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More Teacher Training Videos

21 Jan

There was no school on Tuesday this week due to snow so I took the opportunity to create two more training videos for the teachers I support.They requested these two specific videos since they cover operations that the teachers don’t do very regularly and are therefore trickier to remember.

I sent the links to these videos to the teachers I work with and also placed web links in an easily-accessible folder on a shared network location. Doing these videos is pretty enjoyable and I’m going to keep this strategy in mind in the future. It’s a great way to be able to provide support for someone without needing to be present, such as when a staff member is working from home or needs something right away.

The Values of Personality and Character in Tech Support

18 Jan

In 2003 I responded to an ad and was hired as an instructor for Eastconn, who needed someone to teach a class in Microsoft Word. It was a bit of a trial by fire since I had to just show up and start teaching. In the past I’d provided instruction to people in their homes, giving them private lessons while I fixed their tech issues, but this was something new. A group of people had paid good money for a class and expected me to make them competent!

It didn’t turn out to be as daunting and scary as I initially thought. People loved me. I had glowing, outstanding reviews. Teaching these classes showed me that I was very patient, friendly, and good at explaining technical concepts to people that lacked technical knowledge and ability. It all came down to communication and personality. My technical skills were not the most important thing, but rather my patience and understanding and ability to get across important technical concepts to people who were not technically capable were the things that mattered.

As long as I’ve been working with people and technology I’ve had people telling me stories where they’ve dealt with another “tech person” who wasn’t warm and friendly and who couldn’t explain things clearly to non-technical people. I’ve heard the story countless times: “oh, I’m so glad I found you! We tried getting this fixed but you wouldn’t believe how unfriendly this other tech guy was…”

People want their problems fixed, whether it’s a person using their home computer, a superintendent of a school, or a business owner. However, I don’t feel that fixing problems is good enough. The person I’m assisting should feel like they’re being taken care of. They should feel that they’re in good hands and that I’m trustworthy, prompt, and someone they can feel comfortable with.

Think of it like an auto mechanic. I go out of my way to bring my car to this guy called Karl. Karl makes me feel good. He’s not sleazy like the guys at some dealerships are. Other people take a long time, try to upsell me on tires or extra services, and leave me feeling unhappy, overcharged, and suspicious, but when I see Karl I feel content and satisfied. He’s prompt and if he recommends something extra, like having my tires rotated, then I feel comfortable following his advice because I know he’s not jerking me around. I don’t go home saying “Wow! Karl fixed the crap outta my car!” but it’s his character and customer service skills that make me feel good about doing business with him.

If you work with technology and you support other people then I think the same concepts apply. People are trusting you with their computer, their workflow, their status quo, their entire organization’s daily functioning, or their sense of comfort. That trust should be met with trustworthy behavior on your side of things too. They want to feel they made the right decision in working with you and want to feel comfortable, especially if they’re someone who’s uncomfortable with technology. People may say they want you to “just fix it” but there’s often a hidden truth that people want to not only be supported but feel supported, too.

It’s all about communication and personality. Can you provide solutions with humor, personality, integrity, and a warmth that brings about trust? That’s what makes the work you do important and distinctive to people and also gets you recommendations, clients, and good reviews. At the very least it’ll make your day at work easier because your coworkers will always have a great opinion of you and your work.

I argue that the way you provide support as a tech worker is highly important. Your tech skills should be up to par, but your communication and personality should be the best that you can make them.

Creating A Training Video for Staff Members

10 Jan

It recently occurred to me that it would be a great idea to create some training videos for the teachers at the school, so I recently created this video which is on creating an assignment in PowerTeacher Gradebook. I used ScreenFlow for OSX to record myself demonstrating the software and did a quick voice over using the built-in microphone on my iMac at home. I edited in iMovie, exported the final video, and uploaded it to Youtube.

Sometimes a teacher will be working on their grades when I’m not around or they’re doing it remotely from home. In these cases it could be very helpful for them to have a quick video to refer to. They can switch to 720 and see the video in full screen mode with high-quality. It’s very cool! I presented the video to the teachers and received some feedback on some topics to make future videos for. I’m glad I had this idea. Now the resource will always be available to the teachers to refer to and will be very helpful for any new staff as well.

Things I’ve Learned and Accomplished in 2010

31 Dec

2010 has been a killer year! I’ve made a lot of discoveries and positive changes in my career, both in my technical proficiency and my skills in communication and relationships. It didn’t feel right to let the year conclude without sharing some of those things so I want to share them now.

Social skills and the importance of compassion

I saw a lot of retweets of the Dalai Lama’s Twitter activity and eventually followed his account. He wrote a lot about the importance of compassion and in thinking about compassion I learned a few things.

First, compassion often will melt away any tension between me and a coworker. I often could be impatient with people (though it was internal and I wouldn’t pressure or be rude to others) and I usually tried urge them to “get to the point” when they were complaining about something that happened. I just wanted to know what they needed so I could fix it and get back to whatever else I was doing. By slowing down and understanding that the problem they were experiencing was significant to them I was better able to see the situation from their perspective. To me, it’s nothing to show up and fix a technical problem by clicking the mouse a few times but to another person that same problem might be a significant technical hassle that causes them to lose their cool in an already stressful day.

By seeing people’s problems from their perspective and listening patiently before providing a solution I am better able to create trust and understanding between us. This has helped my interaction with coworkers and clients because they see me as patient and understanding. They can not only ask for help but can also confide in me and feel they’re understood. I make sure they know that they aren’t hassling me by bothering me with their problems but that I genuinely want to help them. On my end, I feel like a more supportive and helpful coworker and my relationships with other people in professional situations have become more personal and enjoyable. There’s more of a human connection and it’s made a significant and pleasant difference at work! Solving problems with patience and humor isn’t just fixing computers; it’s making a positive difference by solving problems for other people and making their day better.

Technical skills

This year I’ve discovered some useful software and invented some solutions. I’ve also found ways to handle some tasks with greater efficiency. Let me break ‘em down:

Biggest improvement/time saver:

I wrote custom report card generating software in C# that takes raw student grades from our PowerSchool server and generates attractive and detailed PDF report cards for all our students. This streamlines the report card process, which was easily my number one headache working at the school, and allows report cards to be finished much more easily. Put simply, it works faster and better than anything else we’ve previously used or had available and I can immediately fix any problems that pop up rather than waiting days or a week for a tech support call to resolve the issue. It also saved my wife a week’s worth of ranting at home during stressful report card release times!

Best free software implementation:

UltraVNC is free software allows remote access. You can control another computer as thought you were sitting right in front of it. I prefer it to the built-in Windows Remote Desktop Connection due to its added features and ease of configuration. The funny thing is that I didn’t know you could use it through a web browser! Now I can log in to the Windows servers at work through Google Chrome on my iMac at home. Nice.

Biggest accomplishments:

Set up new network server

The school was able to purchase a new network server and I set up a new network this year. Until now the school had to run with an (embarrassingly!) old Windows server acting as our network domain controller. I set up the new domain using our new server and was able to use domain startup scripts to place most of the school’s users frequently used shortcuts on their desktops and to map their preferred printers as their default. This has been a positive change for everyone through being an increase in reliability, efficiency, and ease of use. It’s a plus on the administrative side because the network is now more reliable and easier to maintain.

Deployed PowerTeacher Gradebook

Teachers use grade book software to enter student grades and I generate detailed report cards from those grades. I set up brand new grade book software this year which is staggeringly more reliable than the older software we were using and the school’s teachers have very positive things to say about it! The old software was a huge hassle for both teachers and myself but the new PowerTeacher Gradebook is a pleasure to use.

I provided the teachers with some professional development training sessions and set up all the grading standards, conversion scales, software, classes, and sections. The transition went exceptionally smoothly and everyone (especially me!) is happy with the new software.

The decision to empower users

Traditional wisdom with network administration seems to be to give network users the most restrictive set of permissions possible while still allowing them to do their jobs. I’ve been on the user end of that and it’s not very enjoyable when you can’t do what you need to do on your own computer because of a security policy. Out of habit I started off working at the school by running the network this way, but due to the sheer annoyance of having to run around typing in administrator passwords to install Adobe Reader or Flash Player on everyone’s computer all the time I started giving everyone administrative permissions on their own machines instead.

I received a big surprise: I no longer had to continually walk around the school installing trivial software and the instances of actual problems resulting from this decision were very low! I found that it actually saved me time to deal with the technical issues like spyware that arose from this decision than it was to install software for everyone. If someone did end up with spyware issues due to their user account’s increased permissions I would just fix those issues and spend time educating the user on safer practices to use in the future. There’s rarely been a repeat problem after this step. By empowering users I was able to save time and increase user competency.

2010 has been a great year at work and I’m more confident and comfortable in my role at the school (and in my larger career adventure as well) through the things I’ve learned and the discoveries I’ve made. I’m looking forward to learning more so that I can increase the value I’m able to contribute to my coworkers and clients and to enjoy my work even more. Thanks for reading!