School Secretary NING
I have designed a site just for school secretaries on NING.
School secretaries and receptionists are the ones really running the schools…right? I mean, these people know everything and are the gate keepers for who gets what information. They are also the last ones to get training. We train teachers. We train students. We work with our administrators. We have NETS*S, NETS*T, and NETS*A along with STaR charts, LoTI, and other tech assessments for these groups. We provide tools for them to use to connect to the world-wide network. We develop e-plans and technology integration tools for them; but we neglect the areas that need more than just Microsoft Office tips.
Welcome to the Human Network. http://schoolsecretaries.ning.com/ Welcome to proactive training.
I have always held secretaries in a special place in my heart since I used to work for a church and worked very closely with the secretaries there. I have also worked at campuses with many secretaries who say they want to learn to do things easier and better. They attended those trainings for teachers and then implemented some of the tools in their own job. They were also so amazed that teachers were given training opportunities but more amazed when teachers refused to attend them.
There is little training for school secretaries. They don’t have time to leave their desks. They don’t get subs.
I have seen secretaries who do no more than handle one person’s agenda, phone calls, and typing. I have also seen secretaries who are the secretaries for an entire campus and they handle…..everything.
Truth is….we don’t appreciate them enough to consider them worth training. And our skill-set for training often doesn’t include office management tools either.
So, with that being said, what can be done? What can we do right now to start training secretaries and providing them with tools to help them do their job better? Immediately, I believe we connect them to each other. Secretaries have their own ways of managing their own time and the time of others. They have resources we cannot imagine at their fingertips. The best trainers for them….are going to be each other. So, connect them to each other to let them share what works best. NING allows them to do this.
Let them start small: Share something you do to keep your desk organized. Share a humorous experience. Share something to the group that is a time saver.
Easy things to get them to start conversing with each other.
The question for later is – how will them having a NING impact their campus? The person the administrator relies on for handling their communication is now using Web 2.0 tools to engage and collaborate with others. Will this impact their office communication? Will this help them see other ways to communicate? I am going to bet yes on this one.
So, I offer up the http://schoolsecretaries.ning.com to anyone else out there who would like to get this ball rolling for our most under trained staff at our campuses who could benefit getting the word out the most about technology.
