Welcome to a new school year! At the start and end of each school year I find it helpful to share out the following checklist that was inspired by a practice from when I was a classroom teacher. This checklist is designed to ensure the effective and professional use of various ICT elements and support your growth in the 2022/2023 school year. Please note that not all checklist elements may apply to you depending on your position within the division. The checklist itself has each task hyperlinked which leads to a tutorial or video providing more information on how to complete the… Read More
Follow Along with the MVSD Coordinator of ICT
As I was reviewing my files for the 2022/23 school year I realized that it had been quite some time since I took an opportunity to re-share my socials here on the blog. The social media accounts I maintain on behalf of my professional life are designed to be educational and focus on the use of technology in education (at all levels). At a secondary level, they also serve as an example of how an educator may set-up and utilize social media in a professional capacity. Within these accounts you will find: tech tips to use with students or professionally… Read More
Summer Tech PD
Happy New Year! For those involved in education, fall time is our new year and we are ramping up for the whirlwind that is September. When it comes to the ICT Department, my technicians have been hard at work ALL summer: preforming maintenance on all infrastructure and hardware inventorying and setting up new equipment setting up classrooms As we approach the end of August, we are also preparing for our summer PD series which will include: August 29th – Secretarial PD all building secretaries from across the division Updates to PowerSchool, Office 365, shared calendars, and more August 30th-31st –… Read More
ICT Team Overview 21/22
When I first started my position in the fall of 2019 I joked with my team that they should give me three years to adjust. With so many aspects of education being seasonal I was fairly confident that by the end of the third year I would have everything figured out. Six months into my first year we closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic and all “normal” systems for our team were shut down until the fall of 2020. My second year saw an additional closure transition in May due to rising numbers in our region. So now here, at… Read More
Time to Unplug
On Mondays I share a different ed tech quote on our Thompson Classroom social media pages for our staff to consider. Today marks the LAST Monday of the 2021/22 school year and it goes without saying that, for anyone involved in education, this time of year is chaos (organized chaos… but chaos). While we are still very much in the trenches these past few days I wanted to share this reminder from Brian that taking time to unplug is good for everything (whether that is tech or people). For many of us, unplugging is taking time away from work during the months… Read More
1000th Blog Post!
This post marks my 1000th blog post since I started this journey in 2012! After celebrating my 10th “Blogiversary” I wasn’t sure what my next milestone may be… but then I realized exactly how many posts I’ve published. To celebrate I thought I would summarize my TOP 10 POSTS. These posts represent content that I find exceptionally valuable (meaning I come back to them often or share them with others) and/or those that I invested a lot of work into publishing. I’ve included 5 individual posts and 5 series that I’ve listed in chronological order. Digital Identity: The Big Bad… Read More
June ICT Newsletter
With the start of a new month comes a new monthly ICT newsletter. These newsletters are designed to serve as an outreach to all MVSD staff and provide: general ICT updates (software changes, divisional ICT timelines, tech-themed holidays) upcoming PD for the month tech tips divisional highlights These newsletters are sent out to staff via our divisional email but are also shared out through our social media pages and divisional website. June 2022 ICT Newsletter by Kirsten Cali
MVSD People of Dance
On Thursdays I usually use our social media platforms to share using the #ThrowbackThursday trend where users participate by sharing a memory (recent or distant). These posts don’t usually make it to the blog but when a memory popped up today I was surprised to see I hadn’t placed it as a feature on the blog in the past. Given the Covid-19 pandemic, we wanted to find a way to offer technology-related professional development to staff while having fun and staying safe during the 2020/2021 year. This project saw staff practice their understanding of collaborative documents and cloud-based storage systems… Read More
MAETL President!
Last week the provincial organization, MAETL, held their annual AGM and vendor fair. Usually held in collaboration with the Riding the Wave conference in Gimli, this year’s event was virtual as it continued to be the most reliable option given the ever-changing public safety guidelines that were present during the planning stage of the event. While this is always a fun event, this year was even more exciting as I moved into the role of President for the 2022/23 school year! (If you’d like to learn more about our group you can check out a previous Follow Friday post HERE).… Read More
May ICT Newsletter
With the start of a new month comes a new monthly ICT newsletter. These newsletters are designed to serve as an outreach to all MVSD staff and provide: general ICT updates (software changes, divisional ICT timelines, tech-themed holidays) upcoming PD for the month tech tips divisional highlights These newsletters are sent out to staff via our divisional email but are also shared out through our social media pages and divisional website. May 2022 ICT Newsletter by Kirsten Cali