Ms. Jacob 13:01:40 Hi, my name is Gabriella Jacob and I am here with Mariah Tidwell.

She is the instructional technology and innovation coach. At Winn Holt Elementary, I am
interviewing her today about her position at the school and all things instructional technology.
Hi, Mariah. How are you?
Mrs. Tidwell 13:01:55 Hi, I'm great. Thanks.
Ms. Jacob 13:01:57 Good. I was going to ask you, what is your degree that is required for the
position or do you need a degree for this specific position?
Mrs. Tidwell 13:02:05 No, you just need to be a certified teacher for this position.
Ms. Jacob 13:02:08 Perfect. What are your responsibilities in this position?
Mrs. Tidwell 13:02:15 They're very broad. I have a couple of buckets. So our job description was
rewritten last year to make us more coaching focused and make sure that we're really focused
on. Impacting classroom instruction. So I'm just gonna kind of describe those buckets and that
might be enough. So the first bucket is facilitating technology integration and innovation and that
means providing technology leadership contributing to a shared school vision and future ready
teaching and learning by supporting teachers and school leaders in advancing from traditional
classroom instruction to future ready instructional practices via the support of professional
learning opportunities, curriculum learning teams, and individual coaching. So that's really my
job has to do with helping. Our school uses technology to develop the future ready
instructional practices in the classroom and that can include professional learning with teams, it
can include school by professional learning, one to one coaching, any of that.
And then, I support that work in the background a lot. So I do a lot of things to set up accounts
to set up subscriptions. Like today, I was working with one of the administrators to develop the
budget and the things that we need to purchase, then a big part of my job is professional growth
because this role has to stay informed and stay kind of in the front of the work that's happening
like with the county or in other areas so I have to make sure that I'm growing professionally and
keeping track of how I'm growing and what I'm doing, stay informed, and then I have another
generic thing that's called other school duties and we all laugh because that means I can go in
lots of different places. So I also manage our social media accounts and set up email accounts
and do a lot with things like outward communication. Other school duties really have a lot to do
with whatever else the principal needs us to do, so we're kind of used differently in different
places.
Ms. Jacob 13:04:21 Perfect. So you don't typically have a set schedule every single day.
Mrs. Tidwell 13:04:26 I have 0 schedule. I set my own schedule. I decide how that day needs to
be used best and I try to set my own schedule, but then I have to stay responsive to whatever is
needed that day. So today I had a whole schedule and I have not done anything on it. Except for
this. This is the one thing on my schedule I've actually done today because there were other
things that just came up that were more pressing.
Ms. Jacob 13:04:48 I understand. Well, thank you for meeting with me. I know you mentioned
how you support students and a little bit about how you support faculty and staff, could you
expand a little bit more on what you do to assist faculty and staff?
Mrs. Tidwell 13:05:02 Yeah, it's really important that I am in planning meetings and working with
individual teachers to kind of find the ways that their students might be more engaged with
technology or might have access to information outside the school walls using technology, so
planning and coaching happens a lot with staff. Planning school wide staff development
collecting the information we need and the data we need to make goals for growth and then
planning and implementing that step development also.
Ms. Jacob 13:05:33 Perfect. How do you meet the use of students with remote learning outside
of school? You slightly mentioned that.
Mrs. Tidwell 13:05:40 Yeah, we don't do a whole lot with remote learning because of the the
Gwinnett Online campus and so students who need to do any remote learning for their school
day, I guess, get that learning through Gwinnett online campus or other programs like that. But
so we're not really supporting any of that in our local schools now. The only thing that we have
to do with remote learning is supporting kids when they're outside of the school day, what other
programs do they need to be practicing and I help parents with having tools at home to help
their kids. But that's all that we do with remote learning now.
Ms. Jacob 13:06:19 Perfect. Do you have a budget that you control?
Mrs. Tidwell 13:06:23 I don't have a set budget every year, but typically, I get a chunk of money.
So, they'll say, hey, you've got XYZ to spend like last year I created a budget of $70,000.
$35,000 of that got spent but I had $150,000 to spend. I didn't need it all. 70 was the most I
could and then we boiled it down to the best things that we could spend that money on.
Ms. Jacob 13:06:52 Would you be willing to share some of the things that you spent the money
on for our school?
Mrs. Tidwell 13:06:56 Yeah, we bought some subscriptions. So like the money went toward
learning A to Z subscriptions, brain pop, we have an imagine learning subscription site wide so
for the whole school for imagine learning. We also bought, oh, the VR headsets last year was a
big purchase.
That was my big push; our principal last year wanted to expose our kids to things that they had
never seen before and build their vocabulary and background knowledge, so I knew that VR
was going to be a way that we could kind of get them places they couldn't otherwise go.
So that was a big chunk of our money that we spent. And that was a great purchase and made
a big impact. I've loved using it. The kids have really been engaged. I'm looking forward to using
that again this year.
Ms. Jacob 13:07:43 Yes. I personally have used them as well and I love them and I hope to use
them some more this year.
Mrs. Tidwell 13:07:48 Yeah.
Ms. Jacob 13:07:49 Do you have a technology committee or is it mostly you who is making
decisions involving technology?
Mrs. Tidwell 13:07:55 So I kind of have a team here at the school, our technology team consists
of myself, our technical support. There’s a Technology support technician which is Mr. Gates, he
does the hardware work, our media specialist who does instructional support also with
technology and handles a lot of communication like the broadcast system, and then our Student
data management clerk that's the SDMC, which is Mrs. McVickers and she manages student
data. So she kind of works in the background with technology. Mrs. Gibbs and I, our media
specialist, and I work mostly in the front with technology. As far as a committee that makes
decisions, those are mostly made with those technology teams with input of the admin.
So I have cabinet time once every 3 weeks and I sit with the administration and we discuss
topics that might need to be addressed. Last year I had an innovation team that gave me some
feedback because we had the one to one Chromebooks last year and I needed a lot of
feedback from teachers who were using them and what we could do. Then, I also have a very
strong support system with other people in my role and throughout the county, so I have a tight
group of people who I communicate with when I'm having problems or need some advice or
trying to kind of innovate and come up with new ideas. I'll go to that small group of people and
we also have monthly check-ins and quarterly in service where we go and get professionally
developed, so I get a lot of ideas and a lot of work and support in that way too.
Ms. Jacob 13:09:34 Awesome. So just to wrap it all up, what is the best part of your job and
what might be the most challenging part of your job.
Mrs. Tidwell 13:09:43 The best part about my job is that it's different every day. I really don't
know what the day is gonna look like until I show up. I might think it's gonna look in one way and
then it just goes a different way. I also love to innovate, like come up with new ways to do things
and be creative and solve problems, so that is something I spend a lot of my time doing, you
know, kind of seeing a problem and figuring out the best way to solve it. And the worst part
about my job is communication because it's really hard sometimes. I have to communicate a lot.
Not everybody receives that communication and it's kind of can be a barrier to getting the work
done, so communication seems to be one of the most challenging things.
Ms. Jacob 13:10:28 Awesome. Well, it sounds like you have a lot on your plate, but you're
managing your time very well and you have a good support system. I really appreciate the time
that you've taken today to answer my questions and I hope you have a great rest of your day.