Author: R

Work

So you are the NEW Tech Director. Now what?

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A recent question on the techdirector.ning.com blog I subscribe to brought me to thinking about this very important question. What do you do the first time you are a brought into a school as its Technology Director? The first time you become a Technology Director; what do you do?

I was quite young when I was recruited to be the American School Foundation’s (Mexico City) Technology Director in 2001; I was 27 years old. I had worked a few years for the US State Dept. in partnership with the Ford Foundation on a ten-year education reform project born out of the Clinton administration. I was used to moving around, working with various teams across the US, Puerto Rico and South Africa, and with carrying out wide-ranging needs assessment surveys. I was actively working with administrations and faculty bodies across the N-12 and Higher Ed arena. I new a bit about education and a bit about technology.

Coming into the American School Foundation was a daunting task. I was naive, so I didn’t even know it at the time, but I was a bit in over my head. I feel I did a pretty good job of hiding it, though. Still, coming into a school with over 2,500 students, over 500 employees, and over 120 years – then – of history was quite a bit to deal with. Fortunately they did not have much in the way of technology, and they were thirsty to get themselves updated. Anything I had done at the time would have made a considerable difference in the lives of all involved. Of course, I did not know or realize that at the time – fortunately. I left Mexico in 2008 after having accomplished quite a bit. I consulted for various schools during my tenure there, and I was asked to opine on the state-of-technology of many of them. At the time the big question was about the need for a Technology Director. Often I recommended to Board members and administrative teams that having a Technology Director on staff would focus their strategy in this regard. This position would consolidate often disparate efforts already underway in various forms. It would centralize spending, and control. It brought many benefits, not just an added expense line item on the operation budget of the school. I was asked to participate in many hiring efforts to recruit/hire a Technology Director at various schools. It was great to speak to many candidates, and to find out that for the most part it would be the first time any of them would step into this role. Many were seasoned teachers, a few were techies looking to make a transition from corporate to education, and even fewer were administrators looking to make a horizontal change in their careers. After some of them were hired I  kept in touch, and some of the newly hired people asked me many questions about getting started. Right or wrong, I tried to lead them in the transition, offering what advice I could to help them out.

After much thought, I think this is what I would offer any incoming tech director who asked for my input now-a-days:

Head straight to your academic leaders, and afterwards sit down and have lunch with as many faculty members and students as you can. Find out what is going on in the classroom. What is the bare minimum of services needed? Alongside this needs-assessment effort comb through your entire personnel and gadget inventory. Make sure the inventory matches the services required. Whatever is peripheral or a complete add-on, get rid of it. Streamline your processes such that technical support is as efficient and child-friendly as possible (Keep It Simple Sam). Make sure folks know how to get help, where to get help, and that help gets to them as soon as they request it. Make yourself and your team invisible; if people are talking about you, chances are they are complaining about something that’s not working right.

Now that the basics are covered, start looking out, way out. Think about scalability when putting together your systems. These need to be flexible and robust, …and low-cost. Simplify. Open source is not always the answer, but there are many great options available, so don’t go for brand-name right away. Make friends, rely on colleagues and keep your eyes open.

It’s a learning process. There are no out-of-the-box solutions out there, even though salespeople will always claim so. Everything requires an investment of someone’s time and effort; be sure to account for that up-front.

Make some perfectly-timed mistakes, and ask stupid questions…Don’t forget; it’s all about the learning

My 3cents.

About Life, Play

Kids in school on Saturday!

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Here I am, sitting at my desk on a perfect Saturday morning waiting for a group of student to finish shooting a short film they are making to compete in a 48hr competition online. It is such a great way to spend a Saturday, seriously!

These kids are fantastic, enthusiastic and totally given to the project. Sure, they have no script, not much of an idea of how to operate the equipment, nor much of a crew – only 3 of them because the other 3 or 4 managed to get themselves grounded last night – but they are committed to finishing a 3minute short within 48hrs. This is what I love about video in the classroom. Even though many of the students in school who work on videos are not my actual Digital Moviemaking students, the word gets around that we have decent equipment for them to use and they gravitate towards my neck of the woods.

Once kids have an interest – and if they are in school on a weekend they sure have an interest – the rest is easy. Teaching them how to operate complicated equipment, how to deal with editing issues using post-production effects, or how to make better audio for their projects is simple when they are actually paying attention. When students get together to create video projects they employ all the good stuff employers are looking for these days; group work, leadership, good communication, [some] planning, troubleshooting, quick-problem-solving, creativity, imagination. As long as they are interested I watch as they develop these skills all on their own….I’m there to guide the process, but they get to do all the work. It’s a joy really!

Check out what Dimitris and company churned out in 48hrs: 

About Life, Work

RBaldizon Executive Summary

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I am one of few fortunate people who have not had to search for a job in more than a decade. But, just in case, I’ve always had an up-to-date CV at the ready. My e-CV is online at http://es.linkedin.com/in/rbaldizon. My print-ready CV I keep on Word. Still, whenever I read through either, soooo much is missing that I wish I could tell the person seeing it whenever the moment comes. So, for the past few days I’ve been tinkering with the notion of creating a life/bio summary page that will be the first page of my formal CV. After seeing it on screen, and thinking about each bit of info I’ve included I figured it would not be such a bad idea to post it here…so, here it goes.

Later on I will include short capsules on this site that further explain each piece of the following document. Stay tuned!

RBaldizon Executive Summary

 

About Life, Play

My students have an A+

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Even before stepping into my classroom, my students already have an A+ as a grade. It is up each of them to maintain that A+.

The way I see it, in the Middle/High School years, very little academic content motivates students more than their social life. At that age, a day can be the single worse or the single best day of their lives. What they learned in math or science on any given day is overshadowed by what their best friend said or did, or even what that special someone posted on their Facebook profile that morning. Each student’s relationship/status with their own circle of friends is above anything else.

I am not claiming students don’t learn. They do. It’s just that there are other more important things going on in their lives that trump any academic information we try to give them. This is where is gets really easy for me. Students come into a computer lab hungry for information, one they can use to get better at their social “job/life”. Teaching Communications Media in the Middle School, I get to walk them through how to create graphics, publish information via their own website, and how to create voice/video recordings they can then share to the world via YouTube or Vimeo or their own website. In the Digital Moviemaking class in the High School, students learn about making movies, creating stories and how to interpret composition in still images as well as images in motion. These two classes that I teach already engage the student even before I say one word. They are hungry to know more. This I take advantage of!

This is why my students have an A+ when they come into my classroom. They walk into my class with intense interest and motivation. They are willing to make really incredible mistakes during the first few weeks, and their work gets better as time moves on. They work on the creative as well as the technical, simultaneously and interchangeably. They stick to deadlines, they write, they edit, they manage themselves, they find ways to move the story forward even if one whole scene must be taken out during post production. They make decisions, they mess up, they ask questions, and go right back to make it better. I sit back and I enjoy!