I’m going to be the teacher tech next year, which means I get an period to work on it. During our FAC (Faculty Advisory Committee) meeting I made a statement about doing the job, which resulted in another teacher telling me I should get students to help me. Well, I’m not wild about that, but between the principal and myself, we’ve come up with a neat way of handling it:
Here’s what I sent to him:
I propose that we set up 4th period as an Independent CS Study class. This would be my "teacher tech" period. That would give the students assisting technology credit. We would be flexible as to when we take lunch, based on the needs of the job.
Instead of a formal lesson plan, submitted each week, I would submit a weekly report each Friday, which would be a summary of what each student and what I did that week. We would also present formally once a month to an administrator, preferably Dr. Crawford at least once each semester (using the model that I worked under at TI). We would also have a portfolio which must be up to date at the end of each six weeks. I would like another formal presentation at the end of each semester.
Each student would be responsible for certain duties: for example, one student might be in charge of the athletic portion of our website. That student would post each sport’s schedules, do tech support for the athletic director and any of the coaches as needed.
In addition to the tech and website responsibilities each student would have a personal project that they would be working on. These projects might take one or two class periods, several weeks, or maybe an entire semester. I expect each student to initiate these projects.
As a result, the students in exchange for working for the school, the student would receive technology credit, a portfolio, and recommendations from both myself and Dr. Crawford for future employers.
The more I think about it, the more I think it is a really cool idea.