Left to right: James Litton, CEO of Identity Automation, Dr. Tom Røtting, CEO of Uninett AS

This week, I’m heading to Sacramento, California for the 2016 CETPA Annual Conference. Held by the California Educational Technology Professionals Association (CETPA), the conference is attended by IT professionals from K-12 school districts throughout the state.

When Dustin Hardin became the Director of Technology for New Caney Independent School District in 2011, the district didn't have WiFi or student accounts and only had basic email for staff. However, district leadership had ambitious goals: to implement 21st century teaching methodologies in the form of digitized learning and ongoing student-teacher engagement. To get there, New Caney ISD created a program called 1:Vision, with the goal of issuing a laptop to each student in grades 3-12.

They’re there, lurking, seemingly lifeless, clinging to the shadows.  Even just one of them is dangerous, but when they amass in a horde, they can become an overwhelming throng of chaos, destroying everything their path. 

Sounds like fiction, right? Well, unfortunately this type of zombie – zombie accounts – is all too real.

At the end of June, I joined more than 16,000 ed tech leaders as they converged on Denver, Colorado for a week of idea sharing, collaboration, and networking at the 2016 ISTE Conference & Expo. 

Looking for the Clayton County Public Schools User Login Page?

Located in the Atlanta suburb of Jonesboro, Georgia, Clayton County Public Schools (CCPS) is future-forward district with a vision of making the digital classroom a reality for its more than 55,000 students, staff, and administrators. As part of this, CCPS is aggressively working towards district-wide adoption of cloud-based education technology.

School district IT departments are under great pressure to do more with less. While much more focus tends to be placed on technologies that are used inside the classroom, those technologies are only possible with strong infrastructure in place on the backend. However, the money for both classroom and infrastructure technologies usually comes from the same budget, a budget which never seems to be large enough.

I stand in front of more than 70 IT security professionals giving a presentation on security gaps associated with managing the access of users who are not traditional employees. As is the norm, I pepper the presentation with some light attempts at humor to keep people engaged. Each quirky joke I share elicits the desired chuckle or murmur of amusement from the crowd.

Our first conference this year is the Texas Technology Summit on February 9th in Houston, Texas where we’ll be exhibiting in booth #214. This year’s theme: “Conquering Your IT and Security Objectives.” At Texas Tech, CIOs and IT professionals can get the right tools and make vital connections to best prepare companies for the broad spectrum of ever-changing technology trends.