Work analysis — school year 17/18

So, it’s time once again to sum up the work year on this last day before vacation. Have I managed to accomplish anything, or am I just wasted taxpayer money? The last question is probably for someone else to answer. But the short answer is that I’m pretty satisfied with the year and that I’ve reached the goals I set for myself, given the little time I had.

With an upcoming (already here) curriculum revision, digitalization strategy, GDPR, a new school platform (grades, schedules, database, etc.), a new IT contract, an IT coordinator (my colleague) who left in the middle of the term so I had to take on some of that work, and a lot more, I feel calm and have laid a good foundation for all of this. Below are some numbers showing how I spent my working time in percent.

Numbers 17/18 - top 9

17.56% (approx. 7 hrs/wk) - Paddfix (down from 26.5% HT17 to 8.64% VT18)
17.48% (approx. 7 hrs/wk) - Internal and external meetings / External visitors / Conferences (remained stable over the year)
12.68% (approx. 5 hrs/wk) - Course creation / Development / Makerspace (up from 9.8% HT17 to 15.54% VT18)
12.22% (approx. 4.9 hrs/wk) - BER / Grades / School web (fairly stable over the year)
11.97% (approx. 4.8 hrs/wk) - Web / Server (up from 8% HT17 to 15.96% VT18)
7.17% (approx. 2.9 hrs/wk) - Helpdesk / Support (fairly stable over the year)
7.07% (approx. 2.8 hrs/wk) - Own continuing education / professional development (up from 2.8% HT17 to 15.54% VT18)
4.6% (approx. 1.8 hrs/wk) - Media production (fairly stable over the year)
1.59% (approx. 0.6 hrs/wk) - Planning (fairly stable over the year)
I have also on average worked one extra hour every week, which is a decent average in my flex-time world.

My focus areas 17/18 have been to

Create opportunities for staff professional development, where Kursportalen is up and running with about 1,500 course participants and courses that cover the basics of programming for grades 0–9 but also other topics
Kick off Open Lab, which is a physical space with courses or just networking. There were too few sessions, but unfortunately time wasn’t enough.
Make sure to bring structure to and find new routines and workflows for the introduced parts of Skolplattformen
Build (yes, by hand :) ) a makerspace and quietly get that activity started
Streamline parts of the operation by, for example, introducing a Helpdesk system for admin/service
Learn Python and create courses in it

Failures — things to consider

I don’t think I’ve failed in any particular area, but there’s always a feeling of wanting to have been able to do more of everything. Time simply hasn’t been enough, which actually means I haven’t managed to prioritize well enough. And that in itself is a failure. There’s always time, but you can’t do everything. I still find the meetings/visits/conferences item alarmingly high, despite having worked hard to cut it. In the autumn I’ll probably introduce a pot system, where I allocate a number of slots per week.

Exciting future 18/19

Since we’ve hired a new IT coordinator we’ve also taken the opportunity to refine the roles quite a bit. This means the IT coordinator, in short, will take care of all infrastructure like hardware, projectors, AV equipment, networks, etc., and that in turn means I can drop some of the larger items (although I’ll take on a few new ones) and focus more on the actual IT-pedagogical part and development work. To support the staff even more. To create more courses. To expand our support. To develop more services. To create more meeting places. To simply be able to do a good job. :) I’m roughly calculating that I can triple my output, so hopefully a lot more things will get done next year. We’ll just have to see if that holds! It feels incredibly exciting and full of anticipation. But first… vacation! Have a great summer!