Birds of A Feather Flock Together

Jeff Hargett, Coordinator of Instructional Technology
Rome City Schools

I have attended the GaETC for a number of years (I’ve lost count), beginning as a classroom teacher serving on my school’s technology committee and now as my school system’s instructional technology coordinator.  I have found that the GaETC sessions have provided me with plenty to learn and to take back to my colleagues no matter which perspective I was coming from.  In fact, I credit the information that I gained at the conferences with allowing me to get my current position as an instructional technologist.  I have tried to encourage teachers from my system to attend each year but have had a difficult time in convincing both teachers and administrators that what they will learn at a GaETC conference will far outweigh the costs and hardships of the teacher being out of the classroom.  This article will is in part an effort to encourage a greater attendance at the conference. 

Although I still attend many sessions at the conference that are aimed at classroom teachers so that I can carry that information back to the schools, in the past few years I have particularly enjoyed the Birds of a Feather sessions.  For those unfamiliar with the Birds of a Feather sessions, these sessions are designed particularly for those with similar experiences or job responsibilities like media specialist or instructional technologists, who may frequently be one-of-a-kind in their building.  Birds of a Feather sessions give you a chance to get together with others from outside your school or district who have similar responsibilities and problems.  Not only can you find out how other schools handle your particular problem or issue, but you may also come away with the realization that you’re not the only one who faces those issues.  Perhaps you’ll be the one to share the answer with someone who hasn’t quite solved that issue yet!

This year I attended two Birds of a Feather sessions, one for instructional technologists and one for ITEE grant participants.  In the grant session I was able to sit at a table with representatives from other schools and talk about common problems and experiences in the grant.  I came away from that meeting with several things to share with my teachers as well as a greater appreciation of how well my grant teachers had done to avoid some of the problem issues that some of the schools seemed to be having.  I also discovered that we seemed to be quite unique in that our superintendent had matched the grant hardware for teachers in another department.  These teachers were being partially mentored by our grant participants.

I was also able to attend the Birds of a Feather session for instructional technologists, which actually was an open meeting for G-STE (Georgia Society for Technology in Education).  Members of the DOE’s technology staff were present to both ask and answer questions.  We discussed some of the pressing issues around the state like, “How is your school or system handling the budget cuts in regards to instructional technology and instructional technologists.   It appeared that some systems were cutting back and putting instructional technologists back in the classroom.  Some acknowledged a greater dependence on the ETC’s due to lack of funding for personnel and training.  I expressly remember saying, “I don’t know what we would do without our ETC”.  At the time I had no idea that in just a few months we would be pondering that question for real.  It is my sincere hope and that the ETC’s will be back bigger and better than ever next year at the 2009 GaETC!

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