Wanted – Director of Technology Services

In a few weeks I will start a new chapter in my career as Chief Technology Officer for Union School District. My last official day with Berryessa Union School District will be January 3rd.

Berryessa and I have come a long way together in a short amount of time. Things started out bumpy with major Virtual Desktop issues and regular Server room AC and power outages but we’ve made significant changes and I am happy to say, now have a stable platform on which to build moving forward.

All major systems are, or soon will be, cloud based; including messaging and collaboration (Google Apps for Education), Wireless (Meraki), Mobile Device Management (Meraki) and VoIP (JIVE cutover is set for Jan 3rd!). Firewall and Web Filtering services are in the process of migrating to hosted solutions at the County Office as well.

The Virtual Desktop system has been relegated to providing legacy student desktop computer access. Staff were upgraded to Windows 7 desktops at the beginning of the calendar year and over summer we pushed out iPad carts, ubermix netbook carts and chromebook carts so that there are significantly more student devices available in schools now than there were just a year ago. If that were not enough, we just wrapped up a district wide MacBook deployment for teachers.

There is 5 year technology budget roadmap, an updated technology plan and a likely upcoming Bond measure with classroom technology as a top priority.

The IT team is solid and dedicated and have performed miracles given what we’ve bee able to accomplish with the resources we’ve had.

While at Berryessa, I’ve had the opportunity to work with great administrators, amazing educators and passionate parents who all care deeply about students and learning. Throughout it all, I felt very lucky to get to go to work everyday, knowing that we were on the path to making classrooms places of endless possibility and wonder. I am sad to be leaving Berryessa and yet very excited to be joining Union.

Union is right now in the process of defining what their 21st Century Classrooms will look like in the next 1-5 years. I’m looking forward to bringing my background in building 1:1 learning environments, my experience with emerging education technology trends and my amazing Personal Learning Network of #eduawesome educators to that discussion.

With my departure imminent, Berryessa has posted my position. If you’re awesome, believe in the power of technology to transform teaching and learning and really, really like helping empower administrators, teachers and students with technology, please apply.