The Student Tech Team "Genius Bar" is Launched!

One of my big goals for this year is to start a "Genius Bar" - type program for student - run tech support.

Well, after almost a month of meeting and planning, we are officially launched!  Welcome, the Beckman Tech Team!  We have 13 students from a variety of grade levels who are excited and ready to start helping their peers and teachers.

You can follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.  We will be posting information about the services we offer, but also tech tips, program reviews, and other good stuff.

Logo Designed by Timm, BTT Member

One of the big points that I have been emphasizing with our group of students is that not everything will be perfect, not everything will go well.  We are setting things up and planning but we know that we will probably "fail" in some aspects of how we initially decide to run things.

That's one of the reasons I'm blogging now... before we actually begin.  I want to have record of how we began and what we started with so we have a place to look back and reflect on where we've gone.

Our first couple of meetings focused on defining who we are and what we do.  Here is our initial Mission - Vision - Goals - Expectations and Commitments, which will probably be modified and adjusted as the year goes on and we define more who we are and what we want to become.

One of our opening activities was "When a student or teacher leaves our room after getting help from one of us, what do we want them to say about their experience with us?"  I asked them to give adjectives that would complete the sentence of, "Wow, that Beckman Tech Team member I worked was was very ___________________."  Here are the 11 words we came up with:

For our 3rd meeting, each of the students chose a group and had tasks to complete.

- Design & Logo Team - These students used their Graphic Design knowledge to design our logo (at top of post).  They are also working on our ID cards. - Publicity & Social Media Team - These students were in charge of creating our Facebook and Twitter accounts as well as designing the flier that we handed out this last week. - Logistics & Records - These students were in charge of editing/modifying the Google Forms for BTT team members to sign in when they are "on-duty" as well as for students/teachers to check in and evaluate our support.  They will be updating these forms with a custom heading soon. - Calendar & Scheduling - these student were in charge of making the schedule for the first 2 weeks of "on duty" time, making sure there was a variety of grade levels for each day. - First Week "Intro Speech" - these students wrote the "script" for what students needed to cover for our launch day when they went around to all of the classrooms.

For our 4th meeting, we followed up with each of the groups and planned our "launch" of walking around to the different classes during the tutorial period to spread the word.  There was a conflict so we only had half our team able to participate, but we were able to cover about 90% of the campus.  We were able to debrief for a couple of minutes before they had to head to class and they said it went great.  There were some classes who just stared at them, but others that seemed really pumped and excited!

So... this is the week!  We will have students "on-duty" during tutorial, which is a 30 minute period on Tuesday and Thursday.  As you can see from our "goals" above, our eventual goal is to expand this to before school, lunch, and after school.  However, we thought starting small at tutorial would be a great way to start.

Here are the "on duty expectations" for the team members.  Right now we just have four students on duty for each tutorial period, but depending on how that goes, we may increase or decrease it.  

Our first "techtorial" is next Tuesday for some of our students who don't know how to send emails and attach files yet.  So, one of the English teachers asked if we could help a small group of his students learn this skill in a low-risk, supportive environment.  We'll see how that goes as well!  Our room is actually a computer lab, with space/tables on each end without desktop computers, and then a big central space with computers.  That should be conducive to being able to have "techtorials" as well as the individual support stations.

Well, with that, I will blog about how everything goes for the first week next weekend-ish.  I'm hoping for the best!

DLC Goal - Student-led "Genius Bar" (POST IN PROGRESS)

One of the goals I have for this year is to get a student-led "Genius-Bar" type program started up.  The initial goal is to have "students helping students", especially with the brand new roll-out of the 1:1 laptops.  However, from some of my reading, I can see more potential for students helping teachers as well!

I'll be adding more notes and comments to this post as I sort through all the info, but I wanted to at least start with links to some places with great information!

Some great resources can be found at Generation YES:  Huge thanks to Kourtney Bostain for sending me a resource from them on Google Plus that just got me exploring more!

• "The Genius Bar Goes to School"
• Student support for 1:1 initiatives
• Including students in your technology plan
• Ideas for Student Tech Leaders in your school (GenYES program)
• WhitePaper on Assessing Technological Literacy
• SafeTech Digital Citizenship program

Some other resources I've found:

• West Morris Student Tech Team 

Some ideas from chatting with Nichole Carter, who has started a "Tech Gurus" student tech support group at her school.  (See her Pinterest board of resources here)

•  I attempted to get this off the ground last year by getting kids to come in on their own time or as an after school club. I couldn't get ANY takers. This year I am running it through my advisory class, and boy has it taken off like there is no tomorrow.
• What sort of Training do/should the Tech Gurus have?
• (Ideal) - have them come in over the summer to give more 1 on 1 training
• Digital Citizenship - all students have to go through trainings on this, but this can be led by Tech Gurus if they are trained first
• Care & Maintenance; Responsibility with Device
• Managing Apps, Setting up GDrive, etc
• What do the Tech Gurus do throughout the year?
• Tech Help - Genius Bar during advisory (partner rotation) in the library.  Both students and teachers can come in.
• Tutorials - They make tutorials on different apps/programs the students might use.  They also help with training modules for parents (even running parent training night this year instead of teachers running it).  Things such as how to access wifi at home, how to use the iPad, how to set up accounts, etc).  Tutorials can also be done through a "speed dating" night where tech guru is set up at a table with a small group and shows them something in 5 minutes or less.  Bell rings and groups rotate.
• Projects - Tech Gurus make presentations, movies, Aurasma, etc for different events such as Back To School night, Board Meeting, Rotary Club, etc.
• Other notes:
• She got them t-shirts and badges as an identifying feature so people recognize them and know they can ask for help
• Helpful to have people on the team that speak the different languages needed at the school site.

I will continue to add to this post as I gather more ideas and resources and put a plan together for it.  Please comment and add your resources and suggestions!

DLC Goal - Weekly Tech Trainings for Teachers (POST IN PROGRESS)

I want to develop some sort of "Tech Thursday" or something where there is a once a week, after school, quick hands-on tech workshop for teachers. I'm imagining it would start with me, but ideally it would eventually be organized by me but led by teachers (teaching them to fish...). I sent out a request for ideas on Google+, so I'm going to summarize the resources here for ease of access in the future. (Special thanks to Michelle Roberts, Mark Emmons, and Nichole Carter for their thoughts and resources)

• From Michelle:
• Reference "Best Practices in Adult Learning Theory" to help guide your planning of the workshops.
• Reference "Best Practices for Technology Training" 
• Give some "pre-homework", like a short video tutorial for teachers to watch before coming.  This could motivate them to come - if they just see a "small slice" of a certain piece of technology and want to learn more about it.
• Workshop NOT focused on Direct Instruction, but more on Guided Practice.  If workshop is 30 minutes, max 10 minutes instruction and rest of time to practice.
• Places for free resources and tutorials:
• Adobe Education Exchange (edex.adobe.com)
• Microsoft Education (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/educators/teacher-resources/)
• HP
• Apple Education
• YouTube is an invaluable resource for tech training/tutorial videos. You can find some that are 2 minutes to 10 minutes that will just introduce a particular piece and entice the participants to want to learn more.
• Motivation - raffle at each training. People, especially teachers, LOVE the chance to win free stuff!
• From Mark 
• Characterize the sessions within a problem-solution framework. 1:1 coaching sessions can focus on the pedagogical constraints and actual implementation
• Teacher-led sessions on application of technology/strategies set up ala edcamp, breaking down sessions topically for 1-1.5 hours each. Staff choose from 30+ sessions in a working environment.  (This is an idea I am hoping to use for some PD this fall; we will see with the amount of manpower/facilitators we have available)
• From Nichole:
• "I noticed that when you first roll out a 1:1 program the teachers are always overwhelmed, it takes a little less than a semester for some of the staff to come to the point where they are ready and able to learn more. Beyond that, it's voluntary so what do you consider a valuable piece of time. If I offer a after school workshop and I have at least 5-10 attend out of a staff of 40, I feel like it was a good use of my time. Regardless I post all the materials up for the staff to attend to later for their convenience if they had a meeting or were out sick and wanted to attend but couldn't."
• Survey the staff and hear what needs they have.

• I was able to GHO with Nichole tonight and got a lot of great ideas.  You can check out her Google Site with all her resources here.
• She does a "Tech Thursday" each week, which is a 30 minute after school hands-on workshop for teachers.  She advertises the workshop and tells teachers what topic will be covered on Monday of that week.  Sometime between Tuesday and Thursday, she sends out a "Cheat Sheet" guide of what will be covered for teachers to preview (or to have if they aren't able to attend).  All of these cheat sheets are kept archived on her Google Site for teachers to access in the future.  During the session, she has a collaborative notes document (which isn't being used fully as of yet, but there is hope) for participants to share ideas and take notes.  The ideas for her Tech Thursdays come from two places.  First, at the beginning of the year, she did a "Gripe Jar" activity that she got from Jennie Magiera, where teachers wrote down all their gripes about technology.  She said a lot of ideas for what teachers needed came from that.  Second, she makes sure to listen and hear what teachers are encountering as they are teaching that might be useful as a Tech Thursday.
• One hurdle she is working to overcome with teachers is the thought that "Sharing is NOT boasting".  Getting teachers to want to share what they are doing in their classes, and even "training" other teachers on how to do what they are doing, is a very scary thought for many.  
• Over the summer, she sets up times at teachers' houses to do a "Wine and Apps", where they come together to enjoy wine and appetizers, but also explore different apps or features of the iPad (that is what they are 1-to-1 with).  The first summer, this was about once a week, but it could be even just a few specific dates throughout the summer and work well.  It helps to foster community among the staff and develop a culture of voluntary PD and collaboration.

I will continue to add to this post as I gather more ideas and resources and put a plan together for it.  Please comment and add your resources and suggestions!