USAF Veteran - WPS CIO - 2014 NSBA #20toWatch - 2016 CDE Top 30 - 2017 ISTE Admin Award - 2021 KC CIO of the Year - 2022 National CIO Finalist - 2024 DA 100
Wichita, KS
Joined May 2009
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Honored to be named to the EdTech Top 100 Influencers in EdTech Digest's State of EdTech 2026-2027 report.
This recognition reflects the incredible work happening across Wichita Public Schools - USD259 — from scaling virtual learning and esports to building out digital citizenship programs for 50,000+ students. None of it happens without an amazing team and district leadership willing to push boundaries.
The report's theme this year is Connectedness — across systems, classrooms, institutions, and workforce pathways — and that resonates deeply with the work we're doing every day in @WichitaUSD259 .
Grateful to Victor Rivero, Sheryl R. Abshire, Ph.D. and the EdTech Digest team for shining a light on the people working to move education forward. Proud to be in the company of so many leaders I admire on this list.
#EdTech #K12Education #EdTechTop100 #WichitaPublicSchools #EducationLeadership #WPSProud
edtechdigest.com/downloads/s…
Rob Dickson retweeted
The functional innovations in education shouldn’t be best-kept secrets. 🚀. What if we stopped talking about what technology promises and started sharing what is actually WORKING in schools?
That’s the idea behind Scaling Success, the new podcast I’m thrilled to co-host with Jacob Kantor! We are sharing real leadership strategies & vendor partners frameworks that are propelling education forward!
Grateful to Victor Rivero at @edtechdigest EdTech Digest for featuring our journey in “Scaling the Conversation.”
Our mission? Bring school district leaders and their industry partners together to uncover the relationships, leadership, lessons learned, and proven strategies behind innovations worth scaling.
Because technology doesn’t transform education. PEOPLE do. 🙌 And great ideas deserve to travel beyond one classroom, one district, or one conference stage.
I’d love your thoughts: What’s one innovation in education that deserves to be scaled nationwide?
edtechdigest.com/2026/10/13/…
#ScalingSuccess #EdTech #Edleaders #EducationLeadership #Innovation #K12Education #Podcast
Rob Dickson retweeted
My general advice for using AI for any purpose is to ask yourself: "how do I make what I am doing even more ambitious?"
You do this until you either hit a wall and then you know the shape of the frontier (useful!) or you find out that the AI can do more than you think (common!)
Rob Dickson retweeted
This is f*cking insane. Nobel Prize winner and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis:
"One person who really understands AI will outperform an entire startup team
In 5 years, the people who build with AI will run whole companies with a tenth of the headcount"
In this 1-hour talk, Hassabis explains who survives the next 5 years and who doesn't
Prompts → Agents → Workflows → Automated Departments
Understanding AI doesn't mean typing better questions into a chatbot
It means chaining agents into workflows that run entire departments on their own
95% of people still use AI like a calculator, the 5% who treat it like infrastructure will run everything
Worth more than any $2,000 AI course
Watch it today, then save the full harness engineering guide below before everyone catches up ↓
Here is today's Sunday Signal Report.
I used to carry an iPhone and an iPad. Now I carry one device, and it folds. This week I recorded a quick review of the iPhone Duo, Apple's first folding iPhone.
What I've noticed so far:
👍 Battery life has been pretty amazing
👍 Built well, and it's replaced two devices for me
👎 Some apps aren't made for it yet, including the Google apps
👎 Touch ID instead of Face ID is my biggest adjustment
I use it folded about 80% of the time and open about 20%.
I'm judging it the same way I judge technology for our schools. Not "is it new?" but "what job is this device doing?" For me, so far, the job is two devices. The math works best when it replaces both, not just one.
That's the question I want us asking before any device lands in front of students and staff. If it doesn't have a clear job, it's just one more thing to carry.
Watch the video in the full Sunday Signal post, along with this week's research: showmerob.com/news
This week's ShowMe Signal podcast episode is out too, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all the major podcast apps.
#EdTech #K12 #iPhoneDuo #EdLeadership #SundaySignal
"Technologies are ideas, and ideas cannot be eliminated."
Mustafa Suleyman, The Coming Wave
Knowledge always finds a way out. In schools, our job isn't to guard it but to spread it widely and fairly.
#EdLeadership #Learning #TheComingWave
Rob Dickson retweeted
What tasks should AI be trusted with, and when should humans remain involved? Designing those decision rights is one of the defining challenges of the AI era. Researchers at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research have developed a framework to help.
Learn more: bit.ly/4zed20M
ALT This image is a diagram titled "The AI Decision Matrix: A framework for determining how humans and autonomous AI agents should participate in decision-making based on two dimensions: ambiguity and risk," from MIT Sloan School of Management. It features a 2x2 grid with "Ambiguity" on the y-axis (ranging from low to high) and "Risk" on the x-axis (ranging from low to high). The quadrants are labeled as follows: top left is "Exploratory," top right is "Strategic," bottom left is "Routine," and bottom right is "Consequential." Each quadrant includes descriptions of decision types, approach, and ownership. A key at the bottom explains decision components and participants, with colors indicating human or AI ownership. The footer cites the source and publication.
"A mark of lifelong learners is recognizing that they can learn something from everyone they meet."
Adam Grant, Think Again
Some of my best lessons came from a bus driver, a para, and a fifth grader who kept asking why.
#Leadership #EdLeadership #ThinkAgain
Bridges connect us. Schools build us. 🚲 30 miles today, including the new Redbud Trail bridge, a reminder of what a community can do when it invests in its future. Wichita kids are worth building for. Vote Yes Yes on Nov 3. #WichitaPublicSchools #USD259 #ICT
"Concepts and models, even the most sophisticated, are always inherently pixelated, and our beliefs are always incomplete."
Designing the Mind
Keep refining. Stay humble.
#Leadership #AI #DesigningTheMind
Shot tonight from my backyard with my DWARF mini smart telescope. A waxing gibbous moon, and you can pick out Tycho's rays and the maria from right here in Kansas. Still amazed what a little telescope can do. 🌕
#Astrophotography #Moon #DwarfLab #DwarfMini #Space
Rob Dickson retweeted
Endorsements coming in support of the @WichitaUSD259 bond vote, Nov 3rd. Thanks @ChamberWichita, @unitedwayplains, @Greater_Wichita, and all the organizations showing on this list. Go to voteyesyes2026.com to learn more. Avoid the noise, learn the facts and vote Yes, Yes.
Unboxing day! My new iPhone Duo showed up this afternoon. It's the first iPhone that folds, and I can't wait to see what it does for how I work, read, and build with AI on the go. Setting it up now. First impressions coming soon. 📱
#iPhoneDuo #Apple #EdTech #AI
"Technology is an eternally dangling carrot, constantly promising more, better, easier, cheaper."
Mustafa Suleyman, The Coming Wave
A flat no rarely beats demand. Name the problem, test the promise with teachers, offer a safe tool.
#EdLeadership #AI #TheComingWave
Just finished Google Cloud's Generative AI Leader Professional Certificate on Coursera. It's five courses, from what gen AI can do beyond the chatbot to how agents can change the way an organization works. As a district CIO, I want to be sure we're doing this with real understanding, not just following the hype. Next up is the certification exam. #GenAI #AIinEducation #EdTech #K12 #Leadership
"Passion for work, at the brain level, means that circuits linked to the left prefrontal cortex pump out a fairly steady stream of good feeling as we do our work."
Goleman, Boyatzis, McKee, Primal Leadership
Purpose fuels it.
#Leadership #Education #PrimalLeadership
Rob Dickson retweeted
By every measure, Opus 4.8 beats human experts as peer reviewers in a study of 124 Harvard social science papers covering a range from statistical analyses to formal models to qualitative work.
As academics, we need to figure out how to adapt the practice of science to AI, fast.
Rob Dickson retweeted
Project-based learning engages students in deep thinking while connecting their learning in the classroom to the world around them. Start your #PBL journey here:
thecreativeeducator.com/proj…
#PBL #authentic #purposeful
Rob Dickson retweeted
When my first AI book was published in 2024, the best AI could do 4 minutes of human work with a 50% chance of success
When I turned in the draft of Co-Existence earlier this year, it was 17 hours
When it was published two days ago, AI could do 17 weeks open.substack.com/pub/oneuse…
Thanks to everyone who joined us at Wichita Public Schools for SCAITUG, and to Heartland Business Systems for bringing Abnormal AI to show us new ways to stop phishing threats. Grateful to host! #EdTech #Cybersecurity
