Minutes for the Spring, 2008 GAIT Board meeting

The Spring Board meeting of GAIT was held May 17, 2008 in the Hutchings Career Center , Macon , Georgia at 1:00 pm .

Board members present were: Michelle Lenderman, Ann Grantham, Gordon Baker, Brett Eaker, and Dianne Dees.

Meeting was called to order by Michelle Lenderman, president. The minutes were presented for review. Corrections to the minutes were noted. The minutes were approved as amended. The treasurer's report was presented by ML. Expenditures for the Student Media Festival were reported. Balance on hand as of May 17, 2008 in Checking: $25,795.94 with Total assets: $46,150.53. The treasurer's report was approved and filed for audit (BE moved to accept, GB seconded). In regard to the new treasurer, the names on the financial accounts have been changed with a note being included that the Earthlink email address to be sent to L. Wantland, new treasurer. There was some discussion of combining the Wachovia Savings with the Checking or some other more beneficial account as it currently does not earn very much for the organization.

Committee Reports:

Awards (Juanita Buddy and Suzanne Mittenwei)

Currently there is one applicant for the Goen-Sloan Scholarship and one applicant for the WS Bell Scholarship. It was suggested to add information about the scholarships in the upcoming newsletter. The Technology mini grant was also mentioned. The Technology Mini grant will be added to the Awards committee for review and selection. Last year's winners, Betsy Razza and Kathy Vanderbilt have submitted reports of their projects. There was discussion about encouraging others to submit projects for the technology mini grant award and the scholarships. The deadline for submission is June 1, 2008 .

Publications (Gordon Baker)

GB is working on the newsletter and will be getting the newsletter out soon. There was discussion about changing the name of the committee to include communications (Publications and Communications). The intent of the change is to include the GAIT webpage as part of this committee. Regarding the webpage, it needs to be more user friendly and easier to update.

Student Media Festival (Gordon Baker and Michelle Lenderman)

The Student Media Festival went smoothly and was a tremendous success. There were 967 project representing 3400+ students. The festival was held in the GPB building and GPB will be used again next year. It has been a very good location for the festival. GPB has been very helpful with the festival. The comment was “hope this is a long partnership'). Approximately 400 projects qualified to go on to International competition. Six vendors (3 onsite) were included in this year's festival. GA Student Media Festival is one of the largest contributors to the AECT International Media Festival. The GSMF committee will meet at the end of May. ML will be attending the AECT conference in Orlando .

Government/ Legislative (Ann Hamilton)

No report at this time.

Media Specialist of the Year (Ann Grantham)

The process for selection is as follows: System level selections are submitted to GLMA by April 1, 2008 ; redistributed to district chairs; names of District winners are selected and sent to Summer Leadership Conference June 10. MSOY committee will select MSOY. MSOY will be announced at COMO 2008. Ann Grantham and Dianne Dees will be meeting with the MSOY committee at the Summer Leadership Conference.

Business and Industry (Brett Eaker)

There was some discussion about the vendor perception of COMO as being about the “books” and not very representative of GAIT as an instructional technology organization and thusly not very attractive to IT vendors. GAETC is seen as a more viable conference for the IT vendors. The discussion ended with a commitment to encourage more participation by IT directors and others directly involved in technology purchasing and decision making as well as actively promoting the technology role of the school library media specialist.

K-12 (Catherine Olivier) No report at this time.

Higher Education (Gordon Baker)

GB attended the University System Library Conference (?) and was elected Chair Elect for GALILEO Steering committee.

Leadership & Development (Lee Ann Kelley)

No report at this time.

Membership Director's report (Ginny Harrell)

GH will not be the membership director after this year. It was suggested to ask if she would consider training a replacement and also would she recommend someone to replace her. It was also mentioned that she be asked for a date after which she would no longer be able to serve in this capacity.

Old Business

Web page: there has been no action at this point in revising the webpage or in the submission of a proposal as recommended at the last board meeting.

ML stated that it is still the intention to have the revised webpage in operation by August 1, 2008 .

Handbook: The handbook is currently under review by GB.

New Business:

The COMO steering committee is at work. There is a link on the GAIT website for hotel information and presentation proposals are due by end of May. GB is working with vendors for the conference.

The next meeting of the GAIT board will be at COMO , October 15, 2008 at 3:00 pm .

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned. Motion made by GG, seconded by AG.

Respectfully submitted,

Dianne Dees

Secretary