It can be difficult for IT Leaders to explain the importance of interoperability to education leaders who don’t have a technology background. Yet, interoperability has an enormous impact on teaching and learning effectiveness as well as costs. Improving interoperability can help districts make improvements across their entire digital ecosystem. IT departments could spend a lot less time and money connecting the systems that need to work together.

I’m Kris Hagel, Chief Information Officer of a suburban school district about 45 minutes south of Seattle.

 

We’ve struggled at times with funding for technology, but it feels like there is a little bit more momentum here. We are pretty well caught up in providing devices to our students, but we’ve got a long way to go on the interoperability trail.

 

I’ve had a strong relationship with CoSN and have supported its goals for quite some time. I’m a founding member and chair-elect of CoSN’s Missouri state chapter and was one of the first people in the U.S. to attain certification as a Certified Education Technology Leader. When the Trusted Learning Environment Seal was being developed, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity for Raytown Quality Schools being among the first cohort of TLE districts.

 

My name is Terry Allen and I work for Morgan School District in a rural area in Utah. Being in a small district means that our administrators wear multiple hats.  For me, that means that I oversee the areas of Assessment, Title 1 and IT. Over the last few months, I have had the opportunity to serve on a committee for CoSN about developing an Interoperability Maturity Model rubric. This has been an awesome experience to meet other IT leaders from across the country to discuss and share my perspective as an IT Director from a rural community regarding Interoperability.