Educational Technology and Life has moved:
Visit edtechlife.com for new content.

Compensation for Educational Technologists

Written in response to a colleague's post, this touches on the issue of compensation for educational technology specialists which came up earlier in the week...

Our Librarian/Technology "GURU" works on mostly hardware, library automation, website updates... She is one of our most valuable resources. In fact I was speaking to another teacher and we want to show her how much we appreciate her with a special luncheon. I think she deserves more, but it will let her know how much we care. She is considered a teacher's assistant on the pay scale. That is about $6.50 an hour in a Catholic school.

On one hand, your school is very lucky to have someone like that on board. On the other hand it seems almost criminal to be paying her so little. Could something be done to change this?

I suppose, though, that it is no different than allowing a parent to donate time to the school... or to maintaining it's website. This could apply to the issue of teachers working too hard as well... one could see this as them doing their job well, and also volunteering for the school.

Something I have seen often in the past few years (and been a part of myself) is that when a faculty or staff member (or administrator for that matter) develops an expertise that is out of the ordinary and becomes very valuable to the school, he or she is soon enticed to work elsewhere (for more money or greater opportunity). Is there any way to help schools build the capacity to keep key team members aboard (without requiring that they volunteer their time and skills)?

-Mark