Congratulations on reaching the last weeks of the school year. As you head into summer, we have begun shifting gears to prepare for next year. We hope all of you get a good, long technology detox this summer (check out some great summer reads on the Library website). Before you do, here are a few requests for you and a few things we are working on this summer. Our department mission is  "...to provide leadership, resources, and structures to develop multi-literate, adaptable learners." So, if there's more we can do to live our mission for the school, please don't hesitate to let us know! Enjoy your summer!

Ten Years of Canvas! 🎉

• The 23-24 school year was our 10th using Canvas as our LMS. We've come so far, and you have facilitated so much learning and feedback using this platform! Ten years also brings a lot of junk...so we have an important announcement about old Canvas courses. Starting in October 2024, we will delete Canvas courses older than four years. We will launch the school year with lunch and learns on the topic, so fear not! Reach out at help@overlake.org with any questions.

Reflecting

• Feedback: do you have feedback to help us do better? Please let us know! 
• Artificial Intelligence: this year, we published Overlake's Artificial Intelligence Philosophy to guide conversations and learning with employees and students during Wellness, August Pre-Service days, and Adult Collaboration. Please complete this survey to help us understand how you are using AI and where you'd like to see us focus. We are excited to continue the work together! Please contact Kelly if you want to share what you're working on or join our AI in Education Working Group.
• Institutional Research: we are proud of the strides we have made in our institutional research program and work evolving the data culture at Overlake, in particular, running our Employee Engagement Survey for the fourth time, the High Achieving Schools Survey for the third time, and the Family Engagement Survey for the fourth time. 😅 We are excited to share results from our employee and student surveys in June 2024 so we can launch the 24-25 school year with data-informed action based on community feedback. We also launched our first-ever post-Admission Season Survey to learn more about our admission process. Please contact Jay if you have any questions or feedback about how we can better use data to live our mission. More to come next year with our data dashboards, too!
• TRIM Literacy: we are excited about the work we accomplished this year within our Technology, Research, Information, and Media (TRIM) Literacy curriculum and even more excited about what next year holds. If you would like to work together to integrate TRIM or CSIG standards into your program, please contact Kelly or Rebecca at kvikstrom@overlake.org or rmoore@overlake.org, respectively.

Requests

• Leaving Overlake? Here's our guidance to employees, students, and parents/guardians no longer at Overlake.
• Return Borrowed Equipment: If you borrowed technology from us at any point during the year, including extra mice, laptops, chargers, monitors, etc., please return them to the help desk as soon as possible. Our ability to provide loaners and equipment is limited if we don’t get back what we loan. This does not include your school-issued laptop + charger.
• Do you have other issues you want addressed? If persistent or troubling tech issues pop up, please don’t suffer in silence! Please contact help@overlake.org or complete this form to let us know how we can improve your experience.

FYI

• Election Planning: Kelly and Rebecca are leading a team that will spearhead programming for the middle school and upper school throughout the fall, culminating in an "Election Day On" on November 5, 2024. Our goals are to build students' civic competency and understanding of current events, issues, and stances, and to practice and experience civil, respectful discourse that doesn't deny anyone right to exist. If you are interested in helping, please reach out to Rebecca or Kelly.
• Summer Work: this summer, we will focus on the technology infrastructure pieces of the new Student & Community Center, as well as our typical laptop refreshes for employees and new students, employee offboarding and onboarding, and planning for August orientations. Please watch for downtime notifications related to the new construction this summer on campus.
• Canvas for the new year: Canvas classes for the new school year will be available for you to begin working on by early July. If you're raring to go, "What do I need to know to launch my Canvas courses for the new year?" is always a great place to start. New features come out every summer in Canvas, and this summer is no different - you might be interested in learning about the Canvas roadmap of new features, including new gradebook filters, or the student assignment experience, or discussion/announcements redesign. 
• New Employee Owl IDs: Your newly hired colleagues will receive their Owl IDs in early July. If you wish them to be sent sooner, please let Margaret Lynch know.
• Simulated Phishing Emails: We hope you have found the simulated phishing emails educational and that they have sparked conversations about security and privacy as we all seek to improve our duty of care for personal and school data. As a reminder, please use the Phish Alert button so you know what is actual phishing and what is simulated by the school.

Don't be a stranger!

Don't hesitate to contact us at help@overlake.org or 425.602.7007 if there is anything we can do to help. Have a great summer!