Jean-Claude Brizard, chief executive officer, Chicago Public Schools, in conversation with Virginia B. Edwards, editor-in-chief, Education Week, and president, Editorial Projects in Education

• Professional-development approaches that work best
• Strategies for building cost-effective teacher-training programs
• Using ed tech to implement core curriculum and “deeper learning” skills

• Smart approaches for building online course-taking into district programs for low, middle, and high achievers
• E-learning solutions that work based on the latest research
• How to evaluate the quality of e-learning providers

Panelists include:
William Hite Jr., Superintendent, Prince George’s County Public Schools, Maryland

Kecia Ray, Executive Director, Learning Technologies, Metropolitan Nashville Public School

Themistocles Sparangis, Chief Technology Director, Los Angeles Unified School District

• Methods for deploying e-textbooks in cost-effective ways to engage students in more interactive, multimedia-rich learning
• The best approaches for embedding assessments into digital curricula to raise student achievement
• Replicating successful district initiatives to create digital curricula and avoid pitfalls

Panelists include:
Jhone Ebert, Chief Technology Officer, Clark County School District, Nevada

Rick Miller, Superintendent, Riverside Unified School District, California

Scott Smith, Chief Technology Officer, Mooresville Graded School District, North Carolina

John Danner, co-founder and CEO of Rocketship Education, and Aylon Samouha, chief schools officer, Rocketship Education, in conversation with Kevin Bushweller, executive editor, Education Week Digital Directions.

• Creating a culture that embraces the value of trying new approaches
• K-5 online curricula—what works and what doesn’t
• Thinking strategically about online curricula—how to measure online lesson effectiveness and “par.”
• How schools can make online learning strategic by giving teachers the ability to set the online goals and get daily data on student achievement for lesson planning.
• How next generation platforms for driving student learning will work; learning management systems that optimize for lesson effectiveness.

• Maintaining a strong technology infrastructure amid increased student use on a tight budget
• Creative approaches, such as cloud computing, for using technology to cut costs
• Making difficult decisions about what ed-tech programs to cut and when to start new ones

Panelists include:
Preeti Burns, Director, Technology Customer Services,  Katy Independent School District

Alberto Carvalho, Superintendent, Miami-Dade Public Schools, Florida

Bailey Mitchell, Chief Technology and Information Officer, Forsyth County School District, Georgia ♦ Chair, Consortium for School Networking, Board of Directors

Rob Mancabelli and Will Richardson, co-authors of Personal Learning Networks:  Using the Power of Connections to Transform Education, lead an energetic conversation about how to ensure successful technology innovation. Focusing on the top objections to change (the “yeah, buts”), they discuss what’s really at the root of these concerns and how you can turn pushback into engagement.

• How to overcome the top objections that are raised against change
• How to structure the change process to engage everyone, not just the early-adopters
• How to determine if your District is ready for change using the 21^st Century Learning Readiness Assessment