Reflections on Staff Induction
One of the jobs I have, is running the preliminary staff induction for the new staff attending the school. The week or two before school starts we have the new staff in and we give them some basic training on key tools. Follow up training is provided by the faculties trainer.
So over 4 sessions (about 4 hours) we provide the new staff with the basics on
- Our network policies and connection processes
- Communication and collaboration system (First Class)
- Adding networked resources
- ergonomics
- Using First class as an LMS
As you can proably guess this is a very light touch as these are huge areas. Each time I do the staff inductions I have to reflect on how many tools we use. Consider what I haven’t mentioned:
- Student management system
- Absence system
- Phone system
- Library system
- Website publishing (we are heading to distributed management of this tool)
- Productivity suite (we use open office 3)
- Specialist educational software
- Smartboards and mimio
- Document and file management
- Support Services Portal
- School processes and procedures
- Templates, proformas and branding standards
- Accessing NQF materials and statistics
The list goes on.
Teaching isn’t about just being in front of kids, or preparing lessons, its so much more. ICT competency, literacy and eventually fluency are essential for the day to day success of a teacher in the classroom. And this is not including the teaching/assessment processes.
The 21st Century teacher must be a learner and must be adaptable because if they are not they WILL NOT SURVIVE.
