By Vanessa Lenz
Staff Writer
With the Harry Potter craze and “Twilight” movie series shattering box office records, embracing your inner-geek has become the new cool thing to do for many teens.
Thanks to a new class at East Troy High School, commonly known as the ETHS Geek Squad, the world of geek chic is pervading local school hallways.
Acting much like Best Buy’s famed in-store Geek Squad, the group of five students provides technical support for students and teachers with a focus on web 2.0 tools and computer applications.
“Students will come in and ask how to upload a video, how to get photos off of their phone into a presentation, how to format a website, things like that,” said adviser Claudia Felske, an ETHS English teacher and high school Technology Integration specialist.
She said teachers usually ask for help teaching a new technology to their students or incorporating a web 2.0 tool into a unit or project.
The East Troy Community School District Board of Education recently agreed to give the members of the geek squad credit for their work at East Troy High School.
While the group is informally called the ETHS Geek Squad, the course is officially called Tech Integration Squad.
School board member Martha Bresler pushed for a more formal name for transcript purposes.
A certified Smartboard teacher and Google certified teacher, Felske said the goal of the class to support students and help teachers integrate technology, as opposed to wanting to throw it across the room in utter despair.
“I believe we’re providing a useful service as well. What’s out there – the sheer number of devices and tools available – can be overwhelming. Our job is to do the ‘grunt work,’ figuring out and streamlining the most useful tools so teachers can then integrate them in meaningful ways in their curriculum,” Felske said.
“Ultimately, it’s about how can technology increase student learning. If we can help make that happen, we’re happy to serve that function.”
The geek squad is currently helping Spanish 2 students create a Spanish speaking tour of East Troy, which they will then embed into a Google Earth Tour.
Other projects include helping students create websites, and developing screencast tutorials to take students and teachers step-by-step through various tools.
Felske said the class, which meets daily during resource, is intentionally small.
“It’s a non-traditional class and students must be largely self-directed… We look at our requests, and then we decide which ones we’ll work on together and which we can divide up individually. Then it’s up to the individual students to problem solve, create resources, and find a solution to the requests received,” said Felske.
Felseke said the squad really serves two complimentary functions: providing practical technology support to students and staff, and providing an opportunity to tech-savvy students to develop their creative problem solving skills and leadership skills.
The East Troy Geek Squad started its work in June.
Students became “Google Ninja Certified” over the summer and met during weekly virtual meetings. Their first task was to train East Troy district staff on Google Apps for Education tools during an all-district in-service in August.
“It’s clear that our students’ worlds and lives are increasingly technology-centered. This is the world we need to prepare them for. Our goal is that this course helps us move in that direction,” said Felske.
