Program

The K12 Technology Summit program has been meticulously woven together to address recent technology challenges at the forefront of district planning.  The sessions are designed to build on one another, providing IT leadership with the opportunity to discuss the meta-trends playing out across the industry, including delivery of digital curriculum to mobile devices, cloud computing, data driven decision-making, and the overall convergence of information and instructional technology.

  • Successfully Implementing a Bring Your Own Device Initiative

  • Leveraging the Transformative Potential of Tablet Devices

  • Transitioning to a Virtualized Desktop Environment

  • Dynamically Improving Student Outcomes with Maturing Learning Analytics Techniques

  • Shaping Professional Development with Evaluation Data

  • From the Data Center to the Cloud: Challenges and Opportunities

  • Inside the IlliniCloud: Building a Statewide K12 “Community Cloud”

  • Bridging the Connectivity Gap with Community-Based Internet Hot Spots

  • Strategies for IT Performance Reporting

  • Maximizing the Benefits of Shared Procurement Purchasing Consortiums

  • Paving the Way towards Open Source e-Textbooks

  • Laying the Groundwork for Personal Learning Environments

Successfully Implementing a Bring Your Own Device Initiative

  • Creatively addressing digital divide concerns
  • Device management and network security considerations
  • Optimally deploying wireless infrastructure to support a mobile-computing intensive environment
  • Putting professional development programs in place for teachers

Leveraging the Transformative Potential of Tablet Devices

  • One-to-one computing within reach: tablets as an affordable option
  • Integrating curriculum and delivering digital textbooks
  • Measuring student engagement and achieving improved outcomes
  • Tablets as a step along the continuum towards a paperless, all-digital environment

Transitioning to a Virtualized Desktop Environment

  • Determining the appropriate strategy to deploy
    • Client Virtualization
    • Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
  • Successful project design and infrastructure investments
  • Preparing users for the adjustment
  • A comprehensive overview of the cost savings
  • Leveraging virtual desktops to move towards an internal cloud

Dynamically Improving Student Outcomes with Maturing Learning Analytics Techniques

  • Involving stakeholders to identify key performance indicators
  • Constructing a flexible, student-centric data warehouse
  • Data-mining across disparate sources and formats
  • Transitioning from summative to formative data interpretation

Shaping Professional Development with Evaluation Data

  • Ensuring evaluations are consistent across the district
  • Incorporating stakeholder feedback into the process
  • Developing a system-wide pay-for-performance system
  • Successfully measuring “value-added” factors

From the Data Center to the Cloud: Challenges and Opportunities

  • Best practices for migrating data and applications
  • Seamlessly integrating web-based resources with your local environment
  • Confronting vendor longevity, data portability and exit strategy issues
  • Leveraging improved flexibility and collaboration tools for classroom use

Inside the IlliniCloud: Building a Statewide K12 “Community Cloud”

  • Supplementing initial IT investments with state and federal grants
  • Building cloud infrastructure via unified computing architecture
  • From proof-of-concept to sustainable funding
    • Disaster recovery services
    • Pay-as-you-go virtual machines
  • Moving towards hosted enterprise applications

Bridging the Connectivity Gap with Community-Based Internet Hot Spots

  • Wireless partnership and community kiosk characteristics
  • Strategically placing kiosks to maximize access potential
  • Offsetting costs through advertising sales
  • The future of community internet access: non-kiosk hotspots

Strategies for IT Performance Reporting

  • Developing performance metrics that matter
  • Evaluating the ROI of technology investments
  • Diligently improving service-delivery models
  • Demonstrating IT value and shifting focus from IT cost

Maximizing the Benefits of Shared Procurement Purchasing Consortiums

  • Focusing on outcomes and not procurement processes
  • Arriving at an agreement on what to buy
  • Determining value and tracking savings
  • Peripheral benefits: sharing best practices with consortium members

Paving the Way towards Open Source e-Textbooks

  • Understanding open content distribution models
    • Organization and cataloguing
    • Value-added services
  • Ensuring device-agnostic delivery of materials
  • Confronting infrastructure concerns: bandwidth and wireless access
  • Creating an environment to support collaboration and re-mixing of content

Laying the Groundwork for Personal Learning Environments

  • Leveraging existing web-based tools and applications
  • Discussing the boundary between PLEs and personal social media networks
  • Envisioning the role of ubiquitous, internet-enabled mobile devices
  • Integrating ePortfolios with PLEs