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Professional Learning Community Event Recordings

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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