If you are going to be supporting the educational program at a school (or district), it is important for you to know what you believe to be important in "creating an environment that facilitates learning." This means that you need to spend a little time sitting back and reflecting on what sort of learning environment you would like to help create. Obviously, you are just one voice in many, but the whole process of designing ways to support curriculum through technology will require a reexamination of the whole learning process.

Go to the RWLD to read the resources to provide background for your upcoming project. It discusses the roles of technology coordinators and this will be useful in your upcoming interview.

If you don't know what's important to you in creating educational environments, then you won't be able to make decisions or guide others into creating a beneficial learning environment.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, will be to interview a technology coordinator to find out what s/he does. In the short term, you will probably get the most out of meeting with the technology coordinator at your school. If you are working towards implementing 1-to-1 in your school or another school, you might want to find a technology coordinator at a 1-to-1 school.

Sit back, get a cup of coffee, put your feet up on the stool and dream of what sort of learning environment you would like to create if you were the MASTER of your school for a year. What resources would be available? How would learners access them? What would be their l

Before meeting with this technology coordinator, prepare by doing the following pre-organizational procedure. Make a web map of what you think this technology coordinator's duties are? Refer to the ISTE NET Technology Leader standards.

Suggestions for creating a web map:

• Sit down and open a blank document using Mindmeister.com.
• Place the phrase "What Does this TC Do?" in a circle in the main node.
• Radiate lines/links from the center circle to new circles that have general categories:Administration, Support, Maintenance, etc.
• Radiate additional lines from the new circles to newer circles with subcategories or actual duties in them.

1. What is the size and level of your school/district?
2. How long have you been a technology coordinator?
3. What do you envision as your primary role in your position?
4. Please list ALL of your duties as a technology coordinator. (OK, so buy her/him another cup of coffee.)
5. What sort of assistance do you receive in doing your job?
6. What are the parts of the job that you really enjoy?
7. What parts of the job would you rather have someone else do?
8. If you could restructure your position and responsibilities, how would you do it?
9. What words of wisdom do you have for successfully Coordinating Technology in an Educational Setting?

NOW take the results of your interview and create another web map using your newly-discovered information. Compare your new map with your earlier map.

• Do you notice any significant differences?
• What were your surprises?
• What did you learn from this exercise?

• Set the stage for your interview (don't mention the TL or the school. You CAN say something like "a middle-sized high school in southeastern Iowa").
• Give an overview of what you found in the interview.
• Share the words of wisdom you learned.
• Explain what you discovered when you compared your maps. (If you are really creative, you might even find a way to place your maps on the Web someplace so your readers can compare them while they read your comments - but this is NOT necessary.)
• Summarize what you learned doing this activity.

Submission:

You will post your responses to the Duties of a Tech Leader discussion group. We are using this so that you can respond to your colleagues. You can post your work to your blog or a Google Doc and just include the link. You will receive private feedback from Dr. Z through the discussion group.

Read the postings of your colleagues. You will not be graded on your responses to their postings, but I am certain that they would appreciate some feedback. We will discuss your findings in the next class session.

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