Written by an IT support – Tech Team member about our progress during the first semester.

What are some things you have learned and/or tasks you have accomplished this semester? (Use videos, pictures, upload materials etc. as evidence of learning in your blog)

For the this semester, I have accomplished the same tasks I previously done years before: managing the WAVE during mornings and spare blocks; and collaborating with my team to post about events and news, and encourage students to see social media as a educational tool.

What aspects of your work are successful? Explain why.

Step 1 was introducing ‘rapidevent’ to the school community; step 2 was keeping it going, which took more creativity and organization than believed. But within the team, we have successfully created different ways of attracting attention to our page (as a school news source) beside just posting news, like: Teacher Throwback (guessing who is in the posted photo); just recently, senior shout-outs and a short Wednesday morning talk show made by the leadership group; they overall, help draw in students’ curiosity and show them more of our school community.

What aspects of your work is challenging? Explain why.

Having no material to post with is a tough issue to get rid of. Our social media team is usually reliant on students and staff to supply the information and sometimes photos we specifically needed.

What steps did you take to overcome these challenges / what adjustments did you need to make?

Therefore, we keep track of events and keeping our schedule open , therefore there would be no pressure for missing certain post deadlines. There are exceptions, but we gave a wider berth of time between each deadline: like Teacher Throwback; posting the activity every 2 weeks, therefore there can be time to contact teachers (usually with busy schedules) and gather photos.

Is there anything you can do improve? (with your approach to the project, or altering the project)

Using other tools and programs for creating posts, because so far, I had been using one application and its starting to become limiting to use. So, it’ll be interesting if I start using more short videos or animations to make the page on social media more engaging to our audience.

As Riverside continues to immerse itself into innovation and technology, what do you think Riverside can do to provide support and help for teachers and students? (Provide specific examples)

I have this idea to make time for different seminars to teach about resources they could use like, classes for streaming videos and youtube etiquette. The idea is the same as the micro-bit classes to introduce computer coding, but I thought expanding this is a good way to inspire students to try something new, potential use in their projects or start a new hobby.

Do you have any feedback or suggestions, as we move forward, that could help the Tech Team meet the needs of our school and staff / be more effective? (Provide specific examples)

So far, nothing comes to mind on what should change or improve. Everyone is doing great.

What are some things you have learned and/or tasks you have accomplished this year?

Of Course there are a lot of things, subjects, and topics I have learned throughout the whole year, a lot of it I have incorporated into projects, assignment and tasks, like in most cases I have learned about film making, features in Office 365, in Windows itself or programs not included in Windows. The First half of the year I was in the Sound and Lighting team than later was moved to the Social Media team, however I switch closer to the end of the year so there wasn’t much for me at first. For this year I have volunteered for 2017 Digital Bootcamp, set-up-assist for Pro-D Day, often in the WAVE, and participated in SET-BC Super-natural Riverside Film Project, all of these involved to skills I have acquired working with devices.

What aspects of your work are successful? Explain why.

What was in common with most tasks and projects is problem-solving. It can be involved with everything you do in school, and outside of school. For example in Bootcamp someone has trouble getting on to the WIFI, or the Edu-Blog, on other days, a projector need to be set-up, or volunteering at the WAVE someone has trouble getting on to the WIFI, the Edu-Blog or OneNote, etc. Overall, troubleshooting and fixing/solving the problem was the most successful part of the work.

What aspects of your work is challenging? Explain why.

Troubleshooting and problem solving. Of course it sometimes wasn’t the most easiest thing, in sound and lighting it involves set-up, checking equipment to if in working order and fixing what wasn’t in working order, and while solving issues with devices, there are some devices I didn’t try that much, so I do it on the spot how to solve the issue the best way. For the social media team, I offered to design and make some posters for advertising about Tech team, though what can be challenging sometimes was generating ideas for designs.

For Tech team in general, advertising, reminding students about using devices at RSS can often seem there are some improvement on how we teach in the beginning of the year, like utilizing Edu-Blog, My-Ed, Office, etc. Like to have student remember what to do when using these programs and websites.

What steps did you take to overcome these challenges / what adjustments did you need to make?

What adjustment I could make is help to ensure and advertise that students follow the recommendations for getting a device to use for school or make references on tech help, before (if needed) they come to TT.

Is there anything you can do improve? (with your approach to the project, or altering the project)

Since of course that students don’t always use the one brand of device, what I can improve on is to have more experience with different devices, for example I need to know more about using IOS because I mainly like to use Android and Windows and rarely ever used I-pads or iPhones, therefore I can help to solve any real issues on different brands of devices like during Boot-camp or while volunteering. 

As Riverside continues to immerse itself into innovation and technology, what do you think Riverside can do to provide support and help for teachers and students?

One idea for our service is a group of us could make videos about giving advice, explaining steps for sign-ins, telling tips and/or showing useful features on technology. With this, the school’s YouTube channel would be viewed a lot more and students as well as teachers can be inspired to use technology.

Images

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