Page 16 - Technology Plan ICT Review

Defining Lead Teacher Expectations
A number of concerns were raised during the administrative meeting and on- line discussion with respect to adequate lead teacher time for dealing with support issues.
Minimum time requirement for the lead teacher should be .25. Recommended time for the lead teacher should be .5.
The lead teachers and staff at certain schools have out grown the cur- rent coordinator support services and as a result schools can provide a more frequent and up to date level of services for the staff through the lead teacher position.
Not all schools have budget resources to fund site specific support so- lutions.
All teachers require additional support, once expectations are in place, to ensure ICT outcomes are being implemented.
If district coordinated resources were fully utilized the expectations for the lead teacher at the school level could possibly remains the same if not reduced.
The support expectations for the lead teacher at the school level should be greatly reduced by having two full time ICT support teachers coor- dinating training services across the district. Each ICT support teacher would be responsible for supporting 60-65 teachers in three different schools. Most of the major training issues should be addressed on a daily basis with the ICT support teachers accessing each school two full days in a six day rotation schedule.
The benefit of this support model is that it lets the lead teacher focus on developing innovative ICT project models that incorporate a variety of soft- ware and hardware requirements. Staff will still need an effective teaching model to follow in order to create their own ICT project models. The main responsibility of the lead teacher at the school will be to lead by example and provide the leadership at the school level for future ICT implementation.
In the advent of a computer training facility, lead teachers would continue to receive ongoing professional development to assist them in the development of ICT project models at the various grade levels. This training would be facili- tated by the ICT support teachers based on the feedback and observations of ICT implementation at the school level.
Sample Expectations:
Assisting in the development and maintenance of student computer lab configuration models.
Assisting in the maintenance of student account and file management services.
Assisting in the initial mentorship and support for first year teachers when the ICT support teacher is not available.
Providing regular scheduled professional development opportunities for staff. Example: 10 minute staff meeting presentations.
Reporting troubleshooting issues through the online WebHelp data- base. If this is identified as a time consuming process, all teachers will have accounts created with the lead teacher being the primary techni- cian for their school. This will necessitate that teachers input requests into the database that are filtered and reassigned to the appropriate support services at each school. A second alternative would be to cre- ate a support discussion group for each school with the lead teacher serving as the host and moderator. This would be a common area to discuss and share troubleshooting issues for the school.
Assisting in school specific hardware and software inventory updates. Example: Digital cameras, Wiggle Works, Video camera
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It is absolutely necessary to create clear guidelines and expectations for the parties involved in order to provide a united approach to address the forever changing world of technology integration.
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