What are some initiatives\things\volunteering you have been involved with? Describe what you have done, and the amount of time you have spent.
I have participated in three initiatives/volunteering things this half of the quarter. I was a leader for the Digital Boot Camp, and I attend training as well which was 5 hours combined, I continuously am running the social media team for leadership which has taken around 2 hours, I have done 10 hours in the wave, as I go every Thursday in Block D, and lastly, I helped with the Pumpkin Competition survey which took me around 40 minutes. For the Digital Boot Camp, I have been both a participant and a leader before; however, I have never run the room. This means that I was responsible for helping the students, the teachers, as well as the other Tech Team grade ten student who was new to this process. I remember being in grade ten and being super nervous to run the camp, so I made sure to let him know that if he ever got stuck or needed help the main things to talk about were the blogs, Microsoft, and tech tips. I also shared a lot of wisdom myself with the grade nines; stuff that I know could have helped me when I was younger. I am also a part of the social media team for all things concerning leadership. Whether that be making posts for them or simply posting them and deciding when it is a good time to post them, my primary focus is leadership. I enjoy doing this because I get to integrate two of my IDS courses. The next thing I do is devote my time to the wave and maker space. I hang out in the wave helping students one day a week. I help people who bring their issues to me or people I see struggling. The last thing I have done this half of the semester is work on the Pumpkin Competition survey. I took pictures of all the pumpkins, posted about them on socials, and made a survey for everyone to vote for their favourites!
What are some things you have learned? Describe any challenges, aha moments, small wins…What did you learn from it?
Something I learned from my time helping students at the wave was how important to understand the steps the student took that led to the issue. Because there are so many ways to complete one task, you may not know how to solve a problem by just looking at it. I learned that by having the student take me through the steps they took to get to their issue, I can better assess the situation and figure out how to resolve it. An example of this would be when I had a group of students having trouble signing into their Myblueprint accounts. At first glance, the things I thought were the problem was the way they wrote out their username and password. After trying to fix both these things on each of the student’s computers, it still didn’t work and I had to find a new way to solve the problem. I then decided to ask the students to go back to the original login page so I could see all of the details, to check if we were missing something. When I saw the page, I realized that they were trying to log in to their own accounts, but in fact, they had to be logging in with the school. This helped me realize that if I had asked them all the steps they took to get here, so which account they pressed, the link they used, etc, I would have been able to figure out the problem sooner. This was a great solution, because the students had no idea they missed that, and it was great for me because now I know that I cannot simply approach a problem with what I see, and I have to ensure I understand how the student got there.
What can I improve and/or accomplish? Focus on technology, leadership, and school culture.
Something that was brought up in class, that I think I could definitely work on is approaching people in the library that may or may not need help. This can help students who are maybe too scared to ask for help or let students know about the Wave if they were unaware. I also think it is a great way to make connections; therefore, if a student has a tech problem with their computer, or in the maker space, they have someone already that they can talk to, and it can make the whole process a little easier. I think that this never occurred to me because I personally thought that if anyone had a problem they would ask for help because that is how I am. I am glad that this was brought to my attention because I now understand that I have to remember not everyone is going to think and act like me and I have to put myself in other people’s shoes to best help them.