ACPE 2025 - Include IT

In the ever-evolving realm of educational technology, a myriad of opportunities and very distinct challenges await. While vendors promise transformative solutions, how can education leaders effectively navigate the intricate landscape of purchasing contracts, price negotiations, strategic partnerships, and decision-making processes to truly address their institution's unique needs?
This dynamic, interactive session brings together a panel of seasoned Ed-Tech professionals who will offer candid insights and expert guidance. Participants will gain valuable knowledge on the critical questions every education leader should consider before embarking on technology implementation journeys.

This thought-provoking session is an essential experience for education leaders committed to making informed, strategic decisions about their Ed-Tech investments.

Your schools rely on online tools for instruction, operations, business management, and everything in between. But, do you know what’s really going on in these systems? Are you sure!?

If you’re like most K12 techs, you don’t have free time on your hands to proactively investigate abnormal or risky online behaviors. Nor do you have the tools that provide you the visibility and control you need to do anything about it. You’re stuck with reacting to incidents after they become a big enough problem to be noticed. Surely, there has to be a better way.

In this popular, interactive session we pull from our experience performing thousands of cybersecurity and safety audits with districts to bring you the top eight investigations that will result in the greatest impact for your district.

These investigations include auditing the 3rd party apps that have access to information in your domain, detecting suspicious login activity that could indicate a compromised account, protecting sensitive personal and financial data from leaks and loss, evaluating URLs that need to be added to your blocked list, investigating student safety risks in school-provided tools and online, and more.

Investigations to audit your online environment don’t have to be complicated or time-intensive. You will learn why these investigations are impactful for the majority of your peers and how to conduct them effectively.

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We all know that the role of IT leadership in school districts has changed drastically over the last 20 years. Almost all new initiatives involve technology and new advancements in technology can help improve many things that school districts do. Some school districts don't value the voice of their IT leader as much as other school districts, which has limited their ability to fully leverage technology. This think tank will be a facilitated discussion about how we can individually and collectively advance our profession and voice to benefit the students and staff that we support.

In this session I'll go over some of the different ways that we use Python scripts (with the gspread library) to leverage Google Workspace tools like Sheets, Forms, and Drive. When used together, you can accomplish quite a lot by improving workflows, building automations, creating data dashboards, and more. We'll discuss some general strategies as well as some of the specific implementations that we (the Peninsula School District) use. If you're from a district looking to start automating or otherwise use Google Workspace apps in your scripting, this could be a good place to start and get some ideas. Or perhaps your district already does similar things - in which case I would love if you could share your use-cases and additional thoughts/suggestions at the end!

This session is tailored for leadership and technical professionals looking to enhance their asset management practices with a strong focus on security using Snipe-IT. We will delve into the critical aspects of setting up a secure asset management system, including secure inventory tracking, maintenance scheduling, and resource allocation. Participants will learn how to implement robust security measures within Snipe-IT to protect sensitive data and ensure compliance with educational standards. By the end of the session, attendees will be equipped with the knowledge and tools to create a secure and efficient asset management system that safeguards educational resources and supports teaching goals. Join us to discover best practices for securing your classroom assets with Snipe-IT!

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How do you mold a group of unique individuals with varying skill sets, personalities and behaviors  into a highly functioning team? This aspect of education technology leadership often takes a back seat to the daily grind of supporting tens of thousands of devices, hundreds of software applications, for thousands of end users. Attend this session to learn practical strategies you can implement right away to create a positive--and productive-- team culture.