Central Noble expands tech team program
By Samantha Whiting | KPC News - Albion New Era
Central Noble Community School Corp. started tech teams last year with fourth- and fifth-graders, and this year the program has expanded to the junior high school, added student-staffed help desks and launched a video project.
The school corporation’s tech team began after Central Noble Technology Integration Specialist Brian Wesson attended a conference last year and listened to a presentation given by Angola High School’s tech team.
“I actually contacted their tech team leader, and she gave me a lot of advice before I started,” Wesson said. “The big difference for us is their team is high school, and ours started at elementary.”
Wesson kicked off the elementary school teams last year at both Albion and Wolf Lake elementary schools. This year, he expanded the program to include junior high students, many of which are last year’s fifth-graders who moved up a grade.
Both the elementary and junior high teams launched their student-staffed help desks last week, which serve to assist other students with questions about their iPads or laptops.
The elementary schools’ help desks are staffed before school and during lunch five days a week. The junior high help desk is staffed for 25 minutes on Thursday and Friday afternoons.
Leading up to the help desk launch, Wesson said he wasn’t sure what types of questions students would have for the tech teams.
“Our goal is to get it out there and see what kinds of questions come in,” Wesson said. “If (the tech team) gets questions they don’t know, they know very well to say, ‘I don’t know.’ Then we’ll work together to find the answer, and then they’ll be able to answer it the next time.”
The junior high team also has been working on creating citizenship videos. The video series is based on the school’s six pillars of character, which are respect, responsibility, trustworthiness, caring, fairness and citizenship.
The first video in the series is an anti-bullying video for the elementary school classes to view. Wesson said the junior high tech team was in charge of writing the script, filming and editing the video themselves.
“Most of the things we do is from them, not from me,” Wesson said. “I’m just here as a facilitator. I’ll drop little hints and nudges every once in a while, but it’s mostly their ideas and what they want to do.”
The elementary school teams meet with Wesson two days a week, and the junior high team meets every day.
