Day in the life of
ICT Teacher – Maria Radstam
My name is Maria Radstam and I must say I have a really fun job! If a lot of laughter means that you have a fun job – I have the most fun job there is.
My typical day
I work in high school and my job is to bring digital tools and gamification into the curriculum. Gamification is really hot right now since it brings engagement up and makes the students enjoy what they do. My job is tartly directly with the students and partly helping the teachers play Kahoot, gamify the classroom, use VR (it’s not hard!), and bring contests and badges into the lesson planning. In short – I make things more fun!
This profession is rather new, but during the past decade and especially after the pandemic, all the more schools and teachers feel that they need to get updated on eLearning and digital skills.
There is still some confusion about what the proper job title should be, and titles like IT teacher, ICT teacher, and Digital Educator are all in use, but they basically refer to the same profession that focuses on adding digital tools into the curriculum and help schools and teacher to bring the curriculum into the 21st century.
A QR-tree that I placed in the common room. The QR-codes takes you to documentaries and learning tools to practice homework in the corridor.
I work partly as a teacher and partly as a consultant. As an ICT teacher, it’s common to work with several different subjects and to help teachers see the possibilities of technology in their teaching. Language studies can be spiced up by interacting with other schools in learning platforms or using Google Streetview to practice road directions in an almost real environment. Many different subjects can benefit from open 360 museums all around the world, but the teachers need information about which ones are available and how to use them.
Advice for aspiring ICT Teachers
In my everyday job, I spend 70% of my time in my school or the district, but after the pandemic, I have noticed that the willingness to interact between districts and even nations has become much stronger and it’s not difficult to find work opportunities outside the district that you are in. My best piece of advice for anyone who wants to become an ICT teacher is to grow your network as soon as possible. There won’t be that many colleagues around in your school to give you advice or to get ideas from and so you’ll need to find them where ever they are in the world. Keep your social media presence high since you are expected to be the first person to know about new features in MS Teams, Google Workspace, and all of the other EdTech platforms. In this job, it is important to be creative and find your own ways to reach the students and teachers in different ways. During the lockdown, we started a pod radio channel to still get the information out. You’ll always have to be ready to change your way of working since you are expected to be the one that leads the way for the others.
In my job, I sometimes get booked by individual teachers for counseling sessions, but I also hold regular lectures and sent out newsletters. One other important thing is to keep track of the schools’ licenses and make sure that all the students get access to the proper books and tools on their computers.
A timeline with QR-codes. The blue will take you to YouTube documentaries about historical events. The red ones lead to 360 movies. By placing a Google Cardboard VR-box on the wall, the students can scan the QR-code, place the mobile phone in the cardboard box and enter different museums, historical places and movies.
ICT teachers have many different backgrounds and there are several ways to specialize once you started your career. Some colleagues started out as teachers, others (like me) were librarians and some come from the technical side and started to work with learning. This diversity could be one reason why there are so many different titles that refer to practically the same job. Several of the EdTeach companies offer online education to get certificates to work with their products, like the “Microsoft Certified Educator” and “Google Certified Educator” are the most common.
I highly recommend this job for anyone who likes creativity, fast changes, learning and to help and engage others. It’s playful and fun and you help others to get a “wow” experience every day.
Pros
The best part is that I make people smile and raise the confidence of the teachers and students when they realize that there is a lot they can do.
Cons
The worst part is that there are many working hours in a week and you need to keep yourself updated all the time since there are new things available and happening every single day.
