Rick handed out agendas and minutes from the last meeting which members reviewed. Rick said that he wanted to focus on the action items listed at end of the minutes from the last meeting.
1. Wiring time line on line. Rick said that he and Wendy met with Myron earlier this week. The wiring guidelines are very close to being done. When it is complete it will go on line. He said that the current draft is not very different from what was handed out at the last meeting of the Technical Advisory Committee. Mike asked Rick when he expects to have the third sites up and running by? Rick said that he expects to have them done by the end of the calendar year. Mike then asked what Rick expected about year 4 sites? Rick said that this remains to be seen. He has to talk with Bernie Manning to see if the process will be by RFP. If it is, they will be able to follow the time line exactly.
2. Meeting set up to talk about coordination of pilot projects in Allegheny and Frick with CK:P. Mario said that he has a list of names and will pull a meeting together after the school year is over.
3. Gene develop spec sheets for "standard" equipment for Cy Tomko. Gene said he will do this sometime soon.
4. Get the wiring locations of the third year sites to Myron by June 1. Rick said that he is 15 days behind schedule. He expects to give these to Myron by the end of this week.
5. The modem pool work group has been meeting and has developed a draft plan, which was handed out along with the minutes from the last meeting. This draft plan is also online. The plan calls for running two pilots. Rick said that Pilot 1 is to put a plan in place, sometime in the near future, for all non-CK:P sites that have LANs to have a place to dial up and stay connected. Pilot 2, in the not-too-distant future, there will be dial-up access at PPS for any teacher or student in the district with any account associated with the district. Gene and Bob will work on getting the modem pool up and running. The work group will meet again in the fall. Gene said that this will supply initial connectivity, but these sites will soon want faster connectivity.
6. The Central site work group: Rick said that Wendy and Myron will chair this group. Myron is putting together a list of names of who should be on this work group. This group will figure out the equipment that is needed in the long run to have running at the central site. This group will be meeting this summer. Anyone who wants to be on it, just send e-mail to Myron or Wendy. There was some discussion about the lack of space in the existing computer room at PPS. Rick said that at a bare minimum, at the end of this project, there needs to be the ability to handle 29 schools coming in to Bellefield. There need to be space for at least 2 or 3 servers centrally, to maintain news groups, accounts along with the network equipment.
7. and 8. TCI: Gene said that TCI is working on getting the primary link to Mellon Institute up. Once this is done, connections can be made to some of the schools. Gene said that if the TCI connection is not in place by July/August they will put in orders for ISDN lines. With TCI there is no instillation cost, because it's a contribution in kind, but it is completely up in the air what it will cost after the year of contribution.
Plans for Knoxville Middle School, a third year site, were circulated throughout the meeting. Mike asked some questions about the requirements for Knoxville. Rick said that the third year sites are getting $50,000 which is approx. 25 computers. Knoxville has decided to put 15 of these computers in a lab. Cy said that there are some question about the cost of wiring at Knoxville. Rick said that in addition to the hardware budget, $12,500 has been budgeted for wiring each of the third year sites, figured at $500/drop for each machine. Knoxville came up with their wish list which goes beyond that figure and therefore will have to prioritize their rooms. Anything beyond the $12,500 has to be handled by the site or PPS. Rick felt that once you're at the school already, you might as well do a complete job. He said he is trying to reach a happy medium with each of these schools. It must be negotiated between the school, PPS facilities, and CK:P.
Mike held up the time line for wiring and asked "How about one for purchasing?" The issue of a time line for purchasing needs to be addressed. If wiring gets done by January, they need to have machines by then. Rick said that the goal is to get orders in by Sept.
Rick then generated a list of things to be accomplished over the summer: Liberty, the Fultons, Westinghouse, are a few days away from being completely finished. Carrick, East Hills, and Frick should be finished in August. The central site modem issue is to be done over the summer.
Cy asked if site servers should be connected to emergency power sources in the buildings. There was a discussion of UPS systems and emergency power. Emergency power would mostly be used to give someone at the site time to correctly power down the equipment. Andy explained that a UPS is designed to inform the server that there is a power problem, so the server can gracefully put itself down and that it can be programed to turn a system back on when power comes back on. Rick said that the main issue is communication: if there's a planned outage, does that go out on a network that CK:P can be CCd on? Mike said that Rick needs to talk with Tom Motley to raise these sorts of issues with him. Rick said that at every site there is an individual, typically a teacher, responsible for taking care of the server. This person needs to be informed when there is a planned power outage to that school. Cy said that he thought that appropriate complete planning for the mass system-wide network would be good to do at this time. He said that plant operations have developed a list of communications and priorities about who gets notified when power goes down and that CK:P just needs to get itself in the pipeline.
There was a discussion about West Liberty, which is a restructuring school that has an emphasis on technology. The district decision was made to purchase Novell netware for this site because of ease of set up. There was concern that the district is moving in a direction away from CK:P (from TCP/IP to Novell). There was some discussion about developing standards for decision making about different types of platforms and protocols in the schools. A number of committee members felt that it is time to have the discussions about how to coordinate all these efforts. Mario suggested that the Novell network may seem easier to set up, but that is not necessarily the case. Mike said that he thought this discussion should be part of central site committee.
Cy had a question about people's schedules during the summer. There will need to be site walk-throughs, etc. Ed staff needs to get Cy this information before they leave for the summer. Rick said this will be on line.
Mike said that there was one other thing for over the summer. He and Andy had a discussion of Windows for Workgroups. Andy said that he had a question--is it legal, to upgrade machines with Windows 3.1 to Windows for Workgroups with Wolverine? Need to contact Microsoft and ask about it. Might need to purchase a new license.
Rick then wanted to talk about additions to the CK:P WWW server. There are markers on the CK:P homepage for a PPS home page. There was some discussion about what computer might have enough hard space to accommodate a PPS homepage. Emily said they are short on space. Andy said this problem is easily solvable if they get another hard drive. Rick said that he feels uncomfortable doing the PPS homepage. He has done a little but feels the need to hand it over to PPS.
The next meeting will be in Sept.
The meeting was adjourned at 12:03 P.M..
Action items: