Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Back to School Updates from IT for 2018-2019

Today marks the first day of the 2018-2019 school year! I hope that you have all had an enjoyable and refreshing summer.  For our team, we've spent much of the summer working to continue to improve our technology integration in BVSD. Here are a few of the projects we have been focusing on:


Student Data Privacy Course 
In addition to updating our Student Data Privacy website, all staff members who work with student information are now required to take a Data Privacy course. For more information, please see the BVSD Ed Tech blog post about this topic.


Digital Citizenship 
To prepare our students for the world they live in, we focus on teaching digital citizenship from kindergarten to 12th grade. This summer, we have reorganized and enhanced our digital citizenship resources. Among the new resources is a scope & sequence, which allows teachers at any grade level to quickly identify concepts and lessons to ensure each student is supported in an age-appropriate manner. The inclusion of digital citizenship lessons in our curriculum is also in the superintendent's 100-day plan.

Parent Engagement

My team is continually working on developing resources and avenues for parents to have conversations about technology. We opened up the District Technology Advisory Committee for another round of applications, and had nearly 200 people apply! In order to receive more input from the community, we are developing a comprehensive survey about technology to send to parents, which will be reviewed by the Board of Education and sent out this fall. Additionally, we are putting together “bundles” for schools to host P.E.P. (Parent Engagement Program) Talks - timely conversations about relevant technology topics. We look forward to continuing an open dialogue about the successes and challenges of using technology, both in the classroom and at home.

Updated Technology Policies
In December of 2017, the Board of Education approved the Student Data Privacy Policy, paving the way to update our student & staff technology policies as well. The staff policy revisions, passed on August 14th, reflect the rapidly changing nature of technology and ensure the responsible use of technology throughout the district. Work will continue on an updated student policy once information from the parent survey is available later this year.


Phones
We have now deployed a new phone system in every school & building! These phones have enhanced, modernized features, such as sending voicemails to email, to help streamline communication. Employees, be on the lookout for ideas about how to use these new features in the weekly IT Tips & Tricks emails.

Innovate@BVSD 2018
On July 30-31st, educators, administrators, and students from BVSD and other Colorado school districts joined together at Innovate@BVSD 2018. They spent time learning about and experiencing creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration in action throughout the conference. Hear what teachers and students had to say about the conference in this short video:


My team and I look forward to welcoming you back for another great school year and seeing some of these new resources in action! If you have any thoughts or input that you feel can be helpful, please chime in below.

Andrew Moore
CIO, Boulder Valley School District