Minutes of the June 5, 2007
President
In attendance were Jessica Yanulavich, George Fuller,
First order of business was comments or modifications of the Minutes of the March 2007 Seniornet Executive Committee meeting. Aside from a misspelling of one name the minutes were approved with no other changes.
Treasurers report:
The full treasurer’s report is included as Attachment “A”, of these minutes. As of June 5, there was a balance in the treasury of $17,860.55 which includes a checkbook balance of $7,005.55, undeposited Spring receipts of $855.00 and a CD in the amount of $10,000.
Presidents Report:
As of June 4, 2007 there were 28 students
enrolled in summer SeniorNet classes although that number is expected to grow
as the start date nears.
The Fall and Winter SeniorNet
programs catalogue source material has been completed and submitted to Jessica for
inclusion in the Roswell Program Guide. The Graphics class has been cancelled
for the summer session and the recommendation is that it be offered only once a
year during the winter session.
MSUP, Microsoft upgrade software programs have been received and an email was sent listing the courses. Several instructors have requested copies of the material for review. All material is based on Office 2002. Materials would need to be revised if we wanted to use Office 2003 or 2007.
Office 2003 and Office 2007 software has been received for evaluation.
Publicity on our class offerings has been sent to the Beacon, Neighborhood Newspapers, RCTV, and the Northside Edition of the Atlanta Journal Constitution with notable help from Lois Dean providing support.
Web pages are being kept up to date, courtesy of our President, substituting for Ed Glynn, our Webmaster during his illness.
Bob Nelson will serve as head of the Nominating committee to present a slate of SeniorNet officers for 2008 for which elections will be held during the September 4, 2007 Executive Committee meeting. This provides a few months of transition between the current officers and the newly elected SeniorNet leadership team.
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(Continuation Presidents Report)
There are a number of course coordinator opportunities available. Family Tree Maker and Buying and Selling on Ebay are currently available. Instructors of these courses in the past are willing to help the transition of new instructor/coordinators with these course offerings.
Technical Issues:
A new printer has been installed in the front row of the computer lab.
George Fuller has updated the UPS units on all computers with new batteries.
Netscape 8.0 is now installed on all classroom computers.
The Instructors PC is updated with the latest Microsoft XP patches as of May 31st and the Disk program and “Huey” a display calibration program has been removed.
George Fuller, Bert Emma and
Coordinator Reports:
Curriculum Issues:
Julia Fogel
Memoir Workshop pilot program is scheduled for the fall session. Co-leaders are Julia Fogel, Tony Cobourn and Norma Taulett-Ball. Julia is looking for volunteers to attend the pilot session to help work out any kinks in the program before the first formal winter session.
Digital Camera and PowerPoint courses are still in development. Brian Perry has decided to develop the course for either the 2002 or 2003 PowerPoint software versions, which considering the myriad of issues surrounding the Office 2007 suite and hardware upgrades necessary to properly support the new Vista operating system, appears to be the prudent course of action.
Summer Manuals:
George Fuller
Manuals for the summer session are now available. George reports that SeniorNet National has signed a partnership agreement with on-line manuals printer “Mimeo” to reduce prices on the printing of course manuals at “reduced prices”. George did a price comparison using a Phantom Order in comparison with our local printer and substantiated that our local price was 20% less.
Lab Report:
John reports that the eight lab sessions held during the spring session had an average of 2.8 students per week with the highest attendance being six students and a grand total of twenty five attendees. Attendance is typically high during the first four weeks and trickles down to one or none by the seventh and eighth lab sessions.
Summer Staffing:
John reports the following critical needs:
1) Computer Fundamentals needs one additional coach
2) Wednesday’s Anti-Virus Strategies needs two additional coaches
3) One additional coach for Ebay
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the June 5, 2007
Volunteer Issues:
Beth Korn
Beth reports that six new volunteers have been added to our volunteer roster since January of 2007. We thank our new volunteers for their community spirit. They are:
Marilyn Blatt, Bill Butrick, Lois Dean, Barry Ferrill, Greg Harris and Frank Padua.
Disks and Badges: Bob
Nelson
Bob reports that all is ready for the summer session.
Publicity: Lois Dean
Lois has
been filling in for Fred Wooten and as reported in the President’s summary
remarks have been instrumental in
Course Issues:
Internet/Email: December 2007 is the date by which we plan to migrate to Internet Explorer 2007.
Elliot Vincent will replace Bert Emma for the email course
J.C. Campbell needs feedback relative to Photoshop Elements 4.0
Quicken 2006: Howard
Goldmacher
It appears that SeniorNet National has little success in getting a donation from Intuit on upgrading our Quicken software to meet the yearly upgrades. We can certainly print and teach from the 2006 manuals for the fall 2007, recognizing that the students that wish to purchase the software will only be able to get the 2007 or 2008 versions unless they search the internet for sites selling older versions.
Our only options appear to be;
1) Purchase a license to put sixteen copies of the latest software on our machines and upgrade the course ourselves, a non-trivial cost and labor exercise.
2) Continue to print and teach the 2006 version until some point where the yearly upgrades in the software are important enough to make teaching 2006 inadvisable.
3) Switch to Microsoft Money which may be available through a Microsoft grant.
4) Toss this issue into the Lap of National SeniorNet and solicit their opinion about discontinuing the course offering.
I will raise the issue with Elesa Livingston at National SeniorNet and provide feedback.
Microsoft Word:
John has updated the MS Word Manual to correspond to version 2002.
Migration Plan to
The Tech Team will develop a transition plan for the
At the conclusion of discussion, a motion was made to adjourn the meeting at 11:15 am and seconded.
Respectfully Submitted,