Get the most out of your ATLIS membership

All right.

Welcome everyone.

We're so happy to see you here on a Monday.

We've got a fun info session.

We haven't done one of these in a while, uh, to help you get the most out of your Atlas membership.

So I'm gonna pass it over to Dr.

Ashley Cross to introduce, uh, guest, and then we, we'll get going.

Please drop any questions or comments in the chat as you have them, as we go throughout everything.

Hey, everybody, welcome.

So, today we're gonna be giving you a lot of information about what's new at Atlas or maybe some resources that you may not have fully taken advantage of.

Also, some things we've been working on that we've rolled out recently.

So, glad to have you here.

This is an informal session, so if you have a question, feel free to come off of mute and let us know or drop it in the chat, and we'll, happy, be happy to respond to you.

So, we're gonna start with our cybersecurity assessment.

Now, y'all, if you've been around the Atlas community for a while, this actually has a long history.

Uh, we used to call this the TIE assessment.

It was the technology impact and efficacy assessment, uh, several years ago.

And this has evolved, and we have a fabulous partner to help us with this.

So, Alex Inman of educational collaborators and now STS education has helped us to take the cybersecurity rubric that Atlas developed and basically to put it with an assessment that you guys can do.

So, Alex, welcome.

We're so glad to have you with us today.

Thanks so much for inviting me to join you today.

Do you want me to kind of walk through the assessment? Yeah, that'd be great, Alex.

And just tell us a, again, just from your perspective, um, any of the, the history of it, how it was developed, what they'll get out of it, how they kind of get started with it.

Sure.

So if, if you're not aware, you know, you're gonna learn a lot about the resources that are available to you on this call.

But one of the great resources that Atlas makes available to you is the K 12, uh, cybersecurity, uh, rubric.

And, and that outlines some of the best practices associated with cybersecurity across like technology, personnel, and policy.

And so what we have done is we've taken that and we've converted it into a cyber assessment and a self facilitated kind of process to get involvement.

So one of the biggest challenges that we have found is even when a tech director knows what best practices are for cybersecurity, getting your community to actually recognize that and engage in that is, is almost an entirely other topic, right? Yes.

And so what we've tried to do is sort of merge that.

So the assessment is not just an assessment.

I mean, yes, yes it is.

But we've created a fully facilitated process for you with a bunch of videos from yours, truly to kind of help you get a bunch, get the right people involved.

We recommend that you have a committee that's comprised of an academic leader, a uh, uh, sort of a risk management leader, oftentimes the CBO, um, uh, your technology leaders, and then also two or three, um, kind of frontline data, uh, people and get that group together.

We, in the, in the videos, we walk you all through that, you get the group together, you help build their literacy using the, the assessment.

You are building their literacy.

And then you get together as a group and you enter as a team how well prepared you are or what your level of implementation of these best practices is.

And that's valuable for two reasons.

One, it means more than just the tech person in your community knows.

And oftentimes it's a little bit of a come to Jesus moment where people are sort of like, whoa, we really haven't paid attention to this risk.

And now that I understand this risk, it's something that we ought to pay attention to.

So it's a process designed not only to say, where am I in my cybersecurity, um, profile, but also getting the buy-in and tilling the soil so that you can take the results which come to you in an automated fashion, and the whole thing is automated and you'll get, um, sort of target areas for you to focus on so that you get, we get, we give you kind of big areas of risk and low hanging fruit so that you can start to target right away with that cybersecurity dashboard.

And if you've done the process that we did outline in the videos, you're gonna have a lot more support from your community to implement these recommendations.

And that's golden.

Yeah, absolutely.

Cover it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Fabulous.

And you know, Alex, we actually just finished up our cybersecurity workshop.

And it was interesting because a lot of the questions that people had coming into it was, well, where do I get started? Yes, I see cyber recommendations, but as I look at these, what is going to give me my biggest bang for my buck? And what I love is that when you take this cyber assessment and you fill this out, you're actually going to get personalized recommendations.

And this is a member exclusive benefit where at an easy glance, you're gonna be able to see, oh, this is my roadmap.

These are the items, this is where I should start, and these are the things that I can work on down the road.

So it's really customized and it's tailored, but it not only gives you the roadmap, but we also leave you with resources on the how.

So once you start down that path and you're looking to actually implement those things, um, it's not just the dashboard, but it's also how you get started down the path.

Yeah, it's got a white paper and this, this world evolves faster than this white paper is, is refreshed.

And so there's some things that you'll wanna do some additional research on.

You can always reach out to, to me or anyone at educational collaborators to, to kinda help you with that.

But, um, but it comes with the white paper, uh, that includes, we've done this for years, and the white paper includes some of our recommendations for the most commonly found challenges in independent schools, and it's written specifically for an independent school audience.

Yeah, absolutely.

Audience, any questions for Atla, for Alex, or about this particular resource before we move on? All right, well, Alex, again, you're welcome to hang out with us, but thank you for, uh, sharing a little bit about this cybersecurity assessment.

We appreciate you being here today.

Yeah, Thanks so much for having me.

Alright, everybody.

Now we're gonna talk about some of our, uh, new technology and we're gonna dive into more things about the website towards the end of this info session.

But I wanted to start with our community boards.

We're really, really excited about these because we have a new platform where we have some new options for you.

So this is the view of the platform.

If you log into it, you can also just interact with it through your email.

But the big deal is that you have dedicated spaces.

So typically on listservs, it's like drinking out of a fire hose.

You see all the topics come through on all of the different things.

But we've really tried to narrow these down and the scope of these focused on what are you going through this year? And so we tried to be very disciplined looking at this and pick out topics like force AI specific to your division, because everybody's kind of struggling with that.

So it gives you that common community.

But then addition to that, we have things like construction projects.

So if you're doing a capital improvement project on your campus right now, no matter which stage of the project you're on, even if it's you are planning for a future project, you have a supportive community where you can ask your questions.

But also if you're doing a construction project, that's a great place to go.

And maybe it's to post your time lapse video of, you know, what did that project look like? Or, Hey, these are some things that I learned about the infrastructure that I really suggest that future people going through this should check out.

So it's a great place to offer advice, to give advice to build community.

You see the others here.

So our data projects going through the re-accreditation process, a really fabulous group, strategic planning and women in technology.

So some homes there for you that I hope that you'll check out.

Kelsey's gonna drop some links for you in the chat.

This is also pinned in the general discussion where you can go and you can click on this and you can add them to your community.

I also wanted to talk to you about if you join groups, what your settings should be.

Uh, because this is a new platform, sometimes the settings can be a little bit confusing.

And so what I wanted to share here, you see the women in technology that I'm a, a group member of, uh, the way that it works is that I have a setting toggled on where if you see the red here, it's actually where each new post as it's created, and every new comment as it's created sends an email.

But if you'll go back and look at this, you'll notice I don't have 31 separate emails coming through.

What happens is it all gets tucked away nicely into the thread.

And so even if you have that post that, that setting toggled on, and that's the one I recommend to you, um, you'll have it nice and neat in one thread.

The other thing that we can do here is to check out your inbox settings.

And so when you turn these things on, you can choose a digest.

If you just want a generic, you know, what's happening throughout the day for each of the groups.

Um, the issue with that though is that the subject lines are always going to be a generic digest.

You're not really gonna get a preview of what's happening until you click into it.

Whereas if you choose these other settings, but maybe you relegate them to a folder or a specific area so it's not clogging up your inbox, you really get a, I feel like a lot more value out of a quick preview of what the topic is and what it's going to be about.

So to change those, you can log into the profile, log into the platform, and in the upper right hand corner that you see here from the screen, you can check out your next, we have our Women in tech.

Kelsey, do you mind telling our audience a little bit about women in tech? Yeah, absolutely.

So this is a phenomenal community, um, that really kind of started organically.

So Denise Musselwhite, um, was a former Atlas board member.

She's the founder and CEO of Tech and Thrive.

And this started, um, at one of our annual conferences, just kind of, Hey, women in tech, let's just meet up kind of before the opening reception, let's just kind of gather in this area, introduce one another.

Um, and it kind of turned into a breakout session.

And then we had a lot of, uh, these women saying, Hey, can we make this a year round community? So we have a partnership with Denise where she, we have quarterly virtual meetups, um, and she goes into a leadership kind of professional development topic for each of these.

Um, and then we have the accompanying online discussion.

And you guys, this is one of the most incredibly supportive communities I've witnessed.

Um, I love how everyone just steps up to help one another to share ideas, maybe, um, going through a stressful time and someone will kind of share that and then, you know, share something that they're reading that helped.

Or, uh, we see dogs, we see plants, um, kids, but, but a lot of it is just supporting one another, um, from the career and professional development perspective, as well as just, um, the community of people who understand what you do every day.

And when you're talking about, uh, techy stuff, it's, it's other women who understand that language, you don't have to translate it.

Um, and, and you can kind of get right in and support one another.

So, very robust community.

We also have an in-person gathering that has grown tremendously at our annual conference each year, but, um, virtual community.

So wherever you are in the world, you guys can connect and, um, not feel so far.

Yeah.

Thank you.

And again, we have that quarterly meetup too.

So our next meeting for the Women in Tech is gonna be on January 7th, but we have the discussion boards that you can join and engage with now.

Alright, next up is one of my favorite resources.

This one is known as the Atlas 360, and it's actually a couple of different products rolled into one.

So I want you to understand first of all, what they are and then how to best use them.

So as we look at this, the Atlas 360 is a self-study guide for schools.

You can use this during the re-accreditation process.

It's also a really great tool for strategic planning, or as you're just thinking about your departmental priorities and setting your roadmap for the next couple of years.

So you can use it again, whole school level, all the way down to your department, a lot of different ways.

So it has four mo main components that we want you to know about.

It's divided up into technology for teaching and learning tech for school operations, cybersecurity and data privacy and leadership and strategy.

And so when we are thinking about, okay, we've got these areas, we've asked these questions and guiding prompts, and we've figured out where are, are we a little deficient? Where do we want to really work on now? How can we help? And so that's where you have three separate things.

So the first one that you see over here on the left, that's your supporting questions, guiding prompts, uh, your rubric.

I'm gonna show you a preview of in just a minute.

And that rubric allows you to go through and kind of rate those areas, um, and see how you're doing.

Give yourself a score and identify a particular area to focus on.

And then the companion manual is also going to give you additional support of the how.

So once you figure out what are the projects that you're trying to work on, the companion manual is going to give you best practices, templates, and resources to help you, uh, put those things into action.

So here's a preview of the 360 rubric.

You see here, this section is for teaching and learning.

And so for each of these questions, you're gonna give yourself a rating on a one through five scale.

You also have a line item here for notes.

You could do this with a team, just like we described as the process for the cyber assessment.

So it can be where it's not only you filling this out, but other members of your department, other senior leaders, whoever you would like to involve in this process.

And then you're able to rank all of these different scores for those four domains.

So now we hear the, see the school operations, so at the bottom of each one, there's an area where you can add that up.

And then again, giving you links for supporting resources for where you can go and work on those areas.

We've mentioned cybersecurity's in there, and that's, um, aligned to the NIST guidelines.

And then we also give you, again, some supporting resources within the document to kind of help plan out where should we go from here.

I mentioned the companion manual.

It's got a just a ton of resources there, and you can also find many resources on the Atlas website to help you navigate those areas.

But one thing that we've just added on, and this is actually still in development, uh, we have a, a, like a beta version of this right now, and we have some great new additions coming up, is that we have an interactive dashboard.

So Kelsey's gonna drop a link in the chat where you can actually go in right now and you can add in your school's results to the dashboard.

So what you're gonna see at, at first is going to be your results.

And the great thing is that you're going to be able to benchmark against yourself over time.

Now, this is really important for institutional knowledge.

So let's say that a technology director leaves, you'll actually be able to see the scores from whenever this was first started again, uh, moving back.

And so this is great because if you take on, let's say, a new role and that school has been putting in their scores over the years, that's very helpful.

So you can benchmark against your school.

But also the best part is that we have a brand new partnership with NAIS and we're actually going to have an integration with the Dazzle data.

If you're not familiar with Dazzle, it's data and analytics for school leaders.

And it is one of the largest reporting, I I would say the largest reporting, uh, dashboards and, and mechanisms for independent schools.

And so your school is probably already filling this information out many times it's the, the CFO, the, uh, head of school's assistant, different people like that, that are coordinating this at a school.

They're sending this data back in.

But what you're going to be able to then do is to filter your results in each area based on demographics that are important to you.

So for example, let's say you're a girl school, you'll be able to benchmark against other girl schools within let's say, a particular region.

Or you could look at endowment size, um, all of the different factors for schools, you'll be able to drill down.

So that is a huge, huge new member benefit.

It's currently still in the works.

We are working on building that dashboard piece, but uh, we have all the stuff with the lawyers, it's all signed and ready to go.

That agreement is in place.

And so we're doing the final logistics, uh, with the APIs right now and getting that data ported over.

So that will be coming, uh, very soon.

So we're very excited about that piece.

I've been talking for a while.

I wanna pause.

Any questions about the 360, the dashboard or anything else that we've covered so far? I'll just add On With the dashboard, Ashley.

Yeah, we, like Ashley said, we're very excited about this project.

Um, it's a, the partnership with mission and data for this dashboard, and then the partnership with NAIS and Dazzle.

Um, this is gonna be really helpful for you to be able to advocate for, you know, you know, best what your school needs from a tech infrastructure standpoint, right? You know, these, um, data protection measures that should be in place, you know, the size of the tech team, you should probably have, um, you know, the policies and procedures that should be put into place.

But when you're actually having this data to benchmark against similar schools, um, you can take all of these recommendations and they just have a little bit more weight behind them.

So you can help advocate for the investments your school needs to make, um, maybe some updates, maybe some changes.

Uh, you'll be able to identify weak points and really create a very robust tech strategy.

So we're excited, um, we're gonna have a lot of accompanying support for you as we roll this out.

So, you know, you're not just, uh, receiving all of this overwhelming data and don't quite know what to do for it.

So stay tuned.

Um, definitely as it rolls out, let us know how it's helping you.

Um, and in filling out the survey, as Ashley mentioned, it's kind of beta, a beta test right now.

This is just gonna be for your institutional knowledge as you go through the self study.

But in order to do appropriate benchmarking, we do need a certain number of responses for each category.

So, um, I believe it's, you have to have at least five responses to be able to appropriately benchmark.

So, um, really filling this out now is going to be helpful so that when we have the, uh, dazzle data integrated, you can really get granular with it.

Um, the more, I think Christina always puts it, build the plane as we're flying it.

We are, we are building this plane as we're flying it, and your participation is helpful.

Yeah.

And so to thank you Kelsey for that.

Yeah, to really drill down on that, a couple of two points.

Um, first of all is anonymity.

And so let's, I use the analogy or a moment ago of a girl school, let's say for a particular region, as Kelsey mentioned, if there are less than five responses for, let's say the Northeast, um, it's not gonna drill down any further than that.

So you're not going to actually be able to identify a particular school.

Um, it will not let you drill down to a certain level, and it has to have at least five responses for a particular demographic.

Um, or it basically won't give you that information.

So that's an important one.

The other thing is, a lot of times when we do stuff like self studies, they go, or we do reaccreditation, we put it in a binder and we set it on the shelf, and then five years later, seven years later, we pull it out again and say, okay, it's time to do these things.

And so this is an important way to have conversations.

It's a tool backed up by data.

Again, you're, you've got the power of associations behind you with NAAS and ATLAS partnering on this important work.

And so that's huge in order to be able to go and to make the case for the things that matter most to you.

We also have another dashboard that if you're not taking advantage of, it's a fabulous one.

Um, and that is the Atlas three or the Atlas Compensation Benchmark Dashboard.

And so this one is in partnership with 12 M and EdTech recruiting, and it's a really great one that we do the survey every year and we're looking at the, the salary survey.

So it's important that you guys take advantage of that, that you're responding every year.

And so that we're looking at those metrics over time.

And we're also looking at things like job satisfaction, your responsibilities scope, the evolution of departmental roles, all of those things.

Um, I highly encourage you to get in here and play around with this one.

It also has a salary ban prediction tool.

So this is great.

Again, whether you are advocating for additional support for your team, you need new team members, or if you are looking to negotiate for yourself for a raise, or you're getting a a new role, you're getting a new job and you wanna see, you know, is this an appropriate salary for this region's industry? And so it's very specific to independent schools.

So we've got some great data there.

There's also this report that comes with it that can basically tell you, here are some strategies for how to use this for negotiation.

Here's how to unpack this report, um, that we have.

And so there's, there's an annual report that has key findings and executive summaries, and then we have tools, again to help you go through and to unpack all of these.

So, uh, lots of important things there.

And again, it's so vital that every year that you guys are helping us with the survey piece.

And so Kelsey's gonna drop a link to that in the chat.

We'd really appreciate if you haven't filled that out yet, we'd love for you to take just a moment, uh, right after this and to get those in because that helps influence the future of these dashboards.

Absolutely.

And to add to that, um, the, the current salary survey is open through November 20th.

Couple questions we usually get it is anonymous.

Um, and so again, we use this to aggregate the data of all of the responses.

Um, so you are not, you know, telling us your current salary and benefits.

Um, we just, uh, use the data to share trends, um, and share information and really make it a resource that you can use to advocate for yourself and your team.

Um, and we need responses from every role in the tech department.

So if you are the tech director right now listening to this, go ahead and take the survey.

It takes about 10 minutes to complete.

So sit down, give yourself some time, um, but then please ask everyone else in your department to complete it as well.

Pass it along to peers who work in tech in schools.

The more data we have, the more robust this, uh, benchmarking dashboard is, the more robust the report is.

Um, you get the picture.

We love data And we'd love for you to share, you know, if you want to post this on socials, um, like you see Gordon did here, or to even post it on other listservs, things like that, that helps us get out the words.

So we do truly appreciate that.

Alright, y'all, we're gonna keep rolling into our new resources now.

We have a lot that we are putting out, and so you may have missed some of these.

I just wanted to highlight a few of our big ones from this past, uh, recent time.

So one is, again, a partnership with other associations.

You'll notice that many of these are collaborations with other associations.

And so the first one is actually a resource for your board.

So this is very fascinating.

We partnered with NAIS and the Independent School Chairpersons Association, and we had members of those associations.

We had boards of trustees sit on this, and we had tech directors and we brought them together and we developed a resource that focuses on how the board can have foresight with AI and not get into operations, but how the board can address this.

And so there are some things with their fiduciary governance, uh, just with oversight and risk management where they can think about these high level questions for the school, but not get into the operational side of things.

So again, it's a list of questions that they can ask.

It's really great for use at board retreats, but they could also break it down and, uh, submit like one question during a board meeting for discussion.

So great resource there.

Another one within a IS, we actually worked with their legal team over there.

We partnered with them and we created a guide on data and record retention and risk management.

It's fabulous guide.

It also has tabletop exercises in the back, so be sure to check that one out.

We have a new publication with NBOA, it's the second edition for our guidance on cyber insurance that was just released this summer.

So we've got some new updates there for you.

And last, we, uh, the committee put together new updates for cybersecurity recommendations for independent schools.

We also have some AI resources that were recently published.

So we have things like AI for primary grades and even middle school specific resources.

Some of those grades that don't always get as much love as the upper grades.

I wanted to give you a little preview of some of the things in the middle school resource so you could see what are these guides like.

So the first one here is that we have advisory cards to use during your advisory period where everything is ready to go.

It's a PowerPoint, you can put these up on the screen, and then they're situational things that where the class can have a discussion.

Section two has a lesson planning guide.

And section three, probably my favorite part of this resource, it's a guide on differentiation to support middle school learners.

So here's an example.

Um, this one was included throughout, uh, from mid pack in uh, school.

And so they did a really good job presenting at our, uh, pre-conference workshop.

And so this is an example from there that's made it into this guide.

And so they show when a teacher gives an assignment, this is typically what the teacher thinks that it looks like.

You know, write a three page paper, use a couple sources, you're gonna present it, it's due in two weeks.

Simple, easy to understand.

Everything's crystal clear and nobody has any questions, right? But they showed different perspectives from neuro neurodivergent students and what unpacking those directions actually might look like to those students.

And so it gives just a couple of examples here, but you can see just from the amount of text where it jumps from, you know, this tiny set of directions to wow, this is actually what's going on in the student's head.

It's this overwhelming amount of instructions that are coming at them.

Um, and so looking at things like understanding the question, it's asking them to do a current environmental issue.

Well, they're saying, well, which issue? There's so many options.

Maybe I should research several.

Is it double or single space? What font size? How strict is the page count? And so understanding that our students have some of these questions and what that might look like, and then looking at how AI supports can help us really meet the needs of our neurodivergent population, I think has been just so, uh, a, a light bulb moment for our educators.

So, um, anyway, it runs through specific examples that you can use with your faculty, but I really like this one.

It helps, um, make it very tangible and clear.

All right, next up we're gonna talk about some of our partner programs.

Kelsey, do you wanna give an overview of the nine academies? Yeah, Absolutely.

So we have partnered with nine for a couple years now, um, for the Nine Tech Academy.

Um, last year they added the nine Privacy Academy, and this year they've evolved the Privacy Academy even more to be an AI and Privacy academy.

So right now we've got two programs that registration is open for.

Um, I'll kind of separate the two of them.

We can answer any questions.

And I also have a landing page that kind of compares and contrasts the two programs.

But for those of you who don't know, nine is a consultant for educators, um, in, they're based out of the uk and they have a wealth of information, resources and expertise that really takes, um, the cyber support into a much deeper dive.

They're focused on, um, systems hardening, zero trust, architecture, um, vendor vetting.

And we've established this partnership because while Atlas, um, has a lot of great kind of cyber 1 0 1 resources, the partnership with nine actually allows you to kind of take that into more of a deep dive.

Um, so with these academies, they're year long cohort type programs.

So you'll start with the same group you finish with, um, and you actually get hands-on exercises throughout them.

So for the nine AI and Privacy Academy, that does kick off later this month.

Um, and that is more on your data privacy and management ethical AI use.

Um, are your policies appropriate? Are they up to date? How is your data governance? This one is less technical.

This one's gonna be great for yes, the IT teams absolutely, but also other staff managing data, um, and anyone on your AI task force.

So business officers might be interested into it.

If you have a data privacy or data protection officer type position at your school, it would be a great fit for them.

Any other school leaders, especially anyone handling sensitive data, that might be your registrar, that may be someone who's just interested to learn more.

Um, but this one is gonna be a little less technical and granular.

So there's people who don't speak tech jargon every day, um, might be interested in getting some great tech expertise in a language that they speak and understand.

Um, so that's gonna be scenario-based learning.

They're gonna, they participants will actually develop policies for their schools.

They'll develop framework for their school as they go through it.

So it's not just, um, theoretical.

You're actually doing the work that you can implement right away.

Um, and then the nine tech academy is going to be, um, and I just realized I swapped the last bullets on these, I apologize.

Um, the nine tech academy that launches in January, this one is techie.

Guys, this is a deep dive.

This is hands-on systems hardening.

This is gonna look at your tech infrastructure.

This is gonna help you develop that zero trust architecture for your school to really harden your systems and protect all of the data that you, um, that you hold all of this private and protected data for your students, alumni, staff, faculty, um, and really keep it safe and do everything in your power to mitigate risk.

So this is gonna be the one for the tech team.

This is gonna be for system admins, network managers.

Um, again, it's gonna have the step-by-step frameworks and, um, you're gonna have stronger IT systems that you'll implement as you go.

Uh, you'll have access to the nine platform through the program.

You get one-on-one consulting for your school through the program.

So it's really an incredible value.

Um, and you have that benefit of the cohort that you learn alongside.

So please check those out and, um, don't delay registering, spread the word, especially for the Privacy Academy because that kicks off soon.

Yeah, thank you so much.

Yeah, you know, one of my favorite things about the tech academy in particular is that it's all the things that you should be doing with best practices, but they're gonna walk you through it.

So for example, really deep network segmentation and making sure that you have everything set up exactly like you need to.

They're going to step by step tell you how to do that, share best practices, but not just best practices, but also here's the practical implementation.

Now let's go do it together and then come back, okay, did you run into any problems? Did you have any questions? Let's troubleshoot that.

And so it's just a great resource and it's specific to the Atlas community, so we definitely hope you'll check that out.

All right, our next one is a brand new partnership that I think you're gonna be really excited about.

So this one is new courses on artificial intelligence, but they're really through a pedagogical lens blended with technology.

So we have a new partnership with ED three Dow, if you're not familiar with them, this is breed re's work, and she's just an absolutely incredible thought leader.

She's doing some amazing things and they've got some just fabulous pedagogical based approach to this.

So these modules, it's going to be asynchronous, they're self-paced.

You see that there's going to be about 40 to 45 hours of learning in each of the courses.

So a lot of just really great content that people can dive into, again, at their own pace.

They're gonna leave this with a digital portfolio.

And I wanted to guide, go deeper into the three courses.

So the first one is project-based learning and ai.

Now y'all, I'll have to tell you that at lunch today, I was sitting in on Harvard Business reviews future of work, and they had a leader who was talking about how the future of work is project-based.

It's, that's where the work economy of the future is going.

And I thought, how timely for this course.

So we talk about project-based learning at school, but this partners it with artificial intelligence and it helps your faculty in a very hands-on way, be able to understand what that's going to look like in their classroom no matter what subject they teach.

So again, this is through a tech lens, but these are not deeply technical courses and we welcome your faculty to participate in these as well.

Course two is on media literacy and critical thinking in the age of ai.

So a huge skill, but people have a lot of questions about, well, how do I actually do this? So it's going to walk you through step by step some practical approaches to implementing this in the classroom.

Course three is on design thinking and artificial intelligence.

So design thinking has been very popular for years, you know, came out of the Stanford D School.

And so now partnering that with ai, I think it's gonna be a great mix.

If you would like to learn more and register about those courses, check out the link below that.

Kelsey's gonna drop in the chat.

Oh, now near and dear to my heart is the Atlas Leadership Institute.

So, uh, audience members, if you have gone through, I'm trying to see who all we have today.

If you've gone through the Atlas Leadership Institute, please drop it in the chat below.

Um, or if you know somebody that has, we'd love for you to tell us about that too in the chat.

So this program is about a decade old now, and I have to tell you, I was part of the first cohort of this.

I was a IT director down in Miami, and I'm very glad to go through this program.

It was before I came on with the Atlas staff.

And for me personally, it was the best professional development that I've ever received.

And now I have the honor of getting to work with this program.

We have Peter an who was one of the original faculty members.

He is now our program administrator.

And while the program has evolved over the years to stay current and to meet the needs, the basic curriculum structure has stayed the same.

The other thing that we've added on is a really strong alumni community.

So we actually invite alumni superstars back to come and to present each of these sessions.

And what it looks like is, again, a year long cohort, but it's made for busy working professionals.

We understand that y'all have a lot going on at your school.

So we start with an in-person kickoff at the end of July, and that's like a two and a half day experience.

Um, so it's, it's very easy.

You get there, you bond with your people, but we don't take up too much of your time.

And then we know that summer happens, we've got the beginning of the school year, you go into a little bit of a black hole as all the, the things get very busy in your world.

So we leave you alone, let you reset.

And then once the fall kicks back up, we start meeting with a once a month zoom meeting for about an hour and a half.

And they are interactive, they're a lot of fun.

We have team projects.

There's an research and development capstone at the end.

So just a really great program here.

And the point of this is that you understand at a very high level how the technology department functions.

So if you come from a strong IT background, but maybe you don't understand the pedagogy and the academic side of the house, we help you speak that language and it really relates to your peers in a better way.

Or maybe you came up through the classroom and you do not understand all the boxes and wires, that's okay too.

We can help you bridge those technical gaps.

So it's a really fun program and it runs July through May, but the applications are open right now.

So the atlas.org/oli, again, we'll have a link for you in the chat, but I encourage you to apply to that.

Or if you know somebody who would be a really great fit, we'd love for you to send it to them.

Kelsey, do you wanna talk a little bit about the TLIs? Absolutely.

So the TLIs is newer to the Atlas ecosystem and no, this is not a typo or a mistake on our logo.

TLIS stands for technology leader in independent schools.

And this is a certification that was designed specifically for this community by this community.

So we, um, did some market research and, and we found out that heads of school, school leaders don't know how to hire for your position.

Turns out you guys are a bunch of unicorns.

Um, and it's just so unique.

It requires that combination of technical understanding of school leadership, of understanding the educational ecosystem and it's technology.

It's changing, it's evolving constantly.

So that commitment to ongoing knowledge, ongoing learning and professional development is critical.

So we were provided a grant from the EE Ford Foundation to kick this off.

And we had, um, we've had some committees of volunteers that helped stand up the Atlas Certification Council.

And about two years ago we officially launched the certification.

You may have heard stuff about it.

Um, and it's, right now there's a testing period going on, but we have two testing, testing periods a year.

We always have a spring and a fall testing period.

So if this is something you're thinking about, you know, maybe you wanna look at the spring testing period, um, and wanna start diving in, and we'll do, uh, prep programs throughout.

You can get the candidate handbook on our website for free if you're just interested in learning.

Um, am I even qualified for this? What the heck is it? Um, so there's, it's really a demonstration of your competencies in the areas identified that, um, it takes to be a great tech leader at an independent school.

So if you've had a certain number of years in the role and you've completed a certain number of hours of ongoing professional development, you likely qualify.

Um, and then you have to retest, uh, every three years.

And you do have to maintain professional development.

Again, it's technology.

So we understand that this is changing, um, rapidly, and part of this a achieving this credential signifies that you are committed to that ongoing professional development.

Um, if you have any questions, definitely reach out to us about the certification.

Again, now's a great time to start looking at the spring or next fall.

Um, because right now we are in the midst of the fall 2025 testing window.

There are about a hundred people certified already, Ashley.

Um, so if you're seeing t lists after people's names, uh, that's what this means.

And you can talk to them about it, you can talk to any of our staff about it.

Um, but it is just been really incredible.

And we've heard from school leaders like, thank you.

We now kind of know what to look for when we're opening these positions.

Um, and it helps us do some of the heavy lifting of hiring.

It helps us invest in keeping great people.

Um, and it helps you demonstrate the incredible competencies you've gained throughout your career as well.

Yeah, so a lot of times we'll see people do the Atlas Leadership Institute first.

Mm-hmm.

And then when they complete that and they have again, at least five years in a leadership role at an independent school, um, then we will see where they sit for this exam.

And as Kel mentioned, this is letters behind your name.

This is a big deal and we're seeing a lot of new job postings that are now asking for the T list as a qualification for the role.

So it's a big deal in our industry.

We hope that you'll check that out and we hope that you'll find it useful as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think there's a couple bullets.

These are the, um, the different domains that were identified.

Um, so gov independent school governance and leadership operations, professional development and teaching Technology for teaching and learning.

I dropped the link so you can learn more, get the candidate handbook and just read through it.

Um, see if it speaks to you.

Thank you.

All right.

As we're rounding this out, we've got a few tech updates.

I'm sure you've seen that.

We have a new website.

Kelsey, do you wanna tell 'em about how they can update their profiles? Definitely.

So we're excited.

Um, we appreciate your patience.

I know some things you may still be kind of navigating around.

You can always reach out to us.

But the most important thing you can do right now is log in@theatlas.org and update your member compass.

So if you click over to your profile, you can, um, give us your job title.

You can talk to us about your role, your interests.

Um, you can see your educational history.

So again, if you're looking at, uh, achieving your T list certification, um, we're gonna be able to start actually collecting any Atlas programs that you've participated in.

So if you wanna go and look in your profile after this particular session, um, give it a couple days and you'll see, oh, yep, I attended.

Um, and it collects that.

Um, as well as just to kind of see what you've downloaded and, and quick access point.

But now that we are upgrading our tech stack, it just allows us to know you better.

It allows us to, um, tailor our communications a little bit more geared towards you and what you might be interested in.

Um, if you wanna go to the next slide, Ashley.

Um, we also have tried to work on organizing your resources a little bit better, um, for you to make it easier to find, especially by topics.

Um, so if you are on our menu and you click resources, um, you'll be able to, yep, there we go.

You'll be able to sort by topics or let's say you're a reader and all you're interested is articles.

You don't really care about videos or podcasts or downloadable resources.

Um, you can click on articles only or on podcasts or videos.

Um, so we try to tailor it to your learning style.

Um, but if you just click topics, you can see a variety of these different topics, um, and click around and find resources geared to what you're looking for.

Yeah, so I actually wanna go back for just a second.

Sorry, I'm skipping around.

Yep, no worries.

And so also under resources, you will find everything broken out by T list domain.

So here you see the domains and the sub-domains listed down below.

But if you click on one of those icons, so for example, independent school governance and leadership on the right hand side, that's what the page will take you to.

So you will see all of those resources there.

So you can filter them by domains or as Kelsey mentioned by topics.

So let's say we went in to the menu, we went to topics, and then let's say we clicked on ai, this is what you're going to see.

So all of our resources on artificial intelligence.

But I also wanted you to note that in addition to just looking at all of the resources on one page, there's actually some little tabs there.

So you see all articles, downloads, podcasts, and videos.

And again, if you're scrolling and you're just looking at everything on the main page, you're gonna see our latest resources.

But I encourage you to also click around on that downloads tab because you're going to see our PDFs here.

So these are resources where it's not an article or a podcast, but this is going to be something that you can download and a big takeaway resource.

So you're gonna find guides, white papers, things like that in the download section.

So please check those out.

All right, rounding it out, looking at other news and updates.

We have a brand new award that we started last year.

It's called the Aspire Awards.

Previous to this, we had the pillar awards.

And a way to think of them, the pillar is more like a lifetime achievement.

We look at an individual's body of work that they've contributed to the industry over an entire career.

But we had a lot of, uh, response from our members that said, well, that's nice and we appreciate that you celebrate, you know, kind of the bookend of the career people, but what about these people in the middle or in the early part of their career? And so that's where the Aspire Awards come in.

We have, as you see here, strategic IT leader, visionary Excellence, excellence and Educational Technology and Achievement Award, and a Breakthrough Leader.

So I encourage you to visit our website and to look in more detail about what all of those entail.

I will tell you that there are even some group awards, and these can include not only faculty, but even your students who are doing really fascinating things.

So last year we celebrated students from the Dawson School.

So please check this out.

And again, we'd love for you to submit an application, either self nominate or to nominate a colleague who you know that's doing amazing work.

And we'll recognize those at the Atlas conference.

But these award nominations are open now.

All right, another thing to just be on the lookout for is we have an opportunity for board self nominations and we're going to be, um, accepting those for 2026.

There's an application and interview process, so be on the lookout for that coming soon.

Kelsey, anything you wanna add to that one or you want me to keep going? Yeah, Absolutely.

I just wanted to give you guys the heads up.

It's almost ready to open.

We started this process last year, um, for board self nominations and um, it was incredible the response that the board received.

Um, on any given year, there are board terms.

So, you know, some years the, there may be one open seats some years they may, there may be two or three.

Um, but it's, uh, it's a really in-depth, um, application process and then interview with the board.

So this is, um, the atlas governing board of directors.

So keep an eye out.

There will be a member update email coming soon, um, with instructions on how to do that.

And by soon, I mean, um, in the coming week or two.

Yeah.

And again, if you've never considered serving on a board, I really encourage you to put that on your, your volunteer checklist.

It's a really rewarding way to stay involved in the community and to give back.

Alright, if you don't have this on your calendar, we want you to save the date.

We're gonna be in Columbus, Ohio on April 26th through the 29th.

The Atlas staff has gone and done some work in Columbus at our property there and we've visited and I will tell you, it is so walkable.

So the hotel is in just this prime location and you guys are gonna have so much fun because right outside our hotel there are so many areas where you can just take over.

So I cannot wait until Atlas is there and we're having a really good time with all of our friends.

So please, I encourage you to join us April 26th through the 29th.

And as again, we're coming to a close here, coming to, to close.

If you're not following the podcast talking technology with Atlas, it is phenomenal.

So we have Christina Lule, who is hilarious and witty and just so funny.

She's a fabulous interviewer and she has two ho co-hosts, bill Stites and Hiram Cuevas from our Atlas member schools.

There's a lot of talk about the zombie apocalypse and there's a lot of really hard hitting guests.

So we have some fabulous people that we bring in everything from technical deep dives into cybersecurity to some really big guest speakers and thought leaders around ai.

So please check that out.

We have podcasts that drop weekly.

So fabulous resource, please, um, subscribe.

We appreciate that.

Yeah, And that brings us to the close of our session.

And so we have our membership info here.

We're happy to answer any questions that you may have.

If you have trouble locating any of these resources or you need a one-on-one, we're here for you as well.

Kelsey, anything else to wrap up today? I would just say thank you so much for being part of this community.

Um, you know, we are kind of, um, often going out on the road, so to speak.

So we're developing partnerships with, uh, a lot of the regional, state national organizations that serve independent schools.

And we're out there advocating for the importance of the, um, technology leader and, and the school's tech strategy as a whole.

And then to come and engage with our community.

Have you all part of it, um, have you interact with these resources and contribute, um, when you see calls for volunteers, when, uh, when you're on our webinars, when you come to our conference, it really just brings everything we do full picture.

Um, and so we're grateful all of us here on the Atlas team absolutely love and take a lot of pride in serving this audience.

And please don't ever hesitate to reach out if we can help you in any way.

Thanks everybody.

Y'all have a great day..