When Kadion Phillips first joined Shrewsbury Public Schools in Massachusetts as Director of Information Technology a few years ago, one of the first tasks on his agenda, like many other district leaders, was tackling how to implement artificial intelligence.

To that end, Phillips and district superintendent Joseph Sawyer established a special committee of approximately 20 staff and faculty members to address the rapid development and implementation of AI.

Ultimately, the Shrewsbury AI committee came up with five pillars to guide the district’s use of AI:

1. Preparing students for an AI future - Focusing on readying students for a future in which AI tools will be infused throughout society, higher education, and the workplace.
2. Effectively utilizing AI learning tools for students - Using AI tools to appropriately support student learning across all classrooms.
3. Implementing AI working tools for staff - Finding the right AI platforms to help faculty and staff to work more efficiently and effectively.
4. Establishing guardrails against inappropriate AI use - Putting effective rules and best practices in place to protect data and discourage inappropriate use of AI.
5. Ensuring AI practices promote academic integrity - Creating an effective framework for acceptable use of AI by students in the context of academic integrity.

Rather than selecting specific tools, the committee has worked to align these pillars with the district's "Portrait of a Graduate" skills, such as critical thinking and innovation.

“We also started creating a guiding document, more of a framework, that we're hoping to get out to staff in terms of, ‘Here's where we are right now, and here's what we're trying to get to,” Phillips says. “We're also developing a one-pager of AI dos and don'ts to release this year.”

For this and his other work in his district, Phillips was recently recognized with a Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award. He shares his continued efforts around AI and for improving the district’s cybersecurity.

A Work In Progress

The son of a math teacher from Jamaica who eventually went on to be a school principal, Phillips was exposed early to the possibilities of a career in education and technology. He was working in tech support for a startup company near Times Square in New York City with plans on going to grad school for physics when he heard that there was a local teacher shortage.

“I decided the best way to study for grad school is to teach physics,” Phillips says. He became a teaching fellow since he didn’t have a teaching degree, which was the shortest path to certification. “I was basically kind of thrown into the classroom in New York City after doing a summer intensive, and it was definitely rewarding but also challenging.”

While teaching, his tech expertise helped him become the de facto tech guy at his school, helping to resolve any issue, from fixing the copier to helping in the computer lab to running data analysis. Although he eventually became an assistant principal, following in his mother’s footsteps, a colleague suggested another path.

“I met the tech director in Rochester and he was telling me, ‘Hey, this is what you should do, you should be a tech director,” Phillips recalls. “And I'm like, ‘a tech director, what’s that?’ I'd never heard of that role. I know you had one person help send emails, but I never really thought somebody was in the back end coordinating it all.”

Phillips and his wife, also an assistant principal in NYC, were looking for a better work-life balance at this point, so they moved to suburban Massachusetts where she had been raised. After diving into tech leadership positions in a few districts, Phillips eventually ended up in Shrewsbury about two years ago, just in time for AI’s arrival in education.

As mentioned, Phillips has been proactive in implementing AI, although there are always challenges, such as staff who still are resistant to allowing it in their classrooms because they can’t get past the potential for cheating, and navigating the student data privacy aspects. Like for many districts, it continues to be a work in progress.

“We aren't necessarily picking a tool and saying this is what you need to use but it's like thinking about, ‘Hey, what are the opportunities where AI could be useful?’” Phillips says. “We figured out the skills that we want kids to get with AI is going to be similar to what we did with our portrait of a graduate, such as critical thinking, content mastery, innovation, resilience, collaboration, and even the global citizenship piece.”

‘Locking Down Without Locking Out’

In addition to a focus on AI, Phillips has prioritized cybersecurity as a foundational element of the district’s technology plan, which has earned his team a Massachusetts Governor’s Citation for Municipal Cybersecurity.

“We try to lock things down as much as possible,” says Phillips, adding that they have multifactor authentication on all systems now. “We also have tiered access, like limiting who needs to get access to what. So like our main account doesn't have access to our domain controller, for example, so even if our regular account were to get compromised, it wouldn't have any access to our other internal systems.”

Or, as he puts it, “locking down without locking out” users.

Despite his best efforts, however, Phillips knows cybersecurity is sometimes out of his hands.

“It's just one of those things where we're trying to do best practices but the vendors for our most critical systems, we also have to trust that they're also doing the same,” he says, noting some recent high-profile data breaches. “I think that's what keeps us IT workers up at night, you know, showing up in the morning and seeing that your system potentially could be compromised.”

The district utilizes a state-funded grant to provide training and conduct phishing campaigns, which has improved staff awareness and the reporting of suspicious activities.

Even so, cybersecurity needs to be a constant commitment.

“You can create all this security, do all the training, and build this wall around it,” Phillips says. “But then somebody just leaves the door right open.”

Tools They Use

• Google for Education
• Schoology
• Seesaw
• ParentSquare
• Zoom
• Apple MacBooks and iPads
• Epson
• Fresh Service

“We have been on this planet for a very long time and we've evolved,” says Kimberly Zajac, a speech language pathologist at Norton Public Schools in Mansfield, Massachusetts. “Society changes with time. Communication has always been a basic human right. Too often we put the onus of the work onto the wrong people to be able to access, engage, and be part of the community and what's happening in this world.”

Zajac aims to end this burden by smoothing the road for all students using technology and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. She has developed a replicable model for integrating Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) as an inclusive practice, providing comprehensive professional development and embedded coaching, ensuring that all educators—not just special education staff—are equipped to support students with complex communication needs. This dismantles systemic barriers, creating a learning environment in which students who have been historically marginalized are given the tools to thrive academically and socially.

Zajac, who was recently recognized with a Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award for this and other efforts, shares her “Guide to Preparing for Title II Accessibility Requirements” as well as tips for those interested in creating the best program possible.

An Evolution in Education

“The work I do around accessibility and inclusion and communication in tandem with policy that we've gotten from the DOJ with the ADA Title II and the WCAG guidelines really elevates this idea that we need to take a long, hard look at what we're doing and how we're doing it,” Zajac says. “We need to redesign that to be more accessible and eliminate the barriers in order to evolve as a human race.”

As communication continues to evolve alongside technology, Zajac suggests it was “a ripe time” to learn about the new developments and new ways to support students with their alternative and augmentative communication needs, and to fill in any gaps. Collaborating with district leadership, Zajac and her team did a survey and came up with a five-year plan to build capacity and elevate access and inclusion through communication from pre-K to 12 plus.

“We were able to articulate and apply to grants on a local level, which were well received,” Zajac says. “We received a significant amount of funding locally and at the state level to not only purchase hardware and software, but also to invite professional development and coaching, which is really the glue to helping things turn into actions and experiences for our students and their families.”

This effort brought positive results for everyone.

“The stewards along that path — the teachers, the stakeholders, the parents — are all in it together to bring our learners into the future and make sure their full capacity is realized,” Zajac says. “The point is that it takes a village. The stakeholders are far, wide and vast — they bring valuable individual-lived experience to the table that creates connection and benefits the learners we serve.”

5 Reasons Digital Accessibility Is Important Beyond Compliance

• One in Five People Have a Disability - Actions help more than you think.
• Legal Risks - ADA complaints, costly investigations, and lawsuits with private right of action.
• Educational Barriers - Digital inaccessibility means students with disabilities cannot access the same education.
• Reputational Damage - Non-compliance signals that equity is not a true district priority.
• Universal Design Benefits All Learners - Accessible design principles — captions, clear contrast, keyboard navigation — improve the learning experience for every student, not just those with disabilities.

How Implementation Looks in the Classroom

Zajac hasn’t reached the end of her five-year plan and is realizing it to be just the tip of the iceberg.

“We've experienced a wonderful transformation,” she says. “We have seen increased use of alternative and augmentative communication processes, systems, devices, strategies and assets within a great number of classrooms in our target range of pre-K to 12. It's making significant impact in the way that students are able to be engaged in and included in all aspects of their day.”

Zajac is seeing improvements in academics as well as in social-specific areas, ranging from circle time to snack time, lunch time extending into extracurriculars. Increasing inclusivity into these social-centered elements of a school day are critical to giving all students a sense of belonging.

“I just can't say how important it is that we inspire educators and families and stakeholders at scale to think about learners from the margins as we develop our systems and policies,” she says. “It's a human process to have blind spots. It's impossible not to have them, but that's where the stakeholders come in. Lived experience can inform who might have accidentally been excluded. You can then move forward with policies and strategic system approaches that do honor all the voices that should be represented.”

This has led to more participation from students, who are more eager to contribute to the conversation. Students who do not face communication issues are also curious and interested about how the technology works.

For example, Zajac says, “I was in a group this morning that included one of my non-speaking students who uses an iPad to support the expressive communication element of his participation. Every single student involved in the activity was choosing to utilize the iPad in addition to their verbal communication. Each time a student reached for the iPad, the non-speaking student’s smile grew bigger.”

The 5-Step Compliance Plan

• The Audit Comprehensive review of all digital properties to understand scope.
• The Roadmap Timeline to bridge gaps; prioritize high-leverage systems first.
• Procurement Reform Update RFPs to include accessibility requirements for all vendors.
• Staff Training Build internal capacity so accessible content is created from day one.
• Documentation Record all actions; publish a public accessibility statement online.

Zajac feels one of the most important things we need to establish for students in schools today is that when they arrive, they feel like they belong there—that they are seen, that they are heard, and that there are more things in common among their classmates than there are differences.

“We've known about UDL in the past, but there hasn't been this call to action for the tools to actually have features that make it possible for teachers to design, deliver, and execute the end goal with the student,” Zajac says, adding there's nothing more exciting than seeing it coming together.

“Today, my student— his face just lit up when other students were choosing to use the iPad,” Zajac says. “It hit me, ‘Oh my goodness, he feels so comfortable here. He's letting his emotions out.’ That's that ‘sense of belonging’ indicator. There is no finish line. You just have to commit to that dynamic ongoing process. But we're doing things right when students can let their guard down and be who they are in the space.”

Compliance, Whose Responsibility Is it? Know Your Role

• IT & Technology System configuration, assistive tech support, platform audits.
• Curriculum & Instruction Accessible lesson plans, screen-reader-friendly materials.
• Procurement Vetting vendors for WCAG compliance before purchase.
• Special & General Ed Aligning classroom tools with individual student needs.
• Leadership Steering the cross-functional team; accountability to the board.
• Families & Community Providing feedback on real user experience.

Tools They Use

• Google Gemini
• Glint by NerChat
• Lightspeed
• Everyway
• Canva

For Lauren Harwood, becoming Director of Instructional Technology and Operations at

Dighton-Rehoboth Regional School District in Massachusetts has truly been a homecoming.

“My dad was a science teacher here for 40 years, and in the summer while my mom was at work, I was always with him when he'd come in,” Harwood says. “So, I would be roller skating in these hallways in the summer! It's just such a part of my life.”

And it even continues to be, as in addition to supporting the district she grew up in, her oldest daughter teaches science in the classroom across the hall from where her dad's classroom was.

Still, returning had its bumpy moments. At Harwood’s previous position, she had been a “one-man band” tech director at an agricultural school, which meant she was constantly on call and responsible for resolving any and all issues. Changing that mindset has been a work in progress.

“One of the hardest parts for me in the transition was not jumping up to fix everything because I now have people to do that,” she says, adding that the rural district of 2,600 students poses a mixed bag of new challenges, from coordinating route changes with bus companies and learning about HVAC systems. “I now get to learn something new every day and I enjoy that.”

Harwood, recently recognized by Tech & Learning with an Innovative Leader Award, has focused her energy on three primary areas: creating an AI strategy for the district, expanding its CTE programs, and boosting security and communication.

AI Strategy

Under Harwood’s leadership, DR (as the district is known) has taken a stance against immediately blocking AI sites, choosing instead to focus on teaching students and staff how to use AI responsibly.

“We need to make sure that we're teaching responsible use and that we're teaching respect for it,” she says. “Just because you ask ChatGPT a question, you need critical thinking skills when you look at the response. You still need to know how to find the answers. You can't just assume it can do your work for you.”

Like many districts, vetting and finding the right AI tools and platforms also continues to be a challenge.

“That's what drives us when we're looking at tools, you know, ‘How good is it?’ ‘How can we learn to use it in a mindful way?’” Harwood says. “Being mindful of how we're using it is probably the biggest key. Keeping in mind that potentially everything that it spits out is incorrect. I do think there's a lot of misunderstanding around that. Like, people think, ‘Oh, this is what AI told me, so this must be right.’ And it's not always.”

That includes being constantly vigilant and aware as AI continues to be added to tools that have been already vetted, which requires making sure that security and data privacy is always part of district-wide education efforts.

AI is also a focus during the district’s “DReam Seminars,” PD events featuring teacher-led sessions on using tools such as Brisk AI and Google Gemini, as well as external training on appropriate tool use.

CTE Program Expansion

Harwood is also helping to spearhead expansion of the district’s recently reimagined career and technical education (CTE) program, which is going to include three new career tracks: medical assisting, criminal justice, and culinary arts.

“When our freshmen go through exploratory, they do that for the first half of the year. They try all the different programs and then if they find one that they would like to continue in, they do so,” says Harwood. “This year, 100% of the kids that went through exploratory stayed in a program, so the retention is growing.”

Harwood has also been involved with upgrading all the support tech. For example, the engineering track recently received new computers, monitors, 3D printers, and projectors, which the engineering students used to design the spaces for the new tracks, a hands-on exercise that included real-world implications.

“We had a blizzard and they lost a week of school and they came back in and they said to the engineering teacher, ‘Are we going to get an extension on our deadline?’ And she said, ‘No, this is real. We need these plans,’” says Harwood. “And they did them and they presented them and they were so creative!”

Harwood was involved in the district’s recent purchase of VR headsets for the medical assisting track, which students use to learn how to draw blood.

“The software requires them to go through all of the steps–washing your hands, putting on your gloves,” says Harwood. “It’s not real, but it's also not like just, ‘Oh, I'm looking at it in a textbook, I'm watching a video.’ They're practicing it even though it's virtual. And it's pretty powerful.”

Security and Communication

Like all school districts, cybersecurity remains a priority for DR and Harwood. The district employs various security measures, including multifactor authentication, but understands that no system is foolproof.

“We've all learned that, sometimes the hard way,” says Harwood, who adds that she is constantly discussing potential issues with teachers and staff. “We do provide PD on scams as they come up, but a lot of times if I see a new phishing scam that's going around, something I know people are going to fall for because if it's almost catching me, it's definitely catching others. So I'll send out an email and illustrate what's happening.”

In addition to stressing constant vigilance and educating staff on how to look for warning signs, such as incorrect email addresses in scams, and noting that even large companies such as Cloudflare and Amazon Web Services can experience attacks, Harwood focuses on being engaging with her cybersecurity messaging. “I do try to do it with a little bit of humor like or or just make them a little more personable so people know when I send an email, maybe they want to read it or see what dumb things she's going to say now,” she laughs.

'Make The Most People Happy'

Ultimately, Harwood sees technology as a tool that should empower teachers and students. “It's not that we should be working toward supporting it,” she says. “It should be supporting us.”

She also emphasizes the need to be transparent with everyone as to the “why” behind any edtech or PD she implements.

“I get a lot more buy-in when I say, ‘This is why I would like you to do this, and when I am buying it or trying to do something with a new tool,’” she says.

For example, she cites the recent implementation of a communication platform. She created a committee of teachers and administrators from every school, vetted numerous tools, and then as a group decided on one. Consequently, those who participated in the process were able to go back to their colleagues and champion buy-in, which supported a successful implementation.

“You've always got resistance,” Harwood says. “And those people might come around or they might not. You can't please everybody. And I think in my career, I've finally had to learn that I can't make everybody happy, but I'll try to make the most people happy that I can.”

Tools They Use

• ParentSquare
• Apptegy/Thrillshare
• Google Education Suite
• Aspen SIS
• Open Architects
• Operations Hero
• Lexia
• ST Math
• Wonders
• Renaissance
• Brainpop
• Noodle Tools
• Edpuzzle
• Kahoot
• IXL
• CrisisGo
• Verkada

The high school tech department of RSU 22, located along the Penobscot River near Bangor, Maine, offers traditional programming, such as woodworking and shop, as well as a bringing variety of engineering tech tools and an extremely well-equipped makerspace secured through grant funds. However, through a series of community partnerships and funding opportunities, it was able to launch its Higher Vision Drone Program.

“One of the things that appealed to me is that we already have nine community partners, which represent a range of businesses and organizations,” says Jennifer Nickerson, the district’s Director of Curriculum, who saw an opportunity to add drones to its career pathways. “A little local blueberry farmer in one of our four towns uses the drone to inspect her crops and plan what she needs to do for work that day. The Maine Forest Service visited, sharing stories about their advanced, expensive drones. But they use the same skills our kids are learning to use the drones to find missing people or protect forests and Maine’s natural beauty.”

ESSER funds enabled the school to create an esports lab, tech which served perfectly to accommodate the drone program’s flight simulators. Nickerson worked with Charlie Huff, a technology teacher at Hampden Academy and the department head, Todd Moore, to implement the Higher Vision Drone Program. Title II funds secured out-of-state training for the pair to get certified to teach the young prospective pilots.

“Each certified instructor can have eight kids fly under their license,” says Nickerson. “The first year, they co-taught the intro class together with 16 kids in the program for the fall semester. Of the 16, 14 continued on to take the Commercial Drone course for the spring semester. We have 11 students scheduled for their FAA Part 107 tests, with two passing this week.”

And from there, the program has taken flight.

“Now other students are seeing all this hard work pay off and next year's course enrollments have jumped up,” says Nickerson. “To be fair, some of it is probably because when you are sitting on the second floor in your English class and you see a drone fly by outside, it’s pretty good advertisement."

For this and other efforts, Nickerson was recently honored with a Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award. She shares her “Higher Vision Drone Program” implementation successes and tips for those interested in creating a similar program in their district.

Enrollment, Enlistment, Employment

RSU 22 dates back to 1803, and Nickerson’s family has long been a part of it.

“We like to say, ‘We’re rooted in tradition, but focused on the future,’” says Nickerson. “My kiddos are fifth-generation Broncos, I joke that I bleed purple. The success of RSU 22 is really personal to me and my family and to the four towns in our district. One of which is more affluent than the other three, which can cause issues with programming. However, it was also an inspiration to seek out the Teach with Tech grant from the Maine DOE, which includes a requirement to support underserved students.”

Nickerson saw it as a real way to level opportunities within her district.

”We have tons of AP classes in our high school, Hampden Academy, and we add to them every year,” she says. “But we wanted exciting opportunities for kids who don't fit in that AP niche. I went to a conference which leaned heavily on the concept of three paths for kids, all being equally valuable. Enrollment, enlistment, employment — we need to honor those kids by supporting them with a clear path to success. This was a great motivation to create our drone program.

One very exciting opportunity has presented itself from Cianbro, a nationwide construction company.

“They learned about our program and told me, ‘If you get kids to take and pass the FAA Part 107 test to earn their drone license, we will hire them the day of graduation,’” says Nickerson. “We want those opportunities for our students, because not everyone is going to go to college.”

The Importance of Community Partnerships

A distinctive feature of Hampden Academy’s drone program is its collaboration with nine community partners who share their expertise directly with students. These partnerships include:

• Hampden Public Safety: Demonstrating emergency response applications and public safety uses for drone technology.
• Cianbro: Showcasing industrial applications in construction and infrastructure development.
• News Center 2: Illustrating journalistic and media applications of drone photography and videography.
• Haley Ward Civil Engineering: Providing insights on surveying, mapping, and engineering applications.
• American Forestry Management: Highlighting environmental monitoring and forestry management techniques.
• Matt Thomas Media Productions: Sharing expertise in commercial drone photography and cinematography.
• Allan Gordon Jr Surveying: Demonstrating precision mapping and land surveying applications.
• United States Military: Offering perspectives on drone operations and career opportunities in defense.
• Maine Forest Service: Showcasing thermal imaging and precision aerial surveillance in public safety and natural resource management.

These partnerships provide students with real-world context for their learning and exposure to potential career pathways within their own communities.

“You can't just do it alone,” says Nickerson. “When your community gets behind you to share their expertise and open kids’ eyes to possibility, that culture can be one of your greatest resources even in small, rural, less affluent parts of the world. That’s one way this drone program will be sustainable for the future.”

Ultimately, Nickerson’s goal is just to do the right things for her students by securing the best tools for success.

“No one wants to build a house with a hammer that doesn't have a handle,” Nickerson says. “We need to have the best tools to do the best by our kids. Fortunately, this district has always put technology at the top of their priorities. We have a really supportive superintendent and assistant superintendent who believe in thinking outside the box. It’s just really great, because we need to prepare them. They are going to leave us one day, so we need to help them learn how to fly.”

4 Tips When Starting a New Tech Initiative

Nickerson offers advice to others who might be interested in launching a similar initiative:

• Don’t let lack of funds stop you. Think outside of the box and be creative and you will find the support.
• When securing grants, read the fine print. Some funds require specific choices in tech, such as drones that need to be made in the USA.
• Find your North Star and stay true to it. Think about what is most valuable to you and persevere. Don’t let setbacks stop you.
• Lean on your community. Resources don't have to be financial, expertise is invaluable.

Tools They Use

• Parrot ANAFI Drones
• Claude
• MagicSchool
• Google Suite
• Kibo Robots (Kinderlab)
• zSpace
• edWeb
• Chalk
• Smore
• SWIS/PBIS Apps
• Canva

As the founder and director of Tech Camp for Teachers, Eva Harvell, Director of Technology, Pascagoula-Gautier School District in Mississippi, designed and led a multi-day institute that includes multiple presenters, reaching K-12 and higher ed educators from across the U.S.

The program focuses on practical ways to bring digital tools into the classroom, helping attendees move from basic usage to high-level digital pedagogy. By creating scalable learning opportunities, for both school-level and university-level educators, Harvell and her team ensures technology was a powerful tool instructors at all levels felt confident using.

“It started off with us just wanting to provide teachers technology training for those who were not able to get tech training, or who just wanted more than was made available to them,” Harvell says. “The presenters were actual teachers in the field. Vendors were showcasing what they used in the back of the gym where we met. It was just two days of pre-K all the way to higher education professors getting together, talking about edtech and how to incorporate tech tools in the classroom.”

The Pascagoula-Gautier School District spans 19 campuses serving roughly 6,300 students. As Technology Director, Harvell’s commitment to innovation is best seen through her work in empowering others to master new technology. For this and other efforts, she was recently recognized with a Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award.

Cost-Cutting Creativity Meets Generous Helpers

Smart planning and letting a program grow organically builds a budget-friendly way to connect with big impact.

“Our very first year, I went to vendors we had a very good relationship with and said, ‘Hey, we're looking to do this for two days and I need to provide food. Can you help me?’” Harvell says. “Our presenters were teachers on contract with us, so we worked with their principals to borrow them. It was a professional learning day for them, so they got some PD time as well. It was zero out-of-pocket for anybody who attended.”

A partnership with William Carey University provided an extra bonus, with teachers from the state of Mississippi earning free CEUs. Educators from other states received documentation to qualify at home.

“This started in our unused former high school building with word of mouth from my emailing tech directors and asking them to share with any teachers who were interested,” Harvell says. “We met in the gym and did trainings in the classrooms. It just stayed very grassroots. Anything we needed, we would ask one of our vendors or just figure out how to do it for free.”

4 Tips for Creating a Tech Camp for Teachers in Your District

Harvell shares advice for others considering such a program.

• If you're thinking of doing it, do it. “Don’t be afraid to go for it,” she says. “There can always be hiccups. At the end of the day, you are bringing teachers together and giving them a community so they can have the conversation — that’s what matters.”
• Build relationships and don’t be afraid to lean on them. “You never know unless you ask, but I didn’t think they would say yes,” Harvell says. “They didn’t even hesitate. I’m not sure that would have been the case if we didn’t already have that communication and established relationship.”
• Make it a day of fun — not just your normal PD. “Brand it, name it something cute,” she says. “Get teachers excited to attend by thinking outside of the box.”
• It will grow. They will come. “I was so nervous that first year,” Harvell recalls. “And now we have people driving eight hours to be a part of it. But even if it had been eight people, it would have been worth it. The goal was to provide resources and training. The goal was to help teachers.”

Too Much of a Good Thing is Still a Good Thing

With such an initial resounding success, Tech Camp for Teachers faced a new challenge when they were forced to step away from their in-person model during the COVID-19 pandemic to go remote. Some might have wondered if the infectious, fun element would be too diluted to still draw the crowd.

”It really ballooned when we went virtual,” Harvell says. “Everyone from pre-K to university professors across many states signed up. I have two technology integration specialists who help do this. It suddenly became a full-time job above the full-time job.”

All of the Tech Camp for Teacher training videos were pre-recorded for the virtual event. They were scheduled and then presented with a video live chat.

“Leading up to it, getting the presenters, maintaining the branding, getting all the videos ready to go,” recalls Harvell. “We spent hours upon hours getting it all loaded and put together. It was daunting but it was something that we loved doing, because we knew we were helping teachers.”

Harvell and her presenters have discovered that facilitating the camp has raised their visibility in unexpected ways.

“Now, when we go to our Mississippi state conference — people recognize us as ‘those tech camp people,’” she says. “WLOX, the news station here on the coast, even did a story on it. I’m working on my doctorate at William Carey University and I hear from my professors that they sat in on Tech Camp! I thought that was great because they are teaching pre-service teachers.

Harvell says the event is a win-win for everyone.

“Ultimately, providing resources for teachers is what we were all there to do,” she says. “It's grassroots. It's not a conference, it is just a big group of teachers getting together and sharing what they do.”

Tools They Use

• Acer and HP Chromebooks
• Fortinet
• Incident IQ
• Clever
• MagicSchoolAI
• Google Workspace for Education

Located near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Highline Public Schools serves many students and families from around the world, including some who are new to the United States. Families across Highline speak more than 89 languages, reflecting the rich diversity of the Highline community. At the center of the district’s work is the Highline Promise. From classrooms to front offices to transportation and AI committees, staff across Highline play a role in bringing that promise to life.

“Highline Public Schools Promise is that every student is known by name, strength, and need, and graduates prepared for the future they choose,” says Teshon Christie, the Highline’s Chief of Digital Transformation and Innovation, and recent Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award winner.

It is a statement that Christie refers to not as a mission, but as a living accountability measure. “The amazing thing about that is that regardless of who you go to in our system, you know this promise,” Christie says. “Everyone from our bus drivers to nutrition services workers—everyone at Highline knows this promise and that it is our focus.”

Scaling the Personal Touch

For a district of more than 16,500 students across 34 sites, “personalization” is often a buzzword that loses meaning at scale. For Christie, scaling this promise isn’t about software alone, but about leadership consistency and human connection.

“We scale our promise through humans,” Christie says. “When you break down each part, it’s easy for a person to see what their role is. If a bus driver gets to know their students by name, they can identify strengths and needs during the ride and communicate those back to the office staff. It makes sense operationally and instructionally.”

This human-centric approach is organized around four board-adopted goals:

• Culture of Belonging: A culture where all are welcome, valued, and safe.
• Innovative Learning: Academic experiences that engage, empower, and challenge every student.
• Bilingual and Biliterate: Multicultural skills that enable students to live, work, and communicate across cultures.
• Future Ready: Students explore possibilities and develop mindsets that prepare them for a changing future.

Navigating the AI Frontier

As the Chief of Digital Transformation, Christie’s job involves managing everything from data assessment to instructional technology, as well as navigating the ethical and practical implementation of AI.

Highline is now two years into its AI journey, anchored by a group of AI ambassadors who have developed vision and guidance documents. Rather than banning the technology out of fear, Highline is focusing on future readiness.

“We’re really starting to shift the language from ‘cheating’ to a student’s ‘passive vs. active use of AI,’” Christie says. “Cheating is so binary that it doesn’t describe the whole story. If using a tool is seen as cheating, then what needs to change about education in order to support our ability to move forward with any tool?”

One of Highline’s most successful implementations is Colleague AI, a tool developed out of the University of Washington. Highline currently has 300 teachers actively using the platform.

Christie is particularly excited about involving students in the policy-making process, noting that their insights are often more nuanced than those of adults.

“I was at one of our high schools where they did a unit on AI policy,” Christie recalls. “The students were very specific. They said, ‘I don’t want to be graded by AI because that breaks the relationship.’ They actually mentioned 'culture of belonging.' They want their teachers to have grace and support them in ways that help them get better—things an AI currently won't do.”

Building Trust Through Authentic Engagement

For Christie, the success of any digital initiative depends on the strength of the district’s relationship with its community. He advocates for authentic family engagement, which moves beyond simply inviting parents to a meeting.

“Just being at the table isn’t enough,” Christie says. “You want people to be able to give input and then see their input reflected in whatever comes out. Even if it’s, ‘We weren’t able to do this because of these reasons,’ you still need to be honest and transparent so that trust is built over time.”

This trust is vital when tackling sensitive topics such as screen time. Christie points out that for many Highline students, a school-issued laptop is their only access to a large-screen device.

“Not every student using a district device after hours is on social media,” he says. “They might be learning how physics works on YouTube in a way that makes sense to them. You can't just say they spent eight hours on YouTube and assume it was wasted time.”

A System, Not a Set of Divisions

Ultimately, Christie’s goal is to dissolve the traditional silos between IT and instruction. By focusing on shared bodies of work rather than departmental responsibilities, Highline ensures that no stakeholder is left out of the conversation.

“It’s about how we intentionally involve everyone in our system so it feels more like a system rather than divisions, departments, and people who work on separate things,” Christie says.

By keeping the “Promise” at the center of every digital and operational decision, Highline Public Schools is proving that even in a high-tech world, the most powerful tool in education remains the human connection.

For Newton County Schools, a district in rural Georgia of more than 19,000 students spread across 24 buildings, ensuring that innovation is not isolated but systematically embedded into daily teaching and learning, can be a challenge.

Nonetheless, a comprehensive, district-wide digital learning ecosystem that measurably expands access, strengthens literacy, and prepares students for future careers has been developed under the leadership of Jennifer Williams, Director of Instructional Technology and Media Services.

“We do everything in my department based on ‘3E’--engagement, exposure, experience,” says Williams, who was recently honored with a Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award for her efforts.

The 3E approach ensures students do not passively consume technology but actively use it to build literacy, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills.

• Engagement features high-level activities that make students creators and producers rather than just consumers, keeping a global focus.
• Exposure involves taking students on field trips to places as simple as the Microsoft store to more college- and career-focused destinations such as nearby Spelman Innovation Lab and Georgia Tech.
• Experience is providing hands-on opportunities in class, on field trips, and through partnerships.

“We want to engage our students, we want to expose them to new things, and give them experiences,” says Williams, adding that they’ve taken more than 20,000 students on field trips over the past three years alone. “We have to think of everything as not just a Newton County focus but a worldwide focus. They're in a global society. So we want to constantly engage them with different perspectives, different outlooks, different ways of learning.”

Newton County Schools has a scalable, future-ready digital ecosystem that prioritizes safety and compliance with federal laws, with Williams’ department vetting and re-vetting digital products. To ensure equity and access, all activities are free to all students, via grants and partnerships, which Williams and her team aggressively pursue.

The Rule of 3

Williams has worked to develop three major programs in the district: the Inspire program, which addresses the gender gap in coding; Read Across Newton, a district-wide literacy initiative; and Teach for Tomorrow, an annual technology conference providing training. All are underpinned by the 3E approach.

The Inspire program is a year-long effort focused on getting girls involved in science and coding through hands-on opportunities, visits to nearby Georgia Piedmont Technical College, a week-long coding camp, and a trip to a coding conference, much of which is sponsored by Amazon, who Williams has partnered with and who has provided grants. Students also get to explore 3D printers, LEGO robotics, and more.

“It's one thing telling them, ‘Oh, this is computer science,’ but actually taking them to a college, taking them on these field trips, working with the computer science department, all make a real impact,” Williams says. “They have the world-renowned computer science program nearby and they didn't know about it or think about going there, and it's only 45 minutes from their house.”

Read Across Newton is another year-long initiative during which students participate in book clubs, have people from across the district read to them, and have local authors present reading and writing workshops. During the district’s literacy extravaganza, celebrated the first Saturday in February, students get books to take home.

“So this year we had 3,600 people come and we gave away 55,000 books,” says Williams. “So, if you want to know what 55,000 books feels like, ask my back!”

Teach for Tomorrow, the district’s annual technology PD event right before the school year begins, drew more than 850 teachers last year, which is more than half of those in the district. The event is led by the instructional leadership team and the district’s vanguard teachers, who pilot tools and guide technology integration at the schools. Attendees learn about the district’s LMS, various digital tools, and of course, AI.

“It was amazing because these teachers came, sat, and did full technology learning, like a little mini ISTE conference,” says Williams. “We try to make it so when we do professional development, we help people fall in love with technology so they can help students fall in love with literacy and technology.”

Living The Dream

When it comes to leadership, Williams recommends being a constant student, and continuously learning about new products and understanding the relevant laws. Her best advice, however, is not to be “a lone wolf.”

“Be a part of a group of people who are like-minded, who can share with you and give you advice on how to do things,” she says, suggesting joining a professional networking group such as CoSN. “Find a tribe, a group that is going to help you be your thought partner as you make changes. You don't want to make a big change in your system without getting advice from others who are also in the same job because you're usually one of one in your district.”

In that vein, Williams says she’d be remiss if she didn’t mention “the secret sauce” in everything she does: her team. “I have some spectacular people that I work with,” she says, also citing the support of Dr. Sheila Thomas, Chief Strategy and Support Services Officer.

She also mentions the importance of having a collaborative team, which she also cross-trains. “We sit down and we talk about things,” she says. “And I hire people who are different from me. I don't need a whole ten Jennifers.”

Ultimately, she says being the instructional technology director and media services director, allowing her to merge her passions for reading and technology, has been a dream.

“I can have a lot of jobs but this is my passion–I tell my daughter this is my life's work,” says Williams. “I love going to work every day. There's not a morning that I don’t wake up and am like, ‘Oh boy, it's Monday! It’s another day that we're going to be able to do something great for a kid!’ I couldn’t ask for anything more."

Tools They Use

• Canvas
• Nearpod
• Book Creator
• Sora (the literacy app)
• ClassLink
• Microsoft
• Google Education

Last fall, Hollie Sisk, Assistant Coordinator of Instructional Technology at Effingham County School District, attended the Chicago Google Leadership Summit with education heads from all over the U.S. While she found it enlightening to learn where other districts were in their AI journey and how they were using Google tools, one piece of the experience struck her as something to bring back to her own Southeast Georgia district of 14,500 students.

“They took us into a room of three or four stations, with Chromebooks ready to go,” says Sisk. “We rotated through, learning the basics. I just sat there and thought our teachers really need this. ‘How can we implement this in our district?’ I marinated on that and when I came back, I pitched it to our tech director. From there, it blossomed into the ECSD Gemini School.”

In ECSD’s Gemini School, attendees rotate across four sessions through focused 20-minute labs on Gemini, NotebookLM, Gems, and Gemini in the Classroom, allowing them to quickly experience real classroom value without overload.

“It's not just a traditional ‘sit and get,’” says Sisk. “It’s more about creating an environment where it clicks for every educator because they have just enough exposure to spark their curiosity, but not overwhelm them with a lengthy PD session.”

Sisk tries to keep the PD engaging and moving. Instead of having the presenters going from room to room, attendees have to boogie to each round of learning, literally.

“We play disco music in between transitions. It helps them reset and refocus,” says Sisk. “They are going from absorbing a lot of information in 20 minutes from Notebook LM to custom Gems. They really need to turn their brain off and then get it ready for the next session.”

The impact has been immediate and measurable. Forty-five participant comments included consistent themes such as, “I didn’t want to go to another PLC, but this was amazing!” and “This is the first time AI makes sense to me.”

Most notably, a 31-year veteran teacher — who self-identifies as not tech-savvy — was so energized by the experience that she recorded a ten-minute video expressing gratitude and shared that it was the most excited she had felt about teaching in years. This kind of shift doesn’t come from tools, it comes from intentional, learner-centered leadership.

“I knew these tools could help them, but I didn’t want to pull them into a drawn out traditional PD to learn how,” says Sisk, who was recently recognized for this and other efforts with an Innovative Leader Award. “We really wanted to make it an immersive experience — a hands-on experience like I took away from the Chicago summit. Ultimately, my impact when building this was to give teachers back the gift of time.”

3 Tips for Creating An AI Gemini School in Your District

Sisk offers advice for others who are interested in creating such a PD program in their district:

• Create a relationship with the curriculum to ensure buy-in from the top down. “I needed our curriculum department's trust that we could make this work,” Sisk says. “Don't just try to push it out, really build those relationships and get them on board to support you.”
• Be consistent in the marketing. “I'm partial to branding–I try to focus on that not only for our social media account, but anything we're pushing out,” she says. “I stay very consistent which helps with recognition and so teachers feel they are part of something special.”
• Make PD fun and engaging. Training doesn't have to be a traditional “sit and get,” says Sisk. “You can have movement. You can have 25-minute round table discussions and then get up and move to a different table and a different topic.”

Fuel FOMO With a Marketing Moment

“I knew if we did a really good job marketing this, we'd have bought their trust,” says Sisk. “The next time we roll out a program, they will say, ‘Hey, the last thing they did was really fun. I want to come.”

Sisk embraces that marketing mindset for instructional technology—one that reframes tech not as “another initiative,” but as a value-adding experience educators want to engage with.

“My mindset wasn’t, ‘Let's promote another professional development,’ it was more like a product launch,” she says. “One special ed teacher shared how much time she saved writing IEPs as well as writing success criteria and learning targets. Excited teachers are calling a few days later, ‘Look at this song we created with the students after the session!’ Even our athletic coaches loved the training, which speaks volumes because they often hate having to come to PD.”

Sisk consistently highlights instructional technology successes through social media, reinforcing a culture that celebrates innovation and progress.

“One of the most powerful pieces of this is learning from other teachers,” she says. “It's not technology or curriculum presenting the material, it's teachers and media specialists. April Platt, Crystal Mealor, Jack Sinopoli, and Nick Exely are a few of our rockstar presenters.To me, face-to-face instruction is always more effective.”

One of the goals was to elevate the position of her media specialists and the value they bring to schools. Sisk asked each to earn their Google Gemini-certified educator designation to become the on-site expert at their school post-Gemini School.

Her leadership is shifting perception across ECSD. Instructional technology is no longer seen as optional or burdensome, but as practical, exciting, and directly connected to improved teaching and learning results for their students.

“One of the biggest rewards this year was the blossoming of that relationship between curriculum and tech departments, because they helped us reach out to leadership,” Sisk says. “They allowed us to interrupt their principal's PLC meeting and do a version of Gemini School just for principals. That sparked buy-in. Principals saw the value in their world as a principal and wanted their teachers to have that same experience.”

This PD experience has earned a 4.72 rating out of 5, based strictly on teacher feedback. The demand generated by Gemini School has exploded, prompting plans for expansion—clear evidence that Sisk’s work is not only effective but scalable.

“We are presenting at our board retreat in a few weeks because our board members are asking, ‘What is this Gemini School and why do we have it?’” Sisk says. “Everyone wants a little piece of it. That's exactly what we wanted to create.”

Tools They Use

• Gemini
• Creating custom Gems
• NotebookLM
• Gemini in Google Classroom

In a district with more than 20,000 students set right on the banks of the Microsoft campus in Bellevue, Washington, a natural goal seems to be getting everyone to speak the same language when it comes to school direction and cohesion.

Ironically though, this district is home to students literally speaking more than 117 languages.

“Just at Ardmore, we have students speaking 37 or 38 languages, which gives you a picture of how diverse our school is,” says Yusra Obaid, Principal of Ardmore Elementary School, who was recently recognized for her leadership with a Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award.

Bellevue School District not only celebrates that reality, but builds on their beautiful blend of cultures and backgrounds with a global competency initiative. One element of this is the Multilingualism for All language programs that include both Spanish and Mandarin programs, with unique language opportunities in Arabic, Korean, and Hindi. BSD middle and highschoolers can take Arabic, French, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and Spanish.

“Students learn the majority of their day in English, with an hour and 20 minutes of daily Arabic instruction in language arts with additional translanguaging throughout the day,” says Obaid. “If you walk into our Arabic classroom, you can't tell the difference between it and a general ed classroom. Half of our classes are multi-language learners. The vision of Ardmore is to affirm and identify this idea that our kids come to us speaking either one or multiple languages. We provide opportunity for those kids and make sure that any students who don't speak another language at home can learn in some way or form here.”

That vision is creating results.

“There is a science where students learning a new language at an early age tend to do better in math, science and overall academics,” says Obaid. “This is an accelerated program because kids are actually learning two languages at the same time, which places extra cognitive demands on students. It helps shape their brain in a different way.”

Using Tech Translates to Success

While many of the students come from backgrounds in which they learned languages naturally in the home, it never hurts to use the latest tech to aid acquisition.

“There's a range of tools that make learning more accessible to kids, even language learning,” says Obaid, noting BDS is a Microsoft district. “We know a lot about language acquisition and students learn by repetition and visuals. Our teachers use our whiteboard touch screens in an interactive way to have kids repeat the language. They press on it and can hear the word pronounced. They do image and word matching, they annotate specific words, drag and blend certain letters together — it’s created an accessibility for language learning in general.”

Obaid says these platforms bring together the four different domains of language acquisition (listening, reading, writing and speaking) more effectively than simple worksheets.

The program creates language learners, but also has a bigger picture of enhancing global citizenship.

“When kids come to us, we want to create global citizens who are thinking not just about their local community, but the larger world and their impact on it,” says Obaid. “We want to create that sense of community that our actions affect others not only here in Bellevue, but in the world.”

Obaid has integrated the Global Goals of UN Sustainability framework across grade levels to support this effort on a daily basis.

For example, for first grade, it offers a literacy unit about animals focused on building vocabulary about endangered animals. “They learned about all the animals and then focused on elephants. ‘How do we protect elephants? They're being endangered,’” says Obaid. “Students learned about dangers involved in their habitat, and then raised money and adopted elephants which they continue to nurture and care about. The organization sent a certificate and they have a website with a live camera feed.”

Using technology to connect a lesson to the real world still continues to be effective.

“It's really cool to just see kids thinking, ‘Wow, we learned about this, and now we actually did something that helped this animal survive those dangers in a place on the other side of the world,’" says Obaid.

3 Tips on Creating Global Initiatives in the Classroom

Obaid offers this advice to other educators:

1. Don't wait to make change. “We can get stuck in a place of ‘It has to be perfect, do I have the funding?’” she says, emphasizing the importance of partnering with students and families to learn their aspirations and goals. “Languages and global citizenship were important for our families, so we didn’t wait for things to happen, we just acted by starting with simple things and letting it grow.”

2. Community partnership is huge. “Look within the community for expertise, rather than thinking about outside resources,” Obaid says. “Shifting that idea to where is capacity and expertise within our whole community — our families, our teachers, everybody who walks through our building are potential partners.”

3. Engage all stakeholders right from the start. Assess, adjust, and collect feedback with everything that you do to demonstrate the success for stakeholders. “When something is innovative and new, partnering with the people who you're serving the most helps,” she says. “We have listening sessions. We collect numerical data. We listen to stories from kids. We do empathy interviews. This is how we continue to refine and adjust anything that we bring into our school.”

Finding Local Funding for Global Awareness

The thought of tapping already-stretched budgets for bonus initiatives can be intimidating, but the adage of “use your resources” certainly applies.

“When we think about innovation and change with a financial aspect, sometimes we forget about the open resources, the free availability, the opportunities in our local community that exist where we can make connections,” Obaid says.

The first grade project which made such an impact on the students was born of a simple wildlife trust website and adoption program. Local fundraising helped with the rest.

“Tapping areas of expertise and opportunities within our local community might not necessarily include a direct financial aspect, but are still very valuable,” she says. “It's about relevance. It's about connection. It's about kids thinking, ‘Wow, what I'm learning matters, and I can do something.’ It's not always about money.”

Creative problem solving goes a long way, but the district also benefits from the Bellevue Schools Foundation, filled with local stakeholders.

“One of the really great things we're really proud of is our amazing educators,” Obaid says. “They really go all out looking through different organizations and partnerships. They would reach out to the Pacific Science Center, ‘Hey, the budget is really tight. Would you be willing to host us?’ Our educators do a really good job in advocating and finding opportunities for community partnership.”

Another way of generating funding is spreading word about the innovative programs at the school. Ardmore got a big boost of publicity when Trevor Noah decided to join the school’s “Hour of Coding.” As Microsoft’s Chief Question Officer, the comedian and actor sat in on a fifth-grade class and discussed tech with Ardmore teachers.

“It was such a great connection,” Obaid says. “We have a whole ‘Wall of Wow’ at Ardmore where we post photos and news articles—every time our school gets recognized or we have a special visitor. It's a great inspiration for us to continue to reach for the stars.”

Tools They Use

• Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
• Microsoft Tools for Education 365
• i-Ready Assessment and Personalized Instruction (My Path) K-8 for English and Spanish dual language immersion, literacy, and math
• Code.org Hour of AI/Code

Sometimes, facing multiple challenges at once can create unexpected opportunities for discovery and collaboration.

“A phrase that I use frequently with my team is, ‘How might we?’ instead of just immediately going to ‘That's not going to work within our system,’” says Jeremy Sullivan, Director of Innovative Learning and Student Supports for North Kitsap School District. “We’re always approaching it through that curiosity of ‘how might we,’ especially because one thing I've learned over the last three years is that a lot of previous ‘Nos’ or ‘That's not possible’ or ‘I have no idea how to make that happen’ has changed. And AI has helped bridge that gap, especially from a systemic analysis and a systems lens.”

Sullivan has worked to implement the district's technology integration effort–which is branded as NKSD-connected, and features four tenets: future-ready graduates, equity, collaboration, and innovation–into its multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS). North Kitsap School District enrolls about 5,100 students across approximately 110 to 120 square miles in rural western Washington State, including the Port Gamble S'Klallam and the Suquamish sovereign nations. Using AI to boost MTSS has helped to bridge distances and differences, and for staff to work smarter, not harder, in supporting students.

“AI has let us work in a way we've never been able to do, like quickly taking 10- to 20-page plans and analyzing outlier interventions, synthesizing action steps that certain buildings are taking so we can connect them so they have partners to help them understand the work that they're doing,” says Sullivan.

For this and other efforts, Sullivan–who came from Springfield Public Schools in Missouri to North Kitsap five years ago to help launch the district’s 1-to-1 initiative–was recently recognized with a Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award at a recent regional summit.

Three Tiers of PD

Sullivan says the district started small with this effort, initially gathering school leaders over a few years to determine what an MTSS blueprint would look like. All the district’s elementary schools now have one, with the secondary schools close behind.

Sullivan and his team have been working with Tier 2 and 3 intervention teams across 10 buildings to use AI to sort through the large swaths of data they have, including student well-being surveys, academic records, attendance and behavior data, and other critical information. The district has partnered with Panorama, which offers a student success dashboard.

“We are data rich now but we are still information poor,” Sullivan says. “So how do we understand what this is telling us to the level where we can actually take action? And this year AI has really helped us with that because we're able to take these large data sets and identify trends and patterns, both at a systems level and a school level. We can identify that our students are still struggling with this but excelling in that. We can also see that our staff are struggling in this and excelling in that. So what does that mean? And then that can scale down to both the school level and the classroom level.”

Appropriately, the initiative’s support structure for staff follows a three-tiered model, mirroring the MTSS concept:

- Tier One includes district-wide professional development and staff meeting access for everyone.

“I did a training yesterday during which I was able to show them within five minutes how to click a button, attach a class, ask a question–a simple prompt–analyze the most recent SEAL and student well-being data, synthesize it, and tell me the key points that I need to know,” he says. “And just immediately they get the data broken down in a very easy to understand way. There's no filtering. It synthesizes it for them beautifully.”

- Tier Two involves 27 AI “lighthouse” teachers, early adopters working with smaller groups of teachers, following a shared leadership approach.

“The AI lighthouse classroom teachers come and get additional training from me and my team and then they help support in their buildings with that job-embedded support,” says Sullivan, adding that having that practical, hands-on experience accessible, along with coaching, helps foster implementation.“Those AI lighthouse teachers are the ones who really push it into the classrooms and work with their buildings to help them understand it all.”

- Tier Three focuses on individualized support, during which Sullivan and another instructional specialist are deployed to work with specific teachers or student support teams as needed.

“So ultimately, it's just thinking about how are you covering all of those tracks for your system because you're going to have people–that Tier One everyone needs to get–but then how are you helping support the 20% to 5% who need something more.”

Advice For Other Districts: “Teach To The Smiles”

Sullivan advises other districts interested in using AI for MTSS support to begin by listening to a diverse pool of stakeholders, including certificated and classified staff and principals, to understand current practices, desires, and systemic barriers. With that insight, you can assess the lay of the land.

“You can begin to develop your map because that's when you know where your rivers are that you're going to need to build a bridge, where the mountains are that you might need to do some drilling or some blasting to get through into that system,” says Sullivan. “But until you know the lay of the land, you have no idea how to structure your map to get to that end goal.”

He stresses the importance of starting small by identifying innovators and early adopters, focusing initial efforts on developing human capital and authentic ways to shoulder the work, noting that teachers are more likely to be open to new tools and methods coming from other teachers versus coming from IT staff. And then it's about scaling that influence through shared leadership with the lighthouse teachers.

When confronted with resistance during implementation, Sullivan suggests following the advice from one of his former supervisors.

“She just said, ‘In those moments, Jeremy, look around and find the bright spot. Find the smile. Because oftentimes the smile is the quieter one in the room, but the smiles are there. And in those moments, teach to the smiles,’" he says. "Change never happens if we only talk to the ones who are in right off the bat. The reluctant ones need to see other people change first, and see that they have success in that change before they'll feel safe doing it.”

Tools They Use

Sullivan shares some of the edtech tools he regularly uses.

• NotebookLM - "This is my current workflow game-changer. The source-grounding feature allows me to create Notebooks trained solely the resources from my district (policies, procedures, CBAs, handbooks, etc.). The Studio feature allows me to create and scale support resources for my system like never before. With the click of a few buttons, I can have infographics, reports, mindmaps, videos, and interactive podcasts focused only on what I want it to focus on. When you are a small district team, these creation capabilities are incredible."
• Google Gemini - "Since we are a Google Workspace for Education school district, Gemini is our native AI tool. Much like NotebookLM, the ability to create Gems trained on your own sources and instructions allow for the creation of task-specific tools that get to the meat of the work faster. Much of my role involves analyzing qualitative and qualitative data for our system. Gemini in Sheets helps me whip up the right formula or quickly identify measures of central tendency, frequency distributions, etc. When creating resources in Slides, I can often obsess about the visual layout (colors, fonts, sizes, etc.) WAY more than I should. Lately, I have been leaning into the "beautify this slide" feature in an attempt to let some of that control go. I add the text and pertinent imagery, and let Gemini make it visually appealing. Major time saver!"
• Panorama Student Success - "This is our district's data dashboard that serves as a home for all student data. Our district prioritizes meeting the needs of the "whole child," and this dashboard helps us do that by collecting the academic data as well as our behavior, attendance, assessment, social emotional learning, student well-being, and climate and culture data. We also utilize it to refer, program, assign, and progress monitor individual and group student interventions and to gauge the impact of the interventions we are utilizing. The dashboard is used in a variety of other ways at the district, site, PLC, MTSS team, and individual educator level."
• Panorama Solara - "I had to list this as its own tool even though it is born from our Student Success data dashboard. This is Panorama's AI tool that allows for direct interaction with data available in the Student Success dashboard. Teachers can attach up to 20 individual students from the students in the classes, attach a single entire class, or upload their own resource to use with the tool. The Intervention Planner asks a series of questions and then automatically programs the trackable intervention with the appropriate team members assigned in the dashboard. We have created an MTSS Agenda Tool that automatically fills out the agenda template with the appropriate data based on the students selected with guiding questions for the meeting directly aligned with the data. There are so many incredible use cases for this resource." 
• MagicSchool - "Our system adopted MagicSchool as our main teacher and student-facing AI resource. While I don't utilize the tools as frequently in my role, I do create custom tools for our system within MagicSchool. This allows us to train the tools in alignment with our adopted curriculum resources. For example, we recently launched a custom tool that aligns our K-5 CKLA curriculum with our K-5 RULER SEL curriculum. Teachers can easily ask instructional design, instructional strategy, differentiation, and other questions and receive answers that authentically integrate the academic curriculum with the SEL curriculum. Marry that with how Solara can quickly analyze their students' most recent SEL data, and you can begin to see how data analysis followed by purposeful planning that used to take hours can be accomplished in minutes, freeing the educator up to engage with students in deeper ways." 
• Dotstorming - "It is an oldie but goodie that I still use for quick group brainstorming that has voting and commenting features that allow it to be used to go from dialogue to discussion to decision." 
• ChatGPT - "This one will also be on this list because it was my OG when I first dove into the LLM world. It has been trained by me for over three years and just "get's me," ya know?" 
• Canva - "Love this tool, but it can be dangerous for me because there are so many options for creation and design. That being said, the ability to create polished visuals, with the assistance of AI if desired, is awesome. It can be used by staff and students. I love tools that help students demonstrate their learning in authentic ways for authentic audiences!"
• Audible/Amazon Music - "Throwing these on here because they keep me sane. We can't work all the time, and I love to unwind with a great book or podcast."

As artificial intelligence continues to expand its presence in schools, the need to educate educators and support staff also continues to grow. And although many edtech solutions provide training around their specific AI tools, having a basic AI education program can be even more useful.

“Tools have their place,” says Courtney Bock, AI Implementation and Library Media & Technology Specialist for Mead School District in Washington State. “But if we don't first understand the how and the why, the tools are not as powerful.”

To help support the teachers, Bock has implemented a four-part AI professional development series in her district, from which she graduated and currently serves about 10,500 students in North Spokane County.

“It can be pretty isolating sometimes as an educator when they’re thinking, ‘Am I the only one that is not getting this?’” says Bock, who was recently honored with a Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award. “And then they go to the PD, see other teachers, and realize, ‘Oh, no, you're struggling, too. Okay, great. We can struggle together.’"

The good news is that Bock’s program has been turning that struggle into success.

Boosting AI Confidence and Literacy

Each session in Bock’s after-school program is 90 minutes and offers STEM clock hours for certificate maintenance in Washington State. Each cohort of the program has averaged 25 teachers.

• Session 1 is "AI 101," providing foundational knowledge, vocabulary (such as "LLM"), how AI works, and its capabilities and limitations, remaining tool-agnostic.
• Session 2 focuses on cheating and AI, helping teachers to redesign assignments and integrate AI into assessments, acknowledging that students are using it regardless.
• Session 3 dives into using AI with students, featuring a more tool-specific approach.
• Session 4 concentrates on using AI to improve teacher workflow, increase efficiency, and save time.

In addition to the cohorts, Bock supports teachers through a monthly newsletter, regular in-person presentations across the district’s 10 buildings, and virtual weekly AI office hours.

So far, the program’s impact has been quantified by significant gains in educator readiness. Post-training data has revealed a 50% increase in teacher confidence regarding the use of AI tools directly with students, as well as a 48% boost in preparedness to teach AI ethics.

Advice For Other Educators

For other educators who are interested in creating a similar PD program in their district, Bock recommends first focusing on AI literacy as opposed to just tossing tools at teachers.

“When I first did a version of this a year ago beforehand, it was just AI tools because that's what people wanted, and I thought, ‘Yeah, I can show you how to use those tools. No problem,’” she says. “But because I'm in the space every day, I was using basic AI vocabulary, and they didn’t understand these basics. That was a real learning moment.”

Bock also tries to make sure that there's plenty of free additional resources available to spark those who want to pursue more learning or certification for a specific AI platform. She notes that Anthropic, Google, and AIEDU, among others, all have AI training for educators.

“Some are better than others,” she acknowledges. “But I think it's good to take it all in with a grain of salt and use what's best for you, and leave what's not.”

Bock also recommends keeping parents and families informed about AI use. “When we're going to be introducing things to their students, I think It's important to have parent and student voices as part of that conversation.” She stresses that students, in particular, should be included in creating district policies as they are already interacting with AI daily, often through platforms such as Snapchat.

She also suggests involving administrative and central office staff in PD efforts as many may be interested in using AI to boost efficiency or simplify basic tasks, if they aren’t already.

“A Whirlwind Of AI”

Bock, who spent two years away from education at a friend’s startup as a natural language model analyst before returning to a district, has been able to bring that experience into her current role, which focuses on supporting district-wide AI implementation in the mornings and being a K-5 specialist in the afternoons.

“In 2022 when ChatGPT became public, it was like my two worlds just came together, which was not on my bingo card at all,” she says. “And it's just been, as you can imagine, a whirlwind of AI ever since.“

Ultimately, Bock appreciates having a community of teachers to learn from and with.

“It's harder to learn things in isolation,” Bock says. “And I'm not saying you can't, you absolutely can. But when you have that community around you to support you, ask questions, look at what they're doing as different examples–that's really powerful.”

Tools They Use

Bock’s “AI Stack”

• Claude
• MagicSchool
• CanvaAI
• Wispr Flow
• Gemini/Studio
• NotebookLM
• Gamma

Montana Digital Academy (MTDA) is a designated state virtual school in Montana, created by the 2009 Legislature to provide supplemental online learning to K-12 public school students. The Frontier Learning Lab (FLL) is MTDA’s new statewide hub for cutting-edge learning tools —a place where teachers and students can explore AI, virtual and augmented reality, and other emerging tech.

“It was a natural space for us to go into with applicability in K-12 across the state,” says Jason Neiffer, Executive Director of Montana Digital Academy. “We were early to the AI conversation because we saw an issue we would have to come to terms with at our state virtual school. In January 2024, members of our team were invited to testify about the role of AI in education. That turned into a deeper conversation about what we wanted to do to support Montana schools.”

In an effort to ensure such rural schools could offer access to interested teachers, a solution for opening exploratory spaces for all regardless of budget toward high-quality PD needed to be reached. Having awareness and a deep understanding of that state’s unique needs and challenges was critical.

“One of the things that we've been very conscious of is that the rural nature of Montana is sometimes underestimated,” says Neiffer, who notes that the state is the size of Germany with one-eightieth of the population. “We have a couple of counties that are larger than some U.S. states with a single school district. The superintendent is also the K-12 principal and substitute bus driver and has their boiler's license in case they're pressed into service.”

Neiffer, who was recently recognized with an Innovative Leader Award during Tech & Learning’s recent Northwest Regional Summit, and his team knew truly rural Montana kids were just as important a constituency and deserve to have access to tech experts and resources.

“The Montana School Boards Association stepped up this year and provided a model policy for districts across the state,” he says. “There are endless organizations, nonprofit and for-profit, that help with policy development in schools. However, they don’t always understand that a rural school doesn’t have a full-time tech person — maybe not even any part-time staff — and might have to rely on third-party vendors for that role.”

That is where the Frontier Learning Lab, under the umbrella of the 16-year-strong MTDA state virtual school, stepped in to form a core planning piece for time-challenged leaders.

Time Is Everything

Time management is an important element of any endeavor but already-stretched rural districts really feel that pinch when faced with absorbing new tech initiatives.

“The time piece is a critical factor here,” Neiffer says. “I've been in the business for almost thirty years now and I do think we underinvest in professional learning around technology. We also get that you can't spend all of your time learning about evolving technologies because teaching is a very technical job.”

Neiffer feels part of any strategy needs to be meeting teachers where their resources are.

“Is it face-to-face training, or is it asynchronous online training?” he asks. “We’ve opened up a help desk for teachers that they can email and ask for assistance because not every one of our teachers will be able to dedicate significant professional learning time. So they really do need the old ‘just-in-time’ training. Sometimes that's really just a one-on-one conversation. We want to be able to provide it however works best for their busy schedule.”

The help desk accepts emails 24/7 with someone manning and responding 9-10 hours a day. This has been particularly helpful for those teachers exploring on their own time or who may not have colleagues at their level.

3 Actionable Tips When Starting a Virtual Academy Such As Frontier

1. Need should drive everything. “One of the reasons why our program was originally created was because Montana’s vast geography needed a virtual option with stable funding and consistency in availability for students every semester,” Neiffer says. “Investment in the program is critical so funding at minimum ensures schools know when they need access to the program, they have access to the program. It can’t be dependent on an unstable funding source. You only get that consensus around need. Look at where gaps are and get coalitions together across many different political, philosophical, pedagogical views.”

2. Don't recreate the wheel. “Unless you are on the exceptionally bleeding edge of something (and if you are, great, just make sure you tell the rest of us what you did!), look at existing models,” Neiffer says. “Montana Digital Academy is part of the Virtual Learning Leadership Alliance which is a coalition of 20 state virtual schools across the United States. Instead of coming up with something from scratch, find something that's 50%, 70%, 80% of the way there and just adjust it for your locality and specific needs. Chances are someone is already doing this work elsewhere. If they aren’t far enough along to give you hints, they'll be a wonderful collaboration partner.”

3. Don't be afraid to ask for resources from others. “We don't spend enough time asking our colleagues down the street what they're doing,” Neiffer says. “Whenever you can take advantage of a room of people that agree or disagree with you about your approach, it's a real opportunity to push yourself and make your planning process that much richer.”

Looking To The Horizon In Big Sky

In an era of ever-tightening budgets — the sky is not the limit, even in Big Sky Country. Investment into innovation can be an intimidating mountain to climb.

“We are actively balancing costs, which are still significant in this space, with utility inside of a classroom,” Neiffer says. “I have no doubt that we can find lots of good, showy, fun, interesting, even pedagogically useful places for virtual reality, but it's always balanced against the cost of the hardware and the cost of maintaining those pieces.”

One pilot that Neiffer and his team is exploring is securing access to virtual dissections for online anatomy and physiology students. “There are anatomy and physiology classes available from two and four-year Montana colleges, but it can be very geography-based due to the human dissection lab requirement,” he says. “So how do we provide that access to online students?”

Stretching resources continues to be a challenge.

“We have four different departments in Montana Virtual Academy with a mix of public, private and school-based funding,” Neiffer says. “In particular, in our Business Learning Program and our Digital Learning Clearing House, we find a reasonable cost to share with schools. The legislature wants schools to have skin in the game so that they know that it's something they are investing in for access to opportunity.”

Embracing partnerships is key. For example, MTDA has access to STEM experts and research professors at the University of Montana who provide guidance on AI, virtual and augmented reality.

Neiffer believes that the lab itself — the professional learning — should be covered with a combination of state appropriation, federal grants and private foundations to help create a sustainable model to ensure access for the most rural schools when public funding might not reach that scalability down to the smallest of schools.

“With such great future-looking leadership in this space, we are now working with vendors to find the most affordable solutions for what is to come,” Neiffer says. “A previous superintendent of public instruction called Montana a frontier state. I think that that's an accurate way to describe what we do.”

Neiffer is enthusiastic about the future of education as well as the hard-working team around him.

“Find people who are interested in helping you and don't be afraid to fail,” he says. “Chances are not every new initiative will be successful so just use that as an opportunity to grow and become better. It’s a really critical part of being a design-thinking forward organization, but it's also the best way to approach teaching and learning. Institutions are learning as much as the students.”

Tools They Use

Neiffer discusses some of his go-to tech tools.

• TextExpander - “I can’t live without a text expansion app. My longtime favorite is TextExpander, which works on Windows, macOS, and ChromeOS. I use it for stock AI prompts, phrases I type all the time, such as, ‘Hello, my name is Jason Neiffer, and I am the Executive Director of Montana Digital Academy,’ and even bits of code.”
• NotebookLM - “I experiment with many fast-moving AI tools, but I keep coming back to Google NotebookLM as a dependable place to organize the large volume of information I collect for work and personal projects. That includes reports, journal articles, presentations, travel guides, restaurant recommendations, and videos about places I want to visit.”
• ChatGPT CustomGPTs and Gemini Gems - “One of the most useful things about today’s generative AI tools is the ability to create small, purpose-built helpers that work through information with you. I love building CustomGPTs and Gems to handle specific tasks, like creating alt text for images, rewriting assignment directions for clarity, brainstorming workshop materials, or helping organize drafts and ideas. They are not perfect, of course, but they can save a great deal of time and mental energy.”

Quakertown Community School District is a diverse suburban district of 5,000 students 40 miles north of Philadelphia.

“We find that many generations of families have gone through our district,” says Superintendent Matthew Friedman. “As a long-time professional in education, that’s always a good sign that people like the school system. When I arrived, I listened to all the internal and external stakeholders to learn the strengths, the pain points, where we needed to grow. What I really wanted to focus on was life beyond the walls of the schools.”

For Friedman, who was recently recognized with an Innovative Leader Award at the Northeast Pre-NYSCATE Summit in Verona, NY, there was one important question to answer: What are kids going to do when they graduate?

“We have a mix of white-collar and blue-collar families and a separate technical high school with about 1,000 kids that feed in from three different districts,” he says. “A lot of our kids go into trades. We support two-year paths, four-year paths, trade school, workforce, military — all the different options. But we really had no dedicated exposure to STEM education at that elementary level.”

To start, Friedman helped design and implement an elementary computational thinking and design thinking course for K through 5.

“It gave the students an opportunity to be hands-on in their learning, to understand the computational thinking process and have exposure to STEM education at the younger level,” he says. “I always use the analogy from a leadership position of building a house. You can build the biggest house in the world, but if you don't have a strong foundation that house is going to collapse."

Friedman saw a lot of schools try to implement things from the top down. He wanted to try to do things from the bottom up, starting conversations in kindergarten to set kids up for success in high school by having K-8 CTE exposure. To do that, he wanted to have career conversations with a common career language K-12 and to take a dialogic approach using the RIASEC taxonomy of career interests.

Far from a one-off concept, RIASEC is now used by many universities such as U of Hawaii, Purdue, FSU, and Michigan State to help students determine prospective majors that speak to their true talents, interest and abilities.

“If you put in your RIASEC results, it will show you what majors align with your letters and what courses you could potentially take,” Friedman says. “It takes a lot of the guessing out and really helps to frame it for students.”

The 6 RIASEC Types to Guide Students

Friedman explains the RIASEC taxonomy:

• Realistic (The Doers): These people are often good at mechanical or athletic jobs (e.g., mechanics, engineers, farmers).
• Investigative (The Thinkers): These people like to watch, learn, analyze and solve problems (e.g., scientists, researchers, data analysts).
• Artistic (The Creators): These people like to work in unstructured situations where they can use their creativity (e.g., artists, musicians, writers, designers).
• Social (The Helpers): These people like to work with other people, rather than things (e.g., teachers, nurses, counselors).
• Enterprising (The Persuaders): These people like to work with others and enjoy persuading and performing.(e.g., managers, salespeople, entrepreneurs).
• Conventional (The Organizers): These people are very detail oriented, organized, and like to work with data (e.g., accountants, clerks, administrative assistants).

Some schools use simple questionnaires to ask students to consider their strengths, dislikes, talents and interests — making it clear there are no wrong answers, as seen here.

Deeper Conversations and Deeper Culture

Friedman has seen a positive change not only in the classroom but the greater school culture.

“We were talking about Martin Luther King Jr's birthday coming up and instead of very low-level factual information, we can integrate career conversations such as, ‘What letters do you think Dr. King would be? What letters are you? Find two or three in the room to have a conversation. What are the similarities between you and Dr. King? What are the differences? Why do you think he would be these letters? Does that align with your strengths and your interests, could you do something similar to what Dr. King did one day?’ It takes the conversation to a whole other level,” Friedman says.

Friedman explains how a third-grade Veterans Day classroom conversation he overheard discussing RIASEC letters in regard to an Army Ranger visitor in the classroom might have affected a student’s career path.

“Students really have to understand all six letters in order to understand where they fit in the framework,” he says. “Their letters could change daily, weekly, yearly. The letters you have in kindergarten are probably not the letters you have in 7th or 12th grade. But if you continue to think about your strengths and your interests, teachers can flexibly group students in classrooms based off of their dominant letter.”

The success stories that are most satisfying to Friedman are those involving helping a student find their own right future path. For example, one strong student admitted he was considering dropping out of school because he didn’t see a fit with what was happening in the classroom. Now an engineering major at a top school, he shared that after being introduced to RIASEC and career conversations using a common language, he realized that his strengths and interests actually had a pathway beyond K-12.

From a leadership perspective, Friedman always wants growth and achievement from his students. A common language is changing the culture of the program.

“We’ve had the kids say, ‘I'm having conversations with people I never thought I would talk to in school,’” he says. “That’s so great. It shifts the paradigm.”

The use of RIASEC also helped in a recent career and jobs fair.

“We’ve created different types of pathways students can take,” Friedman says. “They can take courses and get externships and job shadows and internships throughout high school with local businesses. Integrating Riasec into their decision-making process was invaluable at a recent college and career fair in our high school. We had 96 colleges, universities, businesses, military and trades. Six weeks before the fair, our college and career counselor contacted all 96 attendees. ‘This is the Riasec framework. We want you to list your top 10 majors or job roles with appropriate letters.’"

When students arrived at the fair, rather than wandering aimlessly, they could instantly target the best fit and have productive conversations about their future.

“It’s just such a helpful tool, at any age,” Friedman says. “When we introduced this to parents, a number of adults came up to me afterward and said, ‘I might rethink where I am in my life and my career.’"

The Tools They Use

• Google Gemini
• Google Gems
• Notebook LM
• Streamable Learning
• ClickView

In the rapidly evolving landscape of K-12 education, the role of a Technology Director often fluctuates between maintaining infrastructure and shaping pedagogy. For Eric Coronado, Director of Technology for Suffern Central School District in Rockland County in New York, who was recently awarded the Tech & Learning’s Innovative Leader Award at the Tech & Learning Northeast Summit, the mission is clear. While his responsibilities cover everything from cybersecurity to student devices—"If it has a plug, that's me," he jokes—his core philosophy is rooted in a much softer skill set: supporting people.

Coronado’s path to educational leadership was non-traditional. Like many in the tech sector, he began his career climbing the corporate ladder. A short-term leadership experiment in a school district, however, turned into a long-term calling.

"Once I was in K-12, I realized how meaningful the work was, completely different from corporate,” he says. “When you help schools succeed, you're helping the next generation and it's incredibly rewarding."

Now leading a diverse district with a growing multilingual population, Coronado is leveraging strategic partnerships and cutting-edge tools to bridge the gap between complex technology and student success.

AI Integration: Guidelines Over Rigid Policy

One of the most pressing challenges in modern districts is the rise of AI. Rather than shying away from it, SCSD has leaned into AI, particularly to support their expanding community of English as a New Language (ENL) learners.

Coronado and his team were early adopters of SchoolAI and MagicSchool, identifying these as powerful allies in bridging communication gaps. However, the implementation strategy was just as important as the tools themselves. The district avoided creating hard-and-fast policies that would inevitably become obsolete within weeks. Instead, they established flexible guidelines focused on responsible use.

"Our goal was never to replace learning but to actually support it," Coronado says. He highlights SchoolAI specifically for its ability to create "translation agents." These agents allow for robust language support while maintaining strict educational guardrails. "Students could poke at it and try to break it, but it always stayed educationally focused," he says.

Building the Next Generation of Cyber Defenders

A standout among SCSD’s initiatives is the launch of a three-year Cybersecurity Academy at the high school. This program was born out of a partnership with the League of Innovative Schools and Digital Promise, a nonprofit focused on closing the digital learning gap.

Through a small cohort selected by Digital Promise, Suffern was able to implement a curriculum that emphasizes a "Play, Learn, Perform” learning process. Students aren't just reading textbooks; they are engaging in real-world problem-solving, such as simulating ethical hacking.

“I'm really proud of the cybersecurity academy” Coronado says. “It gives students hands-on exposure in cybersecurity and it gives them a clear career pathway."

The program is designed with a tangible finish line: by the third year, students are prepared to take the CompTIA Security+ cybersecurity certification.

Modernizing the Classroom Experience

Beyond specialized programs, Coronado is focused on the daily instructional environment. The district recently undertook a rollout of Promethean interactive boards. For Coronado, this wasn't just a hardware upgrade; it was a shift in instructional design.

"We wanted to change how the teachers engage with the students," he says. The goal was to move away from static displays to collaborative environments in which mirroring screens and touch interaction are the norm.

To support teachers without overwhelming them, the district utilized a "reverse training" model using Promethean’s self-paced PD website, allowing educators to master the tools at their leisure.

Operational Efficiency and Vendor Philosophy

Managing the backend of a district’s technology is a massive logistical feat, particularly regarding device management. Following the pandemic, the district faced thousands of Chromebooks and the inevitable breakage that comes with 1:1 initiatives.

To streamline this, Coronado implemented Incident IQ, which modernized their help desk, allowing for better tracking, reporting, and budgeting for repairs. This choice reflects Coronado’s strict criteria for vendor partners: interoperability.

"If I'm looking for a tool, I don't want it to be just for Google, just for Microsoft. I want it to be everything," he says. He values vendors that offer proactive customer service—partners who reach out to him rather than waiting for a ticket to be filed.

Leadership Based on Trust

Ultimately, Coronado attributes the success at Suffern Central School District not to the software or the hardware, but to the culture. His advice for aspiring education leaders is to stay curious and prioritize relationships over technical specs.

“Innovation in education is not about flashy tools,” he says. “It's about collaboration and keeping students in the right direction."

The Tools They Use

• SchoolAI
• MagicSchool
• Promethean interactive boards
• Incident IQ

Apply to attend an upcoming Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summits here.

Tech & Learning’s Leadership Summits offer a unique environment for district leaders. Beyond a standard conference, these summits are designed to build a national network of innovative school district leaders—a community you can turn to throughout the year for advice, strategy, and camaraderie.

The Philosophy: The Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room

We believe that collective intelligence drives innovation. That is why every Tech & Learning’s Leadership Summit agenda is bespoke, created based on information gathered directly from our attendees during registration.

We identify the topics that matter most to you and invite select attendees to facilitate valuable roundtable discussions. This format allows you to share successes, troubleshoot challenges, and develop lasting relationships that extend your professional learning network well beyond the event.

Why Attend? Hear from Your Peers

Here are key reasons to join us, in the words of past attendees:

• Elite Networking & Strategic Connections
  “As an IT professional in education, I cannot overstate the value of Tech & Learning's Regional Leadership Summit. This event offers an unparalleled opportunity to collaborate with peers and gain insights into the latest trends and best practices in educational technology." — Nicholas Fountas, Chief Technology Officer, Brigantine Public School District
• Executive-Level Professional Development
  “The Tech & Learning Summit provides the perfect balance of networking, meeting vendors, exploring new products, listening to fellow district ideas, and roundtable discussions. It is interactive, fast-paced, and the speakers never disappoint!” — Kristen Honaker, Technology Coordinator, Houston County Board of Education
• Actionable Strategies & Peer-Driven Solutions
  “The Tech & Learning Summit creates an experience that was clearly designed with practitioners in mind. Everything about the event supported implementation, not just inspiration.” — Matt Joseph, Assistant Superintendent, New Bedford Schools
• Personalized Partner Matching for District Needs
  "The Tech & Learning Leadership Summit highlighted some new technology partners and resources that could positively impact our community and students! What more could you ask for?” — Megan Hanna, Senior Director of Curriculum & Technology, Legacy Christian Academy

2026 Dates & Locations

Each summit is free to attend and focuses on the unique needs of that region to help you develop concrete action plans. Tech & Learning also covers a two-night hotel stay for qualified attendees.

Join us at one of the following 2026 locations:

• February 25, 2026 | NORTHWEST (Seattle) - Pre-NCCE: NEW LOCATION! Tech & Learning is proud to partner with NCCE for our first Northwest Leadership Summit pre-con. Speakers include retired superintendent, Marlon Styles, Washington State’s Elementary Principal of the Year Cathi Davis, and more sharing valuable advice for school district leaders. Find more information and the link to apply here.
• March 13, 2026 | Southeast (Atlanta): Back at the Loudermilk Conference Center, this popular Leadership Summit draws district leaders from GA, AL, FL, and TN. The program will include conversations on topics like AI and emerging tech, data privacy and security, professional development, rethinking learning spaces, and more. Find more information and the link to apply here.
• May 1, 2026: NEW ENGLAND (Boston): Taking place at the beautiful Connors Center outside Boston, school district leaders from the New England area gather to share and learn about the most important topics for school district leaders impacting the region. Find more information and the link to apply here.
• June 27, 2026: PRE-ISTE (Orlando): Tech & Learning is taking our annual pre-ISTE Leadership Summit to the ultimate hub of innovation: The Kennedy Space Center. Surrounded by history's greatest engineering feats, we will explore the next frontier of education—diving deep into science, AI, and the future of classroom technology. This exclusive event sells out every year and draws a national audience. Apply to attend soon to secure your spot here!
• September 18, 2026: TEXAS: They say everything is bigger in Texas, and the Texas Regional Summit is no exception. We are tackling the region’s most significant challenges head-on—from navigating new cell phone bans and AI governance to mastering data privacy and security. Find more information and the link to apply here.
• November 7, 2026: MIDWEST: Returning to the conveniently located NIU Naperville Conference Center, Tech & Learning’s Midwest Summit brings together district leaders from IL, IN, MI, and WI. Join us to share strategies and solutions through a series of intimate, expert-led group discussions. Find more information and the link to apply here.

“This was one of the most beneficial and interactive events I have attended in my 20-year career in education,” writes attendee Billy Runey, Superintendent of Schools, Dighton-Rehoboth Regional Schools. “I would highly recommend this summit to anyone.”

Qualified school district administrators can apply to attend an upcoming Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summits here.

Sample Agenda: What to Expect

Each Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit follows an agenda designed to maximize learning and colleague interaction.

DAY ONE:

• Evening: Welcome Dinner

DAY TWO:

• 8:30 AM: Registration & Breakfast
• 9:00 - 10:00 AM: Welcome & Keynote
  • Hosted by Edtech luminary Carl Hooker, bringing enthusiasm and passion to the day.
• 10:00 - 11:30 AM: Problem-Solving Breakouts
  • Topics include: Generative AI, sustaining tech post-ESSER, rethinking PD, data governance, and managing staffing shortages.
• 11:30 AM: Beyond the Hype: Building a Sustainable AI Governance & Implementation Strategy
• 12:00 PM: Lunch & Meet the Partners
• 1:00-2:00: Navigating the Fiscal Cliff: Strategies for Sustainability Post-ESSER
• 2:00 PM: Problem-Solving Breakouts
  • Topics include: Student wellness, cybersecurity, rethinking learning spaces, and teacher recruitment/retention.
• 3:30 PM: Reflections and Actions
  • Closing activity led by Carl Hooker to solidify takeaways and next steps.
• 4:00 PM: Innovative Leader Awards Ceremony

Call for Nominations: Innovative Leader Awards

As part of our Regional Live Summits, Tech & Learning recognizes exceptional district administrators who are reimagining education with our Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Awards. We are seeking nominations for leaders who have launched unique, forward-thinking programs or policies that have a demonstrable positive impact and are replicable in other districts.

Winner Benefits:

• Invitation to the Regional Summit (including a two-night hotel stay).
• Profile feature in an issue of Tech & Learning.
• Official Innovative Leader Award Seal for district websites and communications.

Read more about our recent winners here.

Nominate yourself or a colleague for the Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Awards here.

For many educators, the path to leadership is a calculated climb. For Jennifer Mazza, Director of STEM and Instructional Technology at Clarkstown Central School District, it was a series of fortunate accidents and "trial by fire" moments.

Mazza, a recent winner of Tech & Learning’s Innovative Leader Award, began her journey in 1999 in Michigan, where she intended to be a wildlife biologist. However, a chance encounter with a principal while applying to substitute teach led to a long-term position teaching biology, geometry, and civics. Decades later, a similar pivotal shift occurred. Mazza moved into administration during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and assumed her current role in September 2022; ChatGPT was released in November.

"It’s turned out to be mostly technology with a little bit of science," Mazza says of her role, noting that the release of generative AI "changed the whole nature of the position and everything that I was focused on."

Today, Mazza is leading a district of approximately 8,000 students through a technological evolution, focusing on student agency, community partnerships, and instructional integrity.

Scaling Innovation at Clarkstown

Clarkstown Central School District, located in Rockland County, New York, is a well-funded, suburban district comprising nine elementary schools, a large middle school, two high schools, and a therapeutic alternative school. With a small technology team consisting of herself and two facilitators, Mazza faces the challenge of implementing large-scale changes across a broad demographic.

Her strategy relies on small-group implementation and "The AI Roadshow." Tech facilitators visit elementary schools to meet with grade-level teams, grounding teachers in what AI tools are before they are introduced to students.

Mazza emphasizes that technology must serve instruction, not the other way around. "The goal of using the technology should be to take kids to places and opportunities and experiences that they couldn't have without that technology."

The AI Externship: A Reciprocal Model

Perhaps the most innovative initiative under Mazza’s leadership is the pilot AI Externship program. Recognizing that students often possess AI skills that surpass those of the average adult, Mazza saw an opportunity to change the traditional internship model.

"We really wanted to connect with our small business owners and our town government... and engage in a reciprocal relationship where instead of just sending a kid out to have an externship experience, we're actually giving them some agency to bring something to the table as well," Mazza says.

The program began with students earning AI certifications through Coursera. They were then placed in district departments and town government roles to create operations manuals and manage publicity using their new skills. The program is now expanding to include approximately 150 students across the county.

This initiative also connects to a broader career focus. One high school recently hosted a career fair organized by department chair Jess Flanigan, attracting professionals from American Express, the medical field, and finance to mentor students.

The Tech Stack: Tools and Partnerships

For district leaders curious about the specific tools powering Clarkstown’s innovation, Mazza offers a transparent look at their "tech stack." While the district has restricted ChatGPT, they actively encourage the use of Google’s Gemini and NotebookLM, particularly noting the latter's success in special education departments.

Video and content creation are also central to the district's strategy. "We train widely on Canva and WeVideo," Mazza notes. "We think it is really important to empower a student to share their voice in a world where technology is the platform for getting your voice out there."

Mazza also highlights the importance of strong vendor relationships for student safety. The district uses Brisk, an AI-powered content creation and feedback tool. Mazza praises Brisk for being responsive to safety concerns and connecting the district directly with product engineers.

"I can't monitor 17 different tools at the same time," Mazza says. "Building those vendor relationships is really important because this is new work and the one place that we can go wrong is related to student safety."

Leading Through "Natural Selection"

Mazza draws on her roots as a biology teacher when offering advice to other leaders hesitant to embrace AI. She views the current educational landscape through the lens of evolution.

"The environment has changed very significantly," she says. "What is going to work in one place may not work in another place. And so right now there's no excuse not to try because you can't really get it wrong. You can only provide more opportunities for kids."

By focusing on empowering new teachers through the district's "New Professionals Institute" and giving students a seat at the table through externships, Mazza is turning potential obstacles into opportunities.

"To see your teachers feel empowered and optimistic about their profession, it makes you feel good about doing the work," she says.

Key Takeaways for Aspiring Leaders

Mazza offers advice for aspiring edtech leaders.

• Embrace the "Accidental" Path: You don’t need a perfect roadmap to lead. Mazza’s career was defined by stepping up during "trial by fire" moments, from her first teaching job to navigating COVID-19 and the arrival of Generative AI.
• Prioritize Instruction Over Tech: Technology is a vehicle, not the destination. If a lesson works better without a screen, do it without the screen. Use tech only when it amplifies the experience or takes students somewhere new.
• Flip the Internship Model: Don’t just send students to learn from adults; acknowledge that students are often the experts in AI. Create "reciprocal relationships" in which students provide value to local businesses and government offices while gaining work experience.
• Vet Your Vendors: You cannot monitor every update on every platform. Build relationships with responsive partners who are willing to put engineers on the phone to discuss student safety.
• Start with Central Office: If you are hesitant to reach out to external companies, start your pilot programs within your own district office. Plenty of work needs to be done internally that can benefit from student tech expertise.

The Tools They Use

• Brisk
• Canva
• ChatGPT
• Coursera
• Gemini (Google)
• NotebookLM (Google)
• Prodigy
• WeVideo

From launching New York State’s first online school program to designing future-ready libraries and libraries and developing groundbreaking apps like the tether interactive whiteboard, Andrew Taylor has repeatedly set new standards for integrating technology into education.

“I'm privileged to be in a very progressive and innovative district that has some amazing programs,” says Taylor, Director of Technology & Innovation and Chief Information Officer for Chappaqua Central School District 66. “We've got a great STEM program that works with K-12 not only in coding and robotics, but also hydroponics with a greenhouse in our high school and an EV program where we're teaching about electric vehicles. They are creating two-wheelers and three-wheelers in the middle schools and they are creating an entire EV car in the high school. They're doing some amazing things.”

Taylor was recently recognized with an Innovative Leader Award during a recent Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit. He shares his independent work with a team of educators leading the development of EDmotionsAI, the world’s first Emotional Management System (EMS) for schools.

Inspiration Meets Need

Taylor credits being based in such an inspiring district for the motivation to really think outside the box and find new solutions in the education world. One of the most pressing needs led to the development of EDmotionsAI with a team of independent educators passionate about student wellbeing.

“I'm often surrounded by educators in both social and professional settings. The conversation often goes to the fact that we have a student mental health crisis,” he says. “I started talking to SEL experts about what we could do with technology to offer support, which is how EDmotions was born.”

Schools have a broad variety of data-driven ways to assess students academically. When considering social-emotional strengths, the bulk of data to draw on is merely behavioral.

“That's not really great data,” Taylor says. “It's not telling you whether students are struggling, it's just telling you that they're acting out. We dug into it and created this platform that is pretty unique and gaining a lot of attention right now.”

Taylor feels a data-driven EMS is a natural addition for schools.

“We have nothing that helps us manage or regulate or track these social emotional skills,” he says. “We believe that emotional regulation, resilience, and interpersonal effectiveness aren’t optional skills; they are essential for student success and lifelong well-being.”

It might seem counterintuitive to lean on AI as a human emotion and social skill helper, but Taylor disagrees.

“A study revealed that 5.4 million kids a week go to generative AI chat to get mental health support,” says Taylor. “Those systems aren't built to do that. We wanted to know, could we build a system that does that kind of support well? We're not a therapist, that's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to train kids on how to recognize their emotions and then find strategies to manage them.”

How The AI-Powered SEL Platform Works

The EDmotionsAI platform is unique in that it tracks 10 emotions, both positive and negative, in varying degrees. A student can feel a certain degree of an emotion, as well as multiple emotions at a time, for a more authentic expression of how they are feeling.

“We wanted to teach kids that you can have diametrically opposing feelings, you can be both happy and sad at the same time,” Taylor says. “It's the “name it to tame it” strategy. You name your emotions and then tame your emotions.”

Taylor’s team partnered with Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) experts Drs. Elizabeth Dexter-Mazza and James Mazza, among others, to ensure EDmotionsAI has conversations with students in a way that is helping them identify, recognize, and give strategies to deal with emotions.

The program offers a multi-prong response system, including concrete prompts for positive social interactions and a journaling component.

“It also offers a social component that gets kids off the computer, encouraging them to do acts of kindness — go open the door for five people today, invite a new person to your table for lunch, give someone a compliment,” says Taylor. “These are skills that younger kids sometimes feel uncomfortable doing, but when you do things for others, you're really doing something for yourself. You are building your own self-esteem, building your own internal compass.”

Taylor hopes using AI in strategic ways can help create a culture of belonging inside the school.

“If you are a teacher sitting in front of a class of 28 kids, who are the three kids you need to talk to today?” he says. “You might notice the student who is acting out, but you might not know another kid is sitting there silently struggling. Our system helps teachers by saying, ‘Here's three kids you might want to connect with today because something's happening in their life they might need some support with.’”

While Taylor called on his experience as a data privacy officer to meet or exceed every standard of data protection from outside entities, the platform is made to be an informational tool within the district with students being clearly informed their chats could be viewed.

“When we were testing, we wondered if that aspect would inhibit kids from using the system,” he says. “What we realized is, no, these kids want to be heard. They just don't know how to talk to you or start that conversation. No one in the school knew these things were happening to the students until they were given an opportunity to talk to this inanimate object. This chatbot revealed what was going on so that they could get support and the resources they needed.”

This insight can be lifesaving.

“Our system is built to monitor for triggers with a background algorithm that weighs the different emotions and alerts the school for support,” Taylor says. “One student seemed to just be a quiet kid. He was getting okay grades, he really wasn't acting out in any way or a problem on anybody's radar. But after doing some work with the program, he discovered that he really suffers from severe depression and actually had self-harm thoughts he was expressing in his writing.”

Once aware, educators were able to get the student proper support.

“Through simply chatting with a bot, he was able to say things he was never able to say to the people in his life,” Taylor says.

4 Benefits to An AI-Powered SEL Monitoring Program

1. Time-intensive SEL programs are hard to implement with fidelity. The best way to teach SEL is on demand when kids need it. Use microlearning opportunities — inject 10 minutes, three different times per day, instead of one whole period. This nets improved data and helps students better regulate their emotions throughout the day.
2. Academic performance is going to increase when kids feel better. SEL provides stability to help kids focus on learning. “If I'm not socially and emotionally ready to be in the classroom, I'm not going to be ready to learn or take in content,” says Taylor.
3. Improve school culture. When students feel a sense of belonging, autonomy, and that they are important and heard, their attendance is going to improve, which will improve performance.
4. Improve the teacher burnout rate in education. Teachers are leaving the profession early. During exit interviews with teachers, many say it's because the profession has changed. “They say, ‘It's not what I thought it was anymore. More of my time is spent managing emotional issues of the students in my classroom,’” Taylor says.

Creating An AI-Powered SEL Platform For Educators, By Educators

Educators felt so strongly about the need for a tool to help, they put their money where their mouths were.

”Our initial round of investment for the program raised around $600,000, and almost 90% of that was actually educators putting in money,” says Taylor. “The people in the field who felt this was a really needed product were putting in their savings, anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000. So I'm pretty proud of that. This is not just something that was created for education, it was created by educators.”

It was also not created by one bright mind. The project grew from kitchen table talks with his social-worker-turned educator wife and more than 40 educators to brainstorming with a bigger educator community on how to build something that could help students and educators at the same time. It also featured targeted use of budget funds with concrete backup for school board or community stakeholders. The full platform with all of the data components includes a data-rich backend that can help efficiently allocate resources.

“It allows you to look at how your school is comparing against different frameworks like CASEL or DBT,” Taylor says. “You can look at subgroup populations, so you can see different groups of students who might need more attention. Do the males need a specific program that is maybe different than the females in our school? Should I focus on our IEP students?”

Taylor is excited for the future of the platform, including the potential to add an audio or video component with additional social cues to the existing text-to-speech/speech-to-text accessibility feature.

“The next stage is culture and climate,” he says. “The data we have is ripe to be able to give you a picture of what the culture of your building is and how that culture changes over time. What does student to student interaction look like? What does teacher to student interaction look like through the eyes of the students and the union of the system?”

While the myriad of AI uses is hotly contested in education circles, offering creative solutions to meet SEL needs is always welcome.

“By embedding real-time emotional coaching, mindfulness prompts, and social-emotional learning into students’ daily experience, EDmotionsAI helps turn emotional growth from a ‘nice-to-have’ into a routine part of schooling,” Taylor says.

Tools They Use

Taylor discusses the tools he and his colleagues use to support EDmotionsAI:

• Classlink — "Our technology partner that helps streamline access and integration across educational tools, making sure EDmotionsAI works seamlessly within existing school systems."
• DBT in Schools — "The global leader adapting Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for K–12 education; together we embed evidence-based emotional regulation, mindfulness, and interpersonal skills into the school day.  
• Break the Hold — "A partner dedicated to helping break cycles of emotional distress, and supporting youth empowerment and mental-health awareness."
• Prompt Inversion — "Working with us to refine and tailor the prompts and AI-driven interactions so that each student’s experience feels personal, supportive, and growth-oriented."
• Lighthouse DIG — "Collaborating on social-emotional learning, data insights, and community outreach, helping us link emotional wellness with measurable student outcomes and school culture."

In the rapidly evolving landscape of educational technology, the conversation often centers on efficiency—how quickly we can generate a lesson plan, grade a paper, or analyze data. However, for Noor Shammas, an Instructional Technology Coordinator at Naperville Community Unit School District 203 in Illinois in her second year of leadership – and recent winner of the Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award – the focus must remain steadfastly on the "human" element of the equation.

Shammas, who describes her role as a synthesis of her "Big Four" passions—instructional technology, curriculum and instruction, professional learning, and coaching—believes that while AI offers incredible utility, its true power lies in its ability to deepen human connection rather than replace it.

Defining Human-Centered AI

The fear that AI might replace educators is a common narrative, but Shammas argues that a human-centered approach renders that fear obsolete. To her, the definition is clear.

"Human-centered AI in education is when we integrate AI and other technology into classrooms in ways that enhance strong instructional practices, student learning, and human relationships rather than replacing them," Shammas says.

She clarifies what this looks like in practice. It isn't simply typing a prompt, generating an output, and copying and pasting it to save time. While Shammas acknowledges that "time is our greatest commodity that's depleting faster than we can keep up with," she emphasizes that efficiency should be a means to an end, not the end itself. The goal is to use AI to handle tasks that free up the educator to focus on complex problem-solving and interpersonal connections.

"It means that you're using AI to increase your efficiency in one area so that you can solve a problem or accomplish a goal with colleagues and students in another area," she says. "It’s keeping humans in the loop. You're the one who knows what your students need first."

AI in Action: From Penguins to Multimodal Learning

Shammas offers concrete examples of how her district is leveraging AI to personalize instruction in ways that were previously incredibly time-consuming. She highlights a coach she works with who utilizes image generation to support a student with specific needs.

"I've worked with a coach who is creating social stories for a student who loves penguins, and the coach is creating images of penguins to teach the student her lagging skills in social stories. Truly personalizing learning for the student," Shammas says.

Beyond individualization, teachers in her district are using tools such as NotebookLM to create multimodal artifacts, allowing students to review and extend their learning through different mediums. Crucially, the students themselves are becoming part of the process. Shammas notes that students are "creating their own images now . . . and refining their prompts to navigate the bias and inaccuracies that AI can produce."

This inclusion of student voice is vital. Shammas’ district recently facilitated a learning advisory during which staff listened to students in grades 6 through 12. The feedback was illuminating.

"We actually had one student say, 'I wish my teachers knew that we are truly trying to use it to learn . . . not only to cheat. I really want to use it for learning,'" Shammas says.

The Power of Coalition

Navigating this new terrain is not a solo endeavor. Shammas is deeply involved with the LEAP Innovations Chicagoland Coalition for Human-Centered AI. This group brings together a diverse array of educational leaders—from public and private schools to charter and rural districts—to grapple with the hopes and fears surrounding AI. The coalition allows districts to share stories, problem-solve, and realize that despite their different demographics, they are facing the same challenges.

For districts looking to replicate this success without access to a local coalition, Shammas advises looking at existing partners in a new light. She suggests that Customer Success Managers (CSMs) from edtech vendors are often untapped resources.

"Don't underestimate your customer service managers. They're not just selling products. They're also willing to help connect you," she says, noting that these partners often see what is working in other districts and can facilitate connections. (See her Tools They Use).

Leadership with a Vulnerable Heart

Implementing such a complex vision requires steady, authentic leadership. Shammas admits that stepping out of the classroom into a coordinator role came with "impostor syndrome," a feeling familiar to many women in leadership. Her advice to aspiring leaders is to lean into vulnerability and self-reflection.

Citing Brené Brown as an influence, Shammas suggests leading with a heart that isn't "armored." "To me, that just means being vulnerable, like admitting when I don't know something or I can't do something," she says.

She also emphasizes the importance of surrounding oneself with critical thinkers rather than "yes people," and maintaining a growth mindset even when the job gets tough. She shares a personal strategy for those difficult days when she feels the urge to retreat.

"By shifting my mindset from 'I want to run away' to 'What can I learn from it?' it really helps me grow as a leader," she says. "You have to always be growing as a leader."

Intentionality First

Ultimately, whether discussing leadership struggles or the latest AI rollout, Shammas returns to a core philosophy: intentionality.

"Technology should serve the inquiry, not dictate it,” she says. “Like the discussions we have at Tech & Learning’s events, we need a return to intentional use—focusing on pedagogy first, rather than chasing the latest shiny, flashy tools."

The technology must serve the learning, not the other way around.

"We try to quickly move staff from learning about the capabilities of a tool to focus on what we want students to learn and how we want them to show they've learned it. And then we align the use of the tool to those driving questions," Shammas says. "It’s all about choosing your starting point."

By keeping the focus on relationships, student needs, and clear instructional goals, Shammas demonstrates that the future of AI in education isn't about the code—it's about the people.

Tools They Use

• Shammas' district is a Microsoft and Google district. “Our Google rep has been incredibly helpful,” she says.
• Magic School - "They’ve also been incredible,” she says.
• Seesaw - "Another great one as well, offering lots of professional learning.”
• Formative - "An awesome group of people who really help us to get into the tools.'

There are still plenty of misconceptions around scholastic esports: kids are just playing games, esports lead to unhealthy screen time and poor academic performance, video games are isolating and don't teach valuable skills.

The facts show different results. When scholastic esports are structured properly, many schools see student academic performance improving. Players learn valuable skills like teamwork and critical thinking, and a recent study shows that esports can also be a key component to student wellness and social cohesion.

According to John Phillips of Berrien RESA, an educational service agency serving over 24,000 students in Michigan, the true power of esports lies not in the technology, but in its ability to reconnect a generation of students who have faced unprecedented isolation.

Phillips recently was recently recognized with a Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award for his work in scaling Professional Learning programs across Michigan and his advocacy for esports and wellness.

The Great Generational Leveler

Phillips, whose agency encompasses a diverse mix of rural agricultural communities and corporate hubs near Benton Harbor, sees esports as a unique tool for equity. Unlike traditional athletics, which often rely on physical attributes or socioeconomic access to expensive equipment and travel leagues, esports opens the door for everyone.

"It is a great generational leveler," Phillips says. "Players of any socioeconomic status can participate. It doesn't matter if the student has high or low academic performance. None of that really matters in the esports space."

This inclusivity extends to students with physical disabilities as well. Thanks to adaptive controllers and accessibility features from game publishers, students who might never make the football team can finally experience the camaraderie of varsity sports.

"We're seeing all students get involved," says Phillips. "I think that is one of the great leveling components we've had from esports. It could be the varsity quarterback or it could be a student who sits in the back of the class and doesn't talk to anybody. They get to esports and all of a sudden that's their thing."

Busting the "Basement Dweller" Myth

Despite the inclusivity, administrators looking to start programs often face a significant hurdle: the stigma that gaming promotes sedentary, unhealthy lifestyles. Phillips is quick to point out that a well-run scholastic esports program actually teaches the opposite.

"Huge misconceptions include that these students don't care about their health. All they care about is the screen and all they care about is button smashing," Phillips says. "That couldn't be further from the truth."

Phillips emphasizes that to be a competitor, students must master skills that include healthy nutrition, physical activity, and balance. He jokingly refers to the need for students to "touch grass"—a gamer term for disconnecting and going outside.

"What they don't have mastered is: 'How do I take care of myself?'" Phillips says. "How do I take care of my physical self so that I don't end up with carpal tunnel or burning out or stress injuries? How do I take care of my mental wellbeing?"

By formalizing gaming into a school program, educators can provide the structure necessary to teach these wellness habits, addressing "rage quitting" and emotional regulation in a way that unsupervised home gaming cannot.

The Research: Safety and Social Cohesion

The push for wellness in esports isn't just anecdotal; it is backed by significant research. Phillips highlights a partnership involving NASEF (Network of Academic Scholastic Esports Federations) and the Department of Homeland Security focused on reducing violence and radicalization in online spaces. The goal was to see if structured esports programs could foster social cohesion and reduce isolation.

Using the eight-step program developed by NASEF, the initiative sought to help students feel a stronger connection to their school community.

"The idea was: could putting those steps in place actually help students feel more social cohesion to the school? Could it help them feel more part of a team?" Phillips says.

By creating a supervised environment, schools can turn a potentially isolating activity into a community-building engine.

Building a Durable Program

For districts inspired to launch their own programs, Phillips offers a crucial piece of advice regarding sustainability: "It cannot be a single person's passion project."

While a passionate teacher is necessary to kickstart the initiative, long-term success requires a coalition of stakeholders, including administration, parents, and students. "If you have multiple stakeholders involved, that's going to allow for that durability factor for this to continue," he advises.

This community approach also helps in overcoming parental hesitation. Phillips suggests that the best way to win over skeptics is to invite them to get involved.

"They have to see it to believe it," he says, noting that the demographic of parents is shifting toward those who grew up with video games, making the conversation easier than it was a decade ago.

Start with What You Have

Finally, Phillips addresses the financial barrier. Many districts assume esports requires a lab full of $3,000 gaming PCs. However, the barrier to entry has lowered significantly.

"You already have the infrastructure to start an esports program," Phillips asserts. "With the advent of cloud gaming and Minecraft being on the Chromebook, that makes esports pretty universally available in schools."

He also points to low-cost consoles like the Nintendo Switch as a viable entry point for games like Super Smash Bros. and Mario Kart. "It isn't as though you need to invest thousands and thousands of dollars. Don't let yourself get bogged down in what you don't have," he encourages. "Focus on what you do have and show that it can be successful."

Ultimately, Phillips believes that for esports to remain a fixture in education, it must be about more than just entertainment. It must serve the whole child.

"I'm grateful to Tech & Learning for the opportunity to share the wellness side of esports,” Phillips says. “While gaming is cool, gaming on its own is not a durable function in schools. There has to be more to the calling. Whether it's career pathways or wellness connections, those elements add the validity needed to integrate esports into both academic and social programming."

“Teachers only have so much bandwidth and capacity with new technology,” says Andy Fekete, the Director for Innovation and Technology for Community Consolidated School District 93 in Bloomingdale and Carol Stream, Illinois. “So we want to make sure that as we're introducing new things, we’re doing it as a ‘value add’ and not as a one more thing to manage.”

In those discussions with teachers, Fekete focuses on how new technology can increase their efficiency and improve student learning outcomes, and tries to find a match for their need.

“I try to be a tinkerer, an explorer, and why I find so much value in conference or networking opportunities,” says Fekete. “I fill up notebooks with things that I see so that I'm prepared when a teacher reaches out and says, ‘I just wish that there was a better way to do blank.’ And I'll say, ‘Actually I do have an idea for you!’ Or, ‘Hey, I have a strong PLN that I can reach out to.’”

In his role for CCSD 93, which serves 3,300 students across nine buildings, Fekete oversees technology services, including maintenance and data privacy, and works closely with the curriculum team on effective technology use to support instruction and student learning outcomes.

For this and his other efforts, Fekete was recognized with a Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award at Tech & Learning's Midwest Regional Summit in Chicago.

The Right Tools For The Job

In his work across the district, Fekete stresses the necessity of being intentional about connecting tool investments to meaningful teaching and learning.

“There's a lot of great tools out there,” Fekete says. “But everything is an investment, even if it's a free tool, right? So we focus on how do we ensure that what we're doing really is having an impact on teaching and learning.”

Fekete says the key for him is to find the right tools and resources to support student potential.

“We only have our students for so many minutes during the day and for so many days out of the year,” he says. “So one of the things that I'm really proud of is that the stuff that we have access to is really high-quality so that we can really feel confident about what students have, and that they can use it well to help achieve their goals.”

Looking Forward With CoSN

Fekete has been instrumental in supporting work with CoSN, contributing to the recent Driving K12 Innovation report, which is a guide for education leaders to help navigate an ever-changing edtech landscape. It provides a framework grounded in real-world challenges, transformative trends, and innovative solutions, and highlights three key areas of focus:

1. Hurdles - These are roadblocks that force schools to slow down, prepare themselves, and make a leap. The top ones include attracting and retaining educators and IT professionals, technology evolution, and digital equity.

2. Accelerators - These are real-world megatrends or catalysts that help motivate and increase the speed of innovation. Included are involving learner agency, building the human capacity of leaders, and fostering student voice.

“People are passionate about building the human capacity of our learners and changing those attitudes towards demonstrated learning,” Fekete says. “So what does that look like? Does it have to be an end-of-the-unit summative assessment, or can it be a video project? Can it be a podcast? What does it look like and how is this different from the way that things have been?”

3. Tech Enablers - These are “the tools that grease the wheels” to overcome hurdles and leverage accelerators. Generative AI, analytics, and broadband connectivity fall in here.

Along that line, Fekete is part of a CoSN AI task force developing guidelines for the evaluation, adoption, and ethical use of AI.

“AI is one of the first disruptors in the technology space that is happening to education where we haven't been able to have a master switch that we've turned on and off,” Fekete says. “As long as we've had technology in schools, the schools have dictated, right? ‘When are we going to buy typewriters, right?’ ‘When are we going to bring in computers, right?’ ‘When are we going to connect to the internet?’ etc. For the most part the schools have dictated the pace of those changes.”

Part of the effort to effectively implement AI involves helping to establish a baseline awareness for all educators

“Some people are latching on to it more than others, right? And so we wanted to create a floor for everyone to say, ‘Here's a starting point where everyone can be,’” Fekete says. “And then you can build upon that. But we feel like some people are in the sky and some people are in the basement.”

Fekete says he and CoSN hope to have those guidelines released later this year.

Fekete is also involved in CoSN reports concerning the future of work and ethical innovation, specifically emphasizing inclusivity, ethics, and responsible digital citizenship.

Ultimately, he notes that the challenge with edtech continues to be understanding that it is constantly changing and evolving.

“Everything is moving so fast, so it's really about trying to be progressive and supportive but also thoughtful in our approach,” Fekete says. “I’m constantly thinking about how do we embrace new technologies? How do we ensure that our teachers have the skill set and the mindset to look at the intersection of technology and learning? What does that look like in the year 2025, right? And what does that look like beyond 2025?”

Tools They Use

• Google Calendar and Fantastical - "They keep my day on track and prevent surprises," says Fekete.
• Gmail - "#InboxLife #InboxZero."
• Google Drive (Docs, Slides, Sheets) - "Shared work happens here."
• MacBook and iPad - "My core workspace."
• Moleskine notebook and Retro 51 Pens - "For quick notes when typing feels slower."
• ChatGPT and Google Gemini - "For drafting, planning, and thinking through ideas."
• Adobe Express and Canva - "For clean graphics and quick layouts."
• Spotify - "Music helps me focus."
• Apple Reminders - "Keeps tasks visible so nothing slips."
• A giant water bottle - "Hydration keeps the brain working!"

Alex Mayszak, Director of Digital Learning & Innovation at East Moline School District #37 in Illinois, not only outfitted all elementary and middle schools in the district with 3D printers and drones, he designed and launched the Exploration Station, a district-wide innovation lab offering immersive, project-based opportunities.

“We are really focused on giving our kids opportunities that are relevant and meaningful,” he says. “We want to make learning transferable between what they're doing now with next steps academically, but also down-the-road opportunities for students to dig into low-through-high tech experiences to test out their own, I want to be a ___ goal.”

For this and other efforts, Mayszak was recently recognized with an Innovative Leader Award at the Midwest Regional Leadership Summit in Naperville.

Mayszak shares his take on the value of collaboration, particularly when it comes to taking on the challenges of AI in education. Mayszak also shares considerations when creating an innovation lab in your district.

Exploration Station

Tying lessons and experiences into what they are learning in the classroom and beyond is key when undertaking a project such as an exploration station.

“We have students that have worked on coding and flying drones,” Mayszak says. “A cool component is opening their worldview, you can do this as a profession. You can use these skills in real estate, in the military, in fire control, in emergency management, in the agriculture realm. A lot of light bulbs go on and now the kids are intrigued about moving forward. Interdisciplinary cross-functional learning is really important.”

Mayszak doesn’t want the program to feel like a novelty treat, but an ongoing resource toward better learning.

“We don't want this to be a one-time, ‘Let's go do this cool thing because we earned it’ concept. We want this to be a normal experience,” he says. “We learn in the classroom, we move to the Exploration Station to do things, then the learning comes back to the classroom. It’s an ebb and flow of learning back and forth.”

The goal is for students and teachers to plan together in the classroom before coming down to the Exploration Station in order to give students opportunities to have some autonomy to create things, solve problems and really dig into things that makes learning more hands-on and engaging.

“We have students creating board games, mapped out based off of a book they were reading. They design and then 3D print the board and pieces and trade with their peers to play and critique the games,” Mayszak says. “We've got students creating podcasts. They are writing scripts, editing, publishing these creations. When you see a student sit down behind the microphone and the persona comes out — that confidence is really neat.”

Mayszak played an integral role in the development of new middle school electives such as Podcasting & Multimedia Editing, and ensured the longevity of his tech initiatives through robust professional learning opportunities.

“We were able to use some of the funding we had through carryover funds, but I've been fortunate working closely with our Associate Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction and the Superintendent,” he says. “They have been really supportive in this vision and seeing it forward to make sure we have means to start this, further it, and continue it.”

Mayszak says part of the future-proof plan is to always keep interdisciplinary goals in mind. For example, “Does this fit in ELA time, is it a science or math concept, all three?” “How can we tie in technology and STEM/STEAM concepts?” The goal is to show learning doesn't have to be in silos.

4 Things To Consider When Building an Exploration Station in Your District

1. Physical Space — “What can your district offer as a space to center your program?” asks Mayszak. “We have the ability during the day to use our internal busing system to bring kids here and to move some of this tech back into their buildings as well.”

2. Funding — “How are we going to build out some of these elements to offer the widest array of opportunity?” says Mayszak, who adds the district has laser cutters, 3D printers, screen printing, a podcast studio, and a multimedia lab.

3. Professional Learning — It’s critical to make sure the adults know what's at their disposal and that they're comfortable with it. “We brought teachers down to do some of the projects we would do with kids to get them engaged,” Mayszak says. “Then they understood, ‘This is an option I never would have thought about before, but now I know how to do this myself.’”

4. Concrete Structure, Routines, and Procedures — It can be really exciting for kids to go to other places, and demonstrates that learning doesn't just have to happen in the classroom. “Sometimes it can get a little extra wiggly, especially with younger students,” Mayszak says. “Make sure you have all those parameters built into the program where this is fun and this is exciting, but we're also going to get down to business in an academic way.”

AI Unites Summit — A Collaboration Station

Much like his dedication to creating a space dedicated to exploration of future goals for students, Mayszak wanted to create a place to bring stakeholders together to take on the challenge of AI in education.

“Life is always dynamic, but it feels like in the age of artificial intelligence, it's more dynamic than ever,” he says. “You start thinking, ‘What are schools for? What skills are we building out here?’ That's a really big opportunity for us to grab the reins and work together to make sure that teacher voice, educator voice, administrator voice, parent voice, student voice — all those perspectives are shaping the way we're doing things.”

Mayszak focused on the larger educational community by partnering with the Learning Technology Center of Illinois, his regional office of education, and vendor partners to create and host the regional AI Unites Summit 2025. The free event drew more than 100 attendees from 12 school districts, two colleges, pre-teachers, and community partners. It featured a keynote speaker, breakfast, breakout sessions, and a student panel.

“The ultimate goal was to create a wonderful one-day professional learning opportunity,” he says. “We know that budgets are shrinking in school districts and not everybody has an opportunity to get to a conference. This was free and in July when no one needed coverage for their classroom.”

The event had multiple breakout sessions — such as how to support English learners and students with disabilities, and being more effective with AI prompting and image generation — as well as vendor partners talking about how AI is embedded in their tool.

“The most important thing for me was our student panel with middle and high school kids,” Mayszak said. “All day long we talked and listened to adult voices. Student voices need to be right at the center of all this conversation as well. Our students are going to be the next wave, and it's really cool to help shape the future of the workforce.”

The student panel offered eye-opening insight about how AI “freaks kids out,” how students are already using it, how their friends are misusing it, and the passionate viewpoints on how it impacts the environment and academic integrity.

Those who attended received CPDU credits. Access was a huge priority for Mayszak, who didn’t want cost to be an obstacle to attend.

“If we create a barrier in this local summit with it being right down the road, then what would ever be an easy route for teachers to participate,” he says. “I worked with local grocery stores to help fund the breakfast items. We hosted at our administration building’s professional development spaces to avoid rental fees. I leaned into my professional network and the Learning Technology Center for speakers and to get expert voices around the table. I even put together some raffles with the help of generous vendor partners. If we're having really good conversations and learning, that to me is more important than it being really flashy.”

The event was such a success attendees have already asked for details about next year’s program.

“I'm really proud of this because I think it's a scalable model,” Mayszak says. “I think other people can do this no matter where they are located. We’re stronger when we operate together and when you pool knowledge, when you pool resources, all of those things can really benefit students.”

The Tools They Use

• Glowforge
• Cricut cutting machine & heat press
• Robolink CoDrones
• Chompshop ChompSaws
• 3D Printers (Flashforge, Elegoo, Lulzbot)
• Bee-Bots & Blue-Bots
• Lego Spike Prime Sets
• Ozobot Evo
• Sphero Bolt+
• LittleBits Invention Kits
• Keva Planks
• Podcast Studio (Rode Rodecaster Pro II) with microphones, headphones, seating
• Multimedia Lab (Green screen, GoPro Cameras, tripods)
• Science Interactive StarLab

When it comes to technology, sometimes less is more.

“You don't have to be weighed down with so many tools around your belt,” says Cori Coburn, Educational Technology Support Manager for Austin Community College District in Texas. “I say you need just a ‘FEW’–frequently executed well-focused–tools to help you to be productive for your teaching and learning. You don't have to be a jack-of-all-trades. You need to be focused, not just have a breadth of different tools, but a depth in understanding those tools.”

Coburn encourages edtech users across her district–and beyond–to deeply learn chosen tools, participate in multiple trainings, and remain flexible as technology evolves. This approach has helped her serve Austin Community College's extensive network of 11 teaching and learning centers, which serve as physical spaces for staff and faculty technology support, as well as offer equipment checkout, software application training, and guidance on integrating technology for teaching and learning.

For this ongoing work, Coburn, who is also the current president-elect of TCEA, was recently recognized with the Innovative Educational Technology Support Manager Award at the Tech & Learning Regional Summit in Austin, part of the Innovative Leader Awards.

Coburn discusses how she handles the importance of team diversity and collaboration, and the necessity of K-12 and higher education partnerships.

Diversity Drives Success

“I think when people talk about technology and education, sometimes we pass over the human connection,” says Coburn, who oversees a team of more than two dozen direct reports. “That is the part that will not be replaced by AI. The sympathy, the empathy, the being able to communicate clearly and understand what's being given to us. Being able to be flexible in times when that is called for, and encouraging of others. Just because this is not your background doesn't mean that you do not belong.”

With a large team spread out, managing it all presents challenges on multiple fronts.

“My biggest challenge is that I've never been able to get my entire team at the same place at the same time because when we're working, we are continually providing support for the district,” says Coburn. “I think that kind of takes away from their ability to be a more cohesive team because some of them have never met face to face.”

Even if she can’t bring her team together physically, Coburn relies on their diversity to handle their responsibilities.

“Diversity seems to be a bad word depending on who's having the discussion but it has made my team extraordinarily strong,” says Coburn, who adds personnel ranges from recent college graduates to retirees returning to the workforce. “Everybody doesn't have to be knowledgeable in the same thing, but you do need to know who has more expertise in that thing to help you out. And because we are so diverse, we can serve a larger audience not just with our communication and language skills but with our experience and being able to make a connection.”

Partnering With K-12

Coburn says one of the best aspects of a partnership between K-12 and higher ed is that it allows educators on both sides to share ideas and drive innovation. In addition, it also provides valuable experiences for students.

“If you have the opportunity to collaborate with higher ed and you're in K-12, do it because not every student will graduate with a degree, but a lot of students who come out of K-12 will have some exposure to vocational or higher education who have partnerships with local industry, as well as different vocations and jobs,” she says.

To that, Austin Community College District has a Make It Center, which Coburn describes as “a maker space meets technology and vocational spaces.” It offers K-12 students access to technologies such as 3D printers and drones, and supports how those are used in real-world, local industries, such as manufacturing and health care.

“Just to get that hands-on experience with the technology that's being used in local industries without having to be enrolled in the class or any special program, I think benefits the local school districts,” says Coburn.

Bringing Everyone To The Table

When it comes to purchasing a digital solution for an entire district, Coburn says the long-term success is often decided before it even arrives on campus.

“The teachers who would be using a tool or software every day, they first hear about it and they say, ‘Oh, we got this new thing. And if I didn't have a say in it, I may not want to contribute to its use. I may not find its value. I may not see how it can help me or my co-workers.’ And it's just no buy in,” she says.

To get that early buy in, Coburn recommends bringing as many stakeholders as possible to the table during purchasing processes. “Yes, administrators are very important,” she says. “But the teachers, the aids, the parents, the librarians, other stakeholders, all need to have a say in that technology, how that technology is used and what kind of financial investment that technology is to the school district. Sometimes this bright shiny thing that looks good and now is at a reasonable price because it's almost obsolete technology.”

Ultimately, Coburn encourages everyone to “stay focused because everything we do is for the students, and those who can't keep up will get left behind and advantage will go to those who don't have the same challenges.”

Tools They Use

Coburn shares her FEW favorite tools:

• Scite.ai: “AI-powered research tool that elevates how I locate, evaluate, and cite academic sources. I use it to verify the strength of claims in research, find credible evidence to support instructional content, and stay current on trends in pedagogy and educational technology. It saves time and improves academic rigor in course design and professional development sessions.”
• Canva: “My go-to for designing engaging, accessible learning visuals, flyers, and multimedia content. Whether I’m creating workshop materials, tutorials, or graphics for social media, Canva’s intuitive interface and rich library help me quickly produce professional designs that enhance communication and visual learning without needing advanced design skills. It provides a wide range of visually engaging design tools while making it simple to incorporate accessibility best practices into all my projects.”
• Chat GPT: “My go-to OG generative AI tool. It helps me brainstorm ideas, draft communications, create training scripts, and answer technical or instructional questions on the fly. It boosts my productivity, supports team collaboration, and allows me to scaffold AI literacy in my department. I also use it to explore how faculty can use it to support student learning and help staff build ethical AI integration practices.”
• Asana: “The project management tool that keeps my team aligned across campuses, departments, tasks, and timelines. I use it to manage portfolios, assign tasks, track progress, and streamline operations for multi-campus support. Asana’s transparency and organization features make it easier to prioritize requests, meet deadlines, and coordinate our efforts with instructional designers and other district departments.”
• All things Adobe Creative Cloud (fave apps are Premiere Pro and Firefly): “Adobe tools empower me to create rich, multimedia instructional content. I use Premiere Pro for producing high-quality video tutorials and faculty training modules, and Firefly for generating creative assets quickly using AI. These tools support faculty and staff who want to create their own learning media, giving our artifacts for teaching and learning a polished, professional edge.”

Texas City ISD’s E-Rate Fiber Project involved designing and planning the installation of district-owned fiber internet to six campuses from the former La Marque ISD that TCISD annexed in 2016. Instead of leasing fiber-optic connections from external providers, the district will now own and manage the entirety of its own fiber infrastructure.

“We were buying leased fiber from Comcast which gets really expensive,” says Gina Covington, CTO at TCISD. “We owned our own fiber originally so we knew we had the ability. Besides the price tag, not owning our own fiber in those campuses meant we were at their mercy regarding when they wanted to take it down to do maintenance.”

On a normal day, this might seem a matter of a small nuisance to plan around, but the district found out just how disruptive not having control of your access could be.

”We were just starting our official state testing and everything went dark,” Covington says. “We scrambled, ‘What is going on?’ They said, ‘Oh, we planned some maintenance and forgot to let you know. Don’t worry, it will be fixed in a couple of hours.’ We told them, ‘You can’t just do this—we are in state testing!’ They restarted it a few hours later, but by that time, it was too late and we had to cancel testing for the day. That meant having to contact the state and making arrangements for another test time, which was no small thing.”

For the fiber installation project and other efforts, Covington was recently recognized with the Innovative CTO Award at the Tech & Learning Regional Summit in Austin, part of the Innovative Leader Awards.

She shares how utilizing the eRate program allowed her district to take back ownership of its lifeline to connectivity for better reliability and cost savings.

Adding Fiber to The Digital Diet

TCISD’s adopted lease-lit fiber campuses had already been disrupted at times due to unforeseen issues. In one case, a tree being cut in Dallas five hours away along the line shut down the entire area past the incident location.

“We had been trying to figure out a way to get this done,” Covington says. “We also had our original TCISD-owned fiber we wanted moved from overhead to underground, which is an expensive switch. We decided, let's go for an E-Rate project.”

Owning the fiber, controlling the maintenance timing, and being in control of issues that might arise to be able to efficiently address them outside of school hours was more than a matter of convenience, it was a matter of security.

“When we lost connectivity in the past due to outside forces, we suddenly had nothing,” Covington says. “It wasn’t just that we couldn’t go online for classwork, we were dead in the water. Our phones are IP phones. Our HVAC system, our cameras, our phone system, not only internally but for parents needing to get in touch with campus or their children, our badge access points—everything we have runs off our internet.”

An outside vendor’s whim of when to shut down for maintenance wasn’t the only challenge that made the project necessary. TCISD is located on the coastline, with some schools a mere 100 yards from the sea. Having overhead lines moved underground was critical to protect the fiber from hurricane winds, storms, and other environmental factors with potential damage along the Texas Coast.

“We are a heavy tech district,” says Covington. “Every student has a laptop, a Windows device. We have lots of access control, cameras, we have e-sports—you name it, we’ve got it. We are heavy on bandwidth and we need to make sure we have fast speed for everyone from students and teachers to our law enforcement and emergency management departments.”

E-Rate to the Rescue

The FCC's E-Rate program aims to make telecommunications and information services more affordable for eligible schools and libraries with funding from the Universal Service Fund.

“We applied for it and got approved,” says Covington. “Owning the fiber for the six campuses as well as burying our overhead fibers was a $3 million dollar project. We paid about the equivalent of one year of the Comcast fiber rent and USAC through E-Rate covered the rest.”

The E-Rate program provides discounts from 20 to 90 percent, based on determinations of poverty level, rural status, and library designation. The funds are geared specifically toward telecommunications, Internet access, and internal connections.

“Owning the fiber infrastructure will not only improve our access, but eliminate the need for budget allocations for leasing fiber, resulting in long-term cost savings for the district,” Covington says.

The massive endeavor involved collaboration between the district and local government, as well as the Texas DoT and railroad commission, as installation requires digging and affects many entities. Overall, the E-Rate Fiber Project was the perfect strategic initiative aimed at enhancing the district's technological capabilities and ensuring a stable and efficient digital environment for all campuses.

“Owning our own fiber means for consistency, we are always up, always on,” Covington says. “In terms of bandwidth and speed, those campuses we took over didn't have quite the same speed that we had, so this provided some equity to bring them up to the same speed with the ability to expand.”

Reliability = Responsibility

TCISD’s future-minded STEM Experience was designed to support the district's CTE pipeline by integrating coding and STEM activities early to prepare students for advanced technical and vocational training programs. The goal is to have every student learn to code by grade six.

“We start in Pre-K, teaching them how to program with color,” says Covington. “Purple means right, blue means left. They have little cars they can program by color. Then we move up to block coding, and on and on. Our area has a lot of petroleum refineries who are now looking for kids that can code because their machines are running off of coding. We're trying to prepare students to move into those fields.”

The STEM Experience includes robotics, makerspace, coding, and engineering design activities paving the way to future success. Schools have interactive walls and floors, and augmented VR tech in every campus. The district’s buses are equipped with WiFi so athletes can stay connected for studies on long rides to games. When hurricanes and storms hit, they drive those WiFi-enabled buses into neighborhoods without power or internet so students can stay on track.

With so many stakeholders relying on the ability to stay connected, finding a solution through the E-Rate Fiber Program was key for this Texas district to weather any storm.

“This will last for decades, that's the beauty of fiber,” says Covington. “We've set the next generation up for success. None of this would have been possible without my amazing team. These guys work so hard, You just can’t accomplish something of this level without such a cohesive group. We have a common vision. We always want to create a path for our students. That’s our job.”

3 Tips for Districts Considering Infrastructure Improvements

1. Plan far in advance. The partner you choose to do this is going to have to file all kinds of permitting documents with the state, Railroad Commission, DOT, etc. Don't expect it to happen within 12 months.
2. Use the E-Rate program. Other grant programs might work well in your state or region, but whichever way you go, just don't fund it all yourself. The money is out there!
3. Plan it to the granular level. Invite all the stakeholders to the table and really think it through. “It took us about a year of talking about it and mapping it out,” says Covington. “‘What bandwidth do we need? Do we need single mode? Do we need multi-mode? What speed are we looking for? How is this going to impact us?’”

Tools They Use

• Classlink
• Canvas
• MagicSchool
• ParentSquare
• Promethean Interactive Displays
• Sphero robots
• Aruba Central
• Lansweeper
• Lanschool
• Linewize
• Microsoft Intune

Aspiring to a leadership role in education can feel daunting, but it's a journey fueled by passion, purpose, and a willingness to step outside your comfort zone.

Anna Fitzsimmons, Coordinator of Digital Learning at Belton ISD in Texas, and recent winner of Tech & Learning’s Innovative Leader Award, shares her advice for educators considering a move into a school district leadership position.

Fitzsimmons began her journey as an elementary school teacher and, with the help of allies in the district who championed her talent, found the courage to pursue a leadership role.

Embrace the "Renaissance"

One of the most important takeaways from successful leaders is the ability to see challenges as opportunities for growth.

“A pivotal turning point for my career in this role was during COVID,” says Fitzsimmons. “A lot of people felt like drowning during COVID, but I felt like it was my renaissance. I taught virtual classes in the morning and in-person classes in the afternoon. I realized that I had to shift how I taught the virtual class because you had to engage kids in a very different way. I brought some of those tidbits into my in-person class in the afternoon and I started realizing how well personalized and blended learning worked for all kids. This put me on a path to learn more about implementing personalized learning and rejuvenated me as a teacher.”

Fitzsimmons went on to get her masters at Texas Tech in personalized and blended learning, which was an important first step toward a leadership path and personal mission and vision.

Join the Conversation

Leaders aren't made in isolation. They emerge from the collective work of their community. Fitzsimmons advises: “Get involved. Volunteer for committees, join professional learning communities, and actively participate in district-wide initiatives. This not only gives you a voice but also allows you to connect with other dedicated educators and administrators.”

Presenting, while it can feel scary, is also a powerful way to share your expertise and learn from others. As Fitzsimmons notes, "the truth is there's always somebody that will resonate from what you were saying."

By presenting, you not only learn what's working and what isn't, but you also expand your network and showcase your skills to those who might be looking for future leaders. She also emphasizes the importance of joining "anything and everything whether you're getting paid or not" because it helps you realize you're not alone and exposes you to different ways of solving problems.

Find Your People and Your Purpose

Fitzsimmons stressed that the people you surround yourself with are crucial.

“Seek out mentors and colleagues who inspire you, challenge you, and support you on your professional journey,” she advises. “These mentors don't have to be in your field. What's most important is that they advocate for you and push you to grow.”

Equally important is staying grounded in your "why." The stress of “imposter syndrome”—the feeling that you're not good enough or don't deserve your position—is a common experience, even for the most successful leaders. When you feel this doubt, remember your purpose. For Fitzsimmons, "when I put myself out there, that's actually where I get the most rewarded because that's when people do reach out. At one recent presentation, for example, a teacher came up to me and said, 'Wow, what you said to me impacted my whole day.' When I have doubts, this kind of feedback is a reminder that people believe in me.”

By focusing on your passion—whether it's celebrating what your students are achieving or helping colleagues with new technology—you shift the focus away from your own fears and onto the collective good. This helps you move past the self-doubt and into a space of purpose-driven leadership.

Paying it Forward

Fitzsimmons has embraced her new role as Coordinator of Digital Learning by creating engaging professional development programs to support the teachers in her district. She highlights several successful programs that have created a "fun momentum" within her district, proving that investing in teachers’ growth directly benefits students and makes the entire educational ecosystem stronger.

• Tech Tuesdays: This initiative is a series of short, fun videos showcasing how technology partners are used within the district. It’s an easy way to share what’s working and help teachers feel confident using new tools. The program also highlights effective partnerships. As Fitzsimmons explains, it’s about "showing how these partnerships work and also what we're doing with the tech products in the district."
• Certifications: The district offers various certification programs, including Google certifications, which are accessible through a self-paced online format or an in-person summer session. Fitzsimmons believes these certifications are empowering because it provides teachers with valuable, practical skills that can be immediately applied in the classroom. The program has grown significantly, starting with just five participants and expanding to more than 80 in a recent summer session.
• Blended Learning Certifications: This intensive 30-hour program has been a huge success. The district celebrates teachers' accomplishments with badges and public recognition from upper administration, which creates a buzz and encourages others to participate. "Those are just really fun initiatives that end up taking off like fire," Fitzsimmons says. The enthusiasm generated by these certifications has led teachers to become confident and proactive leaders themselves, with many starting their own PD on their campuses.

Fitzsimmons notes that these programs, while starting small, have been instrumental in creating a culture of organic professional growth. By empowering teachers and celebrating their successes, the district has been able to overcome budget limitations for mentorship or ambassador roles. The result is a self-fulfilling cycle of excitement and learning that ultimately helps teachers and, most importantly, impacts the students they serve.

“The journey to educational leadership is not a linear one,” says Fitzsimmons. “It's about taking risks, embracing discomfort, and staying connected to your purpose. By getting involved, building your network, and focusing on your core beliefs, you can chart a course that not only benefits your career but also uplifts the entire educational community.”

Tools They Use

• Nearpod: This is a tool that Anna Fitzsimmons used during COVID-19 to create a virtual class. She states that it "really helped...me kind of...find my light again," and that it was instrumental in her realization of the effectiveness of blended learning.
• Google: Fitzsimmons states that they offer certifications that are "very empowering" for teachers and that the district is a "workspace district" dedicated to their products and approach to education.
• Google Meets: Fitzsimmons and her colleague use their video conferencing platform to meet with other districts to talk about things and learn from them.
• Gemini: Fitzsimmons says this AI tool from Google is her "biggest baby right now," and is being used by teachers to make their jobs easier and help enhance learning.
• Sam's Lab: A company that provides STEM-related products and services. Fitzsimmons mentions that they've had "fun with that" and that it is one of their partners.
• Cybernut: This cybersecurity company was the first tool presented at the district’s "Tech Tuesdays" initiative. Fitzsimmons says it provides a fun gamified approach to cybersecurity.
• Managed Methods: Fitzsimmons states this filtering solution is very good and has "definitely...saved some kids."
• Renaissance: A company that offers educational solutions, including the Nearpod and Renaissance platforms. Fitzsimmons says, "The Nearpod Renaissance gives us the needed capacity for personalized learning."

As the second largest district in the nation, it is no small feat to analyze and understand the needs of Los Angeles Unified School District’s broad spectrum of educators and students to best serve their unique educational requirements.

“During the pandemic, we were looking for ways to ensure value on the apps we purchased,” says David Kooper, Senior Director of Information Technology at Los Angeles Unified School District. “We wanted to make sure the apps were being implemented with fidelity and whether our internal divisions should continue to fund various apps based on how often they were being utilized in the best interest of the district.”

For this and other efforts, Kooper, Senior Director of Information Technology at LAUSD, was recently recognized with the Innovative Technology Director Award at the Tech & Learning Regional Summit in Austin, part of the Innovative Leader Awards.

Betting On Big Data

Part of the responsibility of finding new tech solutions is to determine the best bang for the budget buck. Validating the investment through evidence-based results is ideal.

“Budgets are made by decisions,” says Kooper. “While part of the budget involves fixed costs like staffing, the other side is discretionary spending. If you invest in one area that provides you with the data that you need, it's going to potentially save you money in another. It's one thing to buy a product, it's another entirely different thing to figure out at the school level and at the district level whether or not these apps are being utilized.”

Another issue in a district as large and broad as LAUSD is connecting disparate schools to collect usable information. Kooper broke down silos by creating a dashboard that could equip 400+ principals and district/school leaders with visibility into student device and app usage, paired with targeted professional learning to ensure leaders could act on the data. This could enable principals to retire ineffective tools, maximize investments, and deliver more consistent digital learning across one of the nation’s largest school systems.

Gaining access to a tool to determine true tech use value across a vast district using data demonstrated where cuts could be made without affecting the student or educator experience. For this, Kooper relied on insight provided by Lightspeed Systems, which proved invaluable.

“You just have to look at it from a wide lens to see what the impact is,” Kooper says. “What are you losing by not investing in this, versus the amount of money that you're spending. It makes sense for most districts. Districts also gain the ability to negotiate or renegotiate contracts using this usage data. I don't know how a school district could function without looking at the operational and structural impact within their data.”

For LAUSD, savings reaped through removing ineffective tools and smart guidance for future purchases more than compensated for investing in the tech.

How to Use Data Insight to Inform Professional Development Plans

Advice from Kooper to other districts looking to replicate LAUSD's success:

Look at the data. Analyze data at the app, school, and district level to decide what training needs to take place.

Track implementation of not just paid apps, but unpaid apps. Use insight from data as visibility of how often emerging technologies such as AI or engineering-type apps are being used at schools.

Ask questions. Are there barriers to the technology implementation? Is it due to a lack of training? Is it because of a lack of direction? Is some other factor limiting the exposure to a particular app or to a particular technology?

Extrapolate meaning from the data. Ask why would one school be utilizing an app or technology, whereas it is being underrepresented at another school. It gives insight that might lead to follow up and targeted PD at the school level.

The Right Tech Helps in Times of Need

Southern California faces added challenges due to extreme weather and natural disasters. When wildfires forced school closures at Eaton and Palisades, Kooper created school-site groups to track student engagement and access in real time.

“We measured usage data among the impacted students to figure out who was logging in and who potentially was using key apps we use in our school district for delivery of instruction,” he says. “It told the story of where people were and their ability to start accessing learning tools. It gave some insight in terms of students getting back to a sense of normalcy based on their ability to log in, access the curriculum and get the support they needed. It also gave us one additional tool to look at the impact that technology plays on instruction.”

By surfacing differences in device and application use across campuses, Kooper ensured equitable digital learning continued despite the disruption — demonstrating how innovation through data use can directly support students in moments of crisis.

Bigger Builds A Better Product

As the second largest district in the nation, LAUSD offers a broad and varied opportunity for focus groups. Kooper consistently drives K–12 innovation by piloting emerging technologies and building partnerships that shape the future of educational technology.

“We like to think we deal with partners, not just vendors,” he says. “Everything we do is at scale, with all the functionalities that make an implementation more challenging for a larger school district. Companies need to understand beforehand how their systems are going to be impacted by the number of users we have.”

That massive array of user experience is an asset. Kooper brings a collaborative approach — ensuring principals, teachers, and IT leaders are included in testing and feedback. This inclusive process has accelerated adoption, reduced resistance to change, and given districts confidence that new tools will translate to better learning experiences for students.

“We want people to be able to see working with LAUSD as an advantage,” he says. “They might have a canned product that works well for 60 or 70% of the people. We're going to help them create a product that could be used in ways they may not even be anticipating. The exposure is grander, with a lot of users, so we tend to see things a little bit earlier than other folks.”

Beyond technology pilots and roll-outs, Kooper’s programs in business intelligence, device management, application effectiveness, and network security have provided nationwide models for safe, scalable, and impactful edtech adoption. Care is always put into new additions to the program.

“We have to really think out of the box and think things through 100% before implementation to avoid rolling the dice on impact for any user's experience,” he says.

In 2025, Kooper participated in LAUSD’s first districtwide screen time analysis, equipping leaders with data that directly informed school board decisions and parent engagement. This combination of policy leadership, crisis response, and community trust-building highlights how Kooper’s work extends beyond classrooms to shape districtwide culture.

By sharing clear, transparent trends, Kooper strengthened trust between schools, families, and the community, while setting a precedent for evidence-based policy.

Procurement of Digital Solutions (PoDS)

PoDS is the system LAUSD uses to review and approve all digital tools, apps, and online services before they are used in classrooms or offices.

Why is PoDS important?

• Protects student and staff information. Many apps collect personal data. PoDS ensures vendors handle this information safely and legally.
• Keeps our network secure. One unsafe app could put an entire system at risk. PoDS prevents that.
• Ensures quality and compliance. PoDS checks that tools meet District standards, align with teaching goals, and work within existing systems.
• Applies to all products. Free, paid, instructional, or administrative. If it is digital, it goes through PoDS.

Tools They Use

• Lightspeed Systems
• Brain Pop
• Discovery Education
• Dreambox
• EdPuzzle
• IXL
• Kami
• Labster
• Nearpod
• Newsela
• Reading Horizon
• Renaissance
• Rosetta Stone
• Seesaw
• Shmoop
• SmartMusic
• Soundtrap
• ST Math
• Zearn

Tech & Learning is launching the Innovative Leader Report, a new weekly newsletter for education leaders and decision makers. Just as the name implies, this resource will feature actionable education leadership advice, edtech news, best practices, school leader profiles, information about upcoming T&L leadership events, and much more.

“The Innovative Leader Report will be your weekly go-to for everything school leaders need to help their schools and students succeed,” says Christine Weiser, content and brand manager for Tech & Learning. “It’s also a wonderful opportunity to showcase and share the experience and expertise of our longtime advisors, our award winners, and our readers. The content is for school district administrators, by school district administrators.”

By highlighting education leaders from across the nation, the Innovative Leader Report can help in looking beyond your own silo for advice and inspiration. To that end, readers can submit story ideas and news to share–for example, a new book, award, speaking engagement, etc.--and more. SUBMIT YOUR IDEAS HERE.

The Innovative Leader Report will be in inboxes every Tuesday.

SIGN UP HERE TO START RECEIVING INNOVATIVE LEADER REPORT

“In my experience, the most effective districts empower their instruction technology (ITS) and library media specialists (LMS) as strategic partners in teaching and learning,” says Charlie Hinsch, Instructional Technology Coordinator at Virginia Beach City Public Schools. “These are leaders in your building. They are not just support roles, they are change agents. Recognizing this allows the LMS or ITS to focus on integrating lessons, which include technology, to keep students engaged through gamified learning and other innovations.”

Positioning your team as leaders signals educators to seek their help.

“It’s really important ITS/LMS are part of a school’s professional learning structure,” Hinsch says. “They should be there to help design and deliver learning, align to the school and division goals and plan for continuous improvement. We embed our ITS/LMS into our division-wide coaching frameworks and align their support in key instructional priorities like blended learning and digital citizenship.”

Hinsch was recently recognized for his work at VBCPS with the Innovative Instructional Technology Coordinator Award during the Pre-ISTE Summit in San Antonio as part of Tech & Learning’s Innovative Leader Awards.

Hinsch shares the importance of making the most of specialists in your district, with five tips on improving relationships between your ITS and LMS.

Create a Culture of Respect

Building cooperative rapport between specialist teams can help encourage a cohesive school atmosphere.

“When you can focus on the student, it takes the edge off for teachers,” Hinsch says. “They realize that we've objectively looked at data and have seen that students in their class are weaker in certain areas. The focus is, ‘Let's work on those students and figure out what we can do.’ It helps teachers realize the ITS and LMS are there to help the students, not ‘fix the teacher,’ which is really important.”

Hinsch says it’s critical to encourage connection not only amongst staff, but between the two roles.

“It’s really important that the ITS and the LMS are seen as a collaborative team at schools,” he says. “We call them the ‘Educational Technology Team’ at the district level. When combined, you get a really powerful team. It’s a perfect blend of technology integration, information literacy—areas critical for student success in the area of research, media literacy, and responsible AI.”

CLICK HERE TO NOMINATE SOMEONE FOR AN INNOVATIVE LEADER AWARD

Conferences are Goldmines for ITS/LMS Pros

“We are lucky to have several large conferences right in our backyard,” Hinsch says. “With grant funding, we are able to send our instructional technology specialists or library media specialists to a statewide instructional technology conference in Virginia Beach. We also have the library aspect of that state conference in nearby Williamsburg. There are amazing opportunities for growth for both roles. We encourage our principals to join them and see exactly what's happening.”

This participation also helps the administration understand the value of conferences.

“We encourage our specialists to seek other opportunities for investing in themselves,” Hinsch says. “Many submit proposals for conferences for national conferences like STC, ISTE, and ALA. When they get accepted, we try to assist them with funding or help them write grants. However, we still have to have that buy-in from the admin to provide the necessary leave.”

It doesn’t take much to understand the benefits of this philosophy.

“Once they see the growth from this investment and what they bring back to the district, it encourages future participation,” he says. “These roles can now coach teachers, mentor student tech teams, curate resources, lead family workshops, and model innovation. Provide the platform and they can leverage their expertise strategically to amplify what every other educator can do. It just highlights the power that these roles have in our district.”

5 Ways to Improve Your ITS and LMS Relationships

Hinsch offers advice for boosting your team’s teamwork.

1. Give Everyone A Seat At The Table

Include ITS and LMS in conversations with school administrators about curriculum, tech purchases, and policy updates that are coming from the district and state. Consider creating roles on your principal advisory council or instructor leadership team, so they are being seen as leaders.

2. Create AI Integration Champions

“When AI really starts to roll out, the ITS and the LMS roles need to partner together to co-lead instruction on AI and digital citizenship,” Hinsch says. “They can lead teaching students how and when to use AI, as well as properly cite their use. Studies show AI is going to spark creativity, but students need guidance on devising topics and suggestions for AI to enhance. ITS and the LMS can share policies with educators, so they understand that AI is a tool and students should use their brain first.”

3. Education Partners, Not Troubleshooters

“ITS and LMS have such strength and history that their value comes from reimagining pedagogy and using technology and information literacy to really enhance learning,” Hinsch says. “Too often, they are reduced to merely who to call to fix devices or manage your book checkout.” Librarians manage an entire library of resources and collections and even have a library media system. However, their background is information literacy and research, and they need to be Included in planning meetings, data discussions, and school improvement efforts.

4. Use ITS and LMS Roles to Meet Standards

“In each of our schools, we are fortunate enough to have at least one instructional technology specialist and at least one library media specialist,” says Hinsch. “They are a big part of something we call ‘a profile of a graduate’ that aligns with our state's model to ensure students graduate with the knowledge, workplace skills, and community engagement they need to be prepared for any career they decide to pursue.”

5. Respect the Change Agents They Are

ITS and LMS make changes in their school, and help build capacity and innovative instruction. They drive initiatives such as digital citizenship, AI literacy, and the inquiry model for research. When they are fully integrated into the instructional fabric of a school district, the entire system becomes future-ready. “That is a huge part of a strategic framework and strategic action agenda for the coming school year,” says Hinsch. “Being future-ready and prepared for what's coming next.”

Tools They Use

• Adobe Express
• Google Workspace Suite
• ChatGPT
• Google Gemini
• MagicSchool
• WeVideo
• Canva
• Suno
• Canvas
• School AI

In her time as Director of Technology at Episcopal School of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Michelle Chenevert has learned that opportunity sometimes arrives in unwelcome company.

“In some cases, disasters have driven what we've had to do,” Chenevert says. “Hurricane Katrina didn't affect Baton Rouge, but it affected nearby New Orleans. We had to open a night school for displaced students from New Orleans who lost their homes, but needed to finish school.”

Chenevert and her team worked overnight, adding computer accounts to make sure students could login and access the wifi so they could graduate, and gain some sense of normalcy.

“These experiences definitely said to us we have to be mobile and ready to pivot at any time, whether it's Covid, whether it’s a hurricane, whatever happens,” Chenevert says. “We need to be ready.”

For her work, Chenevert was recently recognized with the Innovative Director of Technology Award at the Pre-ISTE Summit in San Antonio, part of Tech & Learning’s Innovative Leader Awards.

Chenevert shares how she uses creativity and clever planning to get the most tech bang for the buck, with six tips on innovating on a budget.

Disasters Offer Learning Opportunities

The aforementioned Katrina incident helped galvanize the school board, Chenevert says. “They got together and asked, ‘How are we backing up our files? All those people in New Orleans lost everything. What can we do better if something were to happen here?’”

Chenevert counted herself lucky they started asking questions then when she found herself in a dire situation a decade later.

“We had a flood in 2016–a storm just sat on top of Baton Rouge for days and days,” she says. “It was a slow-to-rise flood, but people still lost their homes. Our school sits in the middle of a neighborhood. We had four buildings flood and had to pivot really fast. We set up temporary classrooms all over campus. The fourth grade was on the visual performing arts stage, split in three classes by the show curtain and the backstage area.”

Fortunately, the nature of the flood gave Chenevert time to move computers on top of tables, so the main issue from rising water was the outlets.

“That fast pivot—we scrambled to provide network, provide wireless, set all these teachers up in temporary classrooms until the damage was cleaned up,” Chenevert says. “It just underlined the need to protect our equipment and our backups. We started a slow shift away from physical servers to the point of moving even our software to cloud backups.”

This move made Chenevert’s job easier in not having to update the physical server because the host company provides updates. And which positioned them well later when the pandemic hit.

“By that time I had moved my middle and upper teachers onto laptops with a plan to finish the lower school that summer,” Chenevert says. “The only desktops I still had on campus were two computer labs. However, everything was shut down March 13, 2020. Luckily, I had enough spare devices and iPads laying around for the lower school teachers to teach from home.”

Keeping an Eye on the Bottom Line

Pivoting also becomes an important skill in tight economic times, or when funding freezes interrupt a well-thought out plan.

“When you think of future forecasting and budgets, it’s all about how to move the needle on this campus and stay current with the times,” Chenevert says. “We have EEF, the Louisiana Educational Excellence Fund, that helps fund and replace my Promethean hardware in the classrooms every few years. We take advantage of Rate Category 1 and 2 to pay for our Internet and any special projects firewall that qualifies.”

Chenevert had relied on Title II and IV funding in the past, but that funding has been frozen.

“So we are pivoting and evaluating our software,” she says. “What are people still using? What are they not using? What can I fund from another budget, what can we live without it until we're unfrozen.”

One of the key solutions to stretched budgets is to maintain a strict schedule on the health and wellbeing of your tech to avoid surprises.

“It’s crucial to make sure devices and tech is kept up to date,” Chenevert says. “We manage our iPads through JAMF and our laptops through Intune. If we see that a teacher’s iPad hasn’t been updated through JAMF in 30 or 60 days, we start reaching out to that teacher. Most often, they just didn’t plug it in. But that also tells us they must not be using it.”

Monitoring usage helps start conversations.

“‘‘Are you using it, is it helpful? Do you need training in that device—is that why it’s sitting on the desk? If you're not using it, I can give this device to someone else who may have a need,’” says Chenevert. “We’re not just dishing out devices just to have them.”

Once the devices are in hands that need them, Chenevert keeps an eagle eye on her replacement schedule. If critical items suddenly reach “end of life” status, being unprepared leads to rush fees and costly purchases without time to vet for best deals.

“I’m always looking at my technology and what we need to update,” Chenevert says. “At one point I can see that none of our hardware is expiring because it still has warranty, but we have this money available, so what can we do?”

Because Chenevert was aware of funds available and the lull in her “needing replacement” schedule, she was able to invest into a decent security system.

“The cameras are so much better quality and the software works with AI searching,” she says. “I can search, ‘child in red shirt with backpack,’ and it instantly pulls all the kids in red shirts with backpacks. Quickly finding an incident on campus and archive footage can make a big impact in an emergency.”

Even with that win, Chenevert continues to look for upgrade opportunities.

“‘What's the replacement life cycle of this item?’” she asks. “You can often go to the vendor's website to get the answer. ‘End of life’ means end of life. You need to make plans to replace that tech in advance and keep track so you’re not falling out of date.”

6 Tips to Innovate on a Budget

Chenevert offers advice to get more out of your tech budget.

1. Long Range Plan: Don’t Break, Fix

Make a plan for five years and understand it may change in three. “Things change fast,” she says. Make a replacement schedule to see at a glance when you have periods of heavier hits to your budget and when you have upcoming lulls that can accommodate upgrades or new programs.

2. Rightsize Your Devices and Software

Run access reports for your tech to discover unused devices or licenses that could be put to better use. Ask questions to provide training, if needed, to help educators make the most of tech.

3. Timing is Everything

Stay on top of expiring back-end hardware. “It’s not pretty,” Chenevert says. “No one cares that you changed out switches or an access point, but they do care that you are giving them internet that works.”

4. Train Yourself

Consider earning microcredentials for relevant software programs. Once you learn everything it can do, you can help teachers in the classroom in a targeted way without pricy PD or outside training sessions.

5. ‘End of Life’ Means End of Life

Don’t waste time and resources putting duct tape bandaids on devices that really need to be replaced or upgraded. Check vendor sites for how much life is left to avoid unexpected interruptions or expensive rush fees.

6. Attend Conferences

Stay up to date by attending conferences, talk with vendors, and participate in mini trainings. Many offer 20 minute sessions during which you can learn what is out there that your school could use. Attend sessions even for tech you already have as you can learn new features to make it work even better for your students.

Tools They Use

• Aruba Cloud (to manage APs & Switches)
• Fortinet (Firewall)
• Verkada (Security Cameras)
• Gage Cloud Voice (Phone System)
• JAMF (iPad Management)
• Microsoft Intune (Windows Device Management)
• Managed Methods (Cybersecurity & Safety)
• PowerSchool SIS
• Canvas LMS
• Seesaw
• Clever
• Adobe
• Microsoft
• Google
• Discovery Education
• BrainPop
• EdPuzzle
• Book Creator
• Gimkit
• IXL
• Apple Classroom
• Canva
• Copilot
• Gemini
• Magic School
• ClassVR

Dr. Julianne Ross-Kleinmann of Ulster BOCES in New York is transforming its Model Schools and Distance Learning programs through a bold, collaborative vision. By forging strategic partnerships with edtech vendors, instructional supervisors, and regional agencies, she is building a more responsive and innovative infrastructure that supports personalized, equitable, and future-ready learning.

“My family was always active in church or volunteerism within our community, so I did the same thing,” says Ross-Kleinmann. “Whether it was Key Club, Kiwanis, or my sorority—I saw the value of partnering and networking with others. I actively started doing so in my classrooms and then continued as a staff developer and as an instructional tech.”

As a connector of people, ideas, and opportunity—as well as holding leadership roles with ISTE, statewide initiatives, and national platforms such as the AI Café podcast—this top supervisor of instruction services has inspired the most current thinking in instructional technology in educators across her region.

For this and other efforts, Ross-Kleinmann was recently recognized with the Innovative Chief Academic Officer Award at the Pre-ISTE Regional Leadership Summit in San Antonio as part of Tech & Learning’s Innovative Leader Awards.

Ross-Kleinmann shares how she uses networking to enhance her district’s tech offerings, with three tips on how to add partnerships to any program.

Tech Talks

“I'm old school, but I love tech,” Ross-Kleinmann says. “I like to write. I have journals. I know cognitively I'm going to remember it better if I write it down because there is research in that brain work, but I also like tech. I'll come home and play games. I use tech to create and AI to brainstorm.”

Both elements have a place, and entry into true integration starts with education.

“If we're talking staff development, you cannot exclude technology,” she says. “So many people see tech as a separate entity, but what day are you not using technology in your work or your personal life? How can it not be included in the conversation?”

Sometimes, having the conversation is the perfect start to finding solutions and learning how to harness the power of emerging technologies to best help students. Errol St. Clair Smith, executive producer of Blindsided by AI, a documentary about the first year of generative AI in education, tapped Ross-Kleinmann to join his “AI Cafe” podcast.

“The group comes together for a ‘coffee talk,’ all coming from different perspectives—a middle school teacher, a university professor, an early childhood educator-tech coach, and an education researcher,” she says. “A topic is offered and we just talk about it. ‘Is it really cheating, is it going to replace us, what tools are you using?’ Just authentic unscripted conversations about AI.”

The group caps the meet-up by sharing AI tools they find most helpful and effective, offering concrete take-home value along with their insights. St. Clair Smith met Ross-Kleinmann in a media-focused event at ISTE, further underlining the pros of conference networking.

Making Valuable Connections

The current reality of an uncertain financial landscape has budget matters top of mind for many school leaders. Looking to strategic partnerships and getting creative with connections can help make the most of resources in tight times.

“If you feel like finance is an issue, partnerships can be virtual,” says Ross-Kleinmann. “We moved our Sustainability Future summit online so we can have presenters from all around the world. CLIC is a great space for online partners. Sometimes we just get stuck where we live and don't realize what's past the county line. Partnerships are so important to me, in part for trying to open a world of possibilities for students.”

Asking for support is part of the give-and-take of deeper networking relationships.

”I was fortunate to have training from the Columbia Challenge Grant,” she says. “When there was something I didn’t understand, I knew I could reach out to organizations like ISTE to ask questions. Broaden your scope for help, but partners don't necessarily have to be a vendor or someone with a financially-motivated interest in connecting. Partners are also district family members, or local businesses.”

It’s not necessary to focus too heavily on scaling up your circle or worry about the number of partnerships as these will grow organically.

“I was laughing with my husband. I said, ‘I don't always get a big audience. Do I do something to change that?’ He said no, just be your authentic self because when you do have an audience, it's people who really want to hear what you're saying,” Ross-Kleinmann says. “You usually end up becoming friends with that handful of people and connections form, even if you only see each other once a year. Now I can reach out to so many people either to share something really cool that's happening or say I'm happy to support you in something that you're doing or could you support me in something I'm doing? It quickly becomes an amazing connection of people.”

Being open and putting yourself in a place to meet new people. or connect in real life with those whose work you follow online, is key.

“Attending conferences just means making additional connections, learning something new, and then sharing that with others,” Ross-Kleinmann says. “You need to make sure that your students are well supported, but help them see past the horizon.”

The ABC’s of Adding Key Partnerships to Your Program

A few suggestions from Ross-Kleinmann to forging partnerships.

Attend conferences with your team.

Connect with outside groups—such as Tech & Learning, Learning Forward, ISTE— and attend their conferences and take a team with you. “You are going to learn so many things,” she says. “If you can bring students to those conferences, even allow them to present, that is so eye-opening for them to learn what is out past their horizon.”

Bring information back.

Take the information you learn back not only to just your cabinet and your leadership team, but to the teachers and the building administrators. Don’t shy away from the idea of having partners come to the school, their motivations are not always financial. Some want to learn how to make their product better or how to help students.

Connect outside of your local organizations.

It’s great to belong to the AASA, but you should also step out of the box and consider a space with which you might not have direct ties. Go national so that students can see new options of where they can go and what they can do.

The Tools They Use

• ChatGPT
• SchoolAI
• Inkwire (AI)
• Canvas
• Google Workplace
• Microsoft
• Zoom
• Screencastify
• iPad/Macbook Pro
• Logitech Webcam

Last summer, Victor DeMedeiros, Senior Technology Manager at New Bedford Public Schools in Massachusetts, set up and enrolled 3,200 new Chromebooks for the entire high school of approximately 3,000 students.

“During the swap-outs, it was clear how excited students were to get their hands on the new technology,” DeMedeiros said. “Many of them shared how much they were looking forward to using faster, more reliable devices for learning. It may seem like a simple equipment upgrade, but you could see the impact immediately—students were more engaged, more motivated, and genuinely energized by having modern tools to support their education.”

Innovation doesn’t have to mean over-the-top wizardry in the classroom to make a serious difference in the daily lives of students.

“Technology is not a magic solution, but when it’s aligned with purpose, equity, and support, it becomes a powerful catalyst for progress,” DeMedeiros says. “The work we do behind the scenes matters because it enables everything else in the school system to function better.”

DeMedeiros was recently recognized for his work with an Innovative Leader Award for Innovative Senior Technology Manager at the Tech & Learning New England Regional Leadership Summit.

DeMedeiros shares three ways technology managers can help the lives of busy educators and administrators, plus offers tips for those making edtech purchasing decisions.

Inspiring Tech-Supported Initiatives at Work

An ambitious five-part innovation initiative — including a network infrastructure overhaul, security enhancements, student device management, teacher-students classroom management, and parent-community engagement — was a blend of both long-overdue innovation and real-time necessity, says DeMedeiros.

“On one hand, the district was due for a systemic tech upgrade to meet the evolving demands of education,” he says. “The pace of change in digital learning, data systems, and infrastructure made it clear that staying status quo was no longer an option.”

In many school districts, technology departments traditionally operate in a constant state of triage, reacting to outages, fixing devices, and putting out daily fires.

“It often felt like working in an emergency room—high-pressure, reactive, and focused only on the next crisis,” DeMedeiros says. “While that kept us running in the short term, it wasn’t sustainable, and it kept us from becoming a truly strategic asset to the district.”

With the support and vision of edtech influencer and Assistant Superintendent of Technology and Learning, Dr. Matthew X. Joseph (above left, with DeMedeiros), DeMedeiros began shifting toward what he calls an “operating room” approach—in which preparation, precision, and proactive planning are the standard.

“In this model, every tool has its place, every team member understands their role, and the focus is on long-term outcomes rather than simply surviving the next issue,” he says. “This change in mindset has been the real driver behind our tech-supported transformation.”

Part of this effort included improving outreach and inclusion within the local area. Engaged parents and communities create stronger, more supportive learning ecosystems. Tech can help smooth this path of connectivity.

“If communication systems are clunky or inconsistent, families feel disconnected and uninformed—especially in emergencies, school closures, or when interventions are needed,” DeMedeiros says. “A refined system ensures transparency, improves trust, and can directly impact student attendance, behavior, and performance by bringing families more meaningfully into the fold.”

3 Ways Tech Managers Can Improve Busy Lives of Staff

DeMedeiros offers this advice for tech managers who want to better empower their team.

1. Streamline Tools and Training – Too many platforms can overwhelm staff. Consolidating tools into integrated systems (such as using Google Workspace, ClassLink, or ParentSquare) helps reduce friction and makes day-to-day tasks simpler.
2. Provide Responsive Support – Whether it’s fast troubleshooting or proactive professional development, timely tech support keeps educators focused on teaching, not tech glitches.
3. Use Automation for Admin Tasks – Automating repetitive processes such as attendance reporting, communication alerts, or device check-ins, gives time back to staff for more impactful work.

Dollars and Sense

In an uncertain financial environment, balancing need versus want is a challenge when schools have tight budgets. Offering objective, factual analysis can help stakeholders see those funds responsibly put to work.

“Data analysis has been instrumental in helping us prioritize spending,” says DeMedeiros. “We use data to demonstrate ROI — whether in terms of improved attendance from communication platforms or reduced tech downtime due to preventative maintenance. It’s not just about cost, but value. We also take advantage of E-Rate, grants, and public-private partnerships to extend our budget as far as possible.”

Putting off enhancements in a perceived attempt to be fiscally frugal has downsides. Delaying infrastructure upgrades increases risk—both in terms of cybersecurity and operational inefficiency, warns DeMedeiros.

“Outdated systems can lead to data breaches, frequent downtime problems, or even safety issues if communication tools fail,” he says. “More than that, it sends a message to staff and students that we’re not investing in their success. Tech is foundational now, not optional.”

3 Considerations for Decision Makers when Choosing New Edtech

When it comes to making buying decisions, DeMedeiros says school leaders need to consider:

1. Scalability and Compatibility – Tech must scale across schools and integrate with existing infrastructure. Avoid silos; choose platforms that play well with others.
2. User Experience and Training Requirements – Even the most powerful tool is ineffective if it’s not user-friendly. Factor in the learning curve and the availability of training and vendor support.
3. Long-Term Sustainability – Always evaluate total cost of ownership. Consider licensing models, maintenance, and the vendor's roadmap for updates and support.

Tools They Use

• Cisco
• Verkada
• Chromebooks
• GoogleWorkspace
• ClassLink
• ParentSquare

When it comes to implementing technology in a school district, communication is paramount. It’s especially critical to make sure that any decision around it is part of a conversation, not a monologue, says Bill Runey, Superintendent of Schools at Dighton-Rehoboth Regional Schools in Massachusetts.

“Strategic communication isn't just about broadcasting—it's about building trust and driving engagement across all stakeholders,” Runey says. “These efforts foster pride, transparency, and collaboration—ensuring that our programs not only serve students but also reflect and uplift the values of the greater DR community.”

For his work within his district, Runey was recently recognized with an Innovative Leader Award for Innovative Superintendent at the Tech & Learning New England Regional Leadership Summit.

“Every interaction is a chance to listen, connect, and advocate for what’s best for students,” Runey says. “I can gather real-time insights from staff and observe how students engage with tech to choose tools and infrastructure which will truly support learning. Strong leadership is rooted in authentic relationships, and I strive to model that daily.”

Runey shares how he helped transform his district with passion and innovation, offering five tips for superintendents to use tech to serve their district

They Have Spirit, Yes They Do!

Unlike the stereotypical tucked-away superintendent, Runey shows up for his students, even if hidden beneath a falcon mascot costume. The prize for a recent district-wide contest to see which school could show the most “Green & Gold” pride was to host an assembly to paint Runey’s hair green and gold.

“Leadership also means being approachable, having a sense of humor, and celebrating what makes school memorable for kids,” says Runey. “Being deeply embedded in the community isn’t just a job requirement—it’s a key part of how I lead. Whether dressed as our falcon mascot, attending the Fireworks Festival, school concerts, or chatting with families at the local craft fair, I see these interactions as opportunities to gather feedback and understand the pulse of the district.”

This presence raises the spirits of students and staff, and also keeps Runey in touch with how best to serve his community using tech.

“Recent initiatives like our alumni data outreach via Google Forms and the digitization of yearbooks have not only helped us reconnect with graduates but also celebrate our shared history while reinforcing a sense of belonging,” he says. “We’re also using innovative tools—like our Apptegy-powered project website for the potential Dighton Elementary School project—to keep residents informed and engaged in shaping the future of our district alongside the MSBA.”

Runey believes bringing more voices to the table can perpetuate a positive narrative about the district to build long-term support for their mission.

For example: “One of the goals of our new adult continuing education program through the Career and Technical Education (CTE) department is to bring alumni and community members back into our schools to see firsthand the powerful, modern learning experiences happening across our buildings,” he says.

Visitors are impressed by grant-driven, cutting-edge technology additions to the CTE program.

“Our students are getting that relevant experience that will put them in a position to be more marketable to college and post-secondary programs,” Runey says. “But it also makes them very well-prepared to just go directly into the workforce if that's what they choose.”

Dighton-Rehoboth also embeds PD time into the district calendar, and offers DREAM Seminars to ensure it is not a top-down mandate but features events designed to empower staff by offering voice and choice in learning, opportunities to lead sessions, and to dive deep into topics. Administrators are equipped with a dashboard for real-time data analysis and OPTIC to strengthen instructional calibration.

Safety First

Establishing a strong sense of security for the school community allows space for the good work of learning to flourish.

“When I began as superintendent, 80% of our schools had no security camera coverage. Today, every one of our buildings is equipped with modern surveillance systems—an essential step in ensuring the safety of our students and staff,” Runey says. “This transformation not only deters potential threats but also gives families peace of mind, knowing that we are proactively safeguarding our learning environments.”

The district also uses a real-time communication platform that connects staff, school leaders, and first responders.

“Safety isn't just a checkbox for us—it’s a foundational promise,” Runey says. “CrisisGo allows us to coordinate emergency responses more effectively, whether it’s a drill or a real incident, and ensures that all stakeholders have access to accurate, timely information. This level of responsiveness builds trust with families and reinforces our commitment to student well-being.”

Another arm of that concept is making sure every student feels valued and heard.

“Equity must be intentional,” Runey says. “Access for students in special education though the use of tech is one of my top priorities. Through our DRiving Toward 2030 strategic plan, we empower learners by integrating tools such as Lexia, ST Math, and Wonders—platforms that offer adaptive features tailored to individual needs.”

The district also implemented speech-to-text software and interactive digital platforms that help students with disabilities engage more fully in the curriculum.

“I view technology as a powerful tool for equity—one that removes barriers, ignites engagement and confidence, and ensures all students have the resources they need to succeed, regardless of ability,” Runey says. “Backed by targeted grants and evidence-based practices, we are shaping a more inclusive future where technology isn’t just a resource, but a lifeline that empowers every student to thrive.”

5 Tips For Superintendents To Use Tech To Serve Your District

Runey shares advice that any superintendent can follow to get the most out of education technology.

1. Lead with Purpose - Avoid tech for tech’s sake, from infrastructure upgrades to instructional tools. Tech should support your district’s goals to empower educators, facilitate learning, and shape a future-ready community.
2. Cultivate a Culture of Empowered Learning - Invest in PD that not only trains staff on tools, but cultivates innovation and leadership. Runey’s district offers DREAM Seminars or embedded PD days to explore, share, and implement tech-enhanced instructional practices that foster engagement and success.
3. Advance Equity Through Strategic Investment - Prioritize adaptive and assistive technologies (such as ST Math, Lexia, or Wonders) that support differentiated learning. Use grants and strategic funding to close gaps in access, especially for special education students and underrepresented groups.
4. Leverage Data to Empower Smarter Decisions - Use technology to gather, visualize, and act on meaningful data—from attendance and engagement metrics to learning progress and fiscal dashboards. Encourage district and school leaders to analyze trends and ignite improvement efforts through responsive interventions, resource allocation, and transparent reporting.
5. Use Tech to Strengthen Transparent, Two-Way Communication - From mass notification tools to community apps and interactive websites, technology can empower families to engage with schools in real-time. Leverage platforms such as Apptegy or social media to tell your story, highlight student achievement, and provide clarity during times of uncertainty.

Tools They Use

• Apptegy
• TouchViews
• iPad and Apple TV Combinations
• z-Space VR laptops
• OPTIC
• Lexia
• ST Math
• Wonders
• CNC Machine
• CrisisGo

• Innovative Leader Award

“There's a very strong component of leadership being a library media specialist,” says Cathy Collins, Library Media Specialist at Sharon Public Schools in Massachusetts. “We pilot new technology and studies show student improvement in academic test scores and college admissions due to the role. We're just leaders by nature of what we do. And yet there's not always a lot of recognition for the field.”

Too often, library media specialists are underutilized and underappreciated. A misconception they are merely babysitters or simply play a role in the entertainment side of literacy leaves a lot of quality tech expertise and opportunity for student success on the table.

“We are trained to work with teachers across subject areas and grade levels, full classes or individual students. If you have a big project that involves research, we want to jump in. I want administrators to support the work we are doing. Whether you're a principal or a tech coach or department head, involve your library media specialist in your department meetings and curriculum planning, because they have a wealth of knowledge about not only research, but technology and how to best integrate it.”

Collins was recently recognized for her work with an Innovative Leader Award for Library Media Specialist Award at the Tech & Learning New England Regional Leadership Summit.

Collins shares how tech plays a role for Library Media Specialists, offering tips for administrators and educators to make the most of the role’s expertise to benefit their students.

Truth is the Treasure

The current climate and flood of misinformation on social and in media makes becoming a good digital citizen more important than ever.

“I cover cybersecurity, online safety, and being a responsible user of technology integrating ISTE’s digital citizenship lessons, but take it a step beyond,” says Collins. “Right now, my students are creating a digital footprint map—a mind map of their most visited websites, favorite apps, and social media use. This helps them become more aware of their activity online.”

Once students have a handle on how they are interacting with media, Collins shifts to the quality of that media.

“I teach news and media literacy, using the News Literacy Project’s checkology Curriculum,” she says. “We cover things like free speech, the seven standards of journalism, and how to be smart in evaluating information. I teach them about algorithms and to be aware of things like filter bubbles and information pollution, as well as the importance of digital verification when doing research online.”

With political sensitivity on high alert, some of these areas can pose a tricky tightrope to walk for educators.

“It’s a bipartisan topic, it crosses political lines,” Collins says. “One of the lessons I do is all about understanding bias. We all carry biases. It’s simply about determining whether a piece of information that they’re looking at online is factual. Who’s the author? How do we determine how credible this is? What’s their experience level? Your Uncle Charlie might be your favorite uncle and he might know all there is to know about fishing. However, if he doesn’t know anything about physics and your question has to do with physics, then even though you love him, you need to go beyond Uncle Charlie.”

Collin’s debut book, Teaching News Literacy in the Age of AI: A Cross Curricular Approach, will be published by ISTE in August. Aimed at educators and library media specialists, the cross-disciplinary approach offers resources to help students navigate today’s news and media landscape as expert chroniclers, curators, and content creators.

“Be a Sherlock Holmes or an Enola Holmes, be a Spock,” she says. “It’s black and white, take your own biases and emotions out of it and just look at the facts. It’s vitally important. Truth is the treasure. I tell them they are the treasure hunters and their critical thinking skills are their treasure map.”

Project-Based Pizazz

“I'm a firm believer in project-based learning,” Collins says. “We do a lot of cross-curricular projects that involve research, creativity, and the use of technology in the creation process and the expression piece as well.”

Collins’ special projects include coding with poetry from Hour of Code and creating an ideal future sustainable home using 3D-design software through Ludenso Create. She also focuses on popular projects aimed at English language learners, such as a digital music creation with Soundation and drawing projects using Brush Ninja to create a meme, which allows students to communicate in a comfortable non-written form.

“They are still doing research, technology just allows them to get creative about how they're expressing their ideas, which is wonderful,” she says. “My annual session on how to use Sora to gain access to multiple different languages to read and hear their books in their own language as they're developing their English skills draws a full house.”

With much of the news and current events seeming dire and full of doom and gloom, Collins injects a dose of humor to ensure lessons resonate.

“I’ll have a little quiz on AI–there's hilarious things out there,” she says. “We look at images and I teach them the strategies of how to find the source and whether it's reliable or not. I’ll show a photo of the Pope in a puffer jacket, that's not real. So we learn things like reverse image searching to backtrack and find the original source of a photo. The Wayback Machine helps you check down a website where something came from originally. I remember when it was just a newspaper that was thrown on your porch. Now it's a lot harder with the internet, social media and speed with which the misinformation travels. So I let them play with the technology that the bad actors are using.”

AI offers the potential for an enormous effect on today’s world, yet Collins reminds students that it is just a tool, and one that can be used for good or bad.

“I will have students locate a historical photo and use Canva,” she says. “Students upload a historical photo. alter it and then we have a guessing game. What is different in this picture, which is real, which is not? It shows not tells, just how easy it is to use certain tools. Letting them use the tech is the best way I can think of to teach an awareness of what's going on right now in the world of AI.”

5 Tips to Make the Most of Your Library Media Specialist

Collins shares what you can do to ensure your media specialists are contributing all they can to your school.

1. Prioritize Collaboration and Communication. Schedule regular meetings to discuss school needs. Involve librarians in curriculum planning and showcase the library's resources, services and tech to students.
2. Advocate for the Librarian's Role. Promote the librarian’s role in curriculum and tech integration, share access to professional resources such as relevant professional organizations and conferences, and promote teacher-librarian partnerships.
3. Allocate Resources and Support. Ensure adequate funding for materials, tech, collaboration time, and PD. Publicly acknowledge librarians’ contributions.
4. Professional Development and Growth. Provide opportunities for librarians to enhance skills and knowledge, support research and innovative practices, and offer librarian-to-librarian mentorship and coaching from pros.
5. Data-Driven Decision-Making. Use library data to inform resource allocation and measure the positive impact of library programs and services on student outcomes.

The Tools They Use

• diffit.me
• Canva
• Brisk
• MagicSchool AI
• StretchAI
• Safari Montage
• Breakout EDU
• Adobe Express
• Brush Ninja
• Soundation
• Ludenso Create
• Hour of Code
• Checkology curriculum (News Literacy Project)
• ISTE Digital Citizenship curriculum
• Sora
• National Geographic
• Noodletools
• Code.org

Given ever-constricting budgets and the growing need for hands-on STEM experiences, getting the most out of makerspace investments is critical. So what better way to get more hands on a tool than having it available to more than one school?

Enter Maker Spaces Go Mobile.

“When we housed individual machines in schools, they operated in very much of a silo mentality due to the size of our district,” says Susie Simmons, Instructional Technology Coach at Bonny Eagle Schools in Maine. “Our vision with the mobile makerspace was to cut back on isolating components and increase our collaboration across the district. It empowered us to bring a larger number of pieces of equipment into a building at any given time when they need it, which helps make any projects move faster than if they were trying to accomplish it on one stationary machine.”

With the help of collaborator/partner and fellow instructional technology coach Stephen Avery, the program was thoroughly considered before launching.

“We really wanted to have kids interact with the technology and use it, rather than putting in the gatekeeper of an adult who is really the one using the tech and undermining the educational experience,” says Avery. “We worked it into not just CTE-style STEM courses, but for all students.”

Simmons was recently recognized with an Innovative Leader Award for Most Innovative Learning Spaces Award at the Tech & Learning New England Regional Leadership Summit.

Simmons and Avery discuss their impressive Maker Spaces Go Mobile project, offering six tips for districts wanting to connect such spaces with curriculum on a deeper level.

The Making of a Mobile Makerspace

As mentioned, the main focus of the project was to provide students with hands-on, creative opportunities.

“3D printing was still a big piece of the goal,” says Avery. “It was known technology and something we’d been doing for a while. Three years ago, we were also fortunate to add a set of GlowForges, one in each of our middle and high school buildings. GlowForge, a laser cutter and engraver, is very quick technology by comparison to 3D printing. It has great applications for design thinking, prototyping, and problem solving.”

Being able to spread need across the use of multiple machines also has clear benefits.

“Back in the day, a project could take several weeks and a few overnight hours of 3D printing,” says Simmons. “With our new system, the same project can be done within the course of a school day. It’s been really gratifying to work with teachers used to the old methods and now we just show up with a mass supply of pieces of equipment to get things done.”

The “mobile” element of a mobile maker lab space proved interesting.

“We actually moved a laser around a couple of times,” says Avery. “That particular machine was quite heavy and very prone to damage. In search of a more mobile solution, we selected two different types of lasers from a company called xTool. One is a bed-style diode laser called the S1.”

The team also purchased a small, portable engraving unit called the F1, ideal for speedy, small projects with students.

“While we were shooting for the moon, we added a Cricut Venture system,” says Avery. “This large-scale, industrial-sized and output-ready Cricut machine is capable of doing vinyl and other thin substrate work, to be able to cut and design for staff and student use.”

The bonus was should one elementary school need a project completed, without a hands-on piece of tech physically in the room, they could send files and jobs to be printed and delivered as a type of a processing center.

Cutting Class is Encouraged

One makerspace project featured students making physical currency in a social studies class to understand setting up their own little countries and the economy that goes with it. Other efforts have been more practical.

“One of my favorite projects was helping a student in special education with a physical limitation in art class,” says Avery. “The tech made a carving project to make linoleum stamps accessible, despite the student’s lack of physical control needed to manipulate the tools. We created digital designs and used the laser for the physical carving so that the student was able to fully participate. We continue to look for ways that we can support through meaningful opportunities to remove obstacles.”

The program has “earned its keep” further, making gifts for celebrations and staff presents, stencils for the facilities department, even manipulatives for a math class. It helps when it comes time for budget decision to justify expenses.

“We’ve been doing laser work during reading challenges or family engagement nights,” says Simmons. “Students design their own keychain or bookmark. Because of the speed at which we're able to produce those items, the kids walk away with their creation in their hand, which is awesome.”

Simmons notes that there’s even a plan for a major waste issue districts struggle with—recycling 3D printer scraps.

“We ended up buying a wood chipper off Amazon of all things,” says Avery. “We used it to break down our failed models, our scrap, and then melt it into sheets that we can actually cut with the laser to make new products.”

Money Matters

Like many districts, Bonny Eagle benefited from regional partnerships and grants.

“After receiving a grant from the Perloff Family Foundation in Maine, Bonny Eagle Schools expanded the existing 3D printing system across the district,” says Simmons, “The technology in those buildings was beginning to show its age. It no longer worked at the quality or speed we needed to support our programs.”

Located in Maine, the DoE Learning Through Technology Team at the state level offered a Teach with Tech grant. The duo decided to apply with the goal of supporting makerspace youth across K-12.

“We hoped to replace the aging 3D printing technology across the district and provide other methods of creation,” says Simmons. “Our larger vision was for the two of us currently on paper supporting grade 6 to 12 to support K to 12 instead.”

“We were very fortunate in our district to be able to have professionals support embedded professional development,” says Avery. “It's essentially a peer who can support-teach with the teachers. We created a train-the-trainer model and are actively brainstorming projects to avoid introducing technology as a toy. We want to identify it fits as part of the teaching strategy and instructional style to help further and deepen student learning. Those abilities are great for kids moving on into an engineering program, design thinking . . . but the creative problem-solving is really just a great overall life skill.”

6 Steps to Mobile Makerspace Success

Simmons and Avery share their tips for creating mobile makerspaces.

1. Make sure that you have people on staff invested in making it work. Find people on staff who can take the vision and make it happen, and support them doing so. It’s crucial.
2. Be the learner in the process. Without somebody to bounce ideas off and partner with, it’s a heavier lift and becomes really challenging.
3. FInd opportunities just to play, even if you don't have the technology yet. A lot of tools have free software with which you can experiment. The tech is often in libraries and community maker spaces. Be a student again and get some hands-on time to stretch your imagination.
4. Consider the infrastructure involved from a physical standpoint. If you are planning to do something such as this in a mobile setting, how are you going to transport it between schools? Bonny Eagle Schools has a district van and all of the equipment is on carts. Lean on your facilities department to move it safely.
5. Know that it's going to take some time. The duo is still working on building capacity within this district, so this program hasn’t been an overnight success. So be willing to be patient and don't expect it to show the fruits of your labor in year one. Trust the vision and support your staff in making it happen.
6. Don’t undersell the importance of collaboration. The coaches were begging for an opportunity to talk with colleagues and put their heads together in a room. Time is precious, but even an hour of time together to sit down and talk through ideas can be really invigorating and productive.

The Tools They Use

• Heavy duty utility carts for moving the equipment
• Bambu Lab A1 and A1 Mini 3D Printers
• 4-Color AMS Lite
• Cricut Venture Makerspace Educators School Bundle
• xTool F1 Portable Diode/Infrared Laser
• xTool S1 Enclosed Diode Laser Cutter
• TinkerCAD, AutoCAD
• Physical materials such as air handling, storage totes, replacement parts, and consumable materials such as filament, vinyl, and wood.

• Innovative Leader Award

Basing any STEM-based project on a solution for a real-life problem will help the lesson stick, and connecting it to a subject that affects everyone, such as food and farming, cultivates the learning even more.

“The STEM standards for elementary, middle, and high school lend itself to any type of agriculture initiative,” says Trina Reaves, Director of STEM and Innovation at Clayton County Public Schools in Georgia. “We started organically. A lot of the schools had gotten aeroponics towers and aquaponics systems, really trying to show children how they could grow in alternate spaces other than traditional farming. We were having students look at real-world problems, such as Clayton County being in a food desert, and how they could solve them.”

Reaves was recently recognized for the Best Overall Implementation of Technology Award at the Southeast Regional Leadership Summit as part of the Tech & Learning’s Innovative Leader Awards.

Reaves discusses her impressive agricultural technology initiative and shares three tips to plant a similar program in your district.

Growing Solutions With STEM

“As I moved to start the program, I went to Forest Park High School to see their gardens which had been growing for 10 years,” says Reaves. “They were having a salad bar for the teachers. They had a student who was cooking meals the teachers could buy! The day I visited, he was making pan-seared herb-encrusted salmon with a citrus sauce and asparagus. Wow, all of this was going on and nobody really talked about it.”

Forest Park High School had a FarmBot, or tech helper that, once coded, guides planting of seeds, watering intervals, and other key tasks for a successful crop.

“I went to an aeroponics farm in North Georgia,” says Reaves. “They showed us their farm and how this could work for our plans. They suggested a seed business. I had one school which already had a FarmBot with the space and the capability to sell seeds, so we decided to start an initiative at Forest Park High School in which they would produce seedlings to sell to the rest of the district. We call it Agritech Solutions.”

An Organic Way of Connecting the Dots

Reaves pulled in the greater community to serve as mentors, and then let students shine in all the ways that are helpful for a growing business.

“Our aquaponics labs were supported by the science department in collaboration with the Georgia Aquarium,” she says. “One of the teachers at Forest Park helped them build a system to grow tilapia throughout the year to harvest at the end. At Drew High School, they have a culinary CTE pathway with a teacher who uses several aeroponic towers for ingredients in her class.”

The program went beyond simply farming.

“We didn't want this just to be about agriculture, we wanted it to also touch other CTE pathways,” Reaves says. “We have a minority business who's helping us with logistics and distribution. We're training a group of students at the school who are going to run the business. Besides the ag element, we have marketing students creating campaigns to raise awareness. The computer science students are creating the platform so schools can take and fulfill their orders.”

By welcoming in students with a variety of talents, Reaves has built an ecosystem for industry knowledge to thrive.

“The goal is for this to simulate a real-world business,” she says. “Students get practical experience through promoting and securing sales. We want this to sustain the program, so the business students are creating a business plan. The goal was to use this one initiative to support many different pathways while we're also working on a real world problem that's a part of our community.”

Planting The Seeds and Watching Them Grow

With one successful first launch, Reaves looked for ways to include additional schools. Each school designed a unique program–some instituted rain barrels, pollinator gardens, compost bins, beekeeping, and worm farms to support projects that include traditional farming, hydroponics, aeroponics, aquaponics, and even a fruit orchard.

“We have an elementary school that just launched their program with the help of Georgia Tech,” Reaves says. “The university’s engineers came and helped us set up Oliver Elementary School's FarmBot.”

A FarmBot can do as little or as much as it is coded to accomplish.

“Some people will just use them to simply grow produce,” Reaves says. “You can program it to plant the seeds in the system. You can tell it when to water. It takes away some of the manual labor. But we're going to use it to start seedlings and sell them to schools in the district. They plant, they water, the kids then move the seedlings out to sell and just start a new system. We have to keep that rhythm going. If Brown Elementary School wants 20 plants, you’ve got to have a system that's just continually moving. The FarmBot makes that work easier.”

Reaves’ ultimate goal is to raise production to the point at which seedlings can be sold to parents and the community, as an agri-bake sale concept. Of 37 schools, 22 have FarmBot systems.

“The seedlings can be used in traditional planting or in aquaponics or aeroponic towers,” she says. “When we went to the Northern Georgia farm, they shared that a certain number of towers break even when it comes to labor and costs. Seeds are what really grew their business. We're going to start selling to schools, but we are talking about having community farmers markets. That would be a first-touch point for parents to know they can buy seedlings, plants, or fully harvested crops from the students. However, we can also buy seeds if we're growing ourselves in the home.”

Besides offering students the full entrepreneurial experience, creating an opportunity to grow backyard produce addresses the county’s food desert issue.

“We're having a September Farm to Fork event in which we will have all the schools bring their first crop of the season, with a farmer's market for schools to show off their success and sell their yield while talking about the project with customers,” Reaves says. “It's going to be an informational event with vendors and classes about healthy living. The event’s location at Drew High School is right next to Southern Region Medical Center. The hospital staff will come talk about exercise, eating healthy, diabetes, and those issues permeating our community.

“I'm really excited about the opportunity here — it’s not just all about growing,” says Reaves. “You've got finance, you've got marketing, computer science and tech, there’s a whole business side of agriculture. Every time I turn around, there's an opportunity. I joined the National Women in Agriculture association in the Georgia chapter. So many are willing to come and support the schools. It’s really good to see more women and minorities, it’s very important for our kids to see underrepresented groups and to be exposed to as much as possible.”

3 Tips to Build A Sustainable Agritech Program

Reaves offers advice to anyone interested in growing a similar program.

1. For any STEM initiative, you have to have buy-in at the school level. “I started with surveys and forums to make sure everybody saw the vision and was onboard. One of the things I've learned a long time ago as an administrator is I support you wherever you are. I can't force you to do something because when I force you, it doesn't play as well as when you let it build organically.”
2. You need support from outside. Reaves recommends building relationships in the industry to show that you’re trying to feed their workforce in the long term. “Whatever they can pour into the students while in K-12 matters. We’ve partnered with colleges with scholarship and internship opportunities we want to provide our students around the Southeast.
3. Grant writing and donation appeals are imperative. Schools budgets are not large, Reave acknowledges, so supporting programs also requires skills such as grant writing. “Create sustainability for the project,” she says. “I don’t want this to go away if I retire. Make sure relationships and supports are in place for the long term to ensure the project lives on beyond a specific district director or principal in charge.”

Tools they Use

• Google Education Suite
• Adobe Express
• Canva
• Prisms (VR)
• Wonderworks
• Lego Robotics
• Tinkercad
• 3D Printers
• Mimio Boards
• Drones
• Boxlight Labdisc
• Aviation Simulators
• Vex Robotics
• Book Creator
• Canvas LMS
• Tower Gardens
• Produce'd Hydroponics Growbox
• FarmBot

• Innovative Leader Award

Dr. Holly Frilot, Cobb County School District Supervisor of Library Media Education and Adjunct Instructor for University of West Georgia in Educational Technology and Foundations, created a Library Learning Commons certification, the first of its kind in the nation. Designed to support the transformational process of making media instructional programs and spaces into future-ready Library Learning Commons, Frilot’s Library Learning Commons Certification focuses on three tenets: services, resources, and intentional spaces.

“The purpose of certification is to provide guidelines and support for the Library Learning Commons transition, as well as honor schools for their commitment to providing students with an education rich in print and digital literacy,” says Frilot, who was recently recognized for Most Innovative Learning Spaces at Tech & Learning’s Southeast Regional Leadership Summit as part of our Innovative Leader Awards.

Frilot shares her motivation to create the certification as well as magical Library Learning Commons from existing media centers, and offers three tips for districts interested in transforming their own innovative learning spaces.

Creating Cool Learning Spaces Through Literal Sweat Equity

Frilot has spearheaded the transformation of more than 50 media centers into library learning commons, with 50 more in the works. These vibrant student-focused hubs of technology, literacy, creativity, and innovation include podcast booths, video studios, makerspace labs, and lots of access to power and wifi.

“I became a high school library media specialist when the school community was just starting to discuss transforming libraries,” Frilot says. “I was reading David Loerschter’s work and became intrigued by the student-focused participatory approach to school library programs. I loved working with teenagers and wanted to really engage them in our space.”

Frilot had a beautiful area with floor-to-ceiling windows in her existing media center that was a perfect place to experiment with this approach.

“I saved up some funds, got input from students, and went to IKEA to buy some student-friendly furniture,” she says. “I spent a very hot couple of days in the summer putting furniture together and the student response was awesome when they came back in the fall. It was a simple start, and of course IKEA furniture couldn’t hold up to 3,000+ students, but that was the start, and I’ve never looked back!”

Learn and Earn—These Spaces Are Certified Fresh!

Collaborative teaching and learning is at the heart of Frilot’s certification initiative, and informs the design of both the program and the space.

“Library media specialists take the lead on this transformative work, often spending years building a collaborative instructional program, positive reading culture, and a student-friendly space,” Frilot says. “The LLC Certification is awarded to the school, since it requires school-wide engagement to achieve the levels of instructional collaboration and positive reading culture required.”

In addition to the physical space redesign, Frilot worked cross-divisionally to support the CCSD Future-Ready Framework, a scope and sequence of digital literacy and future-ready skills. This framework supports the teaching and learning needed to enable student mastery of digital literacy skills as they grow into collaborators, producers, and innovators.

More Hands, More Wallets, More Impact

In an era of financial uncertainty and tightening budgets, some districts might be hesitant to embark on new programs. Engaging stakeholders with a concrete, clear plan in hand can pave the way for funding.

“Dream big and start small! Creating the vision helps stakeholders see what you’re trying to accomplish,” Frilot says. “When you get funding, get tables on wheels. It sounds simple, but it really helps move in the direction of a flexible space. Create student-friendly low-cost programming, lots of books displays, dynamic shelving, and have fun. Promote the joy of reading. Look at your media centers and make small changes that appeal to students.”

Consider local community businesses as potential partners in achieving a dream future-ready learning space.

”Business partners are opportunities for collaboration, idea generation, and real-world application,” she says. “These collaborations can also bring in funding, resources and innovation, while strengthening community ties and helping students see the world beyond school. Additionally, reach out to your public library and partner with them when possible.”

Equity matters. Offering a fun, exciting, vibrant space can make a serious difference for struggling students.

“I fundamentally believe that if students feel like they belong at school, they keep coming,” Frilot says. “For some kids that’s sports or theater, and for some it’s the library. The transformation of school libraries into student-focused collaborative hubs sends the message that all students belong. You can be a reader or not; you still belong here. We want you here. We’re designing this space, not only as a place for books and tech, but for you. If we keep students coming to school and engaging with other students and teachers, they’ll keep learning and growing.”

3 Tips to Create Your Own Library Learning Commons

Frilot shares three actionable tips to transform your media center, which also happen to describe the important work accomplished within the space.

1. Collaborate: “Library learning commons are all about creating a space for everyone, especially students, so it’s important to collaborate with stakeholders to define what the library learning commons should be for your district,” Frilot says. “Student input is often most overlooked! Teachers, leaders, students, and colleagues from districts experienced in this work should all be involved in these discussions.”

2. Learn: Learning can be a challenge for adults sometimes. “Slow down, listen, and ask good questions of students and colleagues who have gone before you in this work,” Frilot says. “See other library learning commons spaces either in-person or via virtual visits. Look with an eye not only for the way the library has been redesigned, but also the flow, the climate, and the way the library program shifts into a learning hub.”

3. Create: “I always recommend that planning teams, after collaborating and learning, dream big together,” Frilot says. “Create the comprehensive plan in both design and instructional shifts. Engage with a company that designs educational spaces. When the big plan is created first, even if funding or resources aren’t available yet, it facilitates a cohesive vision that engages stakeholders.”

Tools They Use

• Future-Ready Librarians
• MackinVia
• Library PASS
• Follett Software Project Connect 
• Nintendo 
• Nearpod
• Microsoft Office 365

• Innovative Leader Award

“When you dream of something, you are really putting what your wants are into reality,” says Terri Webb, Manager of Instructional Technology at Georgia’s DeKalb County School District (DCSD).

So rather than guess at the needs and wants of students when it comes to the education technology they might learn with best, Webb and her team went directly to the source.

“Instead of the district pushing devices, the students created videos telling us what their dream device looks like, the different features within, how it should be used and carried,” she says. “All the things your parents would tell you, but you don't listen because you're listening to your friends who are much smarter than adults.”

The result was the Digital Dreamers program, which launched in 2018 when the district instituted their 1:1 initiative for middle to high schools (2:1 for elementary).

Webb, along with Instructional Technology Coordinator Natasha Lawyer, were recently recognized for their efforts with the Innovative Educational Technology Specialists Award at the Southeast Regional Leadership Summit as part of the Tech & Learning’s Innovative Leader Awards.

Webb and Lawyer discuss their impressive Digital Dreamers program and their other edtech efforts, plus offer three tips to create your own student focus group to inform tech choices that resonate.

Ambassadors Take Charge

Enlisting student input has long been key in the district, including starting a student AI Cohort and a Hackathon focused on the school portal design.

“It was so impressive! We said, ‘Let's stop asking the leaders what they want, the students will empower us to give them what they need to have fun while learning,’” says Webb. “Accessibility features, AI, cybersecurity—they even spoke about empathy between one another in the classroom. They wanted us to recognize that not all students can afford Apple devices and flashy tools.”

Insight from students refocused the team to help students with the tools they had.

“We saw students teach one another what a certain tool is, the purpose of the tool, and how we maintain a safe digital playground,” says Webb. “These students in turn became our ambassadors.”

Then a surprising thing happened. The ambassadors decided they didn’t really need much school leadership.

“We were trying to start a club to help students fix the Chromebooks. The students said, ‘We don't need to fix the Chromebooks, we need to teach the teachers how to use the Chromebooks,’” says Webb. “It was really cool—‘In Ms. So-and-so's class, we have to show her how to share her screen or a document.’ They shared what we need to know to support them.”

Tech for Littles

Reaching students when they’re young helps start their tech journey in a positive manner.

“We built Magical Moments with Microsoft—a virtual summer program that allows second-to-eighth grade students to play with tech,” says Webb. “They use Microsoft to build apps and games. We wanted to expand and give the ‘littles’ a taste so we chose Digital Game Design, Robotics, Video Production, Multimedia Apps and Graphic Design categories. We asked the schools to try it out, hoping for 30 students. We got over 300 applications. We now have pre-K students podcasting, first graders building video games—creating serious projects and presenting their work to judges.”

Holding tech-celebratory events can lead to big things in the district and beyond.

“Our Tech Competition is a wonderful opportunity for students (grades 3-12) to have their own voice and choice in sharing their knowledge,” says Lawyer, who co-directs the event. “They showcase their tech skills from the classroom, gaining real world experience of presenting in front of a judge to show how they have transformed over this school year.”

“When I led the Tech Competition, we were excited to get 200 students to register,” says Webb. “Natasha looked at the data to see which areas of the district we were missing and personally went into the schools to explain the event. To expand it to over a thousand students in three years is phenomenal.”

“Equity was a big component,” says Lawyer. “We saw disparity with some schools who weren't being represented, so we targeted that group to say, ‘Hey, you deserve to be a part of this as well!’ We knew they were doing the work. When you hear ‘tech competition,’ it can seem so abstract or complex you feel like your students can't do it. Once we really got in the trenches, it opened teachers’ eyes.”

The district enlists digital learning team liaisons and volunteer teacher sponsors. Interested students visit a sponsor who works between the school and parent to make sure they get the work done through an appointment system or in computer labs with a dedicated teacher.

“It’s amazing to still get teachers passionate about teaching and learning without putting a dollar amount to it, because they care so much about the students,” says Webb. “Busy principals are overwhelmed, so we approach them with a ‘wow moment’ in their building. They get excited, ‘Oh! my school is doing this?’ They then support us even more.”

At Techpalooza, the district brings in vendor partners to share what’s new with students and community stakeholders.

“We feature interactive presentations, with new tech students can touch and feel to really get their curiosity going,” says Lawyer. “Inviting the community fosters conversation with parents. grandparents, cousins, siblings—everyone comes to support their students.”

Pipeline to Profession

Engaging a larger audience can result in unexpected benefits.

“One ninth grader has been a Tech Competition first-place winner for three or four years,” says Webb. “He emailed me with a business plan. He recreated an app we use for our event visitors in a way that the students can log in and be notified when it's their time to present. He knew he couldn’t get paid for the tech, so he negotiated to have his own professional table as a featured person at Techpalooza. He presented to vendors and leaders, sharing his resume and LinkedIn information.

”The kid is a businessman at ninth grade, a professional before he can even drive! After the Techpalooza, vendors and tech companies were begging to come in and support our students saying, ‘How can I create a scholarship for this kid?’ They want to nurture and prepare him for possibly working with their company. That’s what I call ‘pipeline to profession.’”

Webb says it all stems from open communication and listening to students.

“When you go to a restaurant or shop in your community, you know that that's a student that came from your school,” she says. ‘I’m always talking to everybody, ‘What school did you go to? What did you learn? What do we need to do next?’ And they tell us.”

3 Tips to Create An Impactful Student Focus Group

Webb and Lawyer share their advice for how to use students to support students.

1. Embrace the personality of the student. Allow them to just talk. Listen to the frustrations, listen to the excitement, listen to everything. Then validate their feelings and concerns by showing interest and feedback on at least one piece of what they're saying, so they understand you support them and that their thoughts matter.
2. Be open minded. Sometimes students can surprise you with the depth of their knowledge and observations in the classroom regarding tech that works and when it could work if handled better by teachers. Let them give you advice and then navigate that advice with the students.
3. Offer space and opportunity to share. Give students the opportunity to talk to leaders and decision-makers. A lot of times people making tech choices don’t have the opportunity to sit in front of students. Creating a student advisory committee space where kids can speak—about the tech, the devices, what they would like to see in the classroom—can change the game. We can learn from them.

The Tools They Use

• Microsoft
• Ignite U
• Chromebooks

• Innovative Leader Award

When Dr. Shanique Worthey launched her Cyber Champions program, she had no idea just how many students would jump at the chance to participate in the digital citizenship program.

“As we began collaborating last summer for the Cyber Champions, we expected a group of 25 or so,” says Worthey, Manager of Security Awareness and Engagement for Georgia’s DeKalb County School District, which serves 92,066 students across 137 schools. “Instead, we had about 100 students immediately apply to be a part of this initiative to virtually meet monthly to talk about different topics such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and being a good digital citizen.”

For her efforts, Worthey was recently recognized as Innovative Educational Technology Specialist at the Southeast Regional Leadership Summit as part of the Tech & Learning’s Innovative Leader Awards.

Worthey discusses her impressive Cyber Champions program and shares five tips to launch a similar digital citizenship program in your district.

A Winning Gameplan for Cyber Champions

Worthey launched Cyber Champions with Eric Logan, Director of Information Security, but its immediate success made the duo realize they would need reinforcements to achieve their goal.

”The numbers were definitely overwhelming,” Worthey says, adding she was thrilled when a dozen teachers volunteered their time to help. “We recruited teachers to help us facilitate virtual meetings and run small breakout rooms to dive deep into the lesson shared in the monthly meeting. We’re hoping to pay them in a future cohort, but we're not there yet. So at the moment we are relying on their enthusiasm and willingness to participate in such an initiative.”

With such a wide age range, one common digital topic was presented each time with breakout rooms providing space to scale participation by grade level.

“When I first started out, I was tweaking plans from Microsoft and Common Sense Media about AI and cybersecurity,” Worthey says. “I created a template for the teachers to align to the grade level of their group of four to six students. I wanted to celebrate, not micromanage our volunteers, so I gave them the autonomy to use their expertise in their respective fields to help students understand.”

Building Leaders—The Domino Effect

Empowering and growing leaders extended beyond the volunteer teachers. Student participants not only put in the time to learn the technology-based lessons, they actively teach others in their school community what they learn.

“They're definitely our ambassadors,” says Worthey. “They're our champions for cybersecurity and AI. They act as a liaison between us and the other students. After the monthly meeting, students are required to create their own presentation based on the information they learned with us and share it with their classmates. That’s why we call them our Cyber Champions.”

Strength in numbers proves true at DeKalb. Worthey’s team reaches out not only to peers and classmates, but shares lessons with parents, teachers, the local community and beyond.

“Some of the students may get selected to present at the PTA or during their school’s morning announcements. Some participate in monthly tech cafes for the community, where they get to present to parents and visitors,” says Worthey. “Many Cyber Champions compete in our tech fair competition, placing in their respective categories. They are highlighted outside of the school community—one was even a participant in the student panel for Tech & Learning.”

Keeping the monthly message relatable and easy to digest helps kids pass the information on to others, a proven technique for ensuring lessons land and are remembered.

“We talk about topics like privacy and reading privacy statements,” says Worthey. “We talk about using artificial intelligence—who's behind those chatbots? Ask teachers if now is an appropriate time to use AI and use it as a brainstorming partner, not for answers. We theme it to what is happening for the kids to make it relevant, so over the holidays we discussed how to shop safely online.”

Worthey promotes the continuation and expansion of the program by using the champions’ own words.

“As part of our closeout ceremony, I asked our students to create a 30-60 second video to help recruit other students,” she says. “I'm definitely enjoying watching their videos, to learn their feedback and what their thoughts are on the program.”

5 Tips to Launching Cyber Champions in your District

Worthey and Logan share tips on developing a successful Cyber Champions program to boost digital citizenship and understanding.

1. Offer Opportunities to Hone Soft Skills

Soft skills such as communication, collaboration, and presenting in front of an audience creates opportunities for students to shine and really be leaders in the field. By working on those soft skills, students will be more comfortable when looking for jobs, interviewing for college, presenting at competitions, and giving classroom reports.

2. Build Model Students

Breaking information into smaller, digestible pieces helps students easily share lessons with peers in the classroom. “When we discuss using AI in an ethical and responsible way, students can model proper behavior when using the tech and show others how to be a good digital citizen,” says Worthey.

3. Bring in Subject Matter Experts

Worthey has reached out to the local FBI office and shared with them about the Cyber Champions program, explaining that they were looking for ways to partner with the FBI to bring strategies for online security awareness to the table to share with the students.

4. Create Career Pathway Awareness

“A lot of our vendors, such as Microsoft, Google, Fortnite, and others have a lot of opportunities for training students interested in careers in cyber security and IT,” says Worthey. “It's a level of experience and knowledge that they have access to through Cyber Champions, so once they go to college or into the workforce, they are already a step ahead.”

5. Offer Volunteers a Choice of Recognition

“I created a form asking teacher-volunteers how they’d like to be rewarded for their time,” says Worthey. “Some like personal recognition — a mention at year-end celebration, some wanted items boasting the Cyber Champions logo, some preferred a district-wide news flash, while others would like a gift card.”

The Tools They Use

• Microsoft Teams
• Canva
• Common Sense Media
• Fortnight
• Google

• Innovative Leader Award

A big element of growing a solid tech program is to create the buzz of excitement that draws in other learners. With 49,740 students across 87 learning sites, Atlantic Public Schools (APS) excels at finding ways to let students show off their hard work and talents.

“We just wrapped up our 13th Annual Technology and Innovation Competition, formerly known as Tech Fair,” says Dr. Natasha Rachell, who was recently recognized with the Innovative Director of Instructional Technology Award at the Southeast Regional Leadership Summit, part of the Tech & Learning’s Innovative Leader Awards. “This allows our students, Grade 3-12, to showcase the amazing technology and innovation projects that they've been working on throughout the year.”

Rachell shares her other impressive programs, tech partnerships, and four key pieces of advice for educators trying to juggle tech and learning in style.

Let Students Shine

Knowing that APS esports at the high school level was already up and running through the Georgia High School Association, Rachell created her own Pathway Program Initiative to prepare students to enter that arena feeling strong, confident, and experienced.

“It's viewed just like football or basketball,” she says. “We saw the need to make sure that our students were prepared for that level, so we established an elementary and middle school pathway program. We've been able to partner with Elite Gaming Live to bring this to life for them. We've seen great success including drops in discipline and increases in attendance.”

Creative minds also find a home for exploring their gifts through tech at APS, as the district prepares to roll out their Second Annual Student Film Festival in May.

“Students are able to use tech to create film projects that are in the process of being judged as we speak,” says Rachell. “We’ll have a red carpet-style event to announce the winners. It was so popular we have actually doubled our numbers from last year.”

There’s No “I” in Tech

Partnerships with tech companies not only provide necessary hardware and software, but invaluable resources crucial during these times of financial uncertainty and budget constraints.

“We have partnered with Verizon to bring Verizon Innovative Learning Schools (VILS) labs to almost all of our middle schools,” says Rachell. “That VILS partnership built amazing STEM labs where students can work, collaborate, create, innovate together. Sphero Balls, 3D printers, Glowforge machines, Oculus headsets—anything and everything you could imagine are in these labs, including a lab mentor. Those labs are $450,000 each and 100% grant funded.”

Other exciting partnerships include Canva, Magic School, Grow with Google Career Certificates for highschoolers considering entrepreneurship, ClassLink, My Backpack, Minecraft Level UP program, and Brisk, among others.

“We're a charter district, so we believe in flexibility and autonomy,” says Rachell. “Our principals and teachers have access to whatever they want. Data drives tough budget decisions, but also helps tell a compelling story for grants. We’ve seen a lot of success building partnerships and relationships with vendors and our ed tech friends to bring awesomeness to our students. My mom always said ‘if you don't ask, you don't get.’ We always ask and then we hope. At the end of the day, everything we do is for students and their futures.”

4 Tips to Find Balance with Ambitious Tech Programs

• 1. Tie everything to an instructional outcome. “Nothing we do is just for the sake of doing it,” says Rachell. “When people hear ‘esports,’ they think kids are just gaming all day or playing Minecraft. Our esports Pathway Program students are engaging in STEM career exploration. Before they even lay hands on a controller, they are going through a curriculum of content exploration to learn about game design, video production, game production—behind the scenes opportunities for their future. Our mission at Atlanta Public Schools is preparing our students for college, career and life.”
• 2. Create a “Principal 360 Report.” The Department of Instructional Technology, the Atlanta Virtual Academy, and the media services department all contribute to a monthly report for principals to see at a glance the support that the division has provided to their teachers, media specialists, administrators, and students or administrators in their school. These impact reports are used for programs lacking hard data to show what Rachell’s team hopes to accomplish.
• 3. Empower and delegate. “I am always delegating and empowering my team to come up with great ideas, to implement the concept, to devise plans for the rollout,” says Rachell. “It's definitely a team effort. This helps to build their capacity and helps make them experts, too. Everyone owns a piece— we're all invested because we all want to see it work and don't want to see it fail.”
• 4. Capture data to tell the story. Rachell’s team has been extremely diligent in capturing data, whether it's quantitative or qualitative to tell the story of their work. “Our edtech specialists operate on a request and feedback system,” she says. “Teachers are able to request their services, they're able to offer feedback which tells the story of what is happening in the schools. If a principal ever says, ‘What is such and such doing in my school?’ We have that data to lean on to measure the impact.”

The Tools They Use:

• Classlink
• Canva
• Formative
• Securly
• Grow with Google Career Certificates
• Google for Education
• Microsoft for Education
• Minecraft for Education
• Apple Education
• Verizon Innovative Learning Schools
• zSpace
• Book Creator
• Common Sense Media
• MagicSchool AI
• Ciena Solutions Challenge
• Kick Up
• Paper
• Adobe
• Brisk
• Remind

• Innovative Leader Award

Congratulations! You’ve ascended to a leadership position in your school or district. And although it seems as if it’s been a long journey to just get to this point, the real work is just beginning!

John F. Kennedy famously said, “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” To help you along on both paths, we’ve collected here some of the best advice, practices, and tips from education leaders across the country, gathered from our original articles, Regional Leadership Summits, and Tech & Learning’s advisors and Innovative Leader Award winners.

T&L KEY RESOURCES

• AI Resources for District Leaders
• AI Starter Kit for Teachers
• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers
• Best Hardware for Teachers

LEADERSHIP ADVICE

Tech & Learning regularly features leadership advice and best practices from actual school leaders. Find our most recent leadership articles here.

COMMUNICATION

4 Ways to Leverage AI to Bridge Cultural Gaps in K-12 Classrooms - By providing personalized learning experiences, enhancing communication and collaboration, and fostering cultural awareness, AI can help bridge gaps.

Rebuilding Trust In School Leadership In An Untrusting World - Trust in leadership is increasingly fragile. School leaders must prioritize rebuilding and maintaining it now, more than ever.

6 Ways For School Leaders to Address “Whispers” - Whispers have the loudest echoes: Stand on the rock, don’t crawl under it.

How to Lead Through Digital Communication - School leaders can demonstrate leadership through their digital communication practices.

Why I Ignore Social Media (Mostly): Advice for School Leaders - Don’t let social media lead you into its toxic swamps.

I Tested Social Media Civility Around A Hot Topic And The Results Will Surprise You - Can online social media platforms foster meaningful exchanges, not toxic destructiveness?

MANAGING STAFF AND COMMUNITY

Managing The Victim Mindset In Teaching - How to not be overpowered by negative, victim mindset by adopting a fair and balanced approach.

Optimizing Teacher PD with AI - How utilizing the best AI tools, including NotebookLM, can improve teacher performance.

7 Things School Leaders Can Do To Promote Digital Citizenship in the Community - By prioritizing digital citizenship and literacy, we can prepare our students and their families to navigate the digital world responsibly and safely.

The Role of School Leaders in Ensuring Ethical Technology Use and Data Privacy - As technology continues to expand in education, school leaders need to drive its ethical use and the protection of student data.

Maximizing Existing Technology Before Adding More: What To Know - When education institutions prioritize thoughtful technology use over constant acquisition, they can save resources and build a stronger culture of purpose-driven innovation.

What Works, What Doesn’t, and How to Tell: The Data That Should Drive K–12 Edtech Decisions - District leaders, now more than in years past, are less interested in vendor promises and more focused on evidence that learning took place.

A Tale of Two Struggles: Instilling Resilience In At-Risk Students - How two failing kids fooled the world.

How to Quiet the Hyperactive Hive Mind in Schools - School leaders need to identify and quell toxic groupthink that can lead to a hyperactive hive mind that impairs everyone.

5 Steps to Developing an Unbeatable IT Leadership Team - Having a strong IT leadership team is essential to successfully supporting your entire school community.

I Used An Edcamp to Educate My Teaching Staff on AI Tools. Here’s How You Can Do It Too - Using an edcamp can be a powerful way to invigorate and engage your teaching staff.

Reimaginine Learning Spaces to Empower Students - If we want to prepare students for tomorrow, we have to provide access to the tools of today

3 Tips to Advocate for Teachers - Here are simple ways to support your teachers when they feel attacked by the small percentage of critics who carry the loudest megaphones.

Creativity Unleashed: Using An Observed Behavior Chart to Limit Disruptions - Being creative and finding your why can lead to classroom solutions such as using an observed behavior chart with disruptive students.

How School Leaders Can Address the Inequities of the AI Digital Divide - As AI becomes more integrated into schools, it's going to be up to school leaders to make sure it is equitable.

SELF-IMPROVEMENT

Strategic School Planning for Fall: 11 Key Considerations for Leaders - In a time of rapid change, strategic planning must be both rigorous and responsive, and the most successful leaders will be those who can achieve that balance.

9 Ways School Leaders Can Use AI - Effective ways that building leaders can use AI tools to improve their leadership.

10 Ways Educators Can Use AI to Streamline Daily Life - By offloading some of the daily mental tasks to AI, you can save time and free up brainpower for the things that matter most.

3 Key Concepts Education Leaders Need To Understand About Technology - Organizational leaders must develop a strong foundational understanding of how technology influences strategic and operational decisions.

The Power of Humility: Why Egoless Leadership Helps Schools Thrive - Leaders who embrace humility often have more success than those who follow their egos.

School Leadership: How to Make Lemonade - School leaders who find ways to turn obstacles into opportunities help everyone win.

Lifelong Learning: Modeling for Students and Faculty - By being a lifelong learner, an education leader can create a win-win opportunity.

T&L LEADERSHIP EVENTS

Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summits - The Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summits bring together Superintendents, CTOs, CAOs, and Instructional and Tech District Leaders to share ideas, best practices, and solutions to help to reshape and reimagine the future of education. Each free to attend Tech & Learning Leadership Summit focuses on the unique needs of the region to give attendees the valuable insight they need to develop action plans.

Midwest 2024: Regional Leadership Summit Report - Bringing together district leaders and service agencies for a deep dive into what it means to teach in the age of AI.

AI, Absenteeism, Cybersecurity, and More at the Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit in New England - Forward-thinking educators collaborated during a day of information sharing, fact finding, and a bit of entertainment at the Tech & Learning Summit in Boston.

The View from Utah: Leadership, Innovation, and Learning - The recent Tech & Learning regional leadership summit offered a great opportunity for education leaders to network, learn, and collaborate.

Immersive Learning, Networking, Model Schools, and More at the DMV Regional Leadership Summit - District and school leaders engaged in an immersive professional learning experience at the Tech & Learning regional leadership summit in Baltimore.

INNOVATIVE LEADERSHIP

As part of our Regional Live Summits, Tech & Learning recognizes exceptional district administrators in select regions around the country who are leading innovation in their schools with Innovative Leader Awards. These recognize district leaders who are reimagining and reinventing education by developing and launching unique and forward-thinking programs, policies, and best practices that have shown to have a positive impact and are also replicable at other districts.

Find profiles of and best practices from our most recent Innovative Leader Award winners here.

Here is a sampling:

5 Tips For Superintendents To Use Tech To Serve Your District - Advice that any superintendent can follow to get the most out of education technology.

5 Tips To Launching A Cyber Champions Program - Dr. Shanique Worthey discusses her impressive Cyber Champions program and shares how to launch a similar digital citizenship program in your district.

The Importance of Working With (Not Through) Technology - Just simply embracing education technology is not enough for positively impacting learning outcomes.

How to Integrate AI Policies Into Professional Development Programs - Providing an emphasized outlook on professional development in regards to technology and, more specifically, artificial intelligence.

How AI Can Help Support Administrative Processes for Educators - Adding AI to a school’s administrative systems can help save both time and money.

How A Two-Pronged Approach Helped To Protect Student (and Staff) Data - One district has gone about protecting school and staff data by addressing the issue in two distinct ways.

Creating A Comprehensive Cybersecurity Plan For Schools - How to develop and implement a district-wide cybersecurity plan that includes regular staff training and more secure storage solutions.

Gamifying Cybersecurity Training - By gamifying cybersecurity training, you can increase engagement and the retention of best practices, ultimately increasing your district’s safety.

Building Equity Through Next Generation Science Standards - How one district is addressing DEI while implementing NGSS.

Best Practices for Launching a Digital Curriculum at Scale - Lessons from launching a digital curriculum for Chicago Public Schools.

With so many AI tools and services available, it can be hard to keep with it all. In the educational space, AI tools can handle any number of processes. Knowing which are best suited to your needs can become an overwhelming prospect. However, having a dedicated team to help assess AI tools can make all the difference.

Here we speak with Greg Reichelt, Instructional Technology Specialist at Maine Township High School District 207 in Illinois, about integrating AI policy with existing tech and security policies and focusing AI to help handle tedious tasks and provide teachers with more time to deal with other classroom challenges.

Reichelt was recently recognized as Most Innovative Technology Director at a Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit with an Innovative Leader Award.

An Unbiased Look at AI

For Reichelt, having a dedicated AI committee was essential to understanding what AI was, how it could be used in the educational space, and what sorts of tools would work best for learning. Nearly 35 teachers, administrators, and other district leaders (separate from the existing Technology Advisory Board) came together for this task. Reichelt also recruited less tech-savvy educators as well as folks who were generally reluctant to change, as he wanted a full array of viewpoints to provide the most objective perspective (not unlike Abraham Lincoln ‘s “Team of Rivals”). They started by brainstorming ideas, frustrations, and challenges, and then discussed all these with the group to build guidance.

“We wanted to specifically look at AI,” says Reichelt. “This is when ChatGPT was just getting announced. We wanted to take an agnostic approach to looking at it and not make any preconceived decisions, one way or the other.”

This might not be new for some districts, but having an extreme reaction to AI tools is common. Many schools either outright ban its use, while others welcome different kinds of AI tools without much regulation. Reichelt chose a very proactive approach to incorporating AI into his schools.

“The committee of 35 people, we got them every AI tool imaginable for us to try so we had an opportunity to see what [those tools] were capable of,” says Reichelt, who also made sure that no student data was involved. “As we were doing that, we had a lot of policy conversations about what we can do to shape guidance on what AI does. We ended up drafting our own policy.”

The policy was pieced together based on what Reichelt and his team found through research, what they agreed should be added to the policy, and what already existed in tech and security policy already in play. This allowed for a comprehensive set of guidelines that felt familiar but also incorporated the best bits of policy that existed at the time.

Policy in Place…Now What?

With the AI policy set, all that was left was to figure out what tools, apps, and platforms would be useful to consider adding to an educational environment. In addition to bringing in outside experts to help steer the process, Reichelt’s team opted for a teacher-friendly approach.

“Once we had a policy in place, we thought about what we could do to get into the heads of teachers to help meet the needs of our staff and students,” said Reichelt. “We specifically wanted to focus on staff at first, not students, just to give staff an opportunity to see what AI could do for them.”

Encouraging teachers to try AI is not always about how to use it with their students. AI tools can help handle other tasks that present as being tedious or otherwise time-consuming.

“Teacher burnout was a huge thing,” said Reichelt. “So we thought about how we can take a new tool on the market and have it help with something contributing to teacher burnout. Too many emails coming in. You have to write too many communications. Here are some tools that can help you with that process.”

The tools that Reichelt gravitated toward were pretty popular programs, such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini, but they also found use in other programs too. Claude AI, for instance, was a huge help in data processing and analytics.

Ultimately, this approach went a long way to a successful adoption of AI tools. It also encouraged other educators in the district to get involved in the process.

• Innovative Leader Award
• Regional Leadership Summit 

Professional development and student/teacher protections are always the cornerstones of whatever technology is introduced to a school, and making sure these tools are implemented well can lead to technological success for a school district.

Callie Salaymeh, Instructional Technology Coach and Biology teacher at Lyons Township High School and Head of Community for Enlightened AI, discusses how her district implemented a successful professional development plan that integrates AI guidelines to help students effectively navigate AI use personally and professionally.

Salaymeh was recently recognized for the Best Example of Professional Development at a Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit with an Innovative Leader Award.

Making Professional Development a Team Effort

Technology is only as good as the hands that wield it. For educational technology to be used in the right way, proper instruction is key for teachers. Professional development in this area is critical when helping teachers introduce technology to their students.

Salaymeh introduced her method of PD that helps keep the district on the edge of modern technology.

“There are five of us technology coaches for a staff of 280 teachers and about 500 faculty members total,” Salaymeh says. “We are a single school district split up into two campuses. So as technology coaches, we’re involved in a lot of the professional development for our district. We bring in a lot of technology. We go out, educate ourselves at conferences or on our own. We bring technology initiatives to our director of technology. We also provide support and coaching for our staff on how they can better implement technology in their curriculum."

Salaymeh has always been very into cutting-edge technology.

“When generative AI hit the tech space, I was fascinated by it,” says Salaymeh. “The first time I started being clued in to all of that was August 2023. I quickly joined a Slack community formed by Amanda Bickerstaff, cofounder of AI In Education.”

Within this Slack community, Salaymeh was able to learn much more about AI and how it was being used. Through her interactions with AI tech leaders and educators, she was able to collaborate with her team of tech coaches to develop a comprehensive PD session based around AI. This session not only helped to educate staff on AI, it led to increased tech literacy among teachers as well.

Leveraging Information Into AI Guidelines

Having a wealth of knowledge in technology at your fingertips can turn into helpful tools for the future. In Salaymeh’s case, this information became the guidelines that the schools in the district use for proper AI use in curriculum development.

“The whole last semester of spring 2024, my focus was increasing AI literacy among staff,” says Salaymeh. “As the semester rolled on, it became obvious that having some sort of guidelines for this coming school year was important. A lot of schools were working on that last spring and I didn’t want to be behind in that initiative. So I proposed that we start a task force for AI. We used a lot of different resources from TeachAI and AI for Education, and put together the stop light guidelines. which we introduced in August of 2024.”

The stop light guidelines help let teachers know whether to utilize AI in any given assignment.

The Stop Light Guidelines

• Green Light: A green light assignment gives a student the ability to use generative AI to complete a project.
• Yellow Light: A yellow light assignment gives a student limited use to use generative AI at the teacher's discretion. This can mean using some AI tools while not using others. (For example, only using image generation AI tools but not ChatGPT to gather information.)
• Red Light: A red light assignment bars the use of generative AI to complete the project.

How to Create Forward Progress in Education for AI

The discussion of AI has been varied based on who you speak to. Many schools and districts want to begin implementing AI into their curriculum (or find better ways to do that than they already have been) but are unsure how to proceed.

Salaymeh shares the following recommendations on what schools should focus on to support their staff on the safe and effective use of AI.

“I think the starting point is to focus on the way that AI can make teachers more efficient,” she says. “Have a better work-life balance. A lot of people are leaving the teaching profession because they are being run down and overworked. Using AI as a tool to not only help [teachers] become more efficient but also eliminate some administrative tasks is a great angle for a school district to start at.”

AI literacy is also a crucial component to the effective use of AI in schools.

“The goal of increasing AI literacy is an important thing I learned early on,” says Salaymeh. “How [AI] is used in their jobs, what is myth and what is fact. Everything they can learn about AI to trust in it and know how to use it appropriately. The AI literacy of staff is really important. Once that’s there, a school district could move into introducing it to students appropriately and supporting their use of it. But those guidelines need to be in place.”

AI literacy is important, especially for teachers. More and more, AI-integrated tools are becoming available and teachers will need to understand not only how best to use these, but also how best to educate their students on how to use these. AI will only become more important going forward, and developing a working knowledge of it now can help create smooth educational transitions into the future.

One final thing that Salaymeh recommends when creating AI guidelines is to include students in the process.

“I think [school districts] need to include students in the discussion," she says. "Students need to have a seat at the table.”

Callie Salaymeh’s Tech Toolbox:

• ChatGPT
• MagicSchool
• Brisk
• EnlightenAI

• Innovative Leader Award
• Regional Leadership Summit

The services that your school uses may, for whatever reason, need to change in the future. When these changes occur, the resulting outcome might be jarring if done hastily or discombobulating if done without adequate planning. It helps to have a strategy in place when looking to make an important change in the technology implemented in a school.

We speak with Travis McGuire, Assistant Superintendent for Learned Resources for Community High School District 99 in Illinois, about his efforts in implementing a new student information system, the planning and coordination that went into it, the pain points to be dealt with, and the method that led to a successful transition.

McGuire was recently recognized as Most Innovative Superintendent at a Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit with an Innovative Leader Award.

Time is On Your Side

One of the greatest assets you can have as an educational decision maker is time. Knowing how much time you have to introduce a change to a school or district environment can mean the difference between a successful launch or not. With the nature of programs and how time-restrictive it can be (with licenses and contracts that can run out), it can be easy to feel overwhelmed when a decision is there to be made.

“You’re on a timeline. The great thing for us is that we knew [how much time we had],” says McGuire. “So that was not as much of a pain point. I can see where some districts [might work under a tight time schedule]. I would suggest, if you can have a full year for your data migration and training before full implementation, that would be a huge thing.”

Knowing how to best utilize your time is important, but what about knowing whether you should make a change in systems or stick with what you have?

“What it comes down to is knowing whether the current system you have meets your needs first and foremost,” says McGuire. “There are always products out there that look like they are better, and it’s good to investigate those, but not always. You have to understand how much time it will take to [implement a new system]. And, because time is our greatest commodity, is that return on investment going to push us to the next level? We know there will be some time intensive moments, some anxiety, and being cognizant of that [is important]. It’s a balancing act.”

Looking to Make a Change?

Changing your student information system, for example, is a big decision to make. The information being handled is sensitive and you will want to make sure you go with the right choice for your students, your school, and your district. However, as McGuire points out, the process doesn’t need to be painful. It just needs to be thorough.

“It’s going to take a lot of work,” McGuire says. “We vetted different providers. We had them come in and do demos. One of the things we pointed out was to show us exactly what we’ve been talking about and if there is anything additional you need to point out. So we had those where we had our first rounds. Then we had our second round with Infinite Campus. We had them come in, we had a whole bunch of staff, different levels that came in.”

In the first round of demos McGuire and his team cast a wide net to have various service providers come in to make sure that the discussions they had prior to meeting in-person would hold up in a physical demo. Infinite Campus made it to the second round and, upon a second meeting, were able to answer direct staff questions from those educators who would be using the platform. This provided a major boon in professional development by helping teachers and other staff understand Infinite Campus before agreeing to accept it as a new system.

“It really allowed us to dig into the functionality, the operations, just the overall flow of the system," he says. "So I suggest getting the right people around the table.”

The best kind of relationship you can have with a vendor is one where they genuinely listen to your questions and pay attention to your needs. Know what you are looking to accomplish before you start wading through salespeople. It’s beneficial to know what path you're on before you accept an offer from a vendor. They need to be on the same path as well. This will benefit you in the long run and will make sure you not only do what’s best for your students, but that you build a lasting relationship with trust as a cornerstone.

• Innovative Leader Award
• Regional Leadership Summit

The recent Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit at the NIU Naperville Conference Center just outside of Chicago was focused on preparing the next generation workforce. It brought together area district administrators and service agencies who took a deep dive into what it means to teach in the age of AI.

District leaders worked in teams to explore how emerging tech has impacted teaching and learning, including how to vet tools, assess data privacy risks, and prepare staff and students for the Generative Age.

Find information about upcoming Tech & Learning Leadership Summits here.

Key Takeaways

1. ANTIDOTES FOR THE ANXIOUS GENERATION

During his opening keynote, Carl Hooker discussed whether or not to ban cell phones in the classroom. He also addressed the need for educators to be equipped with strategies to address student anxiety through mindfulness, social-emotional learning (SEL) techniques, and effective classroom management.

For example, one strategy revolves around notification awareness, and helping students learn to silence and/or regulate what they get notified about on their phones, which can directly help with their focus, especially when they are working, collaborating, or being productive. Discussing this with students helps them create more proactive solutions to their own focus. Do they need to get notified about the group Snapchat or can it wait until after school? What things do they need to be notified about right away? What happens to learning when they get distracted? Reflecting on these and other questions can be the first step in addressing the problem.

See all seven of Hooker’s antidotes for the anxious generation here.

2. ESPORTS WINNING IMPACT

During his presentation, “Scholastic Esports: More Than Just Gaming,” John Phillips, Technology & Innovation Consultant for Berrian RESA, discussed the far-reaching impact of scholastic esports.

Phillips explained how esports equips students with far more skills than just gaming. He cited research that showed that esports can help:

• Improve visual acuity and attention
• Foster scientific reasoning
• Accelerate language learning
• Improve digital and print literacy
• Increase problem-solving skills
• Boost math achievement
• Build technology fluency

He cited dozens of career paths that launch from esports experience, including business, IT, sales & marketing, education, event management, communication & media and more.

Phillips also noted that the average esports scholarship student receives $4,800 in tuition awards a year, according to the National Association of Collegiate Esports—but some can receive up to half off tuition.

Phillips works with the North American Scholastic Esports Federation (NASEF), a nonprofit that offers free esports tournaments and more to help students develop STEAM-based, collaboration, and problem-solving skills they need to thrive in work and in life.

3. BUILDING ENGAGEMENT AND EQUITY

Attendees from Chicago Public Schools discussed Chi-Craft, the district’s esports afterschool Minecraft Build Challenge program. Inspired by New York City Public Schools’ “Battle of the Boroughs", the new program features more than 500 students from 70+ schools, and unlike some other extracurricular programs and activities that can require certain physical abilities and skills, every student is eligible to participate.

Using Minecraft Education, the competition involves “Build and Present Challenges” that are scored with a STEM-powered rubric. Students essentially receive a 3D creative writing prompt that includes key focus vocabulary and Chicago-centered resources. In return, they create innovative architecture, beautiful murals, and constructs from “out of this world.”

Innovative Leader Award Winners

At the close of the Tech & Learning Leadership Summit, the following leaders were recognized for their outstanding work in their districts:

• Innovative Technology Director - Greg Reichelt, Director of Technology, Maine Township HSD 207
• Best Example of Professional Development - Callie Salaymeh, Instructional Technology Coach, Lyons Township High School District 204
• Innovative Superintendent - Travis McGuire, Assistant Superintendent for Learning, Community High School District 99, Downers Grove, Illinois
• Best Overall Implementation of Technology - Chicago Public Schools, Chi-Craft Esports Competition

Special thanks to our partners who made these important conversations possible:

Apptegy
D2L
ClassLink
IncidentIQ
MagicSchool
Wonder Workshop
Hovercam
Stride Learning Solutions
Tinkrworks

Find information about upcoming Tech & Learning Leadership Summits here.

Having a uniform set of platforms in a school or district helps everyone learn how to best utilize what is available. Making a drastic change to that can be a jarring, unwelcome move for most, even when it’s deemed a necessary step forward.

Here we speak with Kathi Kersznowski, educational technology specialist at Washington Township Public Schools in New Jersey, about how she helped her district switch from Microsoft to Google, some of the steps she took to ensure a smooth transition, and what other schools and districts should know if they are looking to make a switch as well.

Kathi was recently recognized for Best Example of Professional Development at a Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit with an Innovative Leader Award.

One Small Step for a District

The idea to switch from one technological ecosystem to another doesn’t come lightly, but every great change starts with a spark. Even if the change is small, it can have massive ramifications if everyone is not on the same page.

“We got a new superintendent last year, and the new superintendent came from a Google district,” says Kersznowski. “He wanted us to be a Google district as well. So we knew it was coming. We had a year to do a turnaround. I have a team of three other people that work with me, it’s just the four of us. We were tasked with making this happen.”

WTPS is a district of nearly 8,000 students with six elementary schools, three middle schools, one large high school, and two preschools, so that transition seemed daunting at first.

“There’s so many people to train, so many to teach,” recalls Kersznowski. “It’s new for the teachers, it’s new for the students. Then we realized it’s new for the secretaries and the administrative assistants as well. We had a lot of people to get this knowledge into. It’s a big shift when you go from Microsoft to Google. Word translates to Docs, and Excel to Sheets, so there’s compatibility with a lot of products, but it works very differently in many ways.”

Embracing “Google Day”

Switching to another technology ecosystem isn’t uncommon. However, some districts may be put off from making the change because of the overall headache it may produce. So how did Kersznowski and her team overcome typical challenges associated with a shift in technology for a whole district?

“I’ll tell you what the best thing is that other districts could do if they want to replicate this,” says Kersznowski. “We had Google turned on last year. The official switchover date wasn’t until the middle of the summer, but we had Google turned on by February 16th of last year, which was a full day in-service for the whole district. As a tech team, we asked for permission to have that day, then we commandeered it and called it Google Day. We wore shirts that had Google day on them. We spent months planning for what this was going to look like, but the fact that we had it turned on last February gave us a sandbox where we could play with it. The only things we didn’t turn on were Gmail and Calendar because those were still running in Microsoft Outlook.”

What was the benefit of having extra time to work with the Google ecosystem?

“With Google Day, we wanted to find out what the core things were that every single person is going to need to know to survive in Google,” says Kersznowski. “We identified those things as Google Drive, the Chrome OS, Google Calendar and Gmail, and the overall app suite. Those were the core things that everyone had to take a session in. We offered live sessions and we offered recorded sessions. Everybody had to take at least two live sessions. We wanted people in person to interact and discuss.”

And how do you deal with pushback?

“Change is hard,” says Kersznowski. “So it would have been the same pushback if we had gone from Google to Microsoft or anything else. People are resistant [to change]. But the fact that we got them PD and training and support so early on, and gave them a place to play, work, and learn, [that was helpful for the transition.]”

Making such a big change for a school, let alone a whole district, can be a daunting task to undertake. But, as Kersznowski and her team have proven, with proper planning and plenty of time to learn the technology, you can set your district up for success as well.

• Innovative Leader Award
• Regional Leadership Summit

One of the biggest hurdles any decision-maker in education has to face is the budget. Striking a balance between maintaining costs and providing the tools students and teachers need to be successful can be daunting, but it is not impossible.

Here we speak with Caroline Lightfoot, CTO of Dickinson ISD in Texas, about her efforts to build equity within her 12,000-student district by providing proper tools and programs to all schools and utilizing Schoology for blending learning.

Lightfoot was recently recognized as Most Innovative CTO at a Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit with an Innovative Leader Award.

Upgrades Across The Board

Some days it can seem impossible to keep up with the tools that will make the greatest impact on education. However, by organizing your resources to provide proper tools and programs to every student and teacher within a district (regardless of how old the campus is), all can enjoy the same levels of education. Lightfoot explains how she approached this goal in her own district.

“We have a tendency to fund our new campuses for technology, and they are able to get the latest, greatest tech,” says Lightfoot. “So when I became the executive director of our department, we really wanted to start getting that out to all campuses and not just our new buildings. So we looked at the age of devices and where the work orders were and we started pecking away at it from there.”

Lightfoot and her team were able to update half the campuses last year, and plan to have everyone on board by February, with the exception of a few teachers at the high school.

Why was it so important to make this shift within the district?

“All of our teachers deserve the latest, greatest technology,” Lightfoot says. “Also, we have a little bit of a push because we have many older desktops that are not compatible with the systems we replaced. We needed to replace those anyway. This was a great opportunity to be able to do that and get some more portable, brighter technology in our classrooms.”

Challenges of Updating Tech

Taking on challenges comes with the territory when education is involved. Lightfoot experienced her own obstacles in reworking her district’s technology.

“We are in Texas,” Lightfoot says. “And, like many districts I know around the nation, we’re in that education funding crisis. We have to get pretty creative with some funding. So we funded at first with our technology budget, but we also asked [for money from the federal programs] to help with our teachers.”

The challenge then becomes spending the money to best support learning goals.

“Like so many other districts, we’ve been moving toward that blended learning model,” Lightfoot says. “We’re definitely there, but Schoology happens to be our learning management system of choice here in Dickinson. We’ve got lots of procedures in place to make things easier for teachers. After COVID, people were on board with online learning. It’s really been great to see them grow and thrive and integrate different tools within Schoology that we have in our district here as well.”

A Focus on Equity

Ideally, all schools, teachers, and students should have access to the same tools and programs to provide the same level of education across the board. Many districts struggle with maintaining a level of equity that would empower these goals.

“It’s just making a point that [achieving equity] is what needs to happen, and getting all the people in your district on board with it,” says Lightfoot. “It’s time that all educators realize that there are occasional funding things that get in the way, but we’ve been able to standardize on equipment as well so that things aren’t as hodgepodge. It makes things easier and more efficient.”

Bringing equity to a school district doesn’t always mean breaking the budget to put the latest technology in your schools, but having the mindset that you want to elevate the schools in your district equally can help advance the tech you have while not breaking the established budget. It also means that getting everyone in your district on the same page can make a big difference in agreeing on how to move forward.

• Innovative Leader Award
• Regional Leadership Summit

Technology has given the world so many opportunities to help ease our daily burdens and make once thought hard tasks doable with less effort. However, as technology continues to evolve, how does education keep up with the changing landscape and prepare students for the future?

Here we speak with Dr. Michael Nagler, Superintendent of Minneola USFD in New York, about his work in adopting technology early on, the importance of maintaining creative thinking skills to prepare students for the future, and how keeping open lines of communication has enabled students and teachers to have an input in the growth of their educational practices.

Nagler was recently recognized as Most Innovative Superintendent at a Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit with an Innovative Leader Award.

Adopting Technology Early

New forms of technology crop up almost on a daily basis, and many schools and districts make decisions on what hardware and software to add to their environment everyday. Nagler notes how early adoption primed his district to become known as a tech district and synonymous with innovation.

“More than 10 years ago, when the iPad came out, we embraced it,” says Nagler. “We had a pilot with a group of fifth graders the first year. Within two years, we were one-to-one. The entire district. And we’ve been known as a tech district based on that.”

Under Nagler, Mineola was one of the first school districts in New York to implement a comprehensive computer science curriculum starting in kindergarten, and he continues to encourage his schools to embrace technology in a thoughtful manner. “We do a ton of innovation,” he says. “But it’s a misnomer that we’ve centered around technology as the answer, whereas I think we use tech appropriately as a tool to try to push changes in teaching and learning.”

How has technology changed the educational approach?

“Direct instruction is a vestige of a long ago time,” Nagler says. “We need to engage kids a lot differently. If we use technology to help them be creative in how they do their work and explain what they know as an assessment form, the better we’re positioning kids for the next wave. AI is coming, and I think the more creative things we ask kids to do, the more we don’t have to worry about AI doing all the work.”

It can be easy to offload all of our processes onto AI programs that are created to handle these. However, it is important to note that the skills students will need in their professional lives are still relevant to be taught. Technology is important, but it cannot replace the human element.

Embracing Technology, Finding Balance

New innovations in education can help achieve a lot, but it can also provide too many options for students and teachers. Nagler says sticking with one form of technology for the district can help to keep students involved in the innovation process.

“We were very purposeful with the iPad,” Nagler says. “I think it’s a device you can use to create. If it’s not web-based, you’re not really doing much. That’s why we’re Apple Distinguished. There’s only 18 districts that earn that recognition. And the reason we leverage Apple products is because we want kids to create.”

But how do we keep kids in the spirit of learning even after leaving an educational environment? Nagler says maintaining a level of flexibility within the district is key to adapt to changes and obstacles along the way.

Nagler also embraces a driven sense of inclusion for teachers when it comes to making innovative advances within the school and the district. Having adequate input from educators can help to create an inclusive and understanding educational environment, even if it doesn’t make everyone completely happy.

“Everybody complains about something,” Nagler says. “That’s the nature of humans.”

How to Keep Your Technology Growth in Check

Dealing with issues stemming from technology in a school can create chaos without having a clear cut approach for obstacles, says Nagler. Not allowing technology to take over is also fundamental in providing a leveled educational experience. In addition, fostering the creativity in students through technology helps them stay ready for a future in technology. And, as Nagler adds, teacher inclusion is key.

“My philosophy is, it’s got to be teacher-driven,” Nagler says. “You have to pitch an idea that teachers can embrace and give them the ability to change it, to make it work for them. Teachers spend years studying to ply their craft, and we need to let them do that.”

• Innovative Leader Award
• Regional Leadership Summit

The greater conversation revolving around artificial intelligence takes place inside the classroom, centered on students. At Llano ISD in Texas, however, there was an effort to use AI as a way to help teachers take some of the load off of their plates so they would have more time to focus on teaching itself.

Maurie Beasley, Network Administrator at Llano ISD, talks about how AI has been used to assist teachers in their daily tasks to help save time and improve student/teacher relationships. Beasley was recently honored by Tech & Learning during a recent Regional Leadership Summit with an Innovative Leader Award for Innovative System Administrator.

How the AI Integration Began

One of the biggest booms in recent tech memory has been the incorporation of AI into almost everything we use nowadays. Once AI made its way into the mainstream, the possibilities for its use were endless.

“Our technology director has been here for 20 years, and he actually has a background in computer engineering. Full disclosure, he’s my husband. He keeps up with all the latest [tech developments],” says Beasley. “Maybe a little over two years ago, when OpenAI first released AI to the world, he was on it immediately. He was in the pilot program. He would play with it and ask it questions and really dig into the technical aspects of what it was capable of. He knew it would be a game changer.”

How did he begin using AI for the district?

“He started developing internal onboarding, similar to a chatbot, using AI,” says Beasley. “He had already started doing a chatbot before AI became a thing, and so we started really looking into taking it in.”

The number of daily administrative tasks a teacher has, such as putting in a work order, not only affects their interaction with their students but can take time away from what’s truly important. And from this obstacle and a deep curiosity in AI, Agnes was born.

Just Ask Agnes

Agnes is a chatbot that, through the addition of AI, has become a reliable way for teachers to offload some of the time-consuming administrative work within a day, giving them more time to focus on other tasks AI cannot perform.

“We were trying to get teachers to [ask Agnes] what their schedules were, whether they had class duty, what the phone number is for the payroll person,” Beasley says. “Especially for our new teachers, because our turnover rate is so high in education now that we really thought this would be great for new staff. That’s where it started.”

While helping teachers had its own benefits, moving the Agnes chatbot to the administrative level helped solve a new gamut of problems. Preparing documents that either took a large amount of time to complete or had to be outsourced (which added to the budget) was exactly why Agnes was created. And as more administrators have understood its purpose, more schools have been ready and willing to adopt it into their environment.

Beasley says that integrating AI into the district's operations has saved several hours of troubleshooting while also helping to make up for limited resources in a smaller district. As with any AI tool, there are concerns about safety and security, but Beasley points out that existing regulations covered AI in its usage and regulation.

How AI Can Help Your School at Higher Levels

Beasley says that the best way to introduce AI into a school, whether at the classroom level or the administrative level, is by prioritizing educator integration. Making sure that teachers and administrators know how to use AI tools can go a long way toward introducing them in the classroom while also helping to deal with tasks that take too much time away from educators on a daily basis. For example, there are AI tools that can help teachers create lesson plans, such as Diffit and EduaideAI, or ones that can assist with multiple tasks, such as MagicSchool.

Another way to help integrate AI into a school or district can be through a dedicated curriculum. Beasley notes that starting AI education is important due to the continued popularity of the medium and its swift adoption in the educational space. To assuage fears related to AI use, Beasley suggests following existing district technology use guidelines and ensuring that AI is used within closed systems to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information.

• Regional Leadership Summit
• Innovative Leader Award

Keeping school devices running can be one of the most important tasks an IT technician can have. But, as Timothy Jaw states, it isn’t all about just focusing on the hands-on aspect with IT. Catering to the human side of IT can also go a long way in establishing and maintaining meaningful relationships within a school environment.

Jaw, Technology Coordinator at Warren Hills Regional School District in New Jersey, was recently honored with an Innovative Leader Award at a recent Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit for his IT work.

Your Call Is Very Important To Us

Dealing with customer service can be stressful for many, as it involves trying to resolve an issue or solve a problem that you cannot do on your own. Sometimes it requires you explaining an issue to another live individual, and this can result in varying outcomes based on a number of factors. Most importantly, you never know what kind of individual you will be dealing with and whether you’ll get your issue solved or not.

Jaw maintains that the way to make the customer service approach work in an educational setting is to begin by showing patience and understanding. Exhibiting qualities that mark excellent customer service can be very helpful when others look to you for answers to their technical questions. With the amount of tech we use in schools, just one device not working can derail an entire day. As Jaw puts it, showing empathy and compassion can go a long way.

“It starts with me, right?” Jaw says. “If I don’t conduct myself with that level of patience, customer service, empathy, and compassion that I expect the people that work in my department to exhibit, then it’s not going to work. The first step is starting with me and making sure that I’m doing that. From there, when I onboard people, we would go over our values, we talk about what’s important to us and try to come up with a shared set of values.”

Involving people who come to work in IT from the beginning mitigates potential pushbacks.

“It doesn’t take a lot of arm-twisting,” Jaw says. “If we are not there serving the people who work in the school community, what are we doing?”

Making Customer Service the Standard

Customer service normally invokes images of business, not education. However, as Jaw says when asked how other schools and IT departments can follow his lead to revamp their own offerings, it costs nothing to change a mindset.

“I would say that people are the most important thing,” Jaw says. “It’s just how we conduct ourselves, how we communicate, and how we operate that brings that success. It’s not due to a system. It’s not due to a product. It’s what we do on a day-to-day basis, who we are as people, and what we bring to the school community every day that makes the biggest difference. [If another school wanted to follow suit] that is what I see as having the biggest impact.”

But what happens if there is pushback to a customer service-oriented mindset?

“Everybody has different experiences and different personalities,” Jaw says. “I think that if we expect ourselves to have that level of understanding and patience and empathy toward the stakeholders that we serve in the school community, then we should have that toward each other as well. When there are people who are having a bad day or have something going on, I let my people know that I’ll take that call. I’ll help that person. I’ll make sure that it’s done the way that we want the department to be perceived in the school community. We have each other’s backs.”

Making the extra effort to help those in need, no matter what they may be dealing with, can help make an IT department go from a dreaded environment to the superheroes of the school.

• Regional Leadership Summit
• Innovative Leader Award

Sometimes the basic building blocks of society can help make even the most obscure ideas real. In this case, those building blocks are Legos.

Heather Brantley, CTE Digital Communications Specialist, discusses the Lego Build the Change Initiative taking place at Pine Tree Junior High and being facilitated by Take Action Global. For her efforts she was recently recognized by Tech & Learning with an Innovative Leader Award for Innovative STEM Program Award.

Building a Better World . . . with Legos?

Legos are very popular and can be used to build any number of structures. Brantley says joining the Take Action Global Lego Build the Change Institutes sparks student interest in providing solutions to real-world problems.

“Last year, I had the opportunity through Take Action Global to be part of the Lego Build the Change institute,” says Brantley. “Take Action Global did an incredible job. They partnered with LEGO Group, separate from LEGO for Education. And what they did in that six weeks was they provided problems that were very open-ended. Students were to create [solutions] with Legos.”

Students were given the opportunity to choose from a list of real-world challenges, such as designing sustainable schools, or teachers could choose for them.

“It was open-ended, but it led to conversations for solutions,” says Brantley. “So one thing that Lego represents is building through play and taking action. Take Action Global looks for how we can find solutions for climate problems through play.”

Sustainability and climate problems may seem like big topics for students to consider, but adding in an element of play can inspire them to find solutions in new and innovative ways.

Building A Program Brick By Brick

The Build the Change initiative uses common play rules to have a student look at issues from a different perspective. Legos can be used to build all manner of structure, but how does this play out in a school under the banner of education?

“I always tell my students that they are bigger than the classroom,” says Brantley. “‘You’re bigger than the walls of the school. You’re bigger than the town you live in and, for us, you’re bigger than Texas. Your voice needs to be heard.’ I’ve tried to give those opportunities.”

Brantley’s district applied for its junior high campus to be a Lego school, which inspired other campus leaders to also participate. Take Action Global ultimately adopted five of the district’s campuses into the program.

“Out of the 25 [participating school seats] for this year, Pine Tree holds five of those seats,” Brantley says. “With that, we become the first to do this on a district level.”

How can this program grow to incorporate more schools and districts? Asking about it can be the simplest way to get involved, as word of mouth has helped other districts join.

“I absolutely see this as the beginning of a great thing as word comes out,” Brantley says. “I didn’t know about it, then I learned through the institute about becoming part of the showcase schools.Then I wanted to know what the next steps were and whether we could increase the scale of the program.”

What’s Brantley’s advice for other teachers?

“Ask the questions. Worst-case scenario, they say no,” she says. “And I really think that it’s important for people to realize that if it doesn’t work the first time, it may just not be the time. Don’t give up on it. Keep having those conversations later. Follow up, make sure everyone is still on board and going.”

Having your voice heard as a student can be a huge boon in your formative years. Not only does the Build the Change initiative provide solutions to problems in innovative ways, it lets students feel more involved in the world around them, engaging them in a way that standard education might not.

• Innovative Leader Awards

Keeping lines of communication open between teachers and families is important. To support that, Lacey Merrifield, Director of Technology at Bosqueville ISD in Texas, created a communication app to achieve transparency in the community. Here we talk about how the app came to be, what it accomplishes, and how it helps mitigate over-communication.

Staying in consistent contact with your child’s teacher can keep you up to date with what’s going on in your child’s class, help you better understand a teacher’s way of teaching, and provide an answer when you need it the most. However, for many schools, keeping connected with what’s going on at a school has been left to the likes of Facebook. Lacey Merrifield thought of a better way to keep families connected with teachers without forcing them to be exposed to social media.

“We’re a really tiny district,” Merrifield says of her 750-student school community. “The main way they were communicating and getting information out was Facebook. At the end of every year we do a parent survey, a staff survey, a student survey, and one of the biggest things on the parent survey was that they had to actually get on social media when a lot of them avoid social media. I’d already wanted to redesign the school website and add communication to it. Our website was really outdated…and adding the app came from parents wanting to be able to avoid getting on social media [to stay connected].”

The Bosqueville ISD app acts as an extension of the updated website, which can also help keep parents connected if they find themselves without their phones or tablets.

For this effort and other work, Merrifield was recently honored with a Tech & Learning Innovative Leader Award for Innovative Director of Technology during a recent Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit.

Making Safety a Priority

Parents today now have higher levels of access to teachers through emails and text messages. Pushing that communication through a single platform can help organize the messages that a teacher can receive regularly, and allows for communication without sacrificing privacy and security.

“We don’t want our teachers texting,” Merrifield says. “This is on the app. That way our teachers aren’t giving out their numbers. They don’t have to get a Google number. They can still use their phone, but their privacy is protected. We’re still communicating, but it’s not intruding on personal boundaries.”

What if a teacher does not want the app on their own personal device?

“The cool part about this is that if a teacher doesn’t want to put the app on their phone, they don’t have to,” she says. “It’s a web-based app as well so they can do it all from their school computer.”

This can help to separate the working world from a personal life for teachers who feel the two may blend together too often. Keeping school-related apps and tools strictly on school devices (or separate devices if they are not school-issued) can create peace of mind for a teacher while also allowing for full focus when sending information to families or responding to an inquiry from a parent.

6 Steps To Put Together a Communication App

With the idea and the execution of the communication service running smoothly, it might seem like the Bosqueville ISD app was a walk in the park to make. However, it took strong collaboration with programmers and designers, as well as vocal opinions from the community itself, to help get this innovative moment off the ground.

“The number one thing was getting a needs assessment that came through our staff, student, and parent surveys,” Merrifield says. “Then we collaborated with Edlio, telling them what we wanted from [the service]. We had to test, and there were some glitches. Our Google Sign On didn’t work as it should have, things like that. Then we had launching and training. I think getting those in the right order [is important], because if you launch it and it doesn’t work, nobody wants to go back to it.”

Merrifield shares the step-by-step process that ensured the app achieved the proper goals and met the needs of her school community effectively.

Needs Assessment: “We began by gathering input from stakeholders, including teachers, parents, and students, to identify their communication needs and preferences,” Merrifield says. “This feedback guided our overall vision for the app.”

Collaboration with Edlio: “After defining our goals, we collaborated closely with Edlio's development team. They provided us with insights into the features and functionalities that could be incorporated, ensuring the app would align with our communication strategy.”

Design and Development: “Together with Edlio, we worked on the app's design, focusing on user-friendly navigation and an appealing interface. Edlio's team helped customize the app to reflect our school’s branding and unique needs.”

Testing and Feedback: “Before launching, we conducted thorough testing of the app with a small group of staff who were also parent users to gather feedback on functionality and usability. This step was crucial to identify any issues and make necessary adjustments.”

Launch and Training: “Once the app was finalized, we launched it to the staff first, then the rest of the community. We also provided training sessions for staff and parents to ensure they were comfortable using the app effectively.”

Ongoing Support and Updates: “After the launch, we established a system for ongoing support and periodic updates, ensuring that the app continues to meet the evolving needs of our community.”

The Hidden Ways A Communication App Helps a School

The main focus of the communication app is to keep teachers and families connected, but having that service can also have other benefits that are more uncommon but just as important.

“There are so many apps,” Merrifield says. “When I started here, we had a different company for door access, a different company for cameras, a different company for guest services. We’re also in the process of changing that. That’s been my thing coming in. I’ve tweaked a few things. Our guest services, cameras, and door access are all going to one company now.”

Combining multiple services into one convenient spot can save time, effort, and money. Doing so with the Bosqueville ISD app had a profound effect on other aspects of school life, not only influencing community communication, but also the consolidation of multiple school tools and functions into better managed situations.

• Innovative Leader Award
• Regional Leadership Summit