Hello, all! Me again.

I just wanted to pop in and mention some notable things I’ve been doing at work. For the last 6 months, I’ve been working with other leaders in educational technology (shoutout to Arline Pique and Bill Fritz) across the state to try to come up with a solution/replacement to the outdated listserv email forum the state has been running for technology coordinators. After several rounds of deliberation in the early spring of 2022, we decided on using GroupsIO as a replacement to the old listserv. Here is the link to the group published on the Ohio Department of Education’s page:

https://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Finance-and-Funding/Programs/Educational-Technology/Technology-Coordinator-List-Serve

Six months in, the migration has been very successful and our membership has grown by at least 200 members (to 810 members at the time of writing) since the cutover.

In addition to working on that, I’ve been trying to snag a couple certifications that are relevant to my field. This fall, I worked toward and earned my Professional ChromeOS Administrator certification from Google and my Level 4 Certified Admin certification from Clever. Both of those exams weren’t too difficult, but the certification from Google definitely required a little bit more of a time investment.

On top of those, I have been working toward getting my Certified Education Technology Leader (CETL) certification from CoSN. This certification has become the de-facto standard for technology leaders across the country in the past couple years. In fact, many schools have begun listing the CETL as a requirement for technology coordinator positions.

Thankfully, I’ve had help from another technology leader in the state, Mike Daughterty. For the past couple years, he has provided the tech community in Ohio with a free course to learn the knowledge required for the CETL exam. Right now, we’re halfway done with his course and I have to say he’s been a great teacher so far. In addition to his course, I purchased his study guide that can be found here. We’re scheduled to take the test mid January right now, so I’m going to be doing a good bit of studying over Christmas break.

Wish me luck! ☘️

P.S. You can check out some cool digital artwork I bought for my wife of our dogs in this post’s featured image!