LTAC notes

LTAC met with 6 districts represented (Auburn, C-M, Moravia, Port Byron, Southern Cayuga, Weedsport) and Rick Dillon from CNYRIC.

Randy Ray presented a discussion of Electronic Information and its storage. Tony will have the PowerPoint.

Tech plans need to be dated by now for 2008-09 e-rate if there are changes. Filing is taking place now.

Rick discussed the Centrex/VOIP bid. They need more time to look at the bids so a decision will not be made this month. 3 districts are anxiously awaiting the results.

Tony talked about the new distance learning class with Cayuga Community College with GIS. Matt Champlin's class and a class from Hannibal will begin in January. The committee for DL will meet in January to discuss next year. Some districts asked whether Verizon will come get the equipment that is now disconnected. We don't know when.

School Library System announced that Auburn will probably be joining the OPALS system which will give us a realtime Union Catalog.

The next meeting is January 17 and the main topic will be security.

del.icio.us

I have started an account where I will save items that I find useful or just interesting.

Media Statistics for November

*79.6% were requested on the Internet
*59 PowerMediaPlus Requests
*210 VT and ND video requests
*305 total requests

Odyssey of the Mind is coming

The Odyssey of the Mind teams are formed and working on their solutions. We welcome Union Springs back this year. The Regional Competition will be held on March 15 at the new BOCES Regional Education Center on West Genesee Street Road in Auburn. We are excited to be hosting this at our new facility. The preliminary number of teams is 68:
§ Auburn – 13
§ Cato-Meridian – 6
§ Jordan-Elbridge – 3
§ Moravia – 6
§ Port Byron – 5
§ Skaneateles – 23
§ Southern Cayuga – 5
§ Union Springs – 3
§ Weedsport – 4

Important dates and information are available at our website

LTAC Meeting Notes

Five districts and the CNYRIC were represented at the meeting today. Deric Tallman, from CNYRIC, introduced School World. It is used to build web pages and is available as a service from the CNYRIC. Port Byron, Jordan-Elbridge and Union Springs are already using it.

WAN Update/Centrex/tech plans were discussed. Rick Dillon explained the Centrex RFP which is out now. Districts are interested in looking at changing the way they look at phone service. 3 districts currently have Centrex agreements that need to be renewed or dropped. The WAN is now complete with the addition of Southern Cayuga. The Tut will be installed soon at Port Byron. Linda will check with Kathy Smith about the e-rate requests recently distributed. It appears to duplicate what Tony has asked for.

The group requested that we look at Nortel and Cisco phone solution demos for January. Rick and Linda will coordinate.

The Distance Learning room at the Regional Education Center is being installed today.

Rick discussed the CNYRIC move "across the street" to RODAX. The current RIC building will become OCM BOCES administration.

Randy Ray is scheduled to speak at the next LTAC about retention of e-mail. Steven Tryon from Oswego BOCES may come to speak on web building tools.

The School Library System now has 6 districts on OPALS and Auburn is considering it.

Jerry is catching up on AV/computer repairs. He talked about the Xerox/Tektronix printers and the plastic failure in them.

Linda talked about Soundzabound, the royalty free music, that was purchased for high schools a few years ago. There is now a fifth volume which will be purchased for each high school through the ISS co-ser.

Linda introduced middle school science teachers to video clips which are MP4 and can be loaded and searched within I-Tunes. They were excited about their use. Disks will soon be available for them to use and for districts to add to servers if they want.

Next meeting is December 20.

Media Request Facts

Our new media system provides some interesting statistics.

The top 5 requested videos were:
Cells
Ocean Life
Donald's Fire Drill
Dying High: Teens in the ER
Pseudoscience

The search used most often was Bill Nye.

There have been 428 bookings for videos and 27 for DVDs. There were 81 requests for videostreaming from PowerMedia Plus.

The busiest hour is 8-9 AM. Monday and Tuesday are the busiest days.

76% of the orders were placed via the internet.

October Copy Service

The numbers are in for the copy service for October. 2,503,860 copies were completed in October. It was another busy month.

Copy Service Update

The final tally is done. The total copies for August and September is 4,744,946 copies.

Media Catalog Problems

We have been dealing with two major problems with our media catalog. Labels weren't printing for materials to be shipped to teachers. That problem was fixed today and all of the materials from the last few days should be arriving in the delivery tomorrow. Please contact Linda if you they don't arrive.

Today we had a Denial of Service attack on our server. Mike tracked it down to an IP address in Amsterdam, Netherlands. That IP has been blocked and the server is back up. You should be able to log in.

Fall Media Previews

The fall media previews are ready for you to look at. They can be ordered by e-mailing or calling Judy Beaumont. If you use mediaographies in the new Media Catalog, you can see the titles. Please help us to purchase new materials by previewing. The titles are:

1. ANGRY AND VIOLENT TEENS (095850) MH 2006 Preview
2. Cash Flow Fever (095841) MH 2005 Preview
3. CYBERSTALKING AND BULLYING (095846) MH 2006 Preview
4. Dominoes (095842) MH 2006 Preview
5. DRINKING AND DRIVING KILLS (095848) MH 2006 Preview
6. FROG/BUTTERFLY (095851) PI 2006 Preview
7. GLOBAL WARMING IN THE ARCTIC (095855) MH 2006 Preview
8. HAMAS VICTORY (095859) MH 2007 Preview
9. Kosovo—A House Still Divided? (095840) MH 2005 Preview
10. othello (095845) H 2006 Preview
11. ROMAN FEATS OF ENGINEERING (095849) MH 2006 Preview
12. SELF-HURTING TEENS (095847) MH 2006 Preview
13. SHAKESPEARE WORKS (095854) MH 2006 Preview
14. Storytelling the Navaho Way (095838) PI 2007 Preview
15. Swin for the river (095839) MH 2006 Preview
16. A TEAM FOR PEACE (095853) M 2006 Preview
17. This Daniel Cook: Celebrations (095843) P 2005 Preview
18. This Daniel Cook: Interesting People, Interesting Jobs (095844) P 2005 Preview
19. TRUTH, LIES, AND INTELLIGENCE (095852) H 2006 Preview
20. WHERE DO STARS COME FROM? (095856) MH 2006 Preview
21. WHY ARE PLANETS ROUND? (095857) MH 2006 Preview

LTAC meeting notes

The October LTAC meeting was held today. CNYRIC and 6 districts were represented.

The 793 Plan was discussed. This is the regional plan which is submitted annually to SED. The group would like to see more information on the Help Desk from Oswego BOCES, investigation into SIF compliance. Over all everyone is happy with services. The members will publicize the regional survey to get more participation. The RIC will be looking at publishing network service agreements.

WAN update. Moravia is connected. They are also connecting the elementary school. Southern Cayuga is temporarily connected using "Plan F". The Time Warner connection should be in by the end of the month. This will mean that 51 districts will be connected to the WAN.

Videoconferencing/DL. Tony and Linda met with the Chief School Officers. A new committee of principals and guidance counselors will meet 4 times a year beginning next month to discuss DL scheduling and courses. Tony will meet with a sub-committee of the CSOs after each committee meeting. Videoconferencing is working! The BOCES DL room should be connected by the end of the month.

E-Rate. Please submit 2008-09 budgets now for technology. Linda has distributed the forms. Return the form to Linda asap. If you aren't sure, put it in.

Tech Plans. All plans approved in June should be linked on the CNYRIC website. Port Byron and Jordan-Elbridge will be doing new plans this year. Tony and Linda are available to help facilitate.

School Library System. The new SCOOLS catalog is up. Ann can update directly to it so regional updates can be done more quickly. Harry Chan will be speaking on November 6 about Trends for the 21st Century. Contact Ann to attend.

AV/Computer Repair. Jerry is working to get jobs done. Call him if something hasn't arrived back to your school.

Demos for the year. Oswego BOCES web service; Archving requirements for electronic documents and e-mail.

RIC report. RFP is out for voice service.

Next meeting is November 15. Deric Tallman will present School World at 9:30. Meeting will be 10-noon.

Media Council

Media Council met on October 16 at the Regional Education Center. We welcomed new members Nick Bennett from WCNY and Arlene Hertzog from Moravia. Auburn, Port Byron, Southern Cayuga, Weedsport, Moravia, Union Springs and Skaneateles were represented.

We looked at previews that are currently available. We talked about the new media catalog and the connection to EdVideo Online (PowerMediaPlus). Nick talked about Double Down and the local schools that are participating.

The next meeting will be January 15

Satellite Off-Air Taping

Our satellite dish is being connected this week. Starting next week we will be able to tape from the Annenberg Channel and from other satellite programs. We still don't have cable TV available in the building.

Distinguished Service Award

Linda (left) received the award from Chris Jehle.

Linda A. Nichols, Director of Instructional Support Services at Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES, received the 2007-08 Distinguished Service Award from the New York State BOCES Media/Technology Association (NYSBMTA). The award recognizes her for sharing her knowledge with the members of the association and for her contributions to the organization. It is presented each year to those members that have shown extraordinary effort in service to the organization. The award was presented at the annual Fall Conference in Cooperstown.

Linda was NYSBMTA President from 2001-02. She is currently chair of the Media Literacy Grant committee and serves on the Media Duplication Projects and the Digital Media committees. She previously served on the Executive committee as a Regional Representative. She has been a member for more than 15 years.

She has been at Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES since 2000. Prior to that she worked at Steuben-Allegany BOCES.

The NYS BOCES Media/Technology Association is made up of the people with responsibility for media and technology in the BOCES across the state. They support educators and students in the proficient use of media and technology.

Almost Caught Up

Copy Service is almost current. They are working on jobs that came in on Thursday, so are only about one day behind. We want to thank everyone for their patience. The statistics aren't done yet, but the number of copies for August/September is very high.

LTAC update

The LTAC (Learning Technology Advisory Committee) met this morning at the new Regional Education Center. 6 districts and the CNYRIC were represented at the meeting.

We discussed the new Ethernet WAN. Rick talked about videoconferencing and the bandwidth that it will use. It will not impact your allotted internet bandwidth to conduct videoconferencing.

Tony discussed distance learning and a meeting in October for principals and guidance counselors from participating schools to discuss scheduling for next year.

Linda demonstrated the new media catalog and the link to EdVideo Online. She explained that WCNY would like students to have accounts in EdVideo. This can be accomplished with an SIS download. It will not be done without a request from each school or district.

The group discussed demos for the year. Deric Tallman from the CNYRIC will be asked to demo School World (to develop websites). Curriculum related demos will be referred to curriculum council.

Rick talked about the redundancy that is being built into the WAN.

Ann said that three more districts are using the OPALS open source library software. She also asked that you let her know if you change IP ranges so that the database vendors can update their logins.

Tony said he needs the e-rate forms back. They were due in July. He will send them again.

Next meeting is October 18, 10-noon. Deric Tallman will present School World on November 15 at 9:30 AM.

EdVideo Online

We are happy to announce a new service. The EdVideo Online (Power Media Plus) titles have now been added to our new media catalog. We have also added passwords for all of the staff. This means that you can login to the media catalog, search the catalog, and wherever you see the "PowerMediaPlus" logo you can click on the video.

If you are new and don't have a login to our media catalog you can request one from Judy.

Cable TV and Off-Air Taping

We are not able to get Cable TV in our new building. Time Warner Cable has chosen to charge us at a commercial rate for cable access. The cost is more than we can pay. We will not be able to tape off-air cable programs until we are able to implement an alternative to Time-Warner Cable.

Our satellite dish has been moved to the new site and will be installed soon. When it is installed we will be able to do teleconferences and the Annenberg channel as we have done before. We will not be able to get cable channels with the satellite dish.

Copies and more copies

We are now running two shifts each day in copy service. We will have staff working again this weekend. The piles are beginning to decrease. Thank you to the teachers who have been giving us future dates for copies. This allows us to prioritize what is needed now.

In the media center, we are working with the new media system. We plan to load the EdVideo Online (PMP) titles next week so that you can search the catalog and get the videostreaming titles without an extra login to EdVideo. I'll let you know when they are loaded.

Have a great weekend!

Tuesday Copy Update

We are making progress on the copying requests that were sent in last week. We had staff work 25 hours over the weekend. We are beginning a second shift tomorrow. We did try to pull things that looked like first day (syllabus, welcome to my class, parent letters, etc.) and did them today.

If there are things that you won't need for the next few weeks, please wait to send them. We are unable to honor next day requests due to the volume. We have a new machine that has only been working for 2 weeks and we already have over 210,000 copies on it. We are also running 3 other machines.

In planning ahead for next fall, please consider sending your requests earlier in the summer.

Friday Copy Service Update

Did you know that we did 26 million copies during the 2006-07 school year? September 2.9 million, October 2.5 million, January 3 milllion and May 2.9 million were our busiest months.

Please help us by putting the date you need the copies on your request form. It is helping us to determine what you need by Tuesday or Wednesday for the beginning of school. We try to get teacher work done the next day if you request it. Other requests like newsletters, booklets, spiral bindings and carbonless requests will take longer than 1 day. We will be working this weekend to get the copies out to you in the delivery.

Have a great school year!

media catalog

If you have tried to login to the new media catalog and you had trouble, please try again. We have just updated all of the files. You should be able to login with your name and school phone number. Please give us your e-mail so that you can receive confirmations by mail.
media.cayboces.org

Please call us with questions. 253-0361

Copy Service update

We have two new copy machines. Our staff is working very hard to learn to use them efficiently. Mary Ann, Suzanne and Judy are trying to catch up with the huge amount of requests that we received so far this week. Please be patient and if you can wait until next week, please send it then.

We are interviewing from the civil service list to find a replacement for Melissa who accepted a job in the maintenance department over the summer. We hope to be back to full staffing soon.

Please call if you have questions or concerns.

still unpacking

We have been here for two weeks. My desk is finally back together. The computer works and we are beginning to get organized. The building is awesome. As I walk down the hallways it is just so amazing that we are here. As we watched the building being built, I never imagined what it would finally look like. Teachers will officially be back next week.

The board voted to name this building the Cayuga Onondaga BOCES Regional Education Center, so you will begin to see that name as we move forward. We are planning for the Open House in September.

Our new media catalog is up and running. The address is media.cayboces.org. Teachers can log in with their name and school phone number. Booking can be done online and confirmations will be sent as e-mail. Please be sure to enter your e-mail address.

Getting Settled

We are here! The network, servers and phone system are working. Our fax machine is finally connected. Furniture is arriving daily. While all this has been happening we have been having training on the new media booking system. It is up and running and will be available to teachers soon.

New copiers have arrived and training is also taking place on them. It is exciting to be in the building.

The BIG Day is here!

Today is the day that we move the network connections. The new GIG POP will be online tonight if all goes well. Districts will begin to be connected to it next week and our new network will be a reality.

Phones go active in the new building tomorrow morning. The phone number and fax numbers will stay the same. We will report for work in the new building tomorrow. We have waited a long time for this and it is very exciting.

New New New

Today is training on the new phone system. On Friday, the phones will be transferred to the new building. The phone number will remain the same. The fax lines for Distance Learning and I.S.S. will also move on Friday. There will be a period of time when they will not be available (while we move them from here to there.)

Our new copiers will be set up on Thursday. The color copier has been moved. The old copiers will be moved in a few weeks. There will be some delays on copy service while we make the transition.

Move update

The move is going to happen next Friday, August 10. The phones and fax machines for our department will move on Friday. The numbers will stay the same. There may be a period of time on Friday when the fax number will not work due to the move.

Our WAN connection will move on Thursday August 9 after 4 PM. There will be some downtime for our e-mail, moodle and web servers, but we plan to have everything back up by Friday morning. Our streaming server, OPALS server and MediaNet server may be down for a longer period of time.

Unpacking

The shelves are mostly back up for the media collections and Judy is unpacking and putting them away. We have had only 2 "casualties" that fell through the bottom of a banana box and were crushed on the pallet. As the boxes are unpacked, we are putting them on a new pallet to be saved for the next group to move.

The network is working internally and we are waiting for the external connections to be live. Phones are to go live next week.

Odyssey of the Mind

The Odyssey of the Mind web page has been updated with new information for the 2007-08 school year. www.cayboces.org/iss/ootm-dates.htm

LTAC dates

The LTAC (Learning Technology Advisory Committee) meets monthly in the Distance Learning Room. Meetings are from 10- noon. Scheduled meeting dates are:

September 13, 2007 This is a change

October 18

November 15

December 20

January 17, 2008

February 14

March 20

April 10

May 15 at OCM at noon

Posting of New Information

We are going to use this blog to give you information about Instructional Support Services at Cayuga Onondaga BOCES. There is alot happening this summer. We are switching to a new media library catalog which will allow access to streaming video from the catalog. Everyone will be receiving a new login number but you will also be able to use your name.

The move to the new building has begun. The Media Library and Repair "stuff" was put on pallets and loaded into two tractor trailers. It has been unloaded and the unpacking has begun. Copy Service will move next.