Some of the students were so moti-
vated that they went out and solicited
training jobs from their teachers. To
our knowledge, not a single teacher
turned down our students’ offers of
one-on-one tech tutorials.
I admit that it took some initial con-
vincing to get my fellow teachers on
board. They feared looking foolish and
incompetent in front of students. To
overcome this fear, I convinced highly
visible stakeholders, such as principals
and department heads, to lead the way
by signing up for tutorials.
The training of student tutors was
key. During our club meeting time, we
role-played the tutorial and coached
our students to be clear, encouraging, and above all, patient. After each
tutorial, we asked our teachers to
submit a survey and give us feedback
on their mice. We received comments
such as, “She was very sincere and
enthusiastic, and explained things
really quite well,” and “They are very
passionate about what they know, and
it is always fun to learn from the students.” It wasn’t long before reports of
their patience and competence spread
through school.
Last year, our extracurricular club
morphed into an academic course.
Komandt and I are now teaching
a digital design and development
course in which our 19 students are
learning basic graphic, web, and multimedia design skills. One requirement to finish the course is to complete two hours of mouse service per
month. For example, we will assign
students to create course webpages
for teachers across our K– 12 campus
and then follow up with one-on-one
tutorials on how to populate the new
website with resources.
Focus on Tech Integration
Our Mouse Mischief club helped us
establish a basic understanding of
technology in our school. Freed from
the time-intensive job of teaching how
to use the technology, I could focus on
the more pressing issue: why teachers
should use technology. With a fuller
understanding of technology’s role in
increasing student engagement and
bettering learning outcomes, teachers
were more inclined to implement the
tech tools in their classrooms.
The Mouse Mischief program serves
a very important need in my school.
Instead of hiring expensive outside
consultants, we capitalize on our
own tech-savvy students to provide
teachers with a low-cost, personalized
technology professional development
(PD) program.
Relying on the students to provide
the nuts-and-bolts training has freed
our ed tech department’s time and
resources to concentrate on the bigger task of linking teachers’ newfound
technological knowledge to existing
content and pedagogical knowledge.
At the same time, our mice tutors
have been able to earn extra money
and gain valuable experience for their
résumés and college applications.
Additionally, the program has created a niche for the tech-savvy kids,
who are often left out of traditional
leadership roles. As confirmation of
this, the president of our club won the
2012 National Center for Women &
Information Technology’s Aspirations
in Computing Award for the U.S. state
of Colorado, which came with some
great prizes and a scholarship!
Several other organizations and
teachers are doing similar student-
led tech PD programs that provide
further evidence of the success of this
tactic. At ISTE 2012 in San Diego, I
heard about Generation Yes (genyes.
org), a nonprofit that provides curric-
ulum and tools to help schools create
student-led technology PD. And Kern
Kelley, my lead learner at the Google
Teacher Academy, runs a Tech Sher-
pas program ( www.techsherpas.org),
where students host weekly online
chats to provide tech PD and answer
teacher questions.
A Well-Thought-Out Plan Is Vital
Tech-hesitant teachers are often unfairly painted as curmudgeons standing in the way of innovation. As I
delve deeper into the ed tech world,
however, I have come to see that poor
change management, not recalcitrant
teachers, is at the heart of tech integration failure.
To avoid creating a tech integration disaster with the latest must-have tools, schools must have a well-thought-out plan. Administration
must present a unified front and a
well-articulated vision that signals
commitment and consistency to
teachers. It must also provide differentiated support that builds skills
and confidence among the faculty on
a clearly established set of tech tools
and behaviors, and it must consistently link technology use to the overall
mission of student success and teacher
effectiveness. In my school, implementing the Mouse Mischief program
has helped us lay a strong foundation
to achieve these goals.
—Kelsey Vroomunn is a 2012 ISTE Emerging
Leader, a 2012 Teacher of the Future for the
National Association of Independent Schools,
and a Google Certified Teacher. She teaches
French, history, and technology and is the online
and blended learning specialist at St. Mary’s
Academy in Englewood, Colorado, USA.
