Tip #2: Build tech support into the day
To support our team, we created a tech support class to ensure one team member was available every class period of the day to troubleshoot and solve issues with student devices. By reducing our time spent on tech support, we can get more done while empowering student learning and building a culture of trust in our team.
Tip #3: Empower student curiosity
Digital natives don’t always think the way we do. Their different solutions and methods for working through issues can pay huge rewards if you meet them partway. Whether that means a team member developing a custom bit of code to automatically reset all admin passwords to stop a rogue user or chasing down strange errors, give your team members some room to run. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the quality of work that comes from a little bit of trust.
Tip #4: Take advantage of service hours
We’re lucky enough to be able to pay summer interns in our program; not all school systems have the same funding available. Many districts require fulfillment of service hours as a component of education. See if you can get tech support work classified as such to help offset student team costs and give them an alternate means to meet requirements.
Tip #5: Embrace the redo
This is the most important lesson we learned in implementing our team: Not all progress is forward progress. Your students will make mistakes, and so will you; learn from them and keep charging ahead! We had to image our new devices three times in our first summer deployment, and we learned tremendously and refined our process each time. You will too.
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