Describing his firsthand experience with student tech-support teams before an audience of his peers on Wednesday at the California IT in Education (CITE) Conference in Sacramento, Jason Borgen, chief technology officer for the Santa Cruz County Office of Education (COE), called them a win-win for students and school districts.
For the past year, Borgen has been building tech clubs at Santa Cruz middle and high schools in collaboration with Vivacity Tech, a public benefit corporation that sells hardware to schools as well as IT training programs for students. He likened the clubs to “Mouse Squads,” student tech-support teams run by a nonprofit that no longer operates in California.
“It was amazing to see these clubs in action, to see the students, who normally are at lunch walking around aimlessly by themselves, connect with other students just like them, facilitated by a teacher during lunch. They got together and talked about technology, they talked about computers and most importantly, they actually got to fix teachers’ screens, teacher computers … all that stuff,” he said. “We saw the empowerment, the agency that students developed, being able to actually fix devices that were in the classroom that they need every day.”
Funded by two Strong Workforce Program grants through CITE, Borgen said, Santa Cruz COE partnered with the Vivacity Student Repair Academy and started putting students through its 80-hour online training program. In half a dozen modules with quizzes, students learn the fundamentals of computing, best practices and essential skills of a technician, repair ticket management, troubleshooting Chromebook hardware and software issues and the specifics of device repair guides from HP, Lenovo, Dell and Acer. The program concludes with a final project, then a professional profile module with which students can build a LinkedIn profile that lists their new skills.
Borgen said the program encouraged school IT staff to get involved by helping students build a tech support website and ticket system, mentoring and encouraging students to work toward earning badges, attending monthly meetings and working with Santa Cruz COE to grow the program. Students came away with training in device repair, hands-on experience, certifications and, in some cases, new friends and reasons not to skip school. Local schools, for their part, got help maintaining their device fleets, faster repairs, some cost savings in extending the lifespans of devices and account credit options based on warranties.
Borgen said the benefits are amplified if students come to feel some ownership of the technology in their school, caring how their peers treat their devices and becoming sources of helpful knowledge for students and staff alike.
“I think it’s great for students to learn how to review tickets and how to write a proper ticket, because they may also help their teachers and people in their classes to write their tech support tickets,” he said.
Borgen added that a program like Vivacity’s may not get 100 percent participation in a student tech club, but it can be one aspect of what the club does.
“Students may do a module here, a module there. … It’s a great way to scaffold the need for things to do in the club. This is not going to be the club. It’s just a tool to get them to learn content in a nice sequential way,” he said. “You’re going to have some students who are not going to want to (do the curriculum), and that’s OK. Have them build the website instead.”
For students who are chomping at the bit for a career in IT, though, Vivacity Instructional Tech Manager Nicky Acevedo said her company’s program will give them a decent head start.
“We do understand at Vivacity that a lot of districts are looking to have students leave with certifications,” she said. “So while our certificate is a certificate of completion of our curriculum, if you want the students to get an industry cert, with the schools that we’ve partnered in and work with, we are aware that if their students do take the CompTIA fundamentals course, there is a section on there specific to Chromebook repair, and students have done fairly well using our curriculum, having the skills that they need as a result.”
