CoSN CTO Clinic

	About CoSN Chapters CTO Clinics Texas, June 2006 Colorado, January 2007

Session Descriptions

Session Descriptions Subject to Change

"Neomillennial" Learning Styles: From Websites to Distributed-Learning Communities

This session will help participants anticipate the challenges and opportunities posed by students of any age with "neomillennial" learning styles. Emerging digital media are shaping motivations, attributes, and social patterns into types of learning styles quite different than those based on sensory, personality, or intelligence factors. "Neomillennial" learners seek distributed learning situations that interweave face-to-face interactions with communication and shared experiences across distance and time. The talk will demonstrate and discuss examples of middle and high school distributed-learning communities based on immersive game-like educational simulations.

Hot Technologies for K-12 Schools

As K-12 schools adopt new technologies they have found innovative ways to transform instruction, assessment, professional development, community connections and operations. Learn about an exciting new report from CoSN on Hot Trends in Technology which highlights technologies from iPods to RFID to audio enhancement and many more. Attendees will gain an understanding of how to think about emerging technologies that meet education goals. Plus hear from Texas CTO’s who have been experimenting with new technologies.

Calculating the Value of Technology in Education

Stakeholders are no longer satisfied with basing technology funding on metrics such as student/computer ratios. CIO’s and Technology Directors are increasingly becoming responsible for helping their schools and districts to better understand the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for technology, using the CoSN-Gartner TCO tool, and calculate the expected and realized value of their technology investments. Presenters in this session provide insight into how to understand the K-12 value proposition, communicate it to their stakeholders, and use it to align the technology effort with the school district goals.

Accessible Technologies for All Students

In school districts where collaboration between IT and AT leaders is the norm, we see important results:

• Technology resources, including funding, are leveraged district-wide.
• Teachers and students have access to teaching, learning and assessment tools that benefit ELL and low-performing students as well as those with disabilities.
• Greater awareness and use of embedded accessibility functions.
• Increased pressure from educators for vendors to use Universal Design (UD) criteria.

Shared vision and collaborative leadership are the catalysts that lead to these results. Participants will leave the session with concrete steps they can take to start a "new conversation" that will build strong and positive relationships between K-12 school district technology leaders and special education leaders.

Public Policy Boot Camp: Becoming a Technology Advocate

How do you talk to elected officials about your vision and plans for education technology? Learn the skills necessary to become an effective education technology advocate, and make your voice heard in support of ed tech funding in your school district and around the US.

A National Perspective on Education Technology

Where have we been with education technology? Where are we today? Where do we hope to go? CoSN’s CEO Keith Krueger outlines the policy context from a national perspective and compares how the U.S. is headed vs. other countries. From the depressing headlines of budget cuts to the current debate over competitiveness, this session will end with concrete actions that education technology leaders, especially CTO’s, can take to change the current situation.

Lessons Learned from the Front Lines of One-to-One

If your district is considering implementing a 1-1 program you can learn from the experiences of districts who have been one-to-one pioneers. Participants will hear from 3 district leaders who have implemented 1-1 programs and have learned many lessons on the front lines.

Open Technology Solutions

Open technologies, the newest leadership initiative from CoSN, provides information regarding three primary components – open source software, open data standards and open device standards – and the impact their decisions regarding the use of open technologies will have on future classroom learning opportunities for students and teachers. It’s critical that educators become more aware of the opportunities presented by the use of open technologies and be prepared to use this experience as they create and assess their technology implementation plans. Participants will work with a wide variety of open source software and compare the functionality to existing proprietary software. Each participant will have an opportunity to explore options in the three primary categories of open source software: operating systems (e.g. Linux), applications (e.g. GIMP) and content (e.g. Wikipedia). Group discussion involving TCO perspectives (installation, printing/network and general support) will complete the workshop. All participants will receive a copy of The OpenCD (for Windows) and a similar MacOS X format CD to enable them to install these open source software packages on their own computers as well as access to a web site with open source resource links.

Data Intelligence: Empowering Teachers, Administrators, Students, and Parents

School district representatives will share their experiences of using data and technology to improve instruction, allocating limited resources effectively and delivering meaningful professional development. Panelists will highlight new developments in the process of data-driven decision making as they describe their efforts to empower teachers, administrators, students, and parents. Participants will learn about the results of these data processes and the very real results that have occurred.

Planning for Cyber Security

Maintaining a school's cyber security requires staying informed about the rapidly changing environment. It is a shared responsibility of policymakers, technology leaders, users, and the community. Presenters in this session will provide insight about dealing with security issues, share what is working in their districts, and identify new issues that are arising. This session will provide information, tools, guidance and strategies for developing and implementing an action plan to strengthen your districts security and handle crises.

Measuring the Value of Technology in Education

Corporate businesses can use Return-On-Investment (ROI) or net-present-value models to determine the value and efficiency of technology projects. While this approach may be effective for measuring K-12 administrative technology initiatives, it falls short when it comes to student learning, where the goal is not to save money but to increase student achievement and teach 21st Century Skills. How do we define qualitative values for student computing initiatives? And once defined, how do we measure and quantify the value of proposed technology initiatives for student computing?