GenYES students from Reed Springs, MO, just came back from Show-Me Techknowledge Day. This is an annual event at the state capitol in Jefferson City, Missouri. Students went to share what they do to assist teachers and other students with technology throughout their school.
In Reed Springs, GenYES students meet in an after-school club where they learn technology and how to help teachers who are participating in a laptop incentive program.
Instructional technology specialist and GenYES advisor Janna Elfrink says, “The GenYES students work with these teachers each month after school, where the students teach the teachers how to utilize and incorporate the technology to meet the needs of the students and teachers. Our goal is to create a community of learners where the teachers present their curriculum to the students, and the students match the available technology with the curriculum. Students and teachers communicate through the TAPs request system and through Gaggle email.”
When planning their trip to the state capitol, the Reed Springs GenYES club did a really smart thing.
“We emailed all state representatives and senators prior to the event, inviting them to visit our booth. The response from representatives and senators was overwhelming. One representative invited the students to visit him in his office, and provided lunch for us. Another introduced our students on the House floor during session. State officials, teachers, administrators, and students commented on our work through the GenYES program and took information from us about our program.”
It’s so important to have these positive examples of students doing good things with technology. This is especially true with politicians, who often only hear about educational technology when things go terribly wrong.
Janna continues, “We have now been invited to be student presenters at an annual technology conference in March at Missouri State University. We have also been asked to present a program review to our Board of Education.”
What do the students do?
At Reed Springs, Janna explains how the students use the GenYES TAP request system to track teacher needs and projects. This is an online TAP (Technology Assistance Project) system that every GenYES school uses.
“After getting buy in from our administrative team and the teachers, I began working with high school students during our late-start Thursdays. We run our GenYES program as a club, with students working on TAP requests and their TechYES projects during that time.
The work that the GenYES students do has carried over into working with other teachers in their building on technical needs and projects.”
Reed Springs also uses our TechYES program to ensure technology literacy for their students. Students not only help teachers, but also their peers as they show tech literacy through authentic projects.
“Our GenYES students also participate in TechYES, where they are creating at least two technology projects this school year. The students are nearing the peer-edit phase of their work, and they each have a goal to submit one of their projects to our annual Reeds Spring Technology Fair in April.”
What students say
Now I know I’m violating all the sacred rules of blogging by going on this long, but there’s more. One of the reasons I’m so passionate about student empowerment is that it’s one of those win-win solutions that have beneficial ripples, both expected and unexpected.
Empowering students and enabling student voice is at core of the GenYES philosophy, so hearing what they have to say matters.
March Foster – “GenYes and TechYes have been opportunities to allow me to take on the true role of a teacher, both by teaching people, and learning new things in turn from them. GenYes has been a great learning experience. It has allowed me to expand my horizons beyond learning just school based curriculum and into more technologically advanced studies that the curriculum can’t support. Beyond that it expands my social enviornment by allowing me to develop friendships with people of similar interests. This has lead to many great relationships to be formed with other GenYes members, and peers.”
Terrion Conner – “no matter the age, you never stop learning” and “never be greedy, knowledge should be shared”
Chris Benson – “I feel that the GenYes program is a great way for me, the student, to show some of my teachers how to do things that honestly I didn’t think were hard but were for someone that didn’t grow up with the technology, and I enjoy getting the teaching experience and it has opened my eyes to the idea that I might teach latter on in life.”
Jack McCoy – “I enjoy the camaraderie of the guys in the program, and think that we have done a lot of good for the teachers and school district”
Mason Vrobel – “I find TechYES an excellent opportunity to do projects such as the computer-in-a-Nintendo.”
Austin Merath – “Genyes is a fun and rewarding experience for me. I like to share my knowledge of technology with the teachers to help them teach their students. I love seeing them learn and excited about learning with the computers and programs I know.”
Yup, what they said.
Sylvia
“Sixth-graders in Tom Coons’ computer class linger after the bell rings, asking for passes to come back during their study halls and lunch periods.
The screencasts are short 1-2 minute help videos that quickly show students, teachers and advisors how to use the online tools and curriculum for GenYES and TechYES. The first set of TechYES screencasts went up today, and TechYES schools can see them by logging into their account and looking in the Toolkit. GenYES screencasts will be coming soon.
Pre-conference – And once again, the 
For U.S. educators, there has been one primary source of funds from the federal government for educational technology over the past few years. It’s part of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, Title 2d, or Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT). 
Working with these Malaysian high school students again confirmed to me that students throughout the world have the same capacity to use their energy and proclivity with technology to redefine our future for the better. Three U.S. based Generation YES schools will act as sister schools to the three Malaysian pilots.
We’re all excited to be going to NCCE 2008 February 25-29. NCCE is the educational computing conference for the Northwest United States. If you are going, be sure to say hello!
