Your Morning Boost - Digital Preservation: The Strategic Investment for Leaders

Welcome to your Morning Boost, brought to you by AWB Education. Here we amplify knowledge, widen reach, and broaden impact in education, delivering your daily dose of professional development. This program is sponsored by Grundmeyer Leader Services, where together we are transforming education, one leader at a time. Now get ready to amplify your day with your Morning Boost. Welcome back to your Morning Boost, your daily shot of motivation and wisdom for school leadership. It's a special Tuesday because we are continuing this conversation with Kristin gwin Becker of History It. Yesterday we established that fundamental why of digital preservation, and today we're flipping the script from cost to strategic investment. We know school budgets are tight, so we're going to discuss some ways and which school leaders can approach digital preservation as a strategic investment rather than just a technical task. You'll walk away with some actionable ideas on how to use your existing archival materials to inform major decisions at even drive development. Hi. I'm doctor Lisa Hill, a longtime educator of nearly forty years as a teacher, counselor, professor and vice principal, and I've seen just about everything public schools can throw at you. And now I'm sharing my tales on my comedy podcast, Vice Principal Unofficed. It's where school leadership meets laugh out loud. Stories from underwear required parent teacher conferences yes really, two staff launch confessions. And more. You won't believe. I'm telling it all with humor and a whole lot of heart. I also tackle the serious stuff too, like what schools really need to change and those behind the scenes moments no one talks about. So if you're ready to laugh, learn, and maybe even cry a little, but mostly laugh, join me and my ninety year old mom, my official co host on Vice Principal Unofficed. New episodes drop bi weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast fix. Trust me, this is one detention you'll actually look forward to. All right, Kristin, I'm really excited about today's topic and this. You know how school leaders when they're focused on a budget, I mean, what are what are some ways in which school leaders can approach digital preservation as a strategic investment rather than just a technical task. It's a great question. So the first thing to think about is how does having one's stories access to all of that content available in an easy to search and find digital framework. How does that support all of the other strategic initiatives. So to not think of the creation of a digital archive and or digital museum as a siloed thing where we have to go, you know, we should we should go scan a bunch of our stuff and put it on the server somewhere that nobody's ever get to be able to search or access, but instead look at all of the ways that having that content would serve purposes. So for executives, for leadership, how is being able to easily search the history of the school going to benefit and giving speeches in talking about the history of the school? How is it going to affect governance or efficiency, and certainly in terms of like marketing, fundraising, alumni engagement, to think about all of those ways. So one should approach it really strategically and understand the various uses that the final product will will support and then build a plan toward that. So that's that's interesting there. If I'm going to do that as a school leader, then what are some what are some practical ways for a school leader to start using archival materials and development or decision making. Then, so assuming that once it's all digital, right, then imagine being able to, depending yeah on your role within the school, being able to access all of the content so photographs, letters, speeches, stories, publications, and being able to look up a particular topic particular class, student, athletics, scholarship, whatever it is, and be able in a quick and easy way to pull together any kind of curated content very very easily. Kristin, that is awesome. What I hear is that digital preservation shouldn't be a line item cost, but a strategic investment. The key takeaway here is to demonstrate the value across the entire school, from executive communications all the way to alumni fundraising. It just transforms static archives into a searchable content engine, instantly giving leaders the stories they need for speeches and for development pitches. That is just awesome. Thanks for being here on a Tuesday, Hedy Christin. We really appreciate this and thank you for this essential boost. Yet again, I'm really looking forward to what else you have to share with us for this week. Thank you listeners for listening to your Morning Boost. As usual, we will talk with you again tomorrow. That concludes another episode of Your Morning Boost. We hope today's daily dose of professional development helps you amplify knowledge, wide in reach, and broaden impact. Your Morning Boost is an AWB Education production brought to you with the generous support of Grundmeier Leader Services. Join us again tomorrow for more. Until then, keep boosting your impact.