But here’s the antidote…

TechYES/GenYES program receives new supplies (News from Stillwater CSD)

“December 8, 2011 – Mrs. McBride’s TechYES/GenYES students will be able to help improve technology throughout the district even more, thanks to a new donation of supplies.

The class received a new video camera, web cam, business card stock, t-shirt iron-on paper and laminator from Hamilton-Fulton-Montgomery County BOCES. A special thank you to Todd DeSoto, who presented the class with the new supplies.

The students are currently planning projects to utilize the new tools.”

Why not put the energy, passion, and enthusiasm of your students to use in your school. TechYES and GenYES are tried and true models of real student engagement and leadership, ready for all schools to adapt and hit the ground running. Online tools, professional development, and curriculum give you everything you need for one school, a district, or a whole state!

Generation YES supports all our schools with commitment, pride, and passion – we would love to work with you!

Sylvia

PS Want something different? Check out our projects website for some ideas for large scale grants and unique technology implementations that focus on student leadership.

Easy as they seemed to be to use, these technologies were largely unfamiliar to a large number of teachers and staff, who were expected not only to use the devices and software themselves but were also supposed to teach students to use them and to work them into the learning curriculum.

So Jamie Price, the district’s technology coordinator, had to turn to the experts for help.

The kids.

Read more… in Student Teachers: School District Turns to Kids for Help with Tech Upgrades

This is not a crazy solution – there are thousands of schools across the country who turn to their students as allies in the effort to improve education with technology. And these schools get more than just extra help, they get students who develop life-long skills as they devote themselves to helping others.

Our GenYES programs help schools figure this out without reinventing the wheel. Check it out!

Sylvia

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

So if you are in the area and want to see student technology leadership and literacy in action, be sure to register and come by! I’ll be setting it up in the morning talking about how we must expand our narrow view of technology professional development to include more than one shot, one-size-fits-all, “sit and get” sessions.

One of these schools was profiled in the blog post yesterday - Jamesville-DeWitt GenYES students teach teachers technology but you should not miss the opportunity to hear about the fantastic things these students are doing from these young leaders themselves.

GenYES and TechYES in Action
Teachers and students from Jamesville DeWitt High School and Baldwinsville’s Ray Middle School will be on-hand to discuss their experiences with the GenYES and TechYES programs in their respective schools. GenYES is the only student-centered research-based solution for school-wide technology integration. Students work with teachers to design technology-infused lessons and provide tech support. In TechYES, students show technology literacy by creating projects that meet state and local technology proficiency requirements. As part of TechYES, a structured peer-mentoring program assists the teacher or advisor, and provides student leadership opportunities that serve to further strengthen the program and enrich the learning community.

Hope to see you there!

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

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

Believe it or not, I wouldn’t consider myself a very techie person. I can’t set up a server, can barely understand the wireless network in our house, and have enough blackened sockets to know I should never be trusted with any electrical handy work. However, friends, family, and colleagues often call me for computer or cell phone technical support. No longer can I attend a family function without spending some time working on a computer problem. Recently, I purchased an iPad just because so many people were asking for help and yet I had never played with one for longer than five minutes at the Apple Store. Rather than calling myself a “techie,” I tend to think of myself as a “fearless explorer.”

How did this happen? Well, I blame the Federal Government. After all, they’re always the “bad guys,” right? In my case, the techiness started with an Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) Grant. In 2005 I decided to search for a job in a school district closer to home. While perusing EdJoin, I stumbled across a science position at a middle school right in my neighborhood. At the last minute I decided to apply and was offered the job. A few weeks later, after getting my classroom set up and meeting students and colleagues, my principal sent me over to the District Office to pick up my “computer stuff.” I wondered what might this “stuff” be? A laptop? Maybe one of those new LCD projectors? My previous school site had purchased one and since twenty-seven teachers shared it I was able to use it once to show my students a virtual frog dissection website. It was amazing!

When I arrived at the district office I met John, the Director of Technology Services, someone who would quickly become my mentor – whether he wanted to or not. John explained that the school district had been awarded an EETT grant, placing technology in every 7th and 8th grade science and social studies classroom. The goal of the grant was to use this technology to increase academic performance, while at the same time improving both student and teacher technology proficiency. Like a magician with a really deep hat, John started pulling out all of the hardware I would receive as participating teacher. I walked out of his office with a new laptop, a document camera, a LCD projector, and a wireless tablet. He also informed me that the following week fifteen student laptops, a printer, and a wireless access point would appear in my classroom. John tried his best to explain how each of these devices worked, but all I really heard was “flux capacitors” and “1.21 gigawatts.” It was as if Doc Brown from Back to the Future was talking to me himself.

Keep in mind, at this point in my life, I wasn’t totally clueless about technology. I had been using email for almost a decade, was quite adept at shopping on Amazon, and had successfully made it through college with Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as my close, personal friends. However, I decided that the only way I would be successful at using this gear with a bunch of pre-pubescent adolescents was if I took it home and fearlessly explored. I also had an inkling that when those fifteen student laptops appeared that everything in my classroom might change and I would need to be a little more technology proficient.

I remember that first night quite vividly. I laid out all of my digital gifts on our large kitchen table. Once the laptop, projector, document camera, and wireless tablet were all neatly organized in a perfectly symmetrical manner, accompanied by their collection of cables and adaptors, I just stood there and stared. What do I do now? I started with the projector. Surely, hooking it up to the laptop couldn’t be that hard. I looked at the back of the projector and decided to begin with the power cable. That was easy. Digging into the recesses of my mind from the one other time I had used a LCD projector at my former school, I scanned the back of the projector, as well as the back of the laptop. “Hmm, there is a blue outlet on the back of the projector that matches the blue outlet on the back of the laptop,” I thought to myself, “I wonder if there is a cable that will connect these two?” Sure enough I found one that had two blue ends matching the outlets and it seemed to work. I played until midnight that evening piecing things together like a giant puzzle. Around 12:15am, when I finally had all of my technology connected, it dawned on me that I would have to reconstruct this mess in my classroom tomorrow! Doing the only smart thing I could think of, I used masking tape and a sharpie to label all of the ports and their corresponding cords, and gently packed them away.

The next morning I arrived at school just before 6:30 and amazingly it only took me 45 minutes to hook everything back up. Naturally, a couple of the pieces of tape had fallen off, I somehow ended up with an extra cable, and the wireless tablet only wanted to occasionally connect to its Bluetooth adapter. Regardless, I was up and running right around the same time my students started pouring into the room. Since I had spent nearly all night figuring out how to plug everything in, my lesson was a little less than stellar. Honestly, I can’t even remember what I actually taught that day. However, what I do remember was the look on every single kid’s face as they entered the classroom. It was that look of pure imagination and curiosity. In every period there was a palpable vibe of excitement emanating from the students.

“Whoa! Look at that Mr. Wood! We can see your desktop. What are you going to show us today?” “Hey, since you have your computer set up, does this mean we are going to start using the student laptops soon?” “My friends said they started using them last week in science. They sound cool.”

The following week the student computers did arrive and we completed our first technology project – a PowerPoint presentation about cells. Naturally, since this was our first computer project, not everything went as planned. One computer crashed, two refused to connect to the wireless network (I later discovered each computer had a wireless on/off switch), and nearly every PowerPoint presentation demonstrated that one could insert too many animations. However, during this project I witnessed the future of my teaching. As I walked around the room, I observed students who were completely excited, engaged, and enthralled by technology- infused learning. I noticed tables of students working in pairs, debating the best way to display a nucleus or cell wall and engrossed in scientific conversations about the difference between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. I watched students reflect, collaborate, solve problems, and search for information without any prompting from me. At the same time my students saw their teacher as a learner – as someone who didn’t have all the answers, but a person who was willing to be a fearless explorer and discover the solution with them.

PowerPoint was only the beginning. Since that day my students and I have fearlessly explored the use of blogs, wikis, cell phones, and even a virtual electron microscope. Some things worked out flawlessly, while other resources were only used during first period and then quickly abandoned for an alternative by the time second period students appeared. Teaching in an EETT classroom was a transformational experience in my career. Through the integration of technology, my classroom moved from a teacher-centered system to a student-centered learning environment. Along the way, I learned that computer expertise is not the secret to integrating technology – it’s simply a willingness to play, discover, and explore. Also, it never hurts to have some masking tape and a sharpie close by.

——————————–

This essay was written by Joe Wood, Teacher on Special Assignment in the Department of Professional Learning & Innovation of the San Juan Unified School District in California. Joe wrote this at the National Writing Project Summer Invitational at UC Davis. He shared it with us here at Generation YES and gave us permission to publish it.

This essay is a perfect expression of the kind of jump in and swim around with the students attitude towards technology that works so well in schools. Today, Joe is the district coordinator for San Juan’s GenYES program running in 6 middle schools as a result of this same EETT grant. Now he’s sharing his ‘fearless explorer” attitude with lots of teachers and student tech leaders district-wide.

For more information on the San Juan EETT program, watch this video, it’s great!

Sylvia

Previous posts about the San Juan Schools GenYES programs:

• GenYES at San Juan Unified School District
• What do GenYES students do? (Student video from Winston Churchill MS)
• Technology Success Story (Technology reboots student interest: Test scores show a 33-point jump for Jonas Salk)