October 5, 2021 at 11:30 AM - Information Services Committee Meeting

Discussion:  Call to order at 11:30 AM.  

Discussion:  The Apple devices have been ordered for homeschool students.  Devices should be delivered throughout this month.  School reimbursement requests are almost done.   We are waiting for some documentation from schools to finish.  

Discussion:  A small committee continues to discuss the GEER Broadband.  It has been a difficult process to find viable projects that would qualify for these funds.  Continue to discuss the homework gap for students.  They are discussing rolling these funds forward to the Future Ready Digital Learning Collaborative.  

Discussion:  The FRDLC proposal was and is being presented to leaders at NOC, NITC and within the NDE for their review and feedback. Next steps are:

• Brian Halstead, Dorann Avey and Scott Isaacson will present the proposal to the Governor’s office for approval and funding decisions for the GEER-funded majority of the plan.
• If funded/as needed, we will amend the ESUCC-NDE contract for GEER work to incorporate the work of the FRDLC plan.
• The first part of the plan to be implemented is the cyber security training and awareness project.

Cyber Security
The ESU and school district cyber security survey collected in September received 132 responses and showed a strong interest in group purchase of a cyber security awareness and training product, multi-factor authentication solution, and security auditing workshops and services. NOC members provided strong feedback that KnowBe4 is the preferred training and awareness product because it is already in place at a number of ESUs and school districts. However, KnowBe4 has not been responsive to negotiating pricing at the state level. A meeting is scheduled for October 7, 2021 to make a final attempt. Duo Security is a multi-factor authentication solution which was of interest to a number of survey respondents. Pricing is being negotiated through COOP Purchasing. ESUCC is testing the Resolute Guard cyber security auditing service and we expect our first assessment report this week. This may be of interest to ESUs and districts who have already taken some steps and self-assessment of their security exposure and want to have additional help to assess and improve. 

Discussion:  Andrew Easton and Deb Paulman gave an update on the TLT Special Projects for 2021-2022.  

Discussion:  SRS - The SRS team is focused on completing the 504 plan support. The current timeline is to have it in user testing by December, 2021. Forward from there, the team is planning to continue to optimize the database and code to make future enhancements easier and faster.

Contractor Change - Mila Arkhiptcova’s contract will end December 15, 2021. We wish Mila well in her future endeavors.

Discussion:  The Digital Learning Director gave his updates for the past month.  As part of Rule 84 was to do some personalized PD for teachers.  They are working on PD for Me. This will be distributed by both email and mail.  This will happen for three months.  They could extend conversations through Zoom meetings in the future.  The Friday Love and Learn has been changed to Love, Learn and Leadership, where each Friday they will have school administrators from across the state.  He created three informational/promotional videos for SIMPL.  Social PD Stories are being done by ESU staff members from across the state.  These are short clips of educational ideas.  NVIS continues to grow with VFT's.  Continues to create podcasts.  Recently created one for the Digital Citizenship for NE.  

Discussion:  Rhonda Eis gave her updates for the month.  She shared an infographic of all their successes for the past year.  They have updated the Digital Citizenship information for this year.  We continue to add to the statewide OER.  There will be two TLT trainings in November at ESU 3.  Tony Vincent (November17) and Adobe with Linda Dickeson (November 18.). Continue to grow our professional book library.  

Discussion:  TLT Special Projects continued discussion, Eduroam update

Discussion:  Meeting adjourned at 12:45 pm.