Consortium Meeting Minutes

March 11, 1998


Welcome: Vicki Alhstrom welcomed everyone.

UPDATES:
ULRC
Bruce Schroeder introduced the program and made announcement about the CSPD election deadline Monday, March 16, 1998. State improvement grant committee will be meeting March 24 to work on grant process.
Davalee Saley Miller introduced the March Utah Special Educator on New Opportunities, New Challenges...Accountability: Measuring Achievement. She said it was a good sample from around the state. She pointed out the registrations for upcoming conferences in back of the magazine.
Jerry Christensen announced that the Preschool Conference registration is closed. There are about 1100 people registered. It should be a good conference.

PARENT CENTER
Helen Post
had the final registrations for their conference on March 27-28. There is plenty of room still available to attend.

USOE
Tim McConnell
gave information about statewide inclusion conference and call for papers. Conference will be November 12-13, 1998 at Snowbird. Registration is in Utah Special Educator.
Deb Andrews announced that the BEST teams institute will be with John Maag on March 26-27. October 22-23 will be BEST Conference at the Provo Park Hotel.
Brenda Broadbent discussed the future preschool conferences and asked consortium to fill out questionnaire to get feedback for next year. There are possibilities of regional conferences and/or change of time of year for the conference.
Donna Suter announced that for the transition conference, March 19-20, there are about 600 people registered but about 100 more could come. If you didn't get a confirmation contact Donna (fax machine).
Mae Taylor-Sweeten announced that Ginger Rhode will be the new Special Education Coordinator. She passed out copies of Measures of Child Well-Being in Utah, 1998 on demographics of children, NASDE Satellite Conference information, and copies of Counterpoint.


INSTITUTES OF HIGHER LEARNING
University of Utah: Jeanette Misaka
announced that nominations are now being taken for outstanding special education alumni award.
Bruce Schroeder called attention to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune about Utah State University's Vision Link System that Jane Pemberton is involved with and has shared information with the Consortium previously.
Utah Valley State College: Kathy Iroz said that they now have a child care center from Alpine District that provides an opportunity for students to work with children.

FEATURE PRESENTATION
Ken Reavis
told consortium that they are ready to share the next phase of LRBI, Support for Districts.
Marilyn Likins told us that this phase had been in development for two years. She introduced Bill Jenson, U of U, and Brad Althouse, USU, who presented the information about the functional analysis computer program and how it works. USU, USOE and U of U developed this program together. It needed to be fast and accurate. They used a fictional student and demonstrated how the program works, giving tips and examples. Program should take about 20 minutes to complete per student. The goal is to have this program available to schools by August. Program also includes videos of key behavioral interventions such as differential reinforcement.
Jerry Christensen presented information on technology. He handed out "Five Easy Steps to Dynamic Net Viewing" that told how to download information to view the Utah Special Educator online from the ULRC web page (www.ulrc.org) using Adobe Acrobat.
Eugene Paulsen, teacher at Dixon Middle School, Provo School District, demonstrated how he using the net to give tests to his students. He uses www.motted.hawaii.edu to have the students take tests. He prepares the tests and gives students the web address. They take the test, get instant results or can have the results emailed directly to the teacher. This is a free web site for educators. but they must sign up for it. There will be a link to this from ULRC web page, "Ed Tech Tools (Quiz Center Online) under Educational Online Resources.
Todd Allen from Provo District demonstrated how those in Provo District can get their email messages anywhere they have web access.
Colleen Densley & student assistants Shaun Merritt and Stephanie Robie, Canyon Crest Elementary, Provo District, demonstrated how to gather scientific data using the Emates and a special temperature probe. Shawn and Stephanie told of the experiments they were able to do using the computer program, which gave back data in forms of graphs. They did a quick demonstration to measure temperature using a glass of water, a glass of ice water and a glass of ice cubes. They liked the ability to actually do the experiments and see the results.

It was announced that the Consortium meeting in St. George has been canceled. The next meeting will be on May 15 at the Inn at Prospector Square in Park City.

The meeting adjourned at 3:00 p.m.




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