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Tech Director Community Event Recordings

Thank you for watching! We are pleased to be a resource to the Technology leaders and their IT Departments, and we provide these recaps as further demonstration of Faria Education Group's commitment to our mission statement to advance international school education.

Input from our async viewers is vital to ensuring the vitality of the events. Please ensure to also provide your valuable feedback! (Link to Google form.)

 

May - Analytics Engineering with MBPY

For the last event of the 2022/23 series, Adam Morris shard a tool that he has been working on for some time, using it to solve various problems, and refining and adjusting it as he progressed. It's a hobby project that is intended to be used by IT Professionals to simplify and automate actions with the public APIs. Its code name is MBPY (ManageBac PYthon.)

April - Data Dashboards & Big Query

From the school leadership side, Paul will be demo-ing dashboards at Stamford American School on top of a very cost-effective data warehousing solution. From my side, I'll be showcasing the techniques I used to bridge ManageBac's APIs and connect it with BigQuery. It's a case where we collaborated and want to share out, and is a bit of a celebration of this long-term project! Together we can tie together some of the approaches for a better broader understanding of the potential, practical use cases, etc.

March - Integrating ManageBac and PowerSchool

Discussing the idea of using PS as a source of truth to populate MB with users and enrollments. William Faure from Taipei European School and Geoffrey Derry at American School Warsaw will be joining us, a combination that has both technical chops and leadership aptitude. We will discuss extracting information from PowerSchool, updating them in ManageBac via the public APIs, and how to map courses to MB's classes.

February 15 - ManageBac and IBIS integration

ManageBac's IBIS integration, a superpower that can potentially save hours of work. with our guest speaker and Faria's own Curriculum Coordinator Tom Brodie

February 1 2023 - OpenAI Implications to our Practice

Thanks to those who joined yesterday, and especially Ryan who took us on a tour of his Reports Writing tool. Here are just some of the questions/comments made:
  • "How is this different from a comment bank generator?"
  • "Consider that everything you say in a report should already have been communicated."


Essentially a sneak preview on the kinds of technologies we can expect to arise, in the age of generative AI, was as informative and inspiring as I found it.

December 2022 - Systems Maps Analysis

We will be exploring the Systems Maps Analysis tool, a free service provided by Faria's Service Manager. 

Our guest, Wolfgang Soeldner, is a highly experienced Tech Director and frequent contributor to our Discord, and we are excited to have the opportunity to learn from him. 

In addition to this, we will also be discussing the topic-of-the-day: artificial intelligence and the rise of new tools that are becoming available in this field, and how platforms might take advantage.
You can access your Systems Maps Analysis via:
  • ManageBac / OpenApply / SchoolsBuddy —> Settings —> Services Manager —> Analysis

November 2022 - ManageBac with PYthon

Adam Morris will be hosting a demonstration of a command line tool that he uses extensively, nearly every day. It leverages both OpenApply and ManageBac's public APIs and allows the operator to input commands to execute common tasks.

For example, he will demonstrate how this tool can be used to:
  • Build SQL queries on a local copy of the API data
  • Download fresh information, format it into specific headers, and export the result into a CSV on disk, or to an SFTP server
  • Extend the functionality of the tool with Python code

October 2022 - Managing Complexity

We'll be asking questions such as:
  • What are some of the problems you've had to solve, and what was your approach?
  • What have you learned that you'd like others in similar situations to know?
  • How do we ensure that knowledge about technical solutions is transferable?
We will also have some bonus content from Lindsey Devillier demonstrating how he solves complex workflows surrounding health. 

Featuring contributions from:

William Faure and Yin-Yin Chan (Taipei European School)

Lindsey Devillier, Beijing World Youth Academy

September 2022 - Change Management", We'll be asking some of the most common questions school-based practitioners have when it comes to managing platforms, such as:

  • What are some of the factors that contribute to successful change?
  • What is the Tech Director's role in change management? Is it as a decision-maker, influencer, or contributor?
  • What are some strategies to ensure the changes are well communicated?

Featuring contributions from:

Lindsey Devillier, Beijing World Youth Academy

Bryan Fawcett, Osaka YMCA International School

May 2022 - End of year, start of year

Are you building the schedule for the next academic year? How do you prepare to onboard your new colleagues? What can we do now to make August flow more smoothly? We'll be inviting some members of our community to discuss.

Featuring contributions from:

Francisco Vigo, Oeiras International School

Antony Rappai, The Overseas School of Colombo

Moin Chorgay, Oberoi International School - JVLR Campus

March 2022 - Actionable Data
We will be exploring data's place in the school, both organizationally and as a pedagogical and academic tool. Chris Smith of Smith Visualizations will help us understand why presentation matters, and what good design and visualizations can do for your data. Ryan Tannenbaum of For Education will explore strategies for engaging stakeholders and leveraging data to help drive institutional and organizational goals. Finally, Wallen Mphepho of Avenues International School will show us how we can take this further, and use AI and ML to really make our data work for us.

 

February 2022 - Data Protection

Our invited guest Tony Sheppard shares with us his experience in the area of data management and safeguarding. We'll be asking some of the most common questions school-based practitioners have, such as:
  • How do we check that we are in control?
  • How long do we keep the data around, and how do we know that?
  • What resources are there to help guide us?
Tony wears many hats in the data protection space, both at Net Support and as an independent contractor with EdTech vendors. He can be a valuable resource for connecting to the data protection space, and so we would be pleased if you could join us live via Zoom and discussion on Discord!
  

 

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January 2022 - System Analysis
Have you ever had to answer the question "Would it be possible…?" or "Do we really need XYZ?" If so, it's likely you've made a Gap Analysis, or a Comparison Matrix, or some other kind of diagram, and have had to communicate your findings with school leadership.

We've invited Laurie Nason of The Kaust School in Saudi Arabia, where we'll be discussing his experiences and observations having worked with school leadership teams, teachers, nurses, other IT professionals etc, as the Operational Analysis.

  

 

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December 2021 
We've invited a special guest, Viktor Datsiuk, Director of Technology at Shanghai Singapore International School, for a conversation about his journey from IT back into EDU, the state of the industry, and what he sees as particular challenges for Tech Directors. You can find the Discord thread Conversation with Viktor Datsiuk Mega Thread to see what kinds of questions will be asked, or even add your own.

Following the interview, for the Mini Share-out portion of the meeting, Daniel Costich has kindly agreed to share his experience implementing Term Grade checking via the API.

  

 

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November 2021 - Sweating the Details of the APIs
Are you someone who has seen this acronym before and would like to understand it better, especially how it is relevant to school development? Or are you someone who has used the APIs to problem solve? Or perhaps you'd like to gain insight into the underbelly of ManageBac and/or OpenApply.

We hope you join us if any of the above sounds like you. We'll be running the gambit on this topic, from demonstrating what other schools have done, to getting started with Postman (a popular  API client), to explaining some of the nuts and bolts behind this technology.

  

 

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October 2021 - The Role of the Tech Director
A round-table discussion with four esteemed panelists.  Our panelists bring a variety of perspectives to the creative tensions present in international schools, who have to navigate between Academics and Operations, Accessibility and Security, and Education and IT. The "Technology Director" plays a key role.
Our panelists:
  • Ioanna Karariga is a former Chief Digital Information Officer, who is currently working in both the education and corporate industries. She is the Director of Education at Tricentis.
  • David Burke is a Dean of Technology and Innovation at Dwight School Seoul, who has a passion for leadership and has some deep thoughts on platforms.
  • Lee Drury works at the group level as Group Head of Technology Implementation at International Schools Partnership Limited.
  • Ryan Tannenbaum is a former Tech Director at OCAC in Suzhou China where he built an entire integration platform and is now an independent consultant.
  

 

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September 2021 - Onboarding & Documentation

During the first few months of the year, schools everywhere are beginning their journey for the year, and the effort is often focused on providing teachers, parents, and students with documentation to get the year started right.

How do technology professionals employed at schools do this? What do they use to get the message across? How does the updating process go? How do users reach out to get help when glitches inevitably occur?

Great documentation is only so useful, though. The underlying onboarding process has to be smooth, so those glitches are limited and maintainable. How do we check that everyone has what they need? What can we use to visualize all of your data?

  

 

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