Tip:
This may be the best time to develop your own tech corps of scholars, much like the AV kids of yesteryear, rather than make the teachers the ones most responsible. Develop the tech corps as we use monitors in our classroom to deal with Delaney cards, distribute books, pass out paper, and the like. I started a club after school in the late 80's out of necessity. I needed to find the students and teachers who were interested in technology. They came out of the woodwork. I had a little knowledge with simple technology and started to show them how to fix things, optimize the computers, mess with disks, etc. I worked with all grade levels. We had officers and it snowballed. The computer rooms were filled with students and teachers playing after school. This transcended into day work. When computers did weird things, the tech scholars in the class fixed it or the teacher called me, and I sent someone or went myself with some techscholars in hand. It was necessary since it took more than a week to get a response from the central office and paperwork and phone calls. It was easier to train my own squad. Today it seems to be common practice in many New York City schools. Now who takes care of technical problems: the school, the teachers, and the tech scholars. We ended up meeting everyday after school with different teachers each day. We taught each other. When outside experts were asked to come in, I'd gather as many of the tech scholars to watch. Now we have Cisco Academies and that kicks it up a notch. We also have Linux and NT tech scholars.
Submitted by:Ted Nellen
Cybrarian Alternative High Schools
New York
Ted Nellen website
Cyberenglish
Creating the Cyber School
