TOPICAL SESSIONS 2005

1) Preparing an IT Budget – Your Questions Answered

2) Creating A Leadership Role For Your School IT Organization

3) The Growth of Technology in Education: What’s Coming Next

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1) Preparing an IT Budget – Your Questions Answered
Moderator: John Bruggeman, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati - New York - Los Angeles – Jerusalem
Panel: TBA

Preparing your annual IT budget? Then you’ve got lots of questions to answer. How do you get the information you need? What goes in the capital budget versus the operating budget? (Do you even have a capital budget?) How can you get needed hardware upgrades funded? Do you need to petition for special funding? If so, what are the best ways to justify your request? What is Return On Investment, and when does it matter when building a budget?

In this panel presentation we’ll explore the answers to the above questions, and give you the opportunity to ask questions of your own. We’ll also cover some helpful strategies that can be used to get special projects funded.

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2) Creating A Leadership Role For Your School IT Organization
Moderator: Virginia Corbière, The Foote School, CT
Panel: Joel Backon, Choate Rosemary Hall, CT & JT Amirault, Groton School, MA

The role of the IT Director in your school has changed. Fifteen years ago, your challenge was to install infrastructure and try to imagine what services your unaware users might eventually need. Eight years ago you focused on faculty training and integrating technology into classrooms. In the last few years, the same users who were once passive or resistant have begun to make demands - some of them realistic, some not. Meanwhile, administrators have recognized the power of technology to impact our programs, policies, and marketing strategies. We are all feeling the influence of technology on every aspect of school life.

As a result, IT Directors, whose job was once that of technical expert, have had to become diplomats, managers, and leaders, often without much official authority to support them. Heads have begun to understand the need to bring IT into alignment with the school’s mission, so that other constituencies can shape technology decisions while institutional plans and systems can benefit from technology.

This panel session will help you with the difficult process of creating a leadership role for the IT department in your school. Our panelists will describe how to overcome institutional obstacles to a leadership role for IT personnel, including relationship building, skills and attitudes to develop, improving relationships with your school’s leaders, and ways to align IT goals to your school’s mission.

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3) The Growth of Technology in Education: What’s Coming Next?
Presenters: Joel Backon, Choate Rosemary Hall, CT and Mark Payton, Vermont Academy, VT

Joel & Mark will discuss current thinking regarding new technologies that will almost certainly impact all of our schools in the near future. How can we distinguish between sustainable technologies that will affect our IT future and solutions that turn out to be short-term market adjustments or hype? Technologies that may be discussed include:

In addition, Joel and Mark will describe how to plan for the arrival of these technologies and sequester the appropriate funding.

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