Inquiry #3 ICT Professional Needs

As a Teacher-Librarian and a Vice-Principal, I highly value a service approach to my everyday work. It is my firm belief that both of these roles within my school community are founded on the need to provide support to students, colleagues/staff, and parents. In terms of meeting the ICT needs of those stakeholders, there are a few things that I try to do regularly and a few things that I am trying to implement. Each stakeholder group requires me to be supportive of their technology needs in different ways but generally speaking, they all need communication about technology and enthusiastic modeling of practical uses for technology.  

Communication: Regular communication with practical ideas about how to use aspects of technology is critical - we need to reach them! We need to be cognizant of what their needs are, make predictions about what they might need, and follow through with supporting their explorations. I have often found that many people won't use technology only because they don't know what they don't know! They have no idea what they're missing (like me and Twitter). A simple, yet perfect, example of this just happened to me last week. A staff member was talking about how much work it takes her to make new bingo cards for each different topic she wanted to cover in her french lessons. I asked her what she was using to make them...she was writing them by hand and used a good ol' ruler and a marker to make the template for the cards. In less than two minutes I was able to show her a sample of what was available online for making bingo cards. It opened up a whole new world of thinking for her and of course, I was right there to support her endeavors! The point is, she just didn't know and she doesn't have the "technological confidence" to go looking without some kind of modeling and support. I communicate ideas mostly via email as that reaches all of my colleagues regardless of their technological level. Email is established as our district's method of communication and so even the least tech-interested must use it. When I finally get my library site going, I look forward to being a lot more creative and engaging than just using email. Some of the useful things I try to communicate via email are websites, opportunities for using technology, and I have just come up with the idea that I can colour scan covers of new books that I get in the library and email those to classroom teachers too as a way of promoting new materials that might be immediately relevant to them. Communication opens doors for people and I am so happy to be able to help them take a step through!
Modeling: I have always been a "let's try it today!" kind of person and that is the approach that I take to modeling technology. Whenever I come across something that I like in terms of using technology, I do not hesitate to share it with my colleagues. I offer my support to facilitate implementation and definitely invite anyone interested to come and see it in action. For example, I have attended several in-services on using SMARTBoards in the classroom and in turn, I have shared my learning and experiences with others during professional development days. I invite others to come into my classroom at any time so they can see it in action with real students. In modeling the "everyday" uses of technology, I think we will get more "believers". If you only show the golden lesson, then it seems contrived and intimidating. Showing the everyday and simply integration of technology makes it seem "do-able" for all end users.

Service and support are critical pieces to any change process and ultimately these are the pieces that maintain the momentum needed to make the change long lasting and meaningful.

...and did you know there's an actual condition called technophilia? This is described on Wikipedia as "a strong enthusiasm for technology". And of course, that means there's also technophobia...

1. http://print-bingo.com/
2.http://justcoachit.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Three-Leadership-Heads.jpg
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzi2RIt8_nk
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technophilia