As of August 2021, I am our school’s system-wide technology integration and coordination specialist! So what exactly does this mean? Primarily I see myself as a tech coach, but now I also; collaborate, consult, evaluate, and troubleshoot technology puzzles so to speak. To get a better understanding of the scale of the new role, let’s break it down by the numbers:
Collaboration
This is a lot of people trying to try and keep happy with their technology every day. Of course, this is not possible without collaboration from the wonderful tech team I work with. These amazing people pool their resources to deliver technology resources to all of our community. But still, the task seems overwhelming. So I then thought, why not empower our teachers? But first, let’s create a vision; which I will link to ISTE Standards for students, as in this case – the teachers are our students.
Scan the Environment
Our technology vision is “we aim to empower students to learn new things, collaborate with one another, and take risks with technology to increase their understanding of this rapidly changing world.” But how to identify which areas of technology to empower the teachers in? To borrow a term from Porter’s five forces, scan the environment and identify the needs of our buyers – in this case, we started with teachers, and created an Office form to collect the data.
Data Capture and Creating Value
Keeping an eye on how to maintain this new role, make it long-term, and build in sustainability, we decided on the following questions:
- Which campus and division do they work at?
- Which department and/or grade level do they work in?
- Staff name?
- Description of the task?
- Recommendations?
- Time spent on a task?
For now, I will fill in the form, as opposed to asking our faculty and staff. This will initially help me to understand the tech needs of our community. In fact, I already spotted a trend in Seesaw questions, which points to extra training needed. Moreover, some of the questions I received were not that complex to answer, and after some consultation with the team, we decided to direct these staff to the Seesaw Pioneer course. It is our hope that the faculty in question would feel empowered (ISTE 1a) by this recommendation – therefore, creating value from data.
This new data exercise is just the beginning, and I sincerely hope that our positive intentions are received by our colleagues…