Hacking Education: 10 Quick Fixes for Every School (2015)
HACK 5. STUDENT TECH GURUS
Fix Small-Scale Tech Problems with a Team of Students
Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.
—RABINDRANATH TAGORE, BENGALI WRITER, PHILOSOPHER, ARTIST, AND COMPOSER
THE PROBLEM: NOT ENOUGH TECH SUPPORT
TECHNOLOGY USE IN schools is growing at an exponential rate. Every year brings more opportunities for integrating technology into our teaching, and along with them come higher expectations for teachers. To meet those expectations, schools need two things: training, to learn how to operate the technology at the optimum level, and support, to address problems with hardware, software, and connectivity when issues arise.
Ideally, every school would employ a small staff of dedicated IT professionals who could provide training and solve problems when they occur. They could report to classrooms within minutes of a problem happening and quickly get things up and running again so that teaching and learning could continue.
Unfortunately, this is not the case in most schools. In some cases a school has only one person in charge of all the technology in the building; other districts require a single specialist to split their time between several schools. And many schools only have a default “tech person,” someone whose original role was something else (librarian, career ed teacher) but who now has the added responsibility of managing building technology.
Apart from troubleshooting, a team of student tech gurus can also work proactively, training students and staff in basic skills, so the whole school learns together.
This support shortage causes a whole host of problems, including lessons that have to be abandoned due to malfunctioning technology, hours of instructional time wasted while teachers try to solve problems on their own, or worse, the engaging hands-on activities that are never planned in the first place, because the risk of things not working is one many teachers aren’t willing to take.
If teachers just had more knowledgeable people on call to fix problems when they crop up, they could take advantage of everything technology has to offer.
THE HACK: EMPLOY STUDENT TECH GURUS
Just like the kid who used to help with the classroom movie projector way back in the day, students can be trained to provide tech support to their classmates and teachers. Because many students are already comfortable with technology—often more so than their teachers—they can learn new tech skills quickly. This added support in every building means more lower-level problems get solved at a greater speed.
Although many teachers probably already enlist student help with classroom technology, it’s likely that they use a “catch-as-catch-can” system: The teacher is having trouble getting a tool to cooperate, so a student jumps up, clicks a few things, and solves the problem. Imagine how much more effective this process could be if it was formalized, if a student tech support team was hand-picked, trained, and made available whenever it was needed. Apart from troubleshooting, a team of student tech gurus can also work proactively, training students and staff in basic skills, so the whole school learns together.
WHAT YOU CAN DO TOMORROW
Building a well-oiled student tech machine takes time, training, and planning, but you can start a loose pilot program right away:
· Find the gurus. Gather a small group of students whose tech skills you’re already aware of. Their skills can be varied—remember, you’re just trying out the concept. Make a list of the tools they know and can help with; for example, Prezi, Google Drive, Microsoft Word.
· Inform your colleagues. With the permission of your administrator, give this list to the whole staff or to a select group of teachers. Encourage them to reach out to these students for help with technology before contacting the school or district tech specialist.
· Try on-the-spot “training.” If you have a few minutes to spare during class, ask for student volunteers to do 3- to 5-minute “show and tells” on a favorite website or app. This informal exercise has a big payoff: It will give students practice in presenting with technology, get other students used to learning tech from their peers, and help you identify skilled technologists who may also possess the necessary communication skills to explain “techy” concepts to “non-techy” people.
A BLUEPRINT FOR FULL IMPLEMENTATION
Step 1: Identify the team.
If you already have some kind of club or other group that focuses on technology, finding students to serve on a support team should be easy. Students on the team don’t need to already know the exact tools or platforms required by the school, but they should demonstrate general aptitude with technology, the ability to pick up new skills, and good communication skills, since they will have to teach others. They also need to have strong academic and conduct records, because fulfilling their duties will mean missing some class time, and when giving assistance in other classrooms, they must be on their best behavior.
Step 2: Identify the school’s needs.
Survey teachers and students to learn what problems they have most often, what new skills they most want to learn, and what their general needs are with respect to technology. Then choose two or three areas for your team to focus on first. The list of needs is likely to be long and varied, so look for patterns and frequent requests when deciding what your priorities will be. When creating your list of priorities, frame items as measurable goals. Here are some examples:
· Users will be able to log into Google Drive, create new items, share them with others, and upload, download, and move files.
· Users will be able to create new groups in Edmodo, send out announcements to groups, upload documents, and link to those documents in group announcements.
· Users will be able to set up a quiz on Kahoot, operate it in class, and save their results.
Along with your list of goals, brainstorm a set of possible frequently asked questions or problems that are likely to come up again and again.
Step 3: Train the team.
Once you have set clear, high-priority goals, train every member of your team until they have met each goal and can perform those tasks in their sleep. Be sure everyone can answer the list of frequently asked questions correctly. Finally, establish clear standards for conduct during help calls and role-play possible situations to give student helpers practice in giving assistance respectfully.
Step 4: Create the support team infrastructure.
Before telling anyone about the support team’s services, set up the request infrastructure and a team workflow, so that when services are requested, those who need them get a timely response. Here’s what should be included in your plan:
· A system for teachers and students to submit their requests. In 1987, this would be done with slips of paper and a shoebox. In 2004, requests may have been sent to the faculty sponsor’s email address. Now, thankfully, we have other options: One way to do this is to set up a Google Form, then embed it somewhere on the school’s website so that anyone who needs help can access it from anywhere. When teachers and students submit their requests through a Google Form, the information would automatically be sent to a spreadsheet. The tech support team could then check that spreadsheet and respond to requests as they come up.
· Devise a system for assigning help requests to student helpers. You might set up a schedule for students to be on call, or maybe the faculty sponsor will oversee the assignments, choosing helpers on a case-by-case basis.
· Set up a place to document your work. Keeping a running record of requests and how they were fulfilled allows you to track patterns, identify possible topics for training, and demonstrate your program’s usefulness in the event that your district considers offering funds for expansion.
Step 5: Market your services.
People won’t use student tech helpers if they don’t know about them, so launch and maintain a marketing campaign to educate teachers and students about what services are provided and how they can access them. A good place to start is to create a tech team homepage somewhere on the school’s website. Be sure to include a specific list of the skills your team is trained in, along with any specialty areas for individual team members. Is one of your support specialists especially good with PowerPoint? Advertise this!
You could also launch a more traditional ad campaign, with posters or announcements in the school newsletter. Consider how you might enlist other students in the marketing—artists and writers who may not excel at technology but can provide your team with compelling posters, scripts for short commercials, or other types of advertising. Because it will take time for people to become accustomed to the new system, be prepared to periodically re-educate the staff and students.
Step 6: Plan and deliver training.
Providing tech support to a school isn’t just about reacting to problems as they come up; the support team can also train staff and students in the proper use of tools. These trainings can be conducted in large or small groups, delivered as part of faculty meetings, or given to individual classrooms. Trainings can also be recorded on video or offered as screencasts, which can be stored on the tech team’s homepage.
OVERCOMING PUSHBACK
Our students are too young. Although student help desks are growing in popularity at the high school level, the trend has not trickled down to many middle and elementary schools, possibly because the staff believes it can’t be done with younger students. At the elementary level, fifth and sixth graders are certainly mature enough to not only learn how to solve basic tech problems, but also to conduct trainings (you’ll see this later in the Hack in Action part of this chapter).
Just imagine what a student would be capable of doing at the high school level if she already had experience serving in a tech support role in fifth grade! Younger students may not be able to provide support with as many tools as a high school team could, but they can still lighten the load on a school or district’s need for support by solving the smaller problems. And if behavior is a concern, remember our recommendations to choose students with a history of good conduct and to clearly establish guidelines for behavior while serving in the tech support role.
What about security? Does doing this put our school’s computers at greater risk? Keep in mind that this is a select group of students we’re talking about, students who have already been vetted for their tech skills, academic records, and behavior, so they are less likely to make the kinds of mistakes that would threaten security–certainly no more likely than some of the less tech-savvy adults in the building! Still, they are kids, so if security is a concern, build safe practices into their training. You may feel that it’s risky for the tech team to have access to confidential teacher documents (like student grades) when working on classroom computers. Be sure to train the teachers to close confidential files or log out of high-security portals when students will be accessing their computers.
If they’re running around helping everyone, won’t these tech kids miss too much class? By only recruiting students with strong academic records, you significantly reduce the chances that occasional absences will hurt grades. Just like any other extracurricular activity or sport, the faculty sponsor can create participation guidelines stating that students who do not maintain a certain grade average will be excused from the team until their grades come back up.
Also, if one particular subject area is off-limits for absences, or a certain teacher does not wish to release students for tech support, just build those considerations into your scheduling, making sure those students are not pulled at those times. One more thing to keep in mind: Even if students are missing some class time, they are still growing in their communication and technology skills, which will both be useful in their future academic and professional lives.
We don’t have anyone in the building to train and supervise a student tech support team. This is a legitimate concern; one that will require a true hacker’s mentality to address. Here are some possible solutions to this issue:
· If one person isn’t willing or able to step up and facilitate this whole project, perhaps it could be managed by a small team of teachers, who could divvy up or rotate responsibilities.
· A tech-savvy teacher from some other school in your district could be given a few professional days to visit your school and train the team. Or on a larger scale, this person could train student teams for every school in the district, “meet” with them in the cloud (see Hack 1) to address day-to-day issues, then meet face-to-face with them periodically for training and troubleshooting.
· If it isn’t possible to implement a full-fledged program with online request forms and formal trainings, every grade level (or team, in a middle school setting) might start by compiling a list of students who have specific tech skills and allow these students to be called on when smaller problems arise.
· The next time you have a faculty training about a particular type of technology, invite a small team of students to participate as well, so they can provide additional support as the staff works to implement the tool.
THE HACK IN ACTION
Students and teachers at Richardsville Elementary School in Bowling Green, Kentucky, enjoy the support of the Bobcat Help Desk, staffed by four tech-savvy sixth graders. Barry Sanders, library media specialist and sponsor of the school’s Student Technology Leadership Program, established the Help Desk in 2014 as a way to satisfy the increasing requests for help from the faculty.
When the team formed, its first task was to survey the faculty in an effort to learn more about technology pain points. What they discovered was that most teachers wanted help learning to navigate Google Drive and work with their new Chromebooks. So the team developed a workshop to teach these skills, presenting it first as a whole-staff professional development session, then as a workshop given to individual classrooms in grades 3 through 6. To further extend their reach, the team has created video tutorials covering some of the same skills taught in their trainings.
Apart from the trainings, the team also responds to requests for assistance. The Bobcat Help Desk uses a workflow much like the one described in the blueprint above. Every school day, team members report to the library to check for any open “tickets”—help requests that have been submitted through the Google Form embedded on the school’s website—which are then automatically dropped into a Google spreadsheet. From there, Sanders or the students decide who will respond to which request.
So is the system working? Since the team was established, Sanders has seen the school’s overall need for technology-related assistance drop dramatically: He estimates that their help requests to the district technology coordinators have dropped about 75 percent this school year. “If a problem is sent to the district, it’s already been pre-screened by the students and me,” Sanders says, “so it’s definitely a more serious issue.” This is a great way to speed up the workflow for everyone: Giving the smaller issues to those with basic skills means the bigger problems get to the true specialists more quickly.
Having students serve in this capacity not only reduces a school’s overall need for support and keeps things running smoothly, it also builds the students’ self-efficacy and leadership skills. “Last year some of these kids would barely speak,” Sanders observes. “Now they’re giving presentations to big crowds of people.”
One unexpected result of putting the support team in place has been its impact on the student body. “I find that teachers still generally come to me for help, but the students now go to each other,” says Sanders. While some school tech support models focus on training teachers, Sanders chose to have his team put most of their energy on teaching their peers.
He likens their work to that of a “force multiplier,” a military term that refers to any tool or factor that, when added to a force, makes that force significantly more effective than it would be without it, “multiplying” its impact. With the help of these student experts, the school is growing together in their technology skills. “You know it’s working because no one’s asking for help,” Sanders says, “or they just bypass the system altogether and go straight to each other.”
The students in your building are walking around with skills—or the capacity for skills—that your school needs, especially when it comes to technology. Regardless of how formally or informally you structure their assistance, if you start considering students as potential resources, if you start thinking of the ways they can authentically contribute to your learning community as teachers in their own right, you have already shifted in the right direction.