It's time for AV Guy to go

If you have followed this blog or talked to me in the past year and a half, you know that school has been a real struggle. It all started with the hiring of the new Chief Informational Officer in the district. There was no doubt that this person did not have the qualifications for this job. But then again, maybe he does...for the jog the administration and the Board wanted him to do. Essentially, he is not an educator. To my knowledge, he has very little formal education. I believe he was in the military and he has been through numerous Microsoft training courses...at the district's expense. Regardless, shortly after him coming on board, the three techs, Jamie, Brian and Dave, I had been working with for a good number of years, guys that taught me practically everything I know about computers and the core of a team that kept this district progressing technologically were fired on September 15, 2005. Since that time, the district has had a revolving door of tech support. With each new tech, I tried to begin to build the kind of working relationship I had with "The Boys". It seemed that every time I got close or started to feel some kind of working relationship, the tech was fired or moved. This year has been a little different. We got a new tech team this fall. At first I thought this situation was going to work kind of like the old days...fool I was. Anyway, it's been up and down for the whole year and finally when they "fired" my tech at TR, a kid I really liked and more importantly, someone who was really fitting in at Thornridge with the staff, I lost all hope that there was ever going to be anything like the good old days again.
Mary gets credit for my current transformation. Actually, the transformation has not actually happened yet. I am just setting the stage for it and planning for it right now. It will go into full implementation when the next school year starts. What will this transition include?
Well, the first thing is that I am backing off any technical support for computers. I have been obviously kicked to the curb on something I really enjoyed and began to develop some expertise in. However, the powers that be are going to protect their territory and I am going to let them have it. Maybe all along, I was interloping into areas I didn't belong. However, I was never treated that way and I really believed that I needed to learn certain things in order to perform my job as Instructional Media Specialist. How could I be a specialist if I didn't know how the instructional media worked?
Back to Mary...perhaps I was invading a sacred technical territory. It was and will be hard to back off, but I can and I will. Though it interests me, I will not fix any computers at school, unless it's mine. I will leave that to them. OK, I get it. I'm done with fixing, setting up, trouble shooting, parts swapping, etc. My professional training makes me an expert in using technology to teach and that is what I am going to do. How I am going to do it is just one of those details I have yet to work out.
As you know, I am currently into Blogs, Wikis and web pages. I really think that those WebII applications is were current instructional media is going. I just need to develop strategies for getting people there. Salesmanship will be the key. Once I get a better feel for what my role will be for the fall...you see negotiations could see a comeback of Conan the Librarian...I intend to begin contracting curriculum development dated and implementation dates with select teachers. I already have a dozen or so in mind. In fact, all I really have to do is contact these teachers and ask them how they would like to apply this technology in their classrooms and make the date. Lesson planning and implementation are my forte'. So this should be fun. The key will be to make it easy on the teacher rather than a burden. I don't want to put any more pressure on our teachers than they already have. So that's pretty much it. AV Guy is going away and will be replaced by the Instructional Media Specialist. We'll see how it goes.

That's it for now.
Peace to you and to those you love.
Rob