Getting organized as an EdTech Coach

In my school, we have organized as a “Tech Team” comprising of:
– Tech Support 
– EdTech

We defined our role very simply:
– Tech Support:

The IT Manager:

  • focuses on the technical aspects of technology
  • coordinates the IT Support team
  • is in charge of the IT infrastructure (Internet and any IT equipment in the school)

The IT Engineer – Tech Support Expert:

  • fixes internet and wifi problems
  • fixes network problems
  • interacts with vendors
  • handles purchase paperwork
  • manages backups
  • fixes desktop/mobile devices issues
  • fixes classroom IT equipment
  • fixes printer issues
  • manages user access control

– EdTech – Innovation & Learning:

  • focuses on the use of technology for learning (and productivity)
  • coaches teachers: help teachers prepare classes using technology, co-teaches, help teachers work on their tech goal
  • train teachers, students, parents, admin, leadership with the use of technology for learning and for productivity

We all work together on a Tech Plan (based on the ISTE Essential conditions and our school goals).

We do not have a director or coordinator of both teams in my school, we collaborate a lot and make it work 🙂

For example, things we do:
– 10 min briefing every week: tech support has 5 min, edtech has 5 min (format: share what is in the pipeline and what challenge you are facing)
– Quarterly tech plan review
– EdTech meets every week about innovation and learning
– Asynchronous collaboration on policy documents (we are building a digital school policy with everything)

Organization tips:

Google Drive – have a “work in progress” folder

Team Drive – this helped us to organize as a team

Templates – we have meeting minutes templates to save time

Calendar – we put our deadlines in here as well as reminders and planning time in advance so we don’t have to work with too much pressure

Charts: we have a chart with (not) important/ (not) urgent and post its places in the different categories (when an action is done, we keep the post it in a box ad we celebrate our achievements monthly)

Chart of weekly tasks: My colleague and I have a chart with weekly tasks (when done, those post-its also go in the “done” box)

Protocols: we use protocols to have effective meetings, we follow a lot of the Adaptive school strategies , norms etc and now looking into U Lab – leading from the emerging future (online course).

We have an event sheet to plan our events with the headers:

Events When Where Why What Who How Resources & Ideas

 

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