Features Region: West

Think of it as a sort of “Shark Tank” for the primary and secondary education set. Teachers and staff come before a board, pitch their product and if the “investors” are excited about it, receive $1,000 to implement it. Down the road, if they meet stated goals, they receive another $500 stipend. And if their […]

In an age when giant tech companies like Upwork and Uber pop up in rapid succession and employees hop from one job to the next, William Zauner is frequently asked what’s kept him working at JAMS for 29 years. His response? “It isn’t one company, it has been many different companies over the years,” Zauner, […]

The largest grocery store merger in history between two Idaho greats took place on January 29, 2015—and standing in the middle of the action was Albertsons Companies’ Rucha Nanavati, who had to help oversee $280 million of IT synergy as part of the larger deal. By the numbers, the merger of Albertsons, a Boise, Idaho-based […]

There are times when she might miss the personal interaction of the classroom —one doesn’t teach for 12 years, as Ellen Dorr did in and around Seattle, without being committed to educating our youth. In the past few years she’s been able to reach more children through her role as chief technology officer for the […]

To Jay Wilson, security is a mindset, not a department, and for him there is no bad time to start on the journey of protecting data. In 2017 Wilson was asked to take the role of chief information security officer at Healthgrades—a technology and data company that connects patients and health care providers—after successfully launching […]

Elizabeth Collins remembers the early days of technology at the University of Colorado Foundation, teaching a co-worker how to use a computer mouse by doing the drag-and-drop game of solitaire on some recently installed software. To say technology has changed since then is an understatement. Now savvy students and a legion of researchers walk across […]

Patrick Perry is a smart guy with just a bit of a mental bone to chew on. The question before him is figuring out the best way to meet and transform the technological needs of the California State University system and make technology resources easily accessible to students at the same time. No small task. […]

If you ask Liza Klumpar to describe the impact of Franklin Pierce School District’s (FPSD) 1:1 initiative—aimed at outfitting every student with a personal laptop—prepare for a beaming barrage of numbers: 3,600 student devices in elementary schools by the end of 2018; a total of 7,800 across the district by the end of 2019. Or […]

He’s heard stories about the most hard-to-please celebrities storming out of world-class resorts because the flowers on the table or the art on the walls weren’t to their liking. And how much angrier they were if the wet bar lacked the right beverages or the menu was too bland. That’s not to say many of […]

In the middle of a lesson on ancient Greece, all 26 of the classroom’s chromebooks begin to buffer, eliciting a string of frustrated sighs. Down the hall, students wait nervously for the next page of their state test to load online, while nearby the teacher struggles to upload the week’s grades into the learning management […]