To: Asha Riley
From: Steve Rippl
Date: November 7, 2024
RE: Tech Department Report
The dust has settled on the start of the year rush. From a tech perspective, everyone seems to have what they need, and our district staff seem to have hit their stride. Support tickets are down to our usual levels and so we’re able to be very responsive to issues when they arise. Our new employee Ossama has done a great job of filling in the tech I responsibilities, helping folks both remotely over the phone and getting into the classrooms and offices whenever needed. James retires this month after 27 years in the district and we’ll be sad to see him go, but they’ve worked closely together to make sure it’s as smooth a transition as possible.
We’ve been looking at where to make our tech investments this year in terms of our replacement cycles. These aren’t completely fixed, we can’t afford to just replace everything on a fixed schedule, and it’s not always necessary to. But we try to stay on top of it as much as possible to ensure a well-running and secure network. Our staff and student computers are always something we have to address a piece at a time, and we’re planning on refreshing some CTE student lab computers and more staff desktops in the coming months. With recent budget constraints, we’ve been less proactive about replacing old projectors than in previous years, and that’s noticeable. We’ve had a spate of projectors fail on us and are short on spares right now. The plan is to share the burden of purchasing new interactive TVs with the buildings, which dramatically improves the picture the students get in the classroom, and we can use the projectors we replace as spares for elsewhere in the district. David at CES has boldly decided to invest in TVs for all his remaining classrooms that don’t already have them (with tech budget support), which I think will be great for our teachers and students.
We’ve begun a conversation with teachers about AI in the classroom. Last week, during the PD days, Jason Cowley and I ran a brief introduction to AI for secondary staff, and he showed how effectively he’s been addressing it in his writing classes. We also introduced what the State is proposing in terms of policies and attitudes towards it. It’s a rapidly evolving situation, and we have more work to do to make teachers comfortable with handling it, but it’s not something we can ignore, so the work continues.
The extra components that were added to Sips and the KWRL Portal for the start of the year all took some extra work in the first couple of months of school as people began using them for the first time, and adjustments had to be made. But again, that has all settled down, and the systems seem to be working well for our teams. Now our attention has turned to WCC and digitizing their processes, something the State is asking all Childcare organizations that receive State funds to do, and also to help simplify paperwork and invoicing. It’s something we’re able to add to our existing website without too much effort (and no extra cost). Hopefully, in the next couple of months, we’ll be beta-testing it with a few families.