Monday, June 28, 2010

A question seeking your definition!

At a time when I feel we should be doing everything we can to leverage the ability of our networks for all they are worth for the education of our students, I found out today that we have such a long way to go in just understanding what we do. With that in mind and before I go on a rant, would you please answer this question?

How do you define the role of the Technology Coordinator at your school, district or state?

Please no word play or semantics. Don't have one but you have a director then how would you define a technology coordinator?

Your help is greatly appreciated. And I will keep your names out of it unless you tell me otherwise.

So much to learn and so little time.

4 comments:

Mr. Stevens said...

The role of a coordinator, at any level, is to provide opportunities to succeed.

This starts with supplying a vision and establishing expectations. It includes training his/her staff to use the resources available so that they can complete tasking with help. Additionally, it means getting the resources, within reason, that the faculty need. Even if the faculty member does not know what that resource is but simply have an idea in mind. Finally, the coordinator should stay out of the way and let the faculty members do their job.

I think of my current campus Athletic Coordinators. Our first day last fall he reiterated his vision for the school overall. Helped up in obtaining our resources and created a culture of sharing ideas/techniques/etc. He started the meeting by saying his job was to handle to issues behind the scene and to "stay out of our way."

Let the classroom expects hand the classroom and ensure they have every opportunity to excel.

Carolyn Foote said...

My own experience has been--

Technology director--a district level position--the vision person for the district

Technology coordinator on a campus--the implementation person, the idea person that's in contact with teachers, the let me help you do that person.

IT director--keeps the network humming.

I realize not every district has all of these clearly delineated roles.

my 2 cents worth ;)

Carolyn Foote said...

Also, I should say--this has been my experience.

What I want, is a district vision person, who also has an understanding of the instructional technology piece of the vision, whatever that might be. Might be one person, might be two.

Maybe the technology piece "shouldn't" be distinct, but sometimes those two roles do or don't converge--just depends on the people and the place.

Unknown said...

It depends if the word "instructional" is added to it. I see a tech coordinator as the "make it happen on an IT level" sort of person. Finding solutions to infrastructure needs, connectivity, etc.

An instructional technology coordinator drills down specifically to make instructional uses of technology more readily accessible to teachers. Facilitation, professional development, modeling lessons, etc.