District Technology Advisory Committee Update (Feb 2017)

Educational technology resources and the opportunities afforded through these tools are forever expanding and changing. In the last five years, BVSD has seen an increase in access, digital devices, and resources that provide an engaging and modern learning environment for students.

With that in mind, I understand and value the varying perspectives of our stakeholders with the implementation of these tools, including views from our students, teachers, administrators, district leaders, parents and community members. Due to the accelerated rates of change, these stakeholders often times have both collaborative and conflicting views of technology in our schools.

Because of these rapid changes, varying perspectives, and continued shifts, I felt it to be the right time to develop a sustainable organization that could provide guidance on how technology and resources are decided, deployed, and utilized in our schools and classrooms. This includes the business side of education with regards to infrastructure and security. You can read about the background in my post from December.

I sent out an email in December of 2016 to gather interest for this committee only to find that we had over 230 stakeholders interested! I worked with my team to select a representative balance of community members, parents, business leaders, BVSD teachers, administrators, and most importantly, students (view the DTAC Roster). We also formed an online forum for those not selected to continue to provide feedback and insight to the work of the committee.

The District Advisory Technology Committee (DTAC) launched on January 23rd with an overview of current and future IT services, infrastructures, programs and projects. These included updates on IT Network upgrades, expansion of 1:Web in our high schools, student data security and privacy updates, and budget information. Members were then provided an opportunity to discuss their ideas of the most critical conversations for this committee to consider in future meetings. You can review their responses here.

I will continue to share agendas and notes from each DTAC meeting on our website to maintain transparency of the work that this committee will complete and the guidance they will provide.

If you have thoughts, ideas or suggestions, please chime in below.

Andrew