Sarah Trimble-Oliver, CIO at Cincinnati Public Schools

How do you stay abreast of what your competitors are doing in the IT space? 

“You might not think that we have competitors since we’re a public school district, but we do, we have charter schools and private schools. In Cincinnati alone, we have several thousand students who live within our district but choose to attend charter and private schools, so those are students who we are not educating and not getting funding for. We have a lot of good networking opportunities with school districts around the country to figure out how they are making the shift towards digital learning and online curriculum. In almost all schools in the city now, teachers are posting assignments online and students are turning them in online. We all have a lot of digital tools available, it can be overwhelming, so rather than focusing so much on devices, we want to focus on professional development, making sure teachers are trained, comfortable and supported for complete integration of technology in the classroom.”