The Importance of Relationships in IT

So, hey everybody.

Welcome. We are going

to be talking about all things it today.

This is a informal meetup. It's very casual.

We would like to thank our sponsor meter

for sponsoring the IT meetups all throughout the year.

We do host these quarterly, so if this is something

that interests you, we, um, touch base several times a year,

and we just try to give you a space

to come together and to chat.

And today we have a special guest facilitator,

so I'd like to welcome Dave.

Dave, thanks so much for being on.

Tell us, um, who you are

and a little bit about what

we're gonna be talking about today.

I've never met any of you. I'm not doing, no. Hi.

Uh, my name's Dave, uh, live in, I'm director

of technology at Head Roy School in Oakland, California.

I've been at this school for 17 years,

or this is the conclusion of my 17th year

and in lots of different positions.

And I don't know if this will resonate with the actual faces

and the black boxes of faces on the screen,

but, um, despite having been here for so long,

I still wonder sometimes about what true skills I bring

to the community, the tech department as a whole.

Hey, Vinny, what's going on? The tech department

as a whole is, um, responsible

for such a wide facet of services,

support, implementations of infrastructure,

a changing landscape.

Like, oh, how should we use AI?

And how should we think about equity when

we're leveraging it?

Right? It's like there's no way that a single person,

even a group of people, have all the answers

within that community.

And for me, what I've, um, through age, I think

what I've come to realize is that one of the special sauces

that I bring to Head Royce School is my ability to connect

with people and to express empathy.

Like really have it,

and to forge those good relationships with the folks

that I've worked with for almost 20 years.

And the folks that are brand new to the school this year,

and the subs that are on campus occasionally, right?

And it's through those relationships that

when things are hitting the fan,

which has happened in my time here,

when things are really stressful, when, um,

it just gives everybody both a feeling of safety

and security, that they have relationships with the people

that are trying to resolve whatever the situation is.

Or on the positive side, oh, hey, I've got a relationship

with a couple different people in the tech department

and I've got this idea for my classroom.

How do we bring them in to talk about it?

So, um, I am not gonna be talking much on this, uh, call,

but I would love to both give folks an opportunity

to weigh in on where they have found success in kind

of forging relationships, either, whether

that's within the tech department, across departments,

to other non-academic positions,

or to teaching communities in the schools you're in.

Um, then there's also kind of the, okay,

you've got your relationships with your boss.

You maybe have relationships with parents at the campus,

and you certainly have

relationships with students at the campus.

So if anyone's got, um, uh,

thoughts on either a struggle

that they're having in building those relationships,

or just a reflection on kind of the safety net that having

actual relationships with the people you work

with can provide for you in your, in your job.

Uh, let's talk about it.

So I am curious, um, what strategies have,

have you implemented in your school,

or what strategies do you,

do you lean on when let's just take

new employees or joining?

Does your school have a process for welcoming them in?

I really can't talk this whole time.

We're gonna need some voices.

We've started to re uh, around new faculty orientation.

You know, it was a weakness, um, a couple years ago,

and it was something where, you know, we kind of had

to rebuild that relationship

and, um, really take a hard look as to, okay,

something is failing here.

Um, you know, we had a conversation about it wasn't

delivered in the proper method,

or, you know, it just didn't meet the level ex expectation

that our new faculty needed.

So it allowed for that self-reflection to say, okay,

let's take that criticism in stride.

Let's really work to fix it for next year.

And the end result has been a really great product that, um,

you know, has kind of led the way for, in some ways

for our new faculty to get onboarded.

And it's interesting how you can have those conversations

that we're not just teaching you a tech skill,

but we're building those technology skills into our core

competencies or our school's values.

Um, you're not just getting tech training, you're getting,

you're learning about Kent School, um,

and what it means to, to be in this community.

So, um, you know, developing those relationships allows you

to kind of communicate that out a little better so

that way everyone can understand your, your goals,

I guess around it.

Thanks for sharing, Michael.

I, uh, I I love that you guys were able to respond

to criticism in a way that you felt like was, uh,

moving your team forward

and moving new employees forward in a, in a right way.

I know that we have about a week of employee orientation,

new employee, maybe two days of new employee orientation,

and then four or five days of returning employee orientation

before the school year starts off.

And the metaphor that always is tossed around is like,

all right, get ready to drink from a fire hose.

Right? And I just don't opt in to that as a, like,

I, I, I use the time that I'm given,

which is a pretty short amount of time to make sure

that new employees and returning employees know the names

and faces of the people on the tech team, know

where their offices are located.

Some high level overview of some things that have changed,

some high level overview of where you can go

to receive support, how you can do that.

But really, if the stress for me isn't on the people,

then it's kind of a lost a lost game for me

because the actual how to, there's too much in the span

of opening weeks to actually get somebody

to pay attention and to retain it.

So yeah. I, I love that.

Uh, it, it does take the pressure off too.

It's like if the only job is to try to make connections

with people as opposed to try to teach them how

to set up their grade book, right.

It's, uh, it's a lot more enjoyable on my end. Yeah.

What else? It's really,

we've been looking at

reorganizing the way that we do it as well.

'cause the fire hose analogy is so there

and, um, you know, realizing that we have people coming in

with different levels, but I would see the new faculty,

there's only two of us on the tech team, um,

for our whole school, which is fun.

But, um, they're, you know, they have trainings of like, hit

with everything, Google, everything, you know,

the student information system.

And I'm like, they're not gonna remember any of

that when it comes time.

So, um, we've shifted.

I'd be interested to see what other schools are doing with

that, that knowledge that we need them to have, right?

To be able to function.

Um, we're toying with putting some short, like

come already previewed these couple short clip videos

to say, these are the things that you need.

Um, and then come and ask questions about it.

And then have some meetings

as the school year goes on to have more touch points.

'cause what seems to happen in the past is we see them

during work week and then

unless there's an issue, we don't see

them until there is one.

So, um, we're trying to put in some,

some touch points, right.

But getting time in their schedules once the year kicks off

is a little bit challenging for us.

Thanks for, thanks for sharing that. Appreciate it.

What's, what other strategies are out there

with all the smart people on this call for

building, building relationships?

And let's just take that opening a school year, right?

I, I bet many of you're already thinking about the fall

or late summer as it's turned into.

And so what is, what are you trying to get done in

that first week and how, uh,

how are you thinking about shifting it?

So one of the things that we have done post pandemic is we

have flipped a lot of it.

So a lot of the work in terms of the setup of the great book

and the setup of the courses

and the various different other aspects, we've moved that,

um, which has created

more space for that connection.

Um, we get an hour and a half, um, in the opening week.

Um, we also are then given about an hour

or so later in the week,

we've actually gone from a three day

to a four day for our new faculty.

Um, and with that we get

or gain an hour Thursday ish, um, that is,

uh, just a drop in time so that, you know, you can,

if it's evident, you can do some one-to-one coaching, um, in

that particular space,

or you can do some small group work, um, but not,

'cause people are coming in

with various different skills nowadays, right?

And so that way that you can tailor

and differentiate to the needs of the individual,

it's been very, very helpful.

We then, then do follow ups

post the opening of school

and just do some check-ins, um, in the same way

that we do check-ins with students who come in off

entry year, um, just to make sure, you know, a week in

just to check in.

We take a look at their course, we, you know,

make an assessment and see if there's again, any issue, um,

that we can identify to begin to do that to kind of

help smooth that transition.

And is that tech department, Vinny, that's reaching out

to students that are coming in on kind of off typical years?

Yes. Very cool. And it's, and,

and again, it's just a handful for us.

Mm-hmm. We have very, very few, we have like seven or eight,

but we do, uh, just a quick check-in

and we actually do it with,

we have a big entry year in year nine.

And so we actually, um, our director of academics

and our upper school technology person will do, uh,

during our morning tutorial time early just to check in,

make sure that they're getting connected into the learning

management system, getting connected into their

communications, their Google box, all

of those things within there.

I love it. I took a note for myself for this next year

because we have the same thing.

Most families come in grades K six or 12,

or I'm sorry, grade six or nine,

but there's always a handful

of those different entry points.

Mm-hmm. I'll say that, um, you know,

I lean on humor a lot, um, just

because that's the way I was raised.

I, I find things funny and I share those things with people

and I think that gives me an easy entrance point

to meeting new people

and to trying to create a, a fun environment to,

to get support in or, or someone fun to work with.

Um, the other thing that we use kind of, um,

without any qualm is food is bribery, right?

Like, so good food, not just the same stuff

that people are seeing at all the,

the, at our school, right?

It becomes pretty apparent what's gonna be out in the table

in the mornings and what is gonna be out there at lunchtime.

And so in the weeks that follow that, uh, you know,

have some nice local pizza, uh, available for a quick lunch

and learn some way to try to give some pretty casual ways

to get a little more direct support.

Um, and also just again, to build this idea that,

um, like listen, there are some people in all

of our tech departments that are stereotypical IT

people, right?

And or have aspects of that stereotype of like,

more comfortable staring at a screen than look than talking

to a person face to face.

And so I think it's really important to break

down those walls for everybody to realize like, yep, well,

okay, well there's stereotypes about our faculty too.

Uh, right. They're the hardest to teach,

they're the worst at reading instructions.

All, all these things are, are joked about for faculty.

And I, I can see some smiles to know that, like, okay,

that resonates a little bit with your school too.

And it's the same with the IT department.

So there's little shorthand of that.

And the more opportunity to

actually just get people connecting with people, I think,

uh, from, from my seat,

the more we learn about what's actually desired in

classrooms, the more we learn about what's causing problems,

the, the quicker we'll hear a response from someone when we

ask for support with something.

Um, and I, I think it really just, it mostly comes down

to relationships, um, for me in, in maintaining a,

a, a well running school.

That's true in, within the department as well.

Um, Ashley supplied a, a nice hit list

of some great questions.

Let's see. I wonder if anyone would share

a communication challenge between the IT team

and other school departments, some ideas of something

that's happened or, you know, if you,

if you have a communication challenge between the IT team

and other school areas, how you might address those.

Ashley, I'm throwing it to you.

I can share one. You know, we've, um, we're going

through a new student process at the moment, you know,

as we're accepting students and, um,

and even with our current students, you know,

one challenge has been, um, you know, with our,

with our studies office and, um, just

the course request process and when there's a need to change

or, or move to a new piece of technology

or to change the process, um, it is,

it is hard when technology can often be the afterthought

and, um, you know, those conversations need

to happen much sooner than a couple

weeks before launching it.

And so you kind of have to, um, you kind

of get just put in this, uh, tough spot.

Do you let the department run with something

that you know is gonna fail

and then that's gonna hurt the student experience?

Or, you know, if you do it last minute,

you're not really fixing the bad behavior of

that department, you're just encouraging it the next time.

Um, so you're kind of stuck in this position of, you know,

giving the best advice you can.

Even if that means, you know, going with a, a less desirable

solution, uh,

that might be the better experience for the students.

So you kind of get put in a tough position of, you know,

having to, to really push back a little bit. Um, so

Yeah, It's one of things you work to really try

and change of trying to have that seat at the table and,

and build those relationships.

You know, it's not, we don't just

want to have the seat at the table.

We want to have that meaningful

relationship with them, like you said.

Yeah. And I think, I think you point to something

that is perhaps easy to conflate,

but right, like you're talking about an opinion about

something that's student centered is,

does this serve our students better?

Does this serve our employees better?

Does this serve our families better?

And that is separate from am I at the table?

Right? And that's certainly separate from the, uh,

feeling like you're not serving a colleague well,

by pushing back, I actually would argue that maintaining

that good relationship, so let's,

let's just call it like a dean of academics.

They're pushing you to do something faster than you think it

should happen, because you think that

that's gonna yield a bad result.

And if you guys already have a good relationship

where you're trusted, that's not about

your relationship at all.

That's just about the program. Right.

Um, and I'm not sure that that's

what you're actually describing, Michael,

but I, I heard it in, in a way where it's like, I,

I think it can be easy to conflate those two things.

Um, and I wonder who else on the call has an example where,

um, I don't know, the lack of a relationship

caused you to feel like you were just driven over,

or having, having that substantial relationship outside

of programmatic choices, um, gave you a

more even playing field or access to the conversations,

Alright, let's, let's change topics, let's see how we do

with vendor relationships.

Uh, I have one, I have one mode of being guys,

what you see is what you get.

I have a really lousy poker face, so I kind

of say everything to all the people.

And I'm, I don't know that that impacts, uh,

my vendor relationships poorly,

but I'm curious to hear your thoughts.

So I'm really open when I'm talking to a large vendor

or a small vendor that I'm in conversations

with other vendors, uh,

or I'll even talk about the pricing

I'm receiving from someone else.

I'm curious, does that resonate with you guys?

Is that something that you do?

Has anyone played their cards closer to their vest

and would caution me against being as open as I am?

Cecile, I saw you on mute. I'm so sorry.

Now you're gonna be called on.

Aha. Um, I'm, I'm the same way.

So I, I am just pretty honest about what I want

and I'm, I'm pretty straightforward and very practical,

and I don't play games, you know,

and I think that's been, it's been, it is works for me.

Um, I can't speak for anyone else, but, uh, yeah, so

I think, I think also it just, it has to do with, you know,

your vendors, whether they're open to hearing,

you know, what you have to say.

So I, I don't, I don't wanna deal with vendors who will not,

you know, kind of put up with that for me, I guess, or,

or be honest with me and, you know, in negotiations.

So I'm pretty honest if I don't have the budget

or if I say, Hey, can we work something out, you know, uh,

with budget is, it's always kind

of like a, a little bit of a game.

But I am pretty honest about if I have it,

if I don't have it or when I have it, you know, so

I don't know if that's, uh, thank you.

Yeah. Yeah.

Hi. I have kind of an example

of a recent ongoing relationship with a vendor.

It's a great relationship, great vendor.

We've done two large projects with them, our wifi upgrade

and our, uh, campus security overhead speaker system.

And we're looking at some updated re cabling,

fiber optic network cables.

And anyway, uh,

the past couple projects have been a little bit,

I don't wanna say rushed, but, um, not,

not really opportunity or time to put out for bid.

And of course we want to,

and our, our, our trustees, we want

to put everything out for bid.

Um, but we kind of just went with them

and we have a good relationship.

So it worked out. Uh, this one we have, we're taking,

we're taking a little bit more time,

and I was like, Hey, by the way, you know, we kind of have

to put this out for bid and it's something personal.

It's just the way we need to operate

for these large projects, of course.

And, um, their response was, okay,

but there's a lot of design and engineering pre-proposal

and, you know, we don't want you just them do the work.

And then some other guy comes in and,

and, and gets the contract.

So they, they charge us for it.

They gave us a really good rate.

And it's, it's, it's like, they'll, they'll credit half

of it toward the project, but, um, anyway, it's, it, um, be,

because now we can use their work as, uh, part

of our RFP basically.

And, um, they're all for it.

And I hope we still go with them,

but we still have to put it after bid.

So yeah. Kind of a communication thing.

And, uh, they get it, you know, they're a big business.

We're, we're a small medium school. That's it.

Yeah. Love it. Thanks for sharing. Brian.

I'm curious too, as we talk about relationships,

and we've talked about navigating this disruptive

technologies and, you know, AI is something

that has evolved, um,

quite a bit over the past two years or so.

How is it going, like right now?

Like, I'd love to just get a, a round the room of like,

what's happening with AI at your school?

Where, where are you in the process?

How's it going with the faculty and their relationships?

Like, what's going well or what are they struggling with?

Can you just kinda tell us about that update?

I think there's a huge relational piece in there

that ties into our theme today,

but also if there's any struggles that you wanna share,

or if there's any things that have been going well.

I think it's always good to have a, a group

to kind of bounce some ideas off of.

'cause that seems to be a common thing that all schools,

no matter their, their age

or size, um, you know, we're all kind of having

to navigate and deal with this together.

Thanks, Ashley. Um, at Head Royce, we're piloting, uh,

flip K 12 as a preferred tool in our middle school program

for this semester, working with faculty

to understand the challenges that they're having with it,

the successes that they're having, that they're having

with it, and using, uh,

their experiences and our experiences.

And we started with essentially a statement of intent on AI

as opposed to a full fledged, here's the policy.

It's kind of like, Hey, here is what we're hoping to go for.

And we presented that to our middle

school faculty at a meeting.

We showed them in breakout in smaller breakout rooms, kind

of what types of things you can do with the tool.

And now we're taking that statement of intent,

and actually we're presenting it in just two days as a, uh,

responsible use of generative AI policies.

That's comprehensive for both employees and students.

And I fully expect that

that policy will change in a few months

and will change again a few months later.

Um, as both more becomes available to our community

and we understand more of the challenges, I think that, um,

the, the biggest challenge that, the thing

that I can't wrap my head around,

I'm really curious if folks

have a good way to think about it.

So my boss chatted me this morning, he's like, Hey,

tell me about the Gemini we have access to, right?

We're a google edu plus school,

and so you can go to gemini.google.com

and you can use the tool there,

but we're not paying for their Gemini for education, which,

oh, man, I was just doing some math earlier today,

which is not my strong suit.

So I used a spreadsheet,

and at our rate, we could spend $4,000,

little over $4,000 a year to license 25 people

with this Gemini for education, right?

Which embeds, Gemini and all of the, the tools

and gives you more access and notebook, lm, right?

Some really powerful features.

So my question is, how do you choose who has access

to these kinds of superpowers,

which can sometimes be some real lousy powers, right?

So, and then how is there transparency around

who has those things

and how do you get them if you want them?

So that's really, for me, the struggle, like, you know,

essentially $173 per user per year.

How do you choose if that's worthwhile to spend, uh,

for a subset of people?

Because, you know, for us at over 200 employees, that's a,

that's a hefty lift to say.

Yep. All of them.

Yeah. We actually were just talking with them about,

um, with our reseller, about adding Gemini,

and we were floored at the cost for our whole faculty.

They quoted us like, something about

$20,000, you can keep it.

Um, but no, we are, we're at the kind

of beginning stages too, of implementing things.

Like I've pointed faculty to say, Hey, try out Gemini,

you know, you're protected, you're inside of the,

the walls of security.

Um, but you know, the fun part for us comes is we,

we know the kids are using it,

but we want them to be protected too.

But we still, there's still not a great tool out there that,

you know, our head of school is comfortable

with going towards for those security reasons.

Um, so we're trying to kind of figure out that piece of it,

but getting faculty on board.

I don't know if you guys have anything, any tricks,

especially the, um, English faculty is being, um, they,

they're very hold out, hold out on it.

Um, we actually are working it into our next strategic plan

as a subset of technology.

But, um, in that, right, like,

I don't wanna focus completely on AI

because there's gonna be plenty of other things

that come up in the next three to five years that need

to shift, but I think that's the only way

that people are buying in is

'cause our head of school has now

said, Hey, we're doing this.

Um, so trying to figure, figure out kind of where

to go from there, um,

and how to figure out which tool to use for the students

to, you know, have them have the safest experience from

really seventh grade up is what we'd like to have them do.

Erica, is there a theme to the English department's?

Uh, red flags, I

Mean, I mean, it's kind of the, the standard.

Um, you know, we don't want them to use it

because we want it to be their voice,

and then we have to flip and they

should be doing the writing in front of us.

And kind of the standard thing that I think a lot

of schools are hearing where I'm like,

but you do, we are a small school.

You know their voice, you know their voice,

you know, what's them, what's not?

Like you don't need a checker.

You know, you don't, you, you can do this.

Um, and, you know,

'cause our goal is, you know, we are a college prep school,

like they need, they're gonna be using this, they need

to know how to use it appropriately

before they leave our, our walls.

So how decided all of those pieces, so we're,

we're weaving in some curricular pieces, but, um,

but that department, interestingly enough, is the one

that joined my committee for the strategic plan.

So it's trying to, to lead them through, um,

I think is a blessing and a curse, a blessing,

and the fact that, right, they're gonna have

to follow whatever they came up with.

Um, but getting us there is gonna be,

is a little like pulling teeth right now.

Thanks for that. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. It's a, it's a little bit

of the wild west here also.

Um, a lot of our stuff is just policy driven at this point.

People are using what they want to use the same thing,

resistance always with the, you know, English.

And I'd say even history.

Um, I know that our ed tech director was looking into Flint.

I don't know if you guys have heard of it.

Um, Flint ai, sort of like a curated, uh, system

for, uh, it sounded really good.

He's not getting a lot of buy-in right now,

but he's, he was kind of trying to pitch this, this, uh,

software, um, license.

So I'm not sure where we are now, but there it is.

I feel like it's very disjointed at the moment.

There's a lot of conversations,

but there's also a lot of quiet.

So I think people are using it,

but we don't really know like, how they're using it.

So

Does anyone think that their employees

or students are not using it?

I definitely have a teacher who's not using it absolutely.

Against, against technology.

Probably wouldn't even use a laptop as well.

But, you know, we has to. So

We, we actually just surveyed our students,

so we surveyed our faculty four times,

and we'll be surveying them in two weeks again.

Um, at this particular point in time, 90%

of our students are self-reporting,

and that's with our upper school students only,

and that's with half of them replying to the survey,

which is a pretty good, um, return based upon the fact

that they weren't required.

We didn't get any community time for them to fill it out.

It was just personal appeal.

90% of our faculty, staff, students,

and administrators have used, uh, generative ai,

whether it's through the school's, um, program or not.

Um, over the last three months, I, you know,

we're definitely in beta year.

Um, we're, we're solid.

Um, in terms of what we've done Dave, like, like you,

in the summer of 22, uh,

or 20 summer of 23, um, we focused first on our principles,

um, and then followed up with our policies.

Our policies have changed four times last year,

twice this year, based upon different use cases

that have emerged, and we wanted to address within that.

Um, also some inconsistencies, um, with everything, um,

we have been using Flint.

Um, we've fully engaged.

It is the, um, one of three, uh, tools

that we permit our students to use, the others being Canva

and the Adobe suite, which they have licensing to.

Um, we have published, um, if you haven't seen a set

of guidelines,

which we also have built badges within our LMS so

that teachers across three different areas, reading and ana,

or reading and analysis, problem solving

and content creation can choose to assign, um,

either no ai, AI as an analyst, AI as a thought partner, AI

as an editor, or, um, as a co-creator

or a co co-creator.

We're in the midst of begin beginning to rewrite that

for next year, um, to add an AI explorer

and merge the, um, editor

and analysis, um, aspect within there.

We're beginning, within our upper school,

we're working on pedagogy commitments for the entirety

of the upper school, which is beyond ai,

but as part of the ai, we're defining what ethical topics,

what basic skills should students have at a grade level.

Um, so that's going to align.

So freshmen, they're going to be as, um, a thought partner,

sophomores as a, um, editor, analyst,

juniors as a, uh, co-creator or thought partner,

and, um, AI exploration for our seniors so

that they can get creative and go their own way.

We, our pockets are different.

We have a number of English

and a number of history teachers who are making great,

fantastic use.

We also have those who don't. Right.

And as part of our student survey, what's troubling

and tells us that we have a lot of work to do is

that the students who reported back are reporting

that about a third of our upper school faculty is

in conversations about AI

and generative AI speaking either negatively

or very negatively around that, that's gonna occur.

We've spent a lot of time, we've done a lot of work,

you know, divisionally,

departmentally, cross departmentally.

Thanks for sharing that. Vinny, I will say

that if you haven't looked at kin k's, uh,

acceptable AI use, uh, policy,

I'm gonna say you're in the minority,

because I think that if you change your policy, Vinny,

I don't know what all the other private schools

that have built their policies off

of yours are gonna gonna do, let's say we've been,

uh, we really have

Liked probably read readdress it.

Yeah. And here's what,

and here's what I don't, here's where we are with it, right?

We understand it's a necessary first step.

Um, we want to, as part of our pedagogy commitments move

to more student student-centric,

that policy is an adult teacher-centric policy.

And we want to recast it as in a more student-centric way,

because we also have an honor code.

And one of the things that we found through the survey,

as well as interviews and focus groups with our students, is

that we are putting our students into a dilemma, especially

for those teachers who are saying no ai.

And so students now want to use the AI to generate

practice test questions

or to, you know, check their understanding of concept,

and now they feel conflicted that if they do that,

and then it somehow gets caught that they're in violation

of the, their honor code, which,

you know, they just want to please.

They want us to trust them, they wanna please,

and for the majority of them, they want

to use it in appropriate, solid ways for them.

We're putting them into a

Dilemmas. Thank you Benny,

for sharing.

Yeah, that's, that's to hear

what you guys are, are up to these days.

But that goes across, I mean, that's just not teaching,

that's in all of our departments, right?

We're supporting growth and experimentation.

We're definitely in beta.

Um, we have not mandated use across anything yet.

Um, I anticipate

and we wanna see that more organically anyway, so.

Well, and Vinnie, it sounds like the mandate is more on

students at these grade levels will learn these skills,

will have an opportunity to, right.

So not mandated on the employee side,

but there's gonna be some in

included skill building on the, on the student

side. Thank you.

I just have a question about kind of where,

I was just reading one of the quotes you have on Flint's,

um, website here,

and just, it seems like the vision really came from the head

of school, but who were the other kind of thought partners

around this vision, obviously yourself,

but where did, was it the senior

leadership that this came up with?

I know sometimes at our school it can always,

sometimes just be technology pushing a certain initiative

or a certain department,

but where did, where did this kind of originate?

So this really originate, this originated,

I'll take my leadership,

I'm getting really comfortable with this now.

Um, but we actually began doing the work, this work, um,

in 2019 and through the S-D-G-M-I-A-I explorations.

Mm-hmm. And in 2019 20, they had a, uh,

team cohort that all of our academic, um, coordinators,

myself and two of my IT team went through, um, in

that period of time.

And we began to introduce concepts

of algorithmic literacies in our pre-K through six.

And we have been kind of watching this, the head

of school came in

and said that, no, we're not gonna block this.

And so I've worked with our academic, our assistant head

of school, our division heads, um, the policy,

if you've seen the policy, and it's on the website in

their AI policies.

Um, and I've also shared it within Atlas a million times.

Um, that that was done with in collaboration

with the division heads, the department chairs in our middle

and upper school, and our upper school student ai, uh, group

who all have worked to craft the language around that

and kind of poke holes in it.

That's great. I love that it says, Hey, you know,

the two AI related goals for the, the school year

and it's, it's great to have that, uh,

support from the top as well.

Yeah. And that, that was in through consultation.

He and I met through,

or four times over the summer so

that he could get the right, the board or,

because I've also presented using plugging it,

Ashley get ready to put it in the atlas, um, board guidance.

So I've actually met with our board of trustees now twice,

um, and have asked,

and they have created from the list of questions for boards,

they've developed a, um, data governance, um, an AI

goal for the board, um, that I'm having to report on.

And I'll be doing my first report in May.

Thank you for sharing. You're welcome.

Hey, y'all, speaking of that,

I wanna share my screen just really fast.

Um, so I've dropped this in the chat,

but just in case that you're, um, not aware of this,

this microsite is something

that Atlas uses when we go out and we present.

So we created it as a support for our presentation.

So there's three big areas here

and, um, under this AI committees,

and regardless of what you call it,

it could just be more informally who, whoever is having

that conversation at your school, um, great resources here

for you that people like Vinny

and other thought leaders have helped, um,

for us to develop.

So the AI for boards, this is the resource

that Vinny just mentioned.

We do have our policy resource,

which will be constantly updating,

but if you haven't seen this one, this build a roadmap.

Um, Connie White helped put this together

and, um, I made the roadmap itself,

but Connie helped like go in

and create this supplemental site of like, okay,

if we're here, what should our next steps be?

Here's some options, and then here's

some resources around those.

So there's an actual, like a, a blank template

where you can go in and create your own roadmap.

It doesn't have to look exactly like this.

Like your roadmap isn't gonna look exactly like this one,

but maybe this will give you some ideas of some next steps

or whatever those might be for you.

And again, some resources to go with that.

So definitely check out, um, these links, play around

with 'em in here, if you have other ideas, um,

and resources to add, please share those.

We have some things about, um, administrators,

just some productivity tools beyond the, the typical things.

Um, and then we've got a section on here

for teachers and training as well.

Um, so anyway, we'd love for you to play with us.

Let us know how it's going and let us

know what what you're using.

But any other, um, resources to share

or things that you're finding helpful these days?

I'm gonna, I'm gonna frame the way we introduced our ai

kind of back to the, like, for me,

relationships are really important

and we had a couple teachers

and our associate head went to the future

of schools conference at Hawaii

because they just needed

to get somewhere nicer than the Bay area

and they came back so enthused, right?

And it wasn't, they came up so enthused

and one of our sixth grade teachers was so clear

that he wanted that enthusiasm to spread to his colleagues.

And that he, in his words, it was like, oh,

don't let this get beaten to death

by bureaucracy at the school.

Let us have our fun. And so we worked with him

and another teacher to figure out like,

well, what would be fun?

What would be fun for teachers?

How do we meet them at a really engaging spot?

So our how to use Flint K 12, uh, division meeting

where we split up into small groups.

It was not academic focused.

It was, uh, I think one group was working on making a song

for another faculty member, right?

One group was using it, uh, you know,

what problem are we trying to solve at our home?

And so someone built a, a quick little chat bot

to figure out what to make for their kids dinner, right?

It was just like, what are the things that are, how do,

how do we get the hook in for people to experiment

with it in a way that builds off of, um, their already

existing relationships with each other as opposed to trying

to get them

to think about their particular classroom setting.

Right. Perfect.

One of the things that's been really successful for us,

and yesterday we had an in-service say,

and yes, we had time carved for some AI purposeful play.

Um, Dave, one of the, um, ones that I did for a parent

or parents association in Houston, one

of the big fundraisers is the, uh,

Houston Nutcracker market,

which is a large vendor driven.

And so in through Flint and

'cause I wanted them to have that same student experience,

I uploaded the floor map, I uploaded the website links,

I uploaded the vendor list and said, Hey, I'm looking for,

and showed them and they this available to them, uh,

freely to come in.

I'm looking for, uh, shopping for my daughter.

And so it would list the various different things.

Do you have a budget? Yes, here's my budget.

And it would narrow it down to the point that it's like,

okay, do you want me to create a map on how

to navigate it in the most efficient route?

And it's like, yes.

Do you need to have a trip

to the bathroom somewhere in there so that we'll map that?

I mean, and they're, they're just blown away.

Their jaws are on the floor and they're testing

and, and working within it.

And they were seeing that power right, in a way

with something, which is something that many

of them spent time going through over the four days of the,

of the fundraising market. So

That's so cool. That

sounds like a really fun activity. I'll say.

We also, we also included in an activity

that we knew would yield some problematic content.

So image creation, um, is an area where

you're gonna get biases.

You, it, it is what is present in the data.

And so it will be reflected.

And I, we don't shy away from there being problems

that's really important for us to uncover

and for teachers to have facility with.

What does, what does this mean?

How do we make sense of that?

Um, and uh, yeah, I mean I think that the, for me,

the fears are, you know, the, the Vinny, you said

that you've updated your policy like, you know,

four times this school year or something like that.

And then it's like, man, well, so how do we continue

to communicate those changes in policies when

they come so quickly?

And how does that not become the drone of,

oh yeah, the policy is updated, policy is updated again,

how do, how is that relevant for, for, for our communities?

Um, yeah, I, uh, I, there are lots of folks

who haven't shared their voice, so I'll do

my best to be quiet for a bit.

But if folks have thoughts on, um, how we kind of

maintain skepticism around the challenges

and biases that are present in generative AI

and how we, um, help our teachers reflect on that

and not let it be a stopping point, um, for experimentation

or implementation depending on where you are in your school.

Kind of a deep one, Dave.

I think you've got 'em a little stumped there.

Um, I would encourage y'all all

to check out the upcoming Atlas annual conference.

We're going to have some students on the panel on day two

from the Mount Vernon School,

and they're actually in Jared Colley's AI class

on the philosophy, it's philosophy in the age of ai.

And the students are gonna be participating in the main

stage and they're gonna tell a little bit about

what they're doing in the classroom,

uh, to address some of those.

So definitely check that out.

Um, we've been talking a lot about ai,

but we've got about 15 minutes left.

Are there any other topics,

and it can be anything y'all, anything that you would like

to get the hive mind on.

Are you struggling with anything?

Is there anything that you, you know,

it could be a tool, it could be a problem.

Anything that you'd like to bring up for the group for us

to discuss in our last few minutes?

Feel free to grab the mic.

Well, we've solved all the world's problems. Look at that.

Y'all don't, y'all don't even have any issues.

That's, that's amazing. Um, no,

Cybersecurity is always on my mind right now, so that's,

that's what I'm dealing with at the moment.

So I don't know if anybody else is doing that, but

Lucile tell us more. So

cybersecurity is really,

really broad in particular like just

keeping your school protected.

Like what are specifically, what are you,

what are you grappling with?

Um, oops, specifically, um,

the cybersecurity around, uh, application use, software use.

So, and then also the internal network, external network.

So we, we finally hired, uh, a, a firm to help us, uh,

do that to kind of assess

and then all the remediations, uh, we will do with our MSP.

So that's kind of like, we've started the ball rolling.

So now we're just looking at, uh, for example,

like our Google environment, our Jamf environment,

uh, the big players.

And after that, during the summer we'll do penetration

testing and then we'll probably go, uh,

and do some, uh, fishing expeditions.

Uh, so all that is kind of in the, in the works right now.

So, but, uh, probably should have started this way earlier,

but, uh, I wasn't getting a much buy-in, so, um,

yeah, better, better late than never, I guess.

But yeah. So anybody else doing that

or have been doing that or have any experience with that?

We're in the process of getting our whole Google workspace

audited for those same reasons.

Um, just, you know, we in the last year upgraded

to the plus version and there's so many

added features that come with that.

Um, and we realized it's been probably 11 years, 12 years,

maybe more than that since it was originally set up.

And through that we've had lots of changes in leadership

and MSP coming in.

So lot too many hands in there that we need to make sure

that, um, things are, are correct.

Um, so we're, we're in that same boat a hundred percent.

We're doing a Google Workspace audit as well.

We just signed on to do that.

Yep. We've done

Some great tools out there.

Yeah, we've done a Google audit, uh,

I think three different times with amplified it or not Cdwg.

Um, and we'll do another one this summer.

It's overwhelming and nonstop, you know. Yeah.

There's always changes from year to year.

Uh, uh, we also utilize, um, uh, simulated phishing

training for our employees.

So that's a monthly test that gets out, sent out

to all employees across a three day

period using nobe before.

Um, and then we, uh,

utilize CrowdStrike

as a ware prevention agent on all of our managed machines.

And we're still looking for, uh, probably a vendor partner

to help us with more of the defensive posturing

and, and with more of mm-hmm.

The kind of offensive style tests, pen tests

that you were referencing, Erica.

It, uh, this is one of those areas like kind of

where I started, where it's like it's unreasonable for any

of us to think that we can all have the knowledge.

And that's where this one sits for me, where, um,

the scope is so broad just in this one

topic of cybersecurity.

Um, I really feel like you need a trusted partner, um,

that that's their specialty.

Yeah, I feel that way too. So we

Have the, the Nine Tech Academy.

So y'all, that is a year long cohort

and we're on, we're going into year three with it.

I just dropped a link. It doesn't actually open again

until the fall, so the registration link isn't up,

but the link that I dropped has some information,

but we partner with nine.

So they're looking internationally at what's happening in

cybersecurity, then they're bringing in their experts

and they have developed in conjunction with Atlas something

that is specific for independent schools.

So you go through with a cohort

of Atlas Indie School leaders from the US

and they do training, and you can have your entire team,

like it can be even your, your MSPs.

You can get those people signed up for the course with you

or with different members of the team.

And it basically walks through step by step all

of the best practices.

And then you can kind of say, well, okay, at my school,

this is how we're gonna, you know,

approach our network segmentation or whatever it might be.

But they actually walk you through the technical steps of

how to set that up, how to go through those things.

But vendor vetting and vendor management data

and privacy security is a huge part of what they do.

And they have a very robust library

and platform that you get access to as part of that program.

Um, so anyway, maybe something that you wanna check out.

Yeah, very much a technical deeper dive.

Um, but there's different levels to it.

And there's one that's for like the administrator level

and then there's one that's more of like the techy,

techy side where you go hands on.

So, um, anyway, something else to check out too. I,

Uh, I wanna add to that

because I, I do talk to them, actually I talked to nine, uh,

more about the, the vendor vetting.

And I recently asked them about can you guys do a kind

of situation where you have a vendor

that you're looking into

or somebody's like programming some, some application,

you know, developing something.

Um, can you have them vet that

but just pay for that one, you know, assessment?

And they said yes. So it's like $513

and basically you just give them the information about

that vendor, whatever you have,

and then they'll kind of like build the assessment

profile for that ven vendor.

So I find that very powerful.

I don't need to know more about that.

'cause I know my users are not gonna use a portal

and like, look at the vendor, they're not gonna do do that.

But for me that is really powerful, just having

that available.

So,

Yeah, for sure.

Dave, how do you find something like CrowdStrike has been

to, to manage in your department?

I know there's different levels. Um, a consortium we belong

to offers of Falcon Complete.

Is it once you get stood up, is it, does it take some going

with a managed product like that?

Does it take a pretty big relief off your team?

Yeah, there was a, there was a decent, it wasn't,

there was a, a lift to get it.

We used Jam, uh, to manage the max that it's deployed to.

And so there was a, a bit of work to get that configured

and I think that we still have work

to do in understanding all of what's available

to us with the platform.

But, um, I, I guess at a, at a bare minimum,

it gave us some peace of mind

that we have a market leading protector on these devices

and it gave our school some peace of mind

that our cyber insurance carrier would continue to cover us.

Yeah, it's a, it's an interesting thing to invest in

and we have where we're Sentinel One

and um, some other vendors,

but you know, it's one of those things

where you hope it isn't gonna find a lot.

So, but when you know something is quiet, you know,

you're spending a bunch of money on a product

and, um, you know, when when it isn't generating a lot

of results, it's, it's a good thing,

but it makes you feel all right.

Agreed. It makes you second guess your investment. Um,

Absolutely.

And, and I think that the, the other side of that is that,

um, when people come in that, uh,

when when people come into the dashboard, it happens

so rarely that we call support, right?

It's not something that we're any of us are dealing

with on a weekly basis even, or even a quarterly basis.

So the, oh yeah, we've got a problem, how do you respond?

Um, that is where I feel like we need to do more practicing

because thankfully it's not happening often,

but then at the same time when it does

and we're kind of like, oh yeah,

what is, what's the flow here?

That's where it gets weird for me.

So, so it's almost like you need an incident command team

for your cybersecurity, just like we have for safety.

Right. So we've covered cybersecurity.

What else, any final things you wanna bring up

to the group before we leave today?

If anyone out there is using automated license plate

reading, I'd love to connect.

Uh, by automated you mean like ada We have,

we have some of that.

Yeah, we do. Well

In particular, um, for School Pass as a dismissal product

and parents can register license plates with school pass,

you get cameras installed when a,

the car drives onto campus, uh,

the student gets added to the pickup queue.

Um, we also have caught cameras

that do the license plate reading,

but it doesn't combine with the,

So they don't have a hook into that. Oh, okay.

So, so Dave, I would love to talk

to you offline about this.

Fantastic.

Alright y'all, well I think that that is bringing us

to the top of the hour.

Dave, thank you so much

for being our special guest facilitator.

You did a fantastic job

and appreciate you hopping on and for all of you, thanks

So much for the check, Ashley, appreciate it.

Oh yes. You're not supposed to tell him about that part.

For all of you, uh, thank you for joining us today.

Like I mentioned, we do have these quarterly for IT specific

and then we have other topics like leadership

and AI all throughout the year.

So we are meeting every month about something.

So we'll hope you'll join us for some future programming

and thank you so much for being here today.

We appreciate it. And thank you to our sponsor Meter.