Planting a Seed

Attending the ICE conference in St. Charles, IL and having a chance to talk with other educational technology educators I am even more convinced that we need to continue to plant seeds and water them. What does that mean? Rather than giving up when a new idea isn't embraced right away we need to think of how to get others thinking about a new idea, provide related information, relate it to best practices and look for other schools already implementing such an idea. I was a technology coordinator but now I am a technology coach. The difference is that I now concentrate on staff and students and not boxes and wires. We have other staff members who do that so I can focus on my passion of helping students and teachers discover how to use technology in meaningful ways to support learning. Schools need support staff to help with troubleshooting, managing servers, installing software and workstations. Schools also need technology coaches to assist staff members in using technology in meaningful ways once the hardware and software is ready to use. If you think this is important and want to plant that seed, Jamie McKenzie has a wonderful site discussing the coach.
http://fno.org/jan02/techcoach.html
Change can happen, we just need to approach it in a way that helps an idea grow. I hope more and more schools consider Technology Coaches too.