Step One: Job Shadowing a School Technical Coordinator

Ever wonder what a day would be really like as the person who's responsible for all the computers in a school? Here's how you can find out. Arrange to meet with a technical coordinator in your school or at a nearby school. If possible, accompany him or her throughout a portion of the day to find out what is involved actually involved in the following:

• the maintenance tasks the Technical Coordinator faces, including the ramifications of apparently simple requests, such as "Just fix this computer."
• the Technical Coordinator's typical workload
• the number of school sites, the amount and kind of technical equipment and how this equipment is used
• the backlog of tasks which accumulate and how priorities are established
• the number of assistants, if any, who work with the Technical Coordinator
• how the maintenance workload is distributed throughout the district
• how much of the Technical Coordinator's day is spent in system maintenance activities
• the Technical Coordinator's recommendations, if any, for providing better services
• the problems and solutions the Technical Coordinator experiences with retrofitting, data transfer and electrical connections
• how the Technical Coordinator evaluates the success of his system maintenance program.

 

Step Two: Job Shadowing a District Technical Director

If you've completed Step One, you know that keeping a school up and running is no simple task. But what about at the district level? Do they face the same problems or different ones? Do they have a smaller staff or larger? Can they get things done faster or slower?

Arrange to meet with the Technology director in your school district. Interview the director (or accompany him or her to sites where they perform system maintenance in their district) to discover what maintenance tasks, if any, the director must perform, how the maintenance tasks are divided up within the district, how priorities are determined, the typical system maintenance workload and backlog (if any), and how the director coordinates system maintenance (as well as other related activities, such as upgrading, retrofitting, data storage and transfer, networks, servers, and purchasing of new equipment) for the district.

Step Three: Post Results

Post your job shadowing responses from both the School Technical Coordinator and the District Technical Director to the course Newsgroup.

Page author: Janet M. Hamann
URL: http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/596r/module15/Apply.html
Last updated: February 20, 1998