3-24+Notes


 * ** Review of agenda, Updates ** || ** Common understanding, Identification of additional items **** (Questions/Actions are listed below in red) **


 * ** || ** Evan & Others ** || ** 45 ** ||
 * Recording from the March meeting

Meeting with chief admin today to talk about funding structure and plan Updates include: • Soft Chalk - Lesson Builder (Evan) Program that makes online learning content that are linear sequential lessons. Used to make Iowa Core module. Used for Ollie content. Used to create module for digital citizenship. Used for instructional coaching work. Good tool. Univ of IL has a site license for Lesson Builder - Soft Chalk can offer a site license for State of Iowa for all the AEAs and employees - cost of $9000 and then yearly cost of $2600. That would be maintenance cost for updates as well as PD for 2 full days. Talked with Nancy about using ARRA grant money for initial and media directors about using media dollars for annual fee. Media directors are receptive to this plan. For an extra $2000 per year - you can take the license and distribute access to the software to LEAs as well. Will go back to the media directors in April with more information. Also discussed with ILO. Need more clarification. AEA 8 has been using lesson builder with their modules as well. Easy tool to learn, creates interactives easily. • SAI meeting (Evan) May 18 - meeting with those who provide PD for admin. Asked that online council be represented. Evan unable to go - looking for someone to attend. If you are interested, let Evan know. • ARRA (Nancy & Vic) Latest update recommended and approved a purchase of state wide repository __Equela__. Hopefully ready by April 1. Hope to launch April 20 publicly. Approved purchase of license for remote server that will do moodle posting. Looking for 140 teachers to engage in communities of practice. Had a great response. Baseline course and will engage in conversation over the year on how to improve the course. Iowa Core and 21st Century Skills. Training begins in April. Grant ends in Sept - hopes the group will stay together for the year to complete the work. Last month mock-up of brochure about ARRA. Still being revised. AEAs are meeting with supts monthly and sharing information with them. Spreadsheet of needs to sustain ARRA work in the future and figure out who is responsible. Share with chief admins - basically broke down into pieces - need dedicated staffing and ongoing support for repository that is building - ongoing resources (time and/or money).

• State Board of Directors & K-12 Online Learning (Gwen) Gwen is ill. Kevin Fangmann met with Board in February to look at question of vision - where are we going as a state with online training and how can we work to not duplicate work. Was going to bring in an AEA committee. Do we want an independent formal virtual school like other states have. There has been interest in a virtual school by Board, but there is a lot of flexibility within that. Gwen has talked of concept of consortium model. Also will fit in with community colleges.

• Ed Service/Jt Directors (Evan) April mtg - will do a prioritization of needs. Evan will generate a list of ideas. Evan would like to send out a list once it's made and get initial feedback. Evan will send an email soon with the list to brainstorm. Previous Process: Created a list - jt directors went through and online council went through - prioritized Iowa Core and 103b. Some feedback from LEAs need to also be requested. Hearing from districts, "Do you have something for bus drivers, for food safety, harassment" etc. Consideration will be given to some of their requests. Different hypothetical ideas were discussed. If a consultant makes a lesson builder module, if we wanted to put in training system - would be extra programming cost - so that becomes a decision the online council must make. Need to consider if there is a need to put it in. We can always take a lesson builder module and put on web - doesn't include programming time. Gives consultants flexibility.

• New updates for Training System Still have some details to work out. Cosmetic things will be up and running by April 15. April 13 the system will be down to change the template. Looking at funding structure for the future for the system. A lot will come from charges to the districts. Proposal - now each AEA as quasi admin acct - workflow is if teacher can't find a password - would click on "support" for contact number. A lot of districts want to be in charge of their employees and be able to change employees' passwords, etc. Propose create district admin acct. - would have access to any person in their district to make changes and to pull up records. The district admin would also be able to schedule trainings. Now - trainings are valid for certain dates - but the districts now want control so they can schedule as works for them. Ex. 103b training - districts may want teachers to take every year - but may want other employees to take less often and they would be able to do that. Would like districts to be able to create their own trainings. Ex. Acceptable Use Policy, Staff Handbook, restrict to pdfs...HR reps are excited about that possibility. Establish a number of trainings we will add per year. The LEAs have talked about things they would like to see - we could say we will add 5 new trainings per year to come out in catalog. This would make new charges districts have to pay more palpable. This will be on Heartland site not on Remote Learner Site. Possibility of sharing some policy pdfs for other districts to use.



• Spring Visits (Evan) - Evan has met with 2 AEAs so far. If you want someone to be a part of the meeting, please invite them to participate.

3/9 Heartland 3/22 Mississippi Bend 3/28 Keystone 4/4 Prairie Lakes 4/5 Grant Wood 4/12 Green Hills 4/18 NWAEA An Upcoming Tuesday - AEA 267 5/5 Great Prairie || Governance council met yesterday and looked over attached doc. $85 is for license renewal. Cost for graduate credit - Morningside is $40 - total for credit $125; Drake is $70 for $155. Page 2 - this is doc the governance council approved at previous meeting. Column 5 - totals plus overhead which includes support for registration, etc. Dave King gave a ballpark figure of cost to support the system. Question that comes up - how do we know how much support will be asked of host AEA? Might need to try and evaluate as it starts. 2 primary methods of raising revenue --online trainings and online courses Decided to charge per student enrollment cost - at 80 cents per student. This is thought to be the best way to market. Treating like this - will be part of funding for system, but don't want to put in funding formula. Currently the online trainings have option for people outside education to take part in. Meant for only educators, but we have child care providers, etc. that also take trainings. Charge $25 for training for those. About $70,000 made this way. Questioned legality of that. Questioned if that will be maintained. Looking $425,000 per year generated from online trainings. Online courses will generate revenue as well. Lots of variables. How many courses? How many students? Can make projections - last year totaled 250 credits. About $87,500 net based on last year. That is very rough estimate - considered low. More classes offered in the future - so the net should be significantly higher. Also there will be more participants since we will draw statewide. Hope to offer 3x more courses in the next year. Asked the governance council to make recommendations for the funding structure and recommendations for additional staff to be hired. Gov Council said - hire one FTE instructional designer to start July 1, and a wait and see approach for the hiring of an additional one. The job description needs to be updated. Could be advantage to do 2 part-time people. More discussion needs to happen. Evan will send update after chief meeting. One AEA had concern with lost revenue from statewide system - they offer some online courses currently. Some discussion at governance council. GC acknowledged that it was a concern, but the intention was that each AEA made agreement to give up the responsibility of doing things individually and to work collectively. But money should come back to each AEA to help alleviate that loss.
 * **Transition Update** || **Inform, Discuss** || **Evan** || **60** ||
 * • Governance Council
 * 1) 2 is considered profit after teacher stipend, benefits and overhead.
 * 1) 3 projected cost - tech support, registrar costs - not seen.

We will look at the proposal for next year's budget and the fee schedule for the online trainings. || Tiffany will have update on DLL library Feedback from committee work on staffing of the instructional designer April 15 for rollout of new reg system - new training system - initial feedback Feedback from jt directors April 28 - next meeting ||
 * ** Closing ** || ** What needs to be communicated? **
 * Future agenda items? ** || ** Evan ** || ** 5 ** ||
 * Teacher courses - SREB rubric for quality - does anyone want to look at these - contact Trista.