what is a information technology student support team
Students assigned to the DCMS ITSST have inquired a unique opportunity to shift their academic experience to a personalized learning environment when researching, developing digital content and teaching others. This personalized learning occurs as students on the ITSST explores specific knowledge and skills, in a real world learning environment. Skills acquired through real world experiences include logical and sequential process of technology troubleshooting that are reinforced through specific analytical and critical thinking skills. These are the skill sets that are often difficult for students to engage in during instruction for core content areas. Essentially, ITSST explores a new area of potential success for acquiring critical thinking skills in a real world working environment.
Each member of the ITSST is required to sign and follow a student pledge that is reviewed by the principal and signed by both the student and parent at the time of application. The ITSST meets every Tuesday to receive assignments and learn a specific technology related skill. The Information Technology Student Support Team is a group of students who take time out of their daily schedules, which includes some time from lunch, advisory, and computer classes. |
The purpose IT Student Support Team (ITSST) is to aid other students and staff members with diagnosing, fixing, and troubleshooting technology-related issues. The Dodge City Middle Sschool ITSST has close staff support and supervision including two technology consultants for training, building principal for selection and organization of responsibilities, technology connect teacher for monitoring assignments and the school library media specialist who supervises the student help desk.
ITSST is made up of 6th, 7th and 8th grade students who provide support services for students learning applications while participating in incidental training with the DCMS student body. In addition to direct instruction from teachers, learning from peers, or completing formal training modules, students are learning to seek out solutions to problems using methods that are not typically used in a traditional K-12 setting, such as using threaded discussion boards, wikis, blogs, and other Web 2.0 tools. |
DIGITAL PARENT NIGHT PRESENTATION
The student IT support team was directly involved in planning and developing the school’s three digital parent nights. The objectives for the digital parent nights included explaining the eight steps for implementing mobile learning devices and information on how the school planned to deploy the devices for improved learning opportunities. The goals for each digital parent night included:
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the digital native
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As Prensky (2001) said, Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. They prefer their graphics before their text rather than the opposite. They prefer random access (like hypertext). They function best when networked.... They prefer games to “serious” work. (p. 2)
Such students could solve problems through real-world applications. We decided to recruit some students to become a technology support team for both teachers and students. They would be partners in shared learning. Those students’ experience with technology would give us a way to increase the digital environment at Dodge City, and their presence on the support team would give them new challenges and opportunities to solve complex problems. |