would need to be familiar with.

All information will be brought to the next meeting and our committee will proceed from there. We can then present what we have to Erv for approval.

We also wondered if we had any results from the informal evaluation sent out concerning Andy's PC imaging training. Liz will check with Audrey to see if she has gotten any results from the survey that was sent out.