The MySTL Catalyst School’s program is designed to enhance a school’s info-culture by including students as legitimate and powerful drivers of ICT in the school. See the “Student-Centered Model” page on this site for detailed information on how a student-centered solutions solve many problems with ICT in the schools.

Once both phases of the MySTL Catalyst Schools program have been implemented, the school will see significant change in how ICT is used in schools. The following points highlight some benefits to the school’s info-culture:

• Sustainability: A school’s ICT knowledge base is expanded to include more teachers and more students. This prevents an ICT “black hole” from developing whenever teachers leave the school or whenever new technology is introduced.

• Frequent Professional Development: For a variety of reasons, new technology in a school often goes under-used. MySTL students can investigate the availability in a school and hold short professional development sessions to educate the teachers on how to use this technology. Students can even suggest ways available technology could be used in the classroom; you never know where a good idea will come from! Additionally, MySTLs can come to a class and teach the class how to use a particular piece of technology so that the subject area teacher does not have that additional burden.

• Increase in ICT infused Resources: Students can assist teachers by creating or maintaining class blogs, constructing presentations, creating tutorial videos, or searching the web for other resources. This saves a teacher time and, over time, can have a dramatic impact on the number of ICT resources used in the classroom as these resources are shared amongst teachers.

• Hardware and Technical Support: Technicians in the school can enlist student support in helping maintain the infrastructure. Often, there is always too much to do and students can be used to do routine maintenance on machines, fix minor bugs, upgrade software etc. Students can do anything with the right guidance and the MySTL program provides a systematic method to ensure that students are contributing in a meaningful, structured way.

• Reporting: The MySTL program provides real-time reporting on the projects being done by students as well as the ways teachers are using ICT in their classrooms. This is done online and, overtime, provides great insight into the school’s info-culture. These reports can be shown to administrators or parents, can help ensure new technology is being frequently used, and to show the ways teachers and students prefer to use available technology. Please download the document on the “TechYES and GenYES Research” page for a detailed description of the reporting tools included in this program.