District data can help teachers ‘work smarter, not harder’

Data is the key element to elevating services for teachers and students alike, the technology director for a Texas school district tells EdScoop in a recent video interview.

“The biggest thing I think that we’re looking at for this coming year is how do we use data better?” says Cindy Bingham, the executive director for technology services at Aldine Independent School District. “How do we use [data] to serve our children better?”

Bingham oversees technology for the district that serves 67,000 students north of Houston. Sifting through all the various pieces of data to actually drive decisions though can be challenging, she says.

“There’s a lot of data to look at and the analytics can be overwhelming,” she says. “We are trying to see what we are using that is truly making a difference to the students, not that we’re just putting them in front of a device and using a software that’s not really helping them.”

This is also true for the way the district technology office serves teachers, Bingham says.

“We’re becoming more data relevant, we’re becoming more security conscious, we’re becoming more personalized with our learning,” Bingham says. “I want teachers to work smarter, not harder.”

To do that, Bingham says she reflects on her own daughter, who’s a teacher, and the challenges she faces when seeking to use technology effectively in the classroom.

“I know how hard she works to meet the needs of a variety of students,” Bingham says. “We need to make sure that the technologies, the tools that we’re providing our teachers are helping them to work smarter.”

Bingham on her top priorities:

Bingham on cybersecurity:

These videos were filmed at the Consortium for School Networking’s annual conference in Portland, Oregon, in April 2019.