Virginia Bond, a training specialist with the Northeastern Regional Information Center, has been honored as a 2024-25 Community Leader by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). In addition, she also recently completed the Google for Education Certified Innovator Program. These achievements are a huge milestone in her career as she marks 10 years with Capital Region BOCES.
Bond was selected to participate in the Chicago Google Innovator Academy back in July. As part of the program, she completed a three-day design thinking journey and upon completion joined a community of 2,200 Certified Innovators around the world.
“This has been a professional goal of mine for a long time. It’s a rigorous application process,” said Bond, who further explained that candidates were selected based on a holistic view of their overall reach and impact in the tech community.
Bond was required to complete the world’s fastest design sprint, which included empathizing, defining, ideating and prototyping within 30 minutes. The challenge she presented aims to address the question of how to elevate and support teacher practices through Artificial Intelligence (AI). She said that while she initially focused on the efficiency of AI integration, she shifted her focus to answering the question of how AI integration can inspire transformation within education.
As an ASCD & ISTE Community Leader, Bond is now also part of a global community of educators who use technology to revolutionize learning, and looks forward to volunteering her time to support communities in need.
In 2021, Bond was honored with a BOCES Service Commitment Award for her unwavering dedication to the students and educators within the NERIC and BOCES network. She has delivered thousands of training courses with the goal of helping both instructional and non-instructional staff navigate the various technological platforms utilized in our classrooms. Bond also has a strong background in education having taught music and technology at Salmon River Central School District for nearly 27 years before joining NERIC in 2015.