The Chinook School Division was represented at the Saskatchewan Teachers' Federation's IT Summit in Saskatoon earlier this week.

The Monday-Tuesday event included technicians, IT managers, teachers, principals and other educational leaders, according to Chinook's manager of information systems, Rob Geiger.

From Chinook, Geiger was joined by Cyber School Principal Shelby Budd and Cyber School Teacher Racquel Biem.

Geiger said there were keynote speakers, concurrent sessions throughout the day, and displayers from businesses talking about educational products.

"George Couros was the primary keynote," Geiger said. "He actually delivered a number of concurrent sessions and also a couple of keynotes. He's always an engaging speaker; he really looks at the higher level - how do we engage students, how to change students, and how to change practice with technology."

Geiger noted there were conversations on what future changes to the IT side of things could like like, including changes to bandwidth and new features coming for the virtual learning system, Blackboard.

"It was good to really engage with the IT managers and we had a two-hour session from the ministry on some of the changes that are upcoming, so that was really good. And I think it was excellent for Chinook to have three presenters there. We had three different people presenting in three different sessions, and so it's really good to get out there on a provincial level and share some of the knowledge and expertise that we have in Chinook."

Geiger did a presentation on Chromebooks and "deploying Google" via professional development for more of the techy crowd, while Biem presented on how to provide support for kids in online learning through feedback and reporting, and Budd presented on her experience in the Cyber School and its leadership in facilitating formative assessment.