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

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

District Technology Advisory Committee

As technology usage continues to expand in BVSD, the discussions and collaborations on how technology is implemented become more important. With that in mind, I’m excited to announce a new advisory committee opportunity for Teachers, Administrators, Students, Parents, Community Members, and Education Center Staff. The District Technology Advisory Committee (DTAC) will launch in January of 2017.

When I arrived at the district in 2010, the ITGC (IT Governance Committee) was up and running. It was largely a group of community members who were helping the district navigate IT communications and change in a period before cloud computing, Chromebooks, 1:Web, security (malware, ransomware, DDoS attacks, etc), and student data privacy were common topics. ITGC disbanded in 2011 after the issues of the day were resolved.

In late 2011, the Boulder Valley School District (BVSD) created the Educational Technology Leadership Council (ETLC) to consider and recommend a vision for the future of educational technology within BVSD. Through the work of this council, initiatives such as the 21st Century Cohort, 1:Web and Innovative Learning Spaces began to take shape as this group determined the ideal learning environment while using technology in BVSD.

As IT & Ed Tech continue to improve on these initiatives, as well as explore the implementation of data privacy laws into existing structures, it is time to form a next generation District Technology Advisory Committee for the 2016-17 school year.

This ad-hoc committee will primarily provide guidance on current shifts in learning and the use of technology. This will include work in the following areas:

• Data Security & Privacy
• Digital Access & Equity
• Resourcing/Budgeting
• Digital Citizenship & Balance
• Professional Development
• Digital Communications Structure and Content

Meetings will be from 4:30-6:30 pm at the BVSD Information Technology offices at 6600 Arapahoe Rd. 2016-2017 meeting dates are:

• Monday, January 23, 2016
• Tuesday, March 7, 2017
• Wednesday, May 10, 2017

We have developed a short application to help form a diverse team representative of district stakeholders:

• Teachers
• Administrators
• Students
• Parents
• Community Members
• Education Center Staff

If you are interested in participating on the District Technology Advisory Committee for the 2016-17 school year, please fill out the application no later than Dec 31st. Parents, please collaborate with your students to fill out the application if they are interested in participating. Thank you!

Andrew