Tech Tinkers: New Group

Techtinkers as a service operate on a half a year basis, for the first half, most of the members are from grade 10 with a few grades 11 as a leader, while in the second half we receive a new batch of grade 9 students. Last week was the first session I experienced with the new group, and I think that the biggest challenge has been to start over from scratch. Within the grade 10’s they had already experienced a routine, learning the in’s and out’s of the service, and this has made guiding them a relatively simple task, particularly when relative to the new grade 9’s.

LO3: Planning initiatives in service
From what I can tell so far, I believe the newer challenge will be to ensure that these younger members remain on task. I recall my own experience when starting with this service, and although I respected the leaders I didn’t particularly like their style. Instead of partaking and actively helping out with the tasks at hand, they often simply delegated and sat back to watch. Building on this past experience, I think that I would like to ensure that everyone is engaged in the activity. Like I mentioned before, the new method of having small groups run by each individual group leader means that we can ‘divide and conquer’. But I found this to be a more challenging experience, as a leader it meant more liability to the tasks at hand, and while we could more efficiently finish the tasks, once they were done we had nothing else to do. I believe that in future planning we will need to find more entertaining tasks to give to the new students, perhaps utilizing their creative skills for other projects/problem-solving.

LO5: Collaboration
When working with other members of the group we have to make sure to be on the same page about what tasks are of most priority, and then evenly delegate the people we have. To do this, we use regularly have to communicate with each other through online platforms to come to the sessions prepared. Although this can be effective, because despite 3 or 4 of us being considered a part of the leadership positions we do not regularly plan. Often times it is instead David Kann, the supervisor teacher, who takes charge of the tasks for the day. I think one thing I would like to focus on for the upcoming sessions is to actively partake in the discussions of what to do, whether that be online or in-person I would like to actively have contributed at least one idea on what we can do per session.

LO7: Ethical Considerations
When we have to work individually with the group members there’s an ethical dilemma of how to approach and guide the kids. Back when I had first joined the service there was little leadership built into the system of the service, oftentimes it would instead simply self-delegating and communicating with our teacher advisory. Coming into this new style of leadership, and taking a more active role, I think I have had to rethink what it means to be someone of a leadership position. Often times the leader is the one responsible for the actions of the people they represent, and this entails properly guiding them and taking into consideration what they need and want. Instead of brushing off their