Minutes+for+Meeting+11-1-10

Conference Planning Committee (Minutes from First Meeting)

Date & Place of First Committee Meeting: 11-1-10, Woodward Building, Room 204, 11:45 to 1:00.

Those Attending: all 18 committee members listed plus Randy Johnson, SEDC Director

Future Meetings: Perhaps once a month. Next committee meeting will be on Monday, December 6, 2010, 11 a.m. to 12 or 12:30 p.m., Woodward Building, Room 204, with no lunch provided.

Dates for the Conferences: October 13-14, 2011  UCET (Utah Coalition for Educational Technology) will be October 13 and 14.  UELMA (Utah Coalition for Educational Technology) will be October 14.

Location of Conferences: Desert Hills High School, 828 East Desert Hills Drive, St. George, Utah 84790. (Note that Lynn Matthews is the school media coordinator at this venue.)

Expected Attendance: We may have our registration cut off at 750. If we decide go over 750, we could use DHMS next door for spillover classrooms. (UCET in northern Utah had 1200 attend their 1-1/2 day conference held on a Friday and Saturday last March.)

Theme: “Targeting 21st Century Learning”

Vision: Charlie would like to see teachers get excited about technology, but we still can gear things toward administrators, tech directors and other tech people, aides, counselors, special ed, and especially differentiated instruction. Cory warned that we should be a little careful this first year, not know who or how many will attend. He was especially concerned about having too many specialized strands; the broad ones would be okay.

Logo and Website: Cody Plumhof

UELMA Conference: Summer Cornelius from Hurricane High Media Center is on the UELMA Board and is in charge of this UELMA Conference.

Attendees: 1. For UELMA, Charlie can pressure the district media coordinators to come. Some will come from other areas. Summer says for some it hard to attend the spring meeting, so they are glad to have a choice for a fall meeting. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. For UCET, Charlie envisioned most attendees would be teachers from our district, but it is fall break and deer hunt, so many will not attend from this district. Cory thinks it will be a big draw from people throughout the state who can get subs and enjoy a couple of days in St. George. For the northern UCET, 90% of the people who attended on Friday had that day off from school and didn’t need to get a sub. The Saturday classes were very well attended.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Keynote Speakers: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. How many? We would like to have one for each day. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. Costs: If Jamie from Google can come, he does not expect to be paid a fee or for any expenses to be paid. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">3. Break-out session: Often people want to hear more from them that just the speech, so ask them if they would like to do another session, and if so, back-to-back or with some time in-between.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Names of Presenters: Tony Campbell will present white boards, there will be many of the usual classes by UEN and SEDC trainers, and there are some people in the district whose presentations are always highly respected, that we might want to find out their strengths and ask them to present at the conference. A few of those mentioned are Brian Stephenson, principal at DHMS, Kalyn Gubler, principal at Lava Ridge Intermediate, and Ryan Reeves, math teacher at DHMS who is very good at data and other aspects of technology. Sometimes it is better to pick topics first, then look for qualified presenters to handle them.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Working with Presenters: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. UCET does not limit the number of presentation per person, but most presenters don’t want to do more than two sessions. We can ask how many they are willing to do, especially the ones that we know will be popular. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. Presenters prefer to know ahead of time how many people they will have in the classroom, but we don’t want to limit people’s choices unless they sign up for a workshop that goes over 2-3 class periods. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">3. Charlie may request that the presenters try to cover some kind of differentiation in the class time. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">4. Will there be perks offered, like free lunch, free membership to organization, free attendance at conference sessions? <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">5. Do they need a whiteboard and/or clickers for effective presentation?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Size of Classes: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Cory says it’s best not to have more than twenty per classroom, so 750 would require 37 classrooms. The venue is a very large high school with about 60 classrooms.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Classes to be Offered: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. UEN and SEDC trainers have many good classes that they can offer. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. Charice suggested that we look at the classes for their conference in March and put out a call for presenters in the mid-February to mid-March timeframe. Usually they do not refuse anyone that apply to present. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">3. Robert Profitt is concerned about first-year teachers needing classroom management and student engagement skills, PLCs having workshops the entire teams could attend and get credit for as a PLC activity, and language arts teachers being able to do their curriculum mapping for the new “Common Core” that is coming to their classroom soon.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Advertising and Website: Logos will be used from our conference (a target?) as well as UCET and UELMA. Logos from paying sponsors will be used in the places appropriate reflecting their donations.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Connection to UCET: If their name is associated with the conference, they want to be certain of quality of all aspects and will contribute enough money to help keep the standards high. Someone asked if UCET has a list of criteria for meeting their standards. Instead there are three people on the board besides Charice who would like to be personally involved in the planning. Both UCET and UELMA will want to have tables set up to answer questions.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Registration: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. Online registration: We do not have to reinvent the wheel. Rick Cline is on the boards of both UCET and UELMA, and he has the information to make registration easy for us to do. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. Entry fees: UCET is suggesting that our conference fee be only $25 which would be reduced even further is they are already a member. (The math: $25 x 750 participants = $18,750) For other UCET conferences, the fee is normally $55 at the door, $45 for early registration. UELMA this fall cost $40 with membership fee (and lunch), $20 if already a member (and lunch), and additional $5 late fee if not registered before the deadline two-weeks before conference. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">3. Costs: The registration fee should cover our conference costs, but to reduce amount needed realize that some of the money will come from UCET, vendor booth fees, and possibly local sponsors. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">4. Membership dues: The registration fee can include membership fees for both organizations; this helps build the membership in professional organizations.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">SUU Credit: Charlie would like to arrange with SUU to provide one credit, so there will need to be a good way to verify attendance, and six hours of seat time per day (including the keynote speeches), and each teacher submitting a brief summary of each class they attended in a small booklet they turn in at the end or send to SUU after the conference is over. We can explore ways to verify attendance, but one suggestion was a card made out of cardstock with each class host passing out stickers to put on them proving attendance.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Hosts: Each classroom should have a host who introduces the speaker, takes care of handouts, and can verify attendance.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Expenses: The WCSD has offered to cover the expenses for meals and snacks, but we need to decide how people coming in from outside the district will be fed, whether they will have to pay extra or what.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Vendors: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. Vendor area: We want a fairly large area for vendors. UCET has high standards (like carpeting) for that area, so they will help with financing to meet those standards. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. Fees: The suggestion is $200 for two days. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">3. Lining up businesses: Ross Rogers has a large list of vendors, so we do not need to start from scratch. It will be very easy to get out invitations. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">4. Timeframe: Vendors like to schedule ahead a whole year, so we need to act soon. We can tell them that we expect to “cap” our registration at 750 so it looks like we will have high numbers even though we can’t be certain until next fall.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Sponsors: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. Local: It would be nice to have at least two local sponsors and their names could be put on banners or whatever would be appropriate. Sometimes they like to be specific, like sponsoring the keynote speaker or one of the meals. These businesses could be asked to pay a fee like $250 or $500 like some others request, but with this being our first year, we might get lucky to get $50 per sponsor. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. Educational: Perhaps SmartBoard and Promethean would like to be co-sponsors.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Facilities: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. The high school has 60 classrooms and larger meeting areas. We will need to pay the custodial fees for using the building. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. Charlie will identify which rooms have whiteboards to evaluate whether we need to bring more in and which rooms will assigned to presenters that prefer whiteboards.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Tech Support: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. Personnel: Charlie will have a tech support team. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. Equipment: Charlie will have extra laptops brought in from other schools if needed. Charlie said most presenters will not want to be in a lab situation.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Student Projects: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. Do we want to have an area to display student projects and if so, do we bus students in to talk about their projects? <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. Posters were mentioned but might a variety of projects be appropriate? Would we want new work that follows a theme like PTA’s Reflections, or simply ask for a display of what kids are already doing in their content areas. Would we want to offer categories like posters, poetry, film production, literature, musical composition, photography, and visual arts?

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">__Critical Conversations after the Meeting__:

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Robert Profitt and Cory Stokes: The upcoming changes in core called “Common Core” will require huge changes throughout the districts. They are supposed to go into effect for language arts in 2012-2013 school year, then math the next year. Superintendents are trying to delay the beginning times for two years, so language arts likely 2014-2015 and math 2015-2016. For language arts, there will be many more standards, but not a lot of direction on how to teach it. The conference could provide a three-hour workshop for PLC teams to learn and outline how they will make it work in their classrooms.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Robert Profitt and Jane: Robert suggested three strands: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. (The what:) Future Trends and the Common Core. Are we preparing kids with skills for jobs that will be available for them in the future? <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. (The how:) Differentiated Instruction. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">3. (Toolkit to meet the how and what:) Technology

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Cory Stokes, Charlie, Jane: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Cory would like to see the conference trade off each year and be sponsored in other areas (at least back and forth with Iron County). Jane and Charlie would prefer to keep it in St. George, because people from our district do not often travel (even to Cedar City) for these conferences.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Charlie and Jane Barfuss: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. Over the next couple weeks, Charlie plans to go around to talk with each of the committee members individually to see what they would like to do, so look over the list and think about what you would most like to volunteer for. You might want to let him know as soon as possible. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. Jane suggested that since Edy Lang is already dealing with grants requiring service projects and a pool of teachers that are doing such projects with their children, we thought she might be a good one to lead “student projects” on our committee. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">3. Jane does not recommend a film festival because teachers are so busy with curriculum demands and most classes cannot be given enough time to produce quality products that will inspire teachers to want to go through the learning curve of video-making. Due to time constraints, teachers have been spending more time teaching the overall process of video making based on content, rather than encouraging interesting stories with the kind of finishing touches that make the videos impactful for audiences who are used to watching professional quality movies.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">__Assignments__:

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">All: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. Consider what you might volunteer to do for the committee. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. Come to the next meeting in December with ideas for sessions. You can post them at Wiki spaces in the meantime. So far Charlie has suggested white boards, clickers, etc.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Charlie: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. Add Randy Johnson to committee list. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. Involve the UCET board in planning and meetings, since they are very invested in keeping up the quality of their conferences. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">3. Contact Ross Rogers for the vendor list. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">4. Talk to Preston Steele, Valcom, about reasonable prices for vendor booths, etc. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">5. Approach Dave Gardner to see if CTE wants to be involved. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">6. Meet with Robert Profitt to talk about topics, presenters, and strands. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">7. Try to involve special ed people (Jim McKim or Karen Bess) or gifted and talented (Judy Eacker)? <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">8. Change the name on our email list so not PLC. It could be called “conference committee” or “conference planning committee.” <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">9. At DHHS, Charlie will identify which rooms have whiteboards to evaluate whether we need to bring more in and which rooms will assigned to presenters that prefer whiteboards.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Cody Plumhof: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. Webmaster for website. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2. Design the logo. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">3. Contact Rick Cline at UEN about how to using their registration methods.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Kathy Petersen: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. Arrange for keynote speakers. Get info from Charice about Jamie from Google.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Charice Black: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. Get contact info to Kathy Petersen for Jamie at Google.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Cory Stokes: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. Is helping to gather trainers through SEDC, UEN, etc.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Robert Profitt: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. Consider which strands would be good to offer teachers.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Jane Barfuss: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">1. Type up the minutes and post them on Wiki spaces for all to read.