What does a Technology Director/Coordinator Do?

There I was in March 2012, trying to defend my job.   After fifteen years of coordinating technology for a school district, there was a "budget crisis"  The school board asked me to come in to explain just what I did.  The superintendent has already proposed cutting 65% of my job.

"After all," one of the school board members told me, "everything runs smoothly, so what are you needed for?"

I brought only one piece of paper with me to the meeting.  It was this diagram:

I explained all the different "hats" I wore keeping technology running for such a small district.  Things ran smoothly because I was there in the background doing what needed to be done - running updates, doing backups, preparing budgets.  I'm not the kind of computer person who would sits back and do nothing, waiting for a crisis to strike.  Once there was a problem, I could charge in and fix it and be a hero.   No I quietly kept the crisis from happening in the first place.

But still I tried to explain all the areas that I supported:
 
Teaching and Learning

•  Educational Software
• Curriculum Integration
• Instructional Technology Research
• Staff Development
• Web-Based Resources and Instruction

Desktop Support

• Equipment Purchasing and Allocation
• Ergonomics and furniture
• Software Licensing
• Help-Desk Support
• Equipment Repairs
• Virus Protection
• Maintenance and Upgrades

Budget and Planning

• Technology Planning
• Budgeting
• Evaluatoin
• Grants
• E-rat Applications

Administrative Computing

• Processing Grades and Student Records
• Human Resources
• Business Operations
• Document Imaging and Management

 Network Operations

• Network Infastructure
• User Management
• E-Mail System Management
• Backup Procedures
• Remote Management
• Intranet Management

Ultimately, my job was cut and I took a full-time job at Longwood School District.

It has now been three years since I left that district.  That small district has now hired five people to do what I did... so much for cost savings.  Not all the positions are full-time, but I really wonder what that school board was thinking.

I have continued to work to support Education in Technology.  First as a Network Technician for Longwood School District.  I worked in two elementary school and an Junior High School, but I focused solely on hardware and network issues.  I missed the"instructional" side of things.  I missed teaching Google Docs to forth, fifth and sixth graders.  I missed instructing the teachers on how to use Google Sheets to teach math.

BOCES offered me a job supporting the teachers so I moved to BOCES last year.  It is nice to work with so many teachers, but I do miss being in a classroom.  All in all I'm pretty lucky to be able to work in a job that I love.  And despite setbacks, I get to keep doing it.

More later....


Kim Cronin

and yes... my name changed from Bunchuck...

Tablets in Education

It is amazing how quickly iPads and tablets  have been accepted in education.  Working for BOCES we have many tablets that our students use.  They are intuitive, simply touch on what you want on the screen.


Apple's Website has many resources for use in the classroom.









But there are detractors who are switching back to laptops.  The Atlantic did an article on dumping iPads for laptops.

It is interesting to read the tablet vs laptop debate, but I think that the applications and programs should work, regardless of whether a tablet or laptop is used.

As Educational Technology instructors, we have to focus on what we are teaching with the technology, not how it is being delivered.  We need to make our program work for all users - laptop, desktop, tablet... or whatever new item is coming up.. like watches and eye glasses.  It is an evolving world in technology, educators need to keep the focus on the content, not the screen it will be displayed on.

Am I that old?? Do you remember lower case L = one?

I'm teaching an Excel class this semester to adult continuing education students.  Most of my students are women who are in the workforce and want to  learn how to use Excel in their job.

This week I stressed the importance of values and how Excel sees cell entries as either text or a value.

I explained how I had a student who typed lower case Ls as the number one and was frustrated when excel wouldn't do any of the calculations.  The students could not understand why anyone would do something so stupid.

So I explained that I've been teaching spreadsheets (first VisiCalc, then Lotus 1-2-3, and now Excel) since 1984 and that in the early days people were moving from typewriters to computers.  On a typewriter there was no one key and you used an L for a one.



They didn't believe me.  So I found a couple of pictures of old typewriters.  It is amazing how things have changed.

I guess I'm older than I think!  Do you remember using a L for a one?

Training Videos

Supporting teachers using technology is never easy.  They want to be trained as quickly as possible and usually don't have time to attend training classes.  A few years ago I created videos to help with training at my district.  I was doing some course work while getting a Master's degree.  I used an open-source (meaning FREE) program called CamStudio (http://camstudio.org/)  to capture my screens.

I captured an Excel lesson using the program and a cheap microphone.  It took about 20 minutes and I didn't edit the video at all, I simply created it and uploaded it to Youtube.

It has been five years since I uploaded that video... hard to believe.  But that video has over 35,000 hits.  How's that for training!

Here is the link.

You've got mail - Fifteen years later

Yesterday I indulged a guilty pleasure and curled up with an old movie. I watched the 1998 classic “You’ve got Mail”. What struck me was how much we have changed in the 15 years since the movie was made. Here are just some of the obvious ones:

CHANGE #1 - the way we meet people online.

In the movie, Kathleen Kelly is emailing Joe Fox who she met in an “over 30s” chat room on AOL. They use dial up to connect and check emails. Today most couples come together through the hundreds (maybe thousands) of online dating sites. We all know people now who have met online. I don’t think anyone uses chat rooms or dial up anymore. Email is giving way to text messaging, but is still popular.

CHANGE #2 - Mega Book stores …They were on the rise (now they are in decline)

Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) runs the mega-bookstore “Fox Books” that puts Kathleen Kelly’s (Meg Ryan’s) little bookstore out of business. Now fifteen years later, it is the big bookstores that are being put out of business by the Internet Bookstores. Would the fictional “Fox Books” follow the same fate as “Borders Books” did? Consumer have majorly changed the way they purchase and consume books.

I had a friend recently tell me that she doesn’t like to buy books in bookstores because she can’t read the reviews posted by others. She’ll shop entirely online or call up the book reviews while shopping in a bookstore.

CHANGE #3 - Technology keeps marching on

The character in the movie Frank Navasky is a journalist. He hates technology and proudly uses his typewriter. Fifteen years later, typewriters have all found their way into the dumpsters and the field of journalism is in crisis. His anti-technology rants didn’t keep the Internet from changing the way he makes his living. Here is an exchange between Frank and Kathleen:

Frank: Listen to this (reading the paper) “The entire work force of the State of Virginia had to have solitaire removed from their computers because they hadn’t done any work in six weeks.

Kathleen: That is so sad.

Frank: You know what this is, what we’re seeing here? It’s the end of Western civilization as we know it.

Kathleen: Oh, hey, aren’t you late?

Frank: Technology. Name me one thing --one!-- that we’ve gain from technology.

Kathleen: Saran wrap.

Frank: That’s one (points at her computers). You think that that machine is your friend, but it’s not.

Of course Facebook has changed how we think of the computer and friends. This movie pre-dates social networking and I think the character Frank had no idea what was coming. Solitaire was the tip of the iceberg for using the computer to waste time on the computer. Angry birds and other online games has changed how many of us entertain ourselves.

CHANGE #4 - Starbucks is the dominant coffee shop

The character Joe Fox says “The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino.”

The Starbucks in my town have closed. There are many more choices now. And of course, a coffee is not $2.95 but more like $5.50.

CHANGE #5 - People are not afraid to “Put themselves out there” online.

Joe and Kathleen are anonymous in their chatting. “Stranger Danger” rang much louder in the earlier days of the Internet. People don’t think about setting up a Facebook profile and loading up pictures and personal information. Here is the exchange between Joe and Kathleen about being anonymous:

Joe: Don’t you love New York in the fall? It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquets of newly-sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address. On the other hand, this not knowing has its charms.

Technology has changed the world in the last fifteen years... I wonder what's coming next?

Proposed Technology Requirements for Computer-Delivered Assessments

As part of the Regents Reform, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) is planning computer-delivered assessments statewide beginning in the 2014-15 school year.

So they have released the minimum specifications for equipment purchase:

• Processor Speed 1.3 Ghs
• RAM 1 GB
• Hard Drive 1 GB with at lease 512 MB available
• Screen Resolution 1024 x 768

I'm wondering with the push to tablets and hand held devices if this initiative has got us all moving in the wrong direction? Shouldn't they be building apps to deliver the testing?

Just a thought. You can read the NYSED's recommendations here:

http://www.p12.nysed.gov/apda/ac-general/2011/tech-req-assessments.pdf

New Computer Devices and Airline Security

The TV commerical for the newest phone/laptop dock are cute. The Motorola Atrix phone docks into a laptop, so your phone and computer are combined.

In the commercial, airline security are giving the passinger grief about the new device that they haven't seen yet. "Is it a computer or a phone?" they ask.

It reminds me of the trouble I had with airport security back in 1984 when I carried a Compaq computer to Alaska. The Seattle airport didn't know what to make of it and wanted me to "open the case". It was a sealed unit with just the keyboard coming off at the bottom. It weighed almost 30 pounds and was hard to carry too!



You can read about the computer here: http://oldcomputers.net/compaqi.html. I did get it on the plane. I'm sure the new laptop weight much less than 30 pounds!