Starting off on the right (tech) foot

I enjoyed reading Jeff Utecht's Thinking Stick blog post "Getting Started in Ed Tech." In it he outlines some tasks and strategies he will use at his school in Bangkok in a new ed-tech role. His last question, though, is a good one for all of us to ask, fresh or seasoned:

What’s the most important thing to do to get the new school year started off right?

In the column Starting Off on the Right Foot (June 2009), I suggested some goals for first year librarians that with minor tweaks might be applicable for tech integration specialists as well:

• Establish a library advisory committee comprised of teachers, parents, and students. The library programs that are the most effective, the most appreciated and the most secure are those that everyone in the learning community has a stake in. An official committee is the best way of creating that ownership and shared responsibility for success. Oh, get on your building’s improvement committee/leadership team ASAP as well. Shared governance goes both ways.
• Establish yourself and program as ally to your principal. If you know and can help solve your principal’s principle problems, you will establish yourself as an important member of her/his team. All the principals I know are being asked to make some serious changes in educational practices. If you can help midwife new methods of instruction and programs, you will be gold. If you are seen as irrelevant, you will be gone.
• Work with your committee and your principal to establish collaboratively created goals and a realistic budget. You may wish to conduct a library survey and do a collection evaluation to give direction to these goals. These do not need to be long and arduous, but the information should help you determine the past program’s strengths and weaknesses. Conducting a staff survey also shows you are genuinely interested in helping teachers meet their needs. A good collection evaluation will help form the basis of writing a budget that is specific, goal-oriented, and realistic.
• Quickly establish a formal communication plan. Think of the four main groups with whom it is vital to communicate: your students, your staff, your principal and your parents. Identify current communication tools (newsletters, web pages, e-mail lists, display areas) and establish a library presence in all of them. Develop your own means of communicating with those you serve or whose support you need. Parents, especially, need to know how the services, resources and skills your program offers benefit their children. And all this needs to be done on a regular, repeated basis.
• Start thinking about how you will demonstrate your program’s impact on student achievement. Start collecting data your first day on the job. Circulation stats, of course, but also track how many lessons you teach, how many collaborative units you do, and how many individual requests you fulfill. Figure out early what numbers are most meaningful to your principal and teachers. You will need numbers one day and you might as well have the right ones.

My sense is that we spend too little, if any, time working on long-range (Covey's Quadrant II) activities. If we only spend time on short term tasks, fighting fires, we will have the same problems in five years we have today.  This comment from David Brooks, "The Summoned Self" (NYT, August 2, 2010) reinforced that conclusion. And reminded me that it applies to all of life, not just work:

...people with a high need for achievement commonly misallocate their resources.

If they have a spare half-hour, they devote it to things that will yield tangible and near-term accomplishments. These almost invariably involve something at work — closing a sale, finishing a paper.

“In contrast ... investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. ... It’s not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, ‘I raised a good son or a good daughter.’ ” As a result, the things that are most important often get short shrift.

Any plans this year that will result in a stronger program in 5 years, in a better life in 20?

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