Membership+Home

NHSTE Board Members,

To add your comments, just click on edit this page and then add your thoughts below the last person in each section. As long as you hit SAVE (buttons are at the top and bottom) after you are done, we should collectively have all feedback in one place for the Membership committee. Please add your initials before your comments.

Thanks, Cyndi

=INDIVIDUAL MEMBERSHIP=

CMTC Program Impact: I suggest that perhaps the only change needed on this form is to include the "new language" that we plan to use for our paid membership, be it "Premium Membership" or "Super Membership" and review the list of benefits and revise them as needed to embrace any changes we anticipate incorporating during the 2007-2008 school year, for example, online access to the membership database.


 * KMALS** Agree with this. I suggest Premium Membership.
 * Deb** I agree I prefer premium. I don't even think that we need to specify the changes at this point. We really haven't worked them out yet (for example the database access.) I think we can do the rationale and specifics at an annual meeting kick off

KMc: I prefer that we keep the language consistent in identifying individual and institutional memberships; standard or all-inclusive. (Please see my notes below for institutional membership). I agree with Deb that we need to work out the specifics for each type of individual membership. It would be optimal if we could have this done for the annual meeting.

[RR: I also agree with this direction and rationale and like "premium membership" as well.]

Kita: I support the change for individual membership and look forward to working out the specifics.


 * Sonja:** I like the idea of calling this Premium and having the features that we discussed at the retreat. Bill Savoie at Savvy had the idea that one incentive we may want to have to get people to "give up" the printed version of Connections was a donation to a scholarship/charity fund. I think it's a nice idea, and may want to use it for something like the FIRST sponsorship.

=INSTITUTIONAL MEMBERSHIP=
 * Deb** I would rather not call this an Indstitutional membership. That name just adds to the confusion. Every year people come up to ht emembership desk and say that their school is an Institutional member for the whole staff. Yets keep it to Bundle Memberships and Bundle contact member for the Super Member

At the retreat we discussed the following change to the structure of the Institutional Membership, include/require one individual membership in an institutional bundle and then a specific number of workshop and CMTC coupons (5-pack, 10-pack, 15-pack). That way we are only chasing down one person's contact info for the database and the institution still gets the value of purchasing event registrations in bulk while they have funds to do so and giving them to whomever in their district will make best use of them.

KMc: Do we want to think about two levels of membership for schools/school district: standard Institutional membership or an all-inclusive Institutional membership that would include the bundle with a specific number of coupons for PD workshops and CMTC? We are offering different levels to individuals and maybe we could come up with a membership for schools. I do not like the use of "Institutional" and would suggest that we arrive at a better identifier for this group.


 * Deb** I would say have one Super membership for the contact and unlimited number of regular memberships. BUT I think that is a change for next year not this year. I would keep the membership portion the same on the bundle for now as we really don't have benefits up and running yeat and we are currenly receiving forms based on last year's set up.
 * KMALS** This makes complete sense. My experience with my teachers is that they don't understand the membership part as they just want to attend McAuliffe.

[RR: I also agree with this. I think it is a reasonable solution for those that want the conference bang for a little less buck.]

Kita: I think we are heading in the right direction with this as I too have seen some confusion about the bundled memberships.


 * Sonja:** I just signed my school up for Reading A-Z. They had a really nice way to have the using members organized by the contact person. It allowed me to put people's name and email in with the type of member they become. Then it generated a canned email to each person who gets the membership detailing what they get. It was a nice way to organize it and distribute the info.

=TechCoordinator SIG Workshops= $15/$20 for members/non-members for a half-day session that included a light lunch. Need to check with Royce regarding the actual cost for these events for last year at the facility Royce used in Concord. I have not seen the numbers for the three ICT sessions to see if we broke even at this rate.


 * KMALS** I suggest increase this by $5 on each end.

KMc: I agree that we increase SIG workshops by $5 on each end and encourage Tech Coordinators to be members.

[RR: I am not certain what the exact total cost was but I think it was something like $750 (for 3 sessions) for food and the cost of the space was $0 (a benefit of being a PSU employee). Considering the cost of food, increasing to $20 would be reasonable. I would suspect that we broke even.]

Kita: I support an increase as I feel that the new fee structure is still more than reasonable.


 * Sonja:** Pricing seems fine.

=Annual Meeting= $15/$25 for members/non-members. I suggest that we consider upping this to the $25/$35 rate to keep up with inflating costs for food and bring it into alignment with the rest of the PD events that include a full meal, especially since the cost of our speakers has been increasing over the past 3 years (David Warlick, Peter Reynolds, Jason Ohler).


 * KMALS** This is a reasonable increase.

KMc: I agree with this increase.

[RR: Considering the cost of food and speakers, I think it is reasonable.]

Kita: The quality of our events certainly warrant the increase.


 * Sonja:** Pricing seems fine.

=SuperThursdays/NHSTE PD event coupons= It would be ideal if the "SuperThursday" coupons could be renamed to "NHSTE PD Event " coupons that have a specific assigned value, then based upon the event, we could easily determine a "NHSTE PD Event" coupon equivalent. For example, the the TC SIG 1/2 day event could be one coupon, the Annual Meeting and TT SIG full-day events could be 2 coupons, and so forth. . . my thought is that the value of one coupon would need to be in the $15 to $20 range. How does this sound to you?

KMc: I would like to see a value placed on the coupons but wonder how they will need to be redeemed. My question is who is collecting the coupons, how will they work with registering online for the PD events, SIG events or the CMTC? Who is keeping the records on this coupons?


 * Deb** It would be great if the cost of the tech coordinator workshop and the annual dinner was the same or at least counted the same in PD portion of the Bundle pack.
 * KMALS** I agree

[RR: Sounds good.]

Kita: I would like to see the name change. Super Thursday did not mean anything to me when I was a new member.


 * Sonja:** I would like to give someone a coupon, but have the actual value maintained within the member's online account which can be applied electronically to the next event they attend, and possibly transferred to another member if they desired.

Deb: One more thought. I now have two NHSTE Wiki's set up. Could we use multiple pages for one wiki rather than starting new ones all the time. This seems like an excellent way to collaborate but I want to go to one plac.e I would like to set one up for the budget, but I don't want to set up another one We have http://nhste.wikispaces.com/ and http://membership.wikispaces.com Can we copy this one to the nhste location?

I don't think money is fair. I'm not joining a money wiki. I like my website, popularplace.wikispaces.com. Mine is also cooler. I will not join! I let everybody who requests membership join. I have 18 members not including myself. ~parakeetlover