••• GaETC •••

Leadership Strand

Leadership Keynote Speaker

Tom Murray

After serving as a teacher and principal at both the elementary and secondary levels, and then at the district level, Tom now serves as the Director of Innovation for Future Ready SchoolsⓇ, a project of All4Ed, located in Washington, D.C. He has testified before the United States Congress and has previously worked alongside that body and the US Senate, the White House, the US Department of Education, state departments of education, and school districts throughout the country to implement student-centered learning. Murray serves as a regular conference keynote and has previously been named one of “20 to Watch” by NSBA, the “National/Global EdTech Leader of the Year”, the “Education Thought Leader of the Year”, and the “Education Policy Person of the Year” by the Academy of Arts and Sciences. His best-selling book, Learning Transformed, was released in 2017 with ASCD, and his most recent best-seller, Personal & Authentic, was released in 2019. Connect with him at thomascmurray.com.

Leadership Featured Speakers

Keith Osburn, Ed. D.

Deputy Superintendent for Technology Services/Chief Information Officer

Office of Technology Services

Georgia Department of Education

Dr. Keith Osburn is the Chief Information Officer and Deputy Superintendent for Technology Services at the Georgia Department of Education. Spending the early days of his career as a Chemistry and Physics teacher, Dr. Osburn was introduced to the world of technology and soon found his passion in its value to improve education. With over three decades of service in education, he advocates for technology’s potential to revolutionize education. Now as the CIO, Dr. Osburn has outlined an aggressive five-year comprehensive plan to modernize the agency’s technology infrastructure and data collections processes to help usher in 21st Century practices that will ensure the availability of modernized equipment to support teachers’ and students’ classroom and learning needs.

Under Dr. Osburn’s leadership, the agency has embraced technology standardization, especially 1EdTech’s interoperability standards and has been the industry leader in leveraging CASE. These efforts earned the Georgia Department of Education the coveted Platinum Learning Impact award in 2018 for this work and the Silver Learning Impact award again in 2022.

He is a strong advocate for all of Georgia’s K-12 technology workforce helping them grow to understand and embrace their critical and importance role as technology leaders. Setting this vision has helped Dr. Osburn usher in several new and innovative programs to support their growth including a new Emerging Technology Leader mentor program, training over 400 digital literacy ambassadors, providing cybersecurity training to every public school district in Georgia, and to create the first of its kind state-wide professional learning environment and online community to enable schools and district leaders a platform to collaborate and share ideas regardless of their location in Georgia.

Eric Toler

Colonel Eric Toler

Executive Director

Georgia Cyber Innovation & Training Center

Colonel (Retired) Eric Toler joined Augusta University in 2018 as Executive Director of the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center (aka Georgia Cyber Center). Mr. Toler previously served in the U.S. Army as a Military Intelligence Officer, retiring with over 27 years of leadership and national security experience. In addition to seven combat tours in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Balkans, Mr. Toler was a pioneer in leading and developing cyberspace operations capabilities for the Army and Department of Defense, serving in key positions within Army Cyber Command, U.S. Cyber Command, and the National Security Agency.

In his role as Executive Director of the Georgia Cyber Center, Mr. Toler is responsible for fulfilling the Center’s mission to create an ecosystem of collaboration among government, academia, and private industry partners that helps solve the state and nation’s most challenging cybersecurity problems through innovative education, training, research and development, and practical applications.

In addition to numerous military schools and training, Mr. Toler holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Henderson State University, a Master of Public Administration from the University of Kansas, and a Master of Science in National Security Strategy from National Defense University.

Mr. Toler has numerous military awards and decorations, including the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, and two Bronze Star Medals. In his current role, Mr. Toler has been twice named to Georgia Trend Magazine’s Georgia 500 most influential leaders and three times named in James Magazine as one of Georgia’s most influential men and women.

The GaETC Conference is an approved CoSN CETL+USA Exam site

The CETL+USA Exam will be offered Tuesday, November 5th at 9:00 am at the Georgia International Convention Center.

To take the CETL at GaETC, you must meet the prerequisites set forth by CoSN (Consortium of School Networking). Applicants must, at a minimum, have a bachelor’s degree plus four years of education technology experience. Education technology experience is defined as demonstrable experience in the three primary professional categories of the Framework, which are: Leadership and Vision; Understanding the Educational Environment; and Managing Technology and Support Resources.

If the candidate does not have a bachelor’s degree, s/he must have at least seven years of demonstrable experience in education technology and appeal to the Certification Governance Committee, in writing, with an explanation of this experience and a signed recommendation from the candidate’s supervisor.

More information and the link to apply to take the CETL can be found on CoSN’s CETL Certification website.

Because of the prerequisites and processing time for approval, the deadline to apply to take the exam on November 5th is Oct 22, 2024.

If you have any questions about the CETL+USA Exam , please contact Amy Denman at adenman@madison.k12.ga.us. If you have any questions about your application or qualifications to take the exam, contact certification@cosn.org.

Free Registration for Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology officers, and technology Directors

As Georgia’s leaders in educational technology, GaETC would like to offer you a complimentary registration to this year’s conference. Each district will receive 1 complimentary registration. This year, we will be adding more opportunities for you to meet with other leaders focused on topics collectively, important to teaching and learning, promoting teacher awareness of student data privacy, cybersecurity, AI’s role in education, and much more. Please be on the lookout for the registration email coming in early June. The registration link email was sent out on May 23, 2024. If you did not receive it and participated in Dr. Keith Osburn’s monthly CIO call, please contact gaetcreg@mcraemeetings.com

GaETC and GLET

The Georgia Leaders of Educational Technology group is the state chapter for the Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) and all technology leaders across K-20 education. The focus of GLET is to empower leaders across the state in a collaborative atmosphere. This work includes partnering with GAETC to bring leaders from across the state together to meet and collaborate in person around leadership, teaching and learning, and cybersecurity topics.Membership is available to all K-20 institutions.

As part of our collaboration with GLET, we will be offering:

CETL Certified Testing Site – Tuesday, November 5

GLET Member Meeting at GaETC

Instructional Technology Coaches

New for 2024, we have added a strand of sessions specifically for Instructional Technology Coaches. These sessions will be tagged for easy reference in the conference app. Instructional coaches are invited to any of the Leadership Strand events and sessions. As part of this track, All4Ed will be doing a Part I/Part 2 – two hour block of time for participants in this strand. Additionally, Adam Phyall will be doing two sessions on Thursday for Future Ready Technology Leaders.