The Tiger Tech Squad is made up of two teachers from each Frenship Elementary campus, three teachers from each Middle School campus, and several teachers from the FHS Ninth Grade Center, Frenship High School and Reese Education Center. Each year new teachers join the Tiger Tech Squad through nominations by their campus principal.
Laurie Bruns, Frenship Instructional Technology Coordinator, says the group’s main purpose is to increase technology education at Frenship's 14 campuses.
“We ask the teachers to come in and do professional development and learn from us,” Bruns said. “Then use it in their classrooms and share with their campus.”
Not every campus has a technology specialist. Bruns says her goal for the past few years is to grow the members of the Tiger Tech Squad into technology leaders to serve those campuses.
“Their purpose is to be the main technology liaison on their campus,” Bruns said. “The one thing I hope from all of this is that not only do they leave using tech tools, but they are going to go out and do more and find more.”
The group meets each month to discuss new technology education tools. This gives them an opportunity to collaborate and learn from each other.
“We often build on what we discussed in the previous meeting,” Bruns said. “For example, if I am showing them something in Schoology, I will show them something they have already learned, and then they will learn how to add to it. They also learn from each other. They share different tech tools, they share what is working in their classrooms, what is not working in their classrooms, and they share what their campuses needs are, and what needs have been met with tech tools.”
Jacie Studebaker is a fifth grade Virtual Learning teacher at Upland Heights Elementary. She said she enjoys using the technology she learns about in the Tiger Tech Squad trainings with her Virtual Learning students.
“Tiger Tech squad has helped me to broaden the technology I use in the classroom,” Studebaker said. “It has also given me a better grasp on programs so that I can use them in a more effective way. In doing so, that helps my students. They are given content in a relevant, interesting way.”
Studebaker explained that she challenges herself to use the technology she has learned about in the group to teach her campus about that technology tool.
“One great thing that I have used is slides.go,” Studebaker said. “This is a free website that offers PowerPoint templates to make any presentation fun and engaging. I use them every single day and I embed timers in them and use them to pace my class. I even used it to create the presentation that we used to teach the other teachers on campus about what we had learned in the Tiger Tech Squad training.”
Reese Education Center Social Studies teacher, Sabre Bennett, said the Tiger Tech Squad gives her the chance to stay “in the know” about the latest technology teaching tools.
“The biggest gain for me has been learning to utilize Microsoft Office to make my classroom a ‘paperless’ one,” Bennett said. “My students can store all their assignments and work in an online notebook, OneNote, so that none of us are forced to tote a stack of papers around or risk losing an assignment.”
Bennett said that getting to share ideas with other teachers is one of the best parts of being in the Tiger Tech Squad. She said that gaining knowledge and ideas from other teachers helps her in her classroom tremendously.
“I make it a goal to attempt at least two of the tools I get from each month's meeting,” Bennett said. “Most of the time, the students enjoy trying something new and breaking up the routine of class with a new piece of technology.”
Bennett said because of the Tiger Tech Squad, the shut down last spring was not as worrisome for her as it was for some.
“One thing that I did not have to worry about was how my students would turn in work,” Bennett said. “I already had a ‘paperless system’ in place. My students had been using OneNote all year to turn in their work for my classroom. They were comfortable with that system, so we just kept using it throughout remote learning. We were able to work together using OneNote just as we had been all year long. I was able to see them working in the notebook in real time and they were able to get feedback or see their grades instantly as I put them into OneNote. Without Tiger Tech Squad, I would not have known about the tools available to set this up or had the courage to put it into place.”