1) For those of you who missed the last meeting, we heard a useful presentation about Boston's Technology goes home program; heard about the city's wireless pilot and RFI (led to interesting discussion of the intersection between the work of the wifi committee and our digital divide committee;) talked briefly about the work of our two subcommittees and handed out chart showing a draft of tasks for subcommittees to address. We also then had short but very lively discussion about the goals of the project overall and of the pilot-- especially the issue of target population. (In a nutshell, the issue was whether addressing the needs of families with children was the first priority of a larger goal or the main goal itself and whether even if the needs of families with children was the goal itself, whether the pilot in a relatively small place (like Newtowne Court) should be broader to ensure that we have enough information from a pilot to inform our later work.
This discussion will continue in the Program Design Subcommittee and then back to us all.

2) As we discussed, Susan Fleischmann is chairing the Program Design Subcommittee and its first meeting will be Wednesday May 16 at 3:00 at CCTV at the corner of Prospect and Bishop Allen Drive. Claire Spinner is chairing the equipment committee and its first meeting is Mon, May 21 @ 1:30-3 p.m. in the Anastos Room which is on the 2d floor of City Hall. A chart showing the draft charges of the Subcommittees is attached and was passed out at the meeting.

3) Tim Plenk sent me the following article that appeared in today New York Times. It is quite interesting about use of computers in the schools and the less than positive experience of some schools. While use in schools is not what we are currently talking about, we thought you would be interested and it also speaks to the issue of maintenance of the equipment.