Students Learn to be Tech Leaders

Mount Airy News – Empowering students through GenYES

After some of the members of the Surry County Schools Board of Education visited a technology conference, they brought back an idea the school system will begin implementing in the fall.

Middle school students in the system will begin the GenYES program developed by Dr. Dennis Harper. The program has been in existence since the late ’90s and has spread across the country and even to four other countries, but Surry County is the first in North Carolina to implement it.

“This caught our eye because it was a student-led type of initiative. It’s something they could take hold of and do on their own,” said Earlie Coe, board chairman. “They had some great success with it.”

The school system believes that this will coincide with the 1:1 laptop initiative that will expand from seventh and eighth grade to the high schools next year. Empowering students to be leaders and valued partners in the school laptop implementation can lead to increased classroom technology integration, greater support for classroom teachers using new technologies and greater understanding and support for program goals, the school officials believe.

“It’s about student engagement and student empowerment. They will become part of the planning, execution and implementation part of our 1:1 initiative. They will learn how to use the software, how to best utilize the laptops in the classroom and help on troubleshooting and minor repairs,” said Jill Reinhardt, director of technology and career and technical education for the school system.

Read more: Mount Airy News – Empowering students through GenYES

Learn more about GenYES

Sylvia

“Another approach was explained to me by a headmaster in a rural school in Eritrea, who said he kept the computers locked in his office to ensure that they did not ‘break’. (I checked them out and, sure enough, all appeared to be in great shape!)”

Yes, that’s certainly one way to keep computers from breaking – just keep them away from pesky users!

But that’s not going to help students learn. So how can schools support computers, even when faced with limited tech support resources and teacher professional development?

“One approach that is not well known, but which perhaps should be, is to have students assume primary responsibility for the technical maintenance of a school’s computer-related infrastructure.

A recent presentation and discussion at the World Bank by AED’s Eric Rusten and Josh Woodard explored lessons from schools in Macedonia and Indonesia (Sumatra) that have been doing just this.”

The article goes on to mention GenYES, our approach to teaching students how be part of the technology support solution, and several stories about student technical support making a difference in Macedonia and Sumatra.

This is an idea whose time has come!

Sylvia

Lahore American School (LAS), Pakistan has recently started turning things around a little bit. It all started with the realization that our students are really smart, and that they are especially smart when it comes to technology. And that realization spawned another: Why not get our students to help us run some tech-related professional development (PD) sessions?

The result has been a series of student-led PD sessions focused on technology that teachers can start using right now in order to make their lessons more engaging and fun. (Read more…)

Good idea in Lahore, good idea everywhere!

Read about GenYES, a set of online resources, curriculum, and tools to make this happen in your school.

Sylvia

It’s tech time at Capital High - Generation Tech lets students become ‘co-authors of learning experience’

The Olympia School District was where Generation YES founder Dr. Dennis Harper settled in about 1990 after working around the world to bring computers to schools in countries from Africa to Afghanistan. He became the technology director and found a school district that wanted to be first class in technology, but had little to start with. He dug in and got started by involving students in every aspect of the district technology – from planning, to getting out the vote for a technology bond, to putting up a district website when no one even knew what that was.

One of the teachers he immediately started to work with was Scott LeDuc at Capital High School. Today Scott is still at Capital, still working with students to make “student-centered learning” a reality. This article profiles Scott and his students who work every day to make education better.

Today’s young people have grown up in a society that revolves around technology.

Want to talk? Send them a text message on their cell phone.

Want to see who their friends are? Visit Facebook.

Want to remove photos from your digital camera and fix that annoying printer error on your computer? Give them about five minutes, and they’ll probably be able to figure out and explain everything to you.

Their teen years are so much different from those of their parents and grandparents, and that’s why students in Capital High School’s Generation Tech class are exploring ways to change their learning experiences, too.

For example, several of the students have begun serving as “technology mentors” at the school, helping teachers and other staff members become more tech-savvy, according to Career and Technical Education instructor Scott Le Duc.

“Education is not going to change fast enough for anyone,” he said. “The only way it’s going to change is if students become the co-authors of the learning experience.”

Read this article – it’s not about technology, it’s about life-long learning…

Although students have access to some of the newest high-tech bells and whistles in their classroom laboratory, much of their growth is taking place outside the class, where students are serving as information resources for others, helping to locate computer support and projects for their teachers and peers, Le Duc said.

“They blow my mind; this group of young people is just awesome,” he said. “They want to see school change, and they’re making it happen.”

Scott authored the GenYES curriculum units on student tech support based on his experiences at Capital High School and years of teaching students how to “learn how to learn” by fixing real problems. Students don’t learn by being talked at – they learn by tackling challenging problems and issues that are meaningful and DOING something about them. And of course, teachers amplify the learning when they guide students through these types of experiences with expertise.

As one of the commenters on the article said – WAY TO GO, COUGARS!

Sylvia

“Students are reversing roles at Jamesville-DeWitt High School, where they have become the teachers and are helping faculty learn tricky computer applications.”

GenYES school Jamesville-DeWitt in New York was profiled in the Syracuse Post-Standard last week. We are really proud of the recognition these students got from their local newspaper. How much better is this than portraying youth as crazed techno-zombies who only care about stealing music and texting!

Stephen D. Cannerelli/The Post-Standard. Jamesville-DeWitt High School students Kaylee Yaeger (left), a junior, and Victoria Nandal, a senior, learn to use software to create a question and answer program on a Smart Board. Students at J-D can take an elective class, Teaching, Leadership and Communications, to learn about various technologies. The students then teach the teachers how to use them.

“It’s absolutely great,” said English teacher Terri Skeele, who’s been receiving help on using her Blackboard from high school senior Greg Werbowsky. “I would spend hours trying to figure out the little quirky things…, and then they revamped the site this summer, which made it harder. So having help like this is a huge timesaver for me.”

Sure – a tech specialist could have taught (and then re-taught) this teacher how to use the system. But perhaps you are saying to yourself – tech specialists? Who has those anymore? In that case, it’s even more important to create internal capacity for teacher support. And why not have students be part of that solution.

Because of course, the teachers are not the only ones benefiting from the interaction – the GenYES students get untold rewards from doing this mentoring.

Great job JD GenYESers!

Sylvia

Connecting Curriculum with Community by Susan Gonsalves, explains this concept with a vibrant mix of research, expert voices, and examples of what students are doing to make a difference at home and around the world.

Be sure to check out the special sidebar called, “Applying Service Learning to Technology,” where one of our Generation YES districts, San Juan School District in California, is profiled. I’ve written about San Juan before, but now a much wider audience can see what a great job they are doing with technology for teachers and students, and how their GenYES students support makes it more likely that technology is used in every classroom. The article quotes Nina Mancina, San Juan’s program specialist for special projects and grants.

“A key component of GenYES is the pairing of students and teachers to find ways to creatively integrate technology programs into the curriculum. “The students become so engaged as they find this connection with teachers, and [the process] gives them a sense of belonging that is very powerful,” Mancina says. Students often act as teachers for a day, giving presentations about the ins and outs of working with a particular computer program in front of an audience of both instructors and peers. They are also called upon to perform technical support when computers break down.”

So, can I do this?
You may be thinking that in this day and age, this is a “nice to have” rather than a “gotta have.” But here are two things that may change your mind. (quoted from article, emphasis mine)

1. Research linking higher academic achievement with service learning projects is limited but growing. This fall, Learn and Serve plans to launch a large-scale study to track and compare student progress by testing in classrooms across the united States with and without service learning. a series of studies by Shelley Billig, vice president of RMC Research Corporation, links higher state test scores with service learning participation. Students in high-quality service learning classrooms also were found to have higher average daily attendance and less tardiness than students from comparison classrooms.
   
2. Funding from Learn and Serve America makes it possible for more than 1.5 million students from kindergarten to college to devote nearly 20 million hours in service learning projects annually in 1,600 local programs across the country. Additionally, about one-quarter of the nation’s elementary and secondary schools have adopted service learning programs, with 40 percent of these making service learning an integral part of their curriculum.

So does that change your mind? Students CAN make a difference, it’s GOOD for them in many different ways, and your school (and teachers) NEED HELP. Why not tie all these together into one package!

Sylvia

THE Journal profiles several student-led technology support programs across the U.S. and finds that students can be a big help in providing high quality, low cost tech support. And in these times, who doesn’t need that!

Graham County Unified School District 281, a small district in northwest Kansas, runs all of its technology troubleshooting through the online help desk, according to its technology coordinator, Scott Parker. “When a support request comes in that I need to handle myself, I can handle it, and when something comes in that a student or a group of students can handle, I can delegate it to them,” Parker says.

The arrangement compares to a real-world job call, he explains. Once receiving the ticket, the student has to set up a time to meet with the teacher to find out what the teacher needs done. That involves working around the schedules of both parties, and may mean meeting during a student's study hall time or after school.

In the 10 years that GenYES has been in place in Graham County, the students’ role in the district’s tech support infrastructure has become essential. Mandatory, in fact: The program is a required course for all sixth-graders. Parker’s students apply the skills they learn in the class to providing help for teachers of all grade levels on technology-assisted projects.

This isn’t just about tech support in the “fixing stuff” sense. Tech support means ALL kinds of support that teachers need to implement technology. GenYES students can provide invaluable support for teachers as they create new lessons using technology.

At Paradise Valley Unified School District in Phoenix, which employs GenYES at all levels of K-12, project-based technology integration is the focus of the program. “There really isn’t a lot of troubleshooting,” says Jeff Billings, the district’s director of technology. “The curriculum is less nuts and bolts, more helping teachers learn how to do things–from the small to the big.

“The real value of technology is in the integration–the ideas, the applications, the creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking. If something is truly broken beyond the appropriate student capability or time to fix, enter a ticket and my staff fixes it.”

Read more about how students are making a difference in technology in They’re Taking Requests: Student Techs Command the Help Desk — THE Journal.

Sylvia

Related posts:

• Not enough tech support = no technology use
• Ten commandments of tech support

eSchool news (partnered with SchoolDude.com) released a survey last year showing that many schools are working with technology support staffing and budgeting well below standards and are failing to meet goals.

Nearly three out of four school leaders say they don’t have enough IT staff to support their needs effectively, according to the survey. Fifty-five percent of respondents said they can’t maintain their network adequately, 63 percent said they can’t plan for new technologies, and 76 percent said they have trouble implementing new technologies.

This is no surprise – Generation YES has been working with schools for a decade to create innovative models that teach students to help support infrastructure and teachers in their own schools. As we work with schools, I think I’ve heard about every tech support horror story out there.

Forrester Research, an independent market research firm, published a recent report titled “Staffing for Technology Support: The Need May Be Far Greater Than You Think,” which concluded that large corporations typically employ one support person for every 50 PCs, at a cost of $142 per computer, per year. According to this model, a school district with 1,000 PCs would need a staff of 20 and an annual tech-support budget of $1.4 million.

Yet, some larger school districts are approaching a ratio of one IT person for every 1,500 computers or more, says Laurie Keating, vice president of technology, learning, and planning for the Center for Educational Leadership and Technology.

I’ve shown this research to educators in conference sessions and workshops across the U.S. I can guarantee a huge laugh from the audience by saying that business considers “one support person for every 60 PCs” just barely adequate. I’ve listened as tech coordinators share their stories – increasing number of computers to support, constantly increasing complexity, and increasing expectations for instant, interconnected systems. And most of the time, a decreasing budget.

So what can you do when faced with this situation? There are only a few solutions:

1. You can reduce the chance of something going wrong by locking down the systems. Teachers look at this solution as a restriction on them or mistrust of their competence. In reality, it’s a lose-lose solution that a desperate tech support department must implement to keep their heads above water. It creates friction and resentment between teachers and IT staff who should be working together to improve education.

2. You redefine your expectations for adequate tech support. Some teachers wait for weeks to get simple problems solved. It’s easy to see why a teacher who constantly has to go to “Plan B” when the hardware doesn’t work just gives up on their technology-infused “Plan A.”

3. People work harder as you try to squeeze blood out of a stone. Educators are notorious for shoestring solutions and working beyond all reason because it’s for the kids. However, 80 hour workweeks without proper resources leads to early burnout. Even worse, other teachers see the hard work required to be a tech-using teacher and decide it’s not worth it. Being a martyr is a lousy role-model.

4. Find new resources. While you might be able to find a few volunteer techie parents who will pop in every once in a while, there is actually a HUGE, largely untapped resource already at the school site. This digital generation is quite capable of learning to provide support to teachers integrating technology. Contrary to what many believe, it’s not impossible, not scary, and not a security threat. Students are 92% of the population in most school buildings. It is simply irrational to continue to ignore this resource in the face of this dire situation.

Plus, it’s a win-win situation. Schools get the help they need, and students learn valuable lessons as they troubleshoot and help teachers with the typical simple issues that block classroom use. We help schools see past security fears and use tried and true models that actually reduce student hacking and increase student ownership.

It’s not a crazy idea! It can be done, and is being done all over the world.

You can read more about the GenYES  tools and curriculum on our website, or check out our free resources (including a handout for Student Support of Laptop Schools) and videos.

The hard truth is, any hope for increasing technology use in schools rests on solving this problem. Teachers using technology in innovative ways result in MORE tech support, and tech support that understands education, not just the wires. And let’s face it, no matter what you do, or how much money you pour into tech support, it’s never enough. There is always something more you can do, more you can try, make the systems better, and support learning better.

There is no other resource in schools that is as ready to help and as underutilized as students. As educators struggle to find solutions, it might help to look up at the faces that sit directly in front of you every day, young people ready, willing and able to help solve this problem.

All we have to do is teach them, guide them, and let them.

Sylvia

Related posts:

• Ten commandments of tech support
• They’re Taking Requests: Student Techs Command the Help Desk — THE Journal

NSBA’s T+L conference is one of my favorite conferences of the year. It’s unique in the fact that whole school teams come to the conference, not just technology folks. This provides a terrific range of perspectives and experience that can’t be matched in conferences that focus on one job title or subject area.

Generation YES is a co-sponsor of the T+L conference, and we’ll be down in the co-sponsor booth area, number 907.

If you are there, I hope you’ll attend a session designed to get everyone thinking about how to “grow your own” resources for technology learning and support in any district. I’m also co-presenting this session Thursday morning with Jeff Billings of the nearby Paradise Valley School District.

Creative Capacity Building for 21st Century Schools
Thursday, 10/21/2010 8:00AM – 9:00AM , Room 222BC
Schools are faced with diminishing technology and training budgets, yet ever increasing needs for technology integration, training and support. Finding cost effective ways to provide these essential ingredients for effective technology is no longer a goal, but a requirement.

Hopefully there will be a T+L Tweetup too – if you’d like to connect, please follow me at smartinez and let’s get together.

See you in Phoenix!

Sylvia

The student tech leaders at Grace Wilday are a big part of this project. They are using the GenYES online tools and curriculum to learn the new technology and assist teachers and other students. These GenYES student tech leaders mean more support and more student ownership as everyone at Grace Wilday takes a big step forward into the 21st century.

Check out this video! (Click here if YouTube is blocked or you do not see the embedded video below)

The student who says the teachers will “TAP” the student tech team for help is talking about the GenYES online tool called the Technology Assistance Project (TAP) system. This is a Web 2.0 tool that schools use to track GenYES projects from start to finish. It also tracks help requests from teachers and offers blogs and wikis to make sure that all projects are documented and that all teachers are satisfied with the results. (More about the TAP tools.)

We are proud to be part of Grace Wilday’s learning adventure!

Sylvia