Did you Know

Join the creators of Canoe Kids, as they share experiences and images of working within Indigenous communities to support people in telling their stories, of their culture, history and experiences. The team travels to work within a community over a period of time and the result of this authentic process, is the development of digital and print publications which brings voice to each unique community.

Security and Compliance with Office 365

The Security and Compliance Center inside of Office 365 provides an excellent set of tools and controls to establish and monitor policies within your school district. In this two-hour session, we’ll take a tour of the Office 365 SCC and more.

What’s Your Comfort Zone? Supporting Aboriginal Education

In this session, we explore through a guided conversation where participants are in their Aboriginal educational journey and their understanding of the new curriculum. We will also highlight key resources and services that ERAC provides to member districts. We encourage audience members to bring their questions, challenges and successes to make this a rich and engaging experience.

Beyond Engagement: Transforming Student Learning Through Virtual Reality

This will be a follow up expansion session to last year’s presentation which focused on the VR app, Google Expeditions. This year will focus on lessons learned and specific strategies to incorporate VR experiences into teaching and learning, with concrete examples, tools and lesson ideas.

Cyber Security Directions in K-12: How it Impacts Everyone

Districts and classrooms are vulnerable to cyber criminals. This session will help educate and increase awareness for IT personnel and educators on strategies BC districts are adopting to try and stay ahead of the ever changing cyber security landscape.

Actioning the Applied Design Skills and Technology (ADST) Curriculum Across the District

At this session, David Vandergugten, Assistant Superintendent of School District No. 42 will share how their district deeply integrated the ADST curriculum into K-12 classrooms. He will discuss Design Thinking as a pedagogy and how it can be used to bring hands-on learning into all classrooms.

Cloud IT in B.C. Education (Whiteboard Session)

As school districts make progress in their digital transformation journey, the challenges and opportunities of mobility are usually top of mind. Come join us and explore the new cloud technologies that are unlocked as part of Microsoft 365 – specifically Enterprise Mobility + Security.

Gartner Services to MyEd School Districts

The Ministry of Education has partnered with Gartner, the world’s leading research and advisory company, to provide a district subscription to Gartner for Technical Professionals (GTP) as an additional free service for those districts utilizing MyEducation BC.

SIP trunking with Thinktel

Learn how to leverage SIP Trunking technology (a resilient VoIP Protocol) to harness the Unified Communication Tools available in Microsoft Office 365 in the modern school setting and reduce expenditures.

Finding the Right Portfolio

For the past 5 years SD 47 has been working on improving Communicating Student Learning via the use ePortfolios. Come join the conversation surrounding the journey we have been on in investing 5 approaches to portfolio based communication. What we have learned, and where we are headed.

Bridging Worldviews: Creating Entry Points into Aboriginal Education

Participants will explore the new curriculum through an Aboriginal lens. Utilizing the Aboriginal Worldviews and Perspectives framework, educators will create and plan their entry point into meaningful professional development, sharing and learning. We will explore our own identity and interests and connect our personal knowledge to Aboriginal culture. This will be supported through the use of culturally responsive and authentic resources.

For more session details, scheduled times and speaker information, visit the IT4K12 Program Page.

Don’t miss out on this year’s event. Register now!

Book your stay at the special event rate before it expires on October 18 through the online reservation system. This special rate is available three days prior to and after the event.

September 24, 2018

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2018 IT4K12 Conference

Program Now Available & Deadline to Book Your Guest Room Fast Approaching!

Check out the IT4K12 Program Page to view the most up to date session information. See details on the many presentations and workshops being offered at this year’s event along with presenter information.

Have you registered to attend this year’s IT4K12 Conference? Join your colleagues and ERAC members from across BC by registering now. Limited space remains available to attend the special pre-conference event Wednesday November 21^st at Science World, highlighting The Science Behind Pixar exhibit. To reserve a spot, select the option to attend during registration.

Book your guest room at the Sheraton Vancouver Airport hotel to take advantage of the special event rate. Book by October 18 through the online reservation system. This special rate is available three days prior to and after the event.

Keynote Highlight

A Conversation with Dr. Helen Papagiannis

Dr. Helen Papagiannis, the keynote speaker for IT4K12 2018, is the author of The Augmented Human, an introduction to advancements in Augmented Reality (AR). In the book she explores how AR technologies can enhance the ways a user experiences their environment.

ERAC had an opportunity to talk with Dr. Papagiannis about what led her to the field of AR.

She reflected on her early exploration of visual arts media during her secondary school years at Wexford Collegiate School for the Arts in the Toronto District School Board. This education provided her with rich experiences in working with design, photography (darkroom!), life drawing, sculpture, and printmaking. She found printmaking to be an early entry into the concept of layering. Both printmaking and sculpture helped her to develop the ability to think spatially in different ways, and to value touch and materiality. She has continued to explore those concepts in her study with AR.

We wondered what interested her most about the future of AR.

She is interested in the potential for creating multi-user experiences, and the opportunity for immersive storytelling. She speaks of learning to design with intention. Reality needs to be ‘the star’…and AR should enhance our existing reality, not supplant it. It can create a sense of amazement, bringing together visual and tactile worlds, layering multi-sensory experiences.

Last comments?

“It’s about wonderment. Wonderment is the gateway to curiosity and learning. If we can design experiences that enhance our lives and add delight to someone’s life through AR…that would be a huge success.”

Join us at IT4K12 to hear more about this fascinating view of what it might mean to ‘be human’ in the future.

Session Highlights

ADST Lesson Planning

With the advent of the new ADST Curriculum, SD 47 Powell River created a template that can be used by teachers in their unit and lesson planning activities. Attend this session to explore these templates and consider their use in your own classroom and district.

Design Thinking

Join Leslie McBeth from Future Design School for a hands-on, action packed workshop that will teach participants to leverage the design thinking process to solve strategic challenges in their schools.

K-12 The Most Difficult IT Support Challenge

Supporting Technology for K-12 is more difficult than virtually any other organization. Come for some stories and tips on how to do it and bring a story or two of your own!

Explain Your Thinking

Participants leaving this session will be able to discover amazing tools to help students communicate their understanding. This session will look at Flipgrid, Sreencasting, Google Slides and other tools that help students explain their thinking. All tools shared are cloud-based and integrate nicely with Google Classroom.

How to Host a Hack-a-Thon

This workshop will present a simple workflow for hosting a Hack-a-thon. You will get the chance to try out different coding platforms that are grade appropriate. We will present a format that can easily be implemented into your classroom to get students excited about problem solving, computational thinking and coding.

Unified Communications: The Key to Successful Teamwork Throughout the Organization

The challenges we encounter in our work require us to communicate with people outside our immediate team, department or organization. However, communication is easier for some people than others, which creates gaps in our efforts and erodes success. Find out how unified communication can be support improved communication in your district.

Explore the World with Google Cardboard

Never heard of Google Cardboard? Many folks haven’t! Cardboard is a relatively new Google product taking VR (Virtual Reality) to a whole new level of cool. With a cardboard viewer box and a smartphone, you can explore the world. In this session, we’ll talk about the technology behind Cardboard, which apps are available, and you’ll have a chance to give it a test drive!

Learn about its potential in the classroom. From virtual field trips around the world to swimming with sharks, Google Cardboard is the next big thing in education.

BC Digital Classroom Sessions at IT4K12

Gale In Context Suite (Canada, Science, Global Issues)

This session will look at the current, media rich content of the In Context Suite of databases from Gale. These three databases work well to support the redesigned BC curriculum at the grade 8-12 level. We will investigate tips, tricks, Lexile reading level search functions and the on-demand text and voice translations with the intention of supporting diverse learners in the classroom. If you need online resources for the secondary level, these three databases provide support for most curricular areas in grade 8-12.

Harness the (Science) Power!

Explore Science Power with ERAC’s Professional Learning Team. Find out more about this fantastic World Book product, ready for use in any intermediate classroom, aligned to the BC Curriculum and chock full of classroom, home, and extension activities for learners in any context. See how to search for topics according to Big Idea, curricular competency or by reading level. Discover Science Power’s built-in tools for differentiating for your learners easily. Science Power will deliver content, creativity and flexibility to your science program— and the best news is, you already have access to it!

September 13, 2018

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New PIA available for All the Right Type 4 Online

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New PIA available for Microsoft 365 A3

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Technology Leadership Advisory Committee

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New PIA Available for Follett Destiny Library Manager

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Act Now: ERAC Discounts on Canoe Kids

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ERAC Extends Follett Agreement for One Year

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ERAC Renews Agreement with West Education

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Microsoft Agreement Renewal

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Learn360 – 197 New Titles Added

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New PIAs available for Access Learning, Rosetta Stone and EVERFI

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Bringing Virtual Learning Experiences to Your Classroom

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Matific PIA

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IT4K12 Attendees

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New! Learning Resource Selection Course

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Thanks to the PSA Superconference

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Trimble SketchUp License Change Notification

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IT4K12 Conference – Program is Now Available

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More Session Highlights

Sessions to Support District Strategies and Planning for Ed and Tech Professionals

Moving into 21st Century Infrastructure by creating a IT strategic plan that addresses the educational and administrative needs of a School District, with a focus on student learning and teachers enhancing classroom experiences. Find out how one district is developing a responsive approach to providing IT support and functionality to further ADST and other curriculum.
Get the Inside Look: Modeling Project Planning Through an RFP Process Planning for an RFP process related to technology infrastructure requires leadership from a multi-department team including technology and education. This session will provide practical tips and considerations for developing an RFP process, using a Wifi network upgrade as an example.
An Education on Privacy Risk

Sessions for Technology Infrastructure/Systems

Layer 3 Switches and LAN Topology Best Practices The demands on school district’s Local Area Networks are increasing as connectivity becomes critical to teaching and learning. Are your school LANs capable of meeting the challenge?
First Steps into the Cloud Building off the experiences that SD42 had in moving to the public cloud we will share our early easy wins, some of the issues we ran into, and how we solved them. Microsoft will bring similar stories from customers across Canada. You will bring your questions and experiences to share
Leadership on the Front Lines
Network Traffic Shaping for NGN QoS on Palo Alto Firewalls

Sessions to Support Curriculum Implementation and Innovation in the Classroom

Instructional Samples for K-12 Teachers – The Ministry of Education will showcase instructional samples that follow a pedagogical framework that includes: connections to the curriculum, First Peoples Principles of Learning, and classroom assessment. Also included is an overview of Taking Making into Classrooms, an online course that serves as an entry point into the ADST curriculum.
District Wide Implementation of Computational Thinking
Office 365 Cool Uses in the Classroom
LibGuides – Connecting Learning to Digital Resources

October 5, 2017

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Educators! Apply to Become an ERAC Evaluator

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Made the Grade – October 2017

Across the Universe

Grades: 8-12

Supplier: Not Available

Seventeen-year-old Amy and her parents are frozen cargo aboard the spaceshi…

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