Vice President of Product Development for Co-nect schools

Hot Jobs presents

August 23, 2000

Janet Dracksdorf, Vice President of Product Development for Co-nect schools, answers questions about training and educating teachers to integrate the internet and other new technology into their schools.

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HotJobs: Welcome to Hotjobs.com's bi-weekly event! We're glad you're here, because that means you're ready to take control of your career. Tonight, we'll be talking to Janet Dracksdorf, Vice President of Product Development for Co-nect schools, for a chat with HotJobs.com--and you -- about training in the information age. Also discussed will be meanings of some of the new job titles out there. Welcome!

Janet Dracksdorf: I'm happy to be here tonight. Co-nect is an Internet education company doing research for schools on how to integrate technology and learning. I'm happy to be here, and I will do my best to answer your questions.

AriesRising: How can you make a resume for teaching seem spiffier than just credentials? Something that would be interest catching.

Janet Dracksdorf: I think the ability to show some work beyond just classroom teaching, whether that's curriculum development, some sort of leadership within the school or school district, some professional activity within an organization outside the school itself--a teacher's association--or curriculum organization around curriculum or technology, would make a resume stand out from the pile, so to speak.

Anne: It seems that you can't get by without having some advanced knowledge of computers these days. How will colleges and universities prepare their students for these new challenges? For example, if a person's major is English and they want to go on to teach HS, will there be some kind of computer related course work that they will have to complete to earn their degree?

Janet Dracksdorf: I think that varies from institution to institution, but more and more, we see universities building in some computer component to most majors. One program where we recruit a lot of people here at Co-nect is a Master's Degree in Technology in Education, which, obviously, integrates the two very closely. We are seeing these kinds of programs more and more. For our company, which combines education with technology, we are interested in people who bring a combination of education with a technology background. If someone can show they've done technology course work or otherwise picked up some technology skills, it makes their whole skill set more valuable.

Anne: With today's ever changing technology market, how are classroom teachers able to keep their students up-to-date with the most current information?

Janet Dracksdorf: Access to the Internet, obviously, gives people and teachers access to information. The role of the teacher then becomes staying on top of resources, maybe even more than specific information, and being able to guide students in appropriate resources and appropriate use of the technology in a fast-changing market.

Anne: What prompted you to leave teaching to focus on Education Training?

Janet Dracksdorf: I only taught for two years, early on in my career. I really had an interest in both education and business, and I had an opportunity to take on a publishing job in education. I have moved through a sort of unusual path, I suppose, from traditional textbook publishing before technology was really an issue, let alone widespread. I moved from there to the development side, developing education technology materials. From there, managing development and training groups that are working with companies and teachers, to help them make sense of the technology, learn how to use the technology, and make sensible use of it in their teaching.

Vb1: What information do you have regarding teaching credentials?

Janet Dracksdorf: I'm not sure what you're referring to specifically, but within New Economy companies, we'd be looking for people who have a Master's degree and considerable (five years minimum) experience in the classroom.

Cherryz: How do I catagorize my resume to get the most important info they are looking for accessible and impressive?

Janet Dracksdorf: I would say probably the most important thing is to start with your skills and maybe have a couple of categories at the top, stating where your strengths lie. Then follow with some of the job history. It's relatively easy to read through job listings and job responsibilities, but what really would stand out is to highlight particular skills, particularly things that go beyond what one might consider to be standard expected skills. These might include leadership, with an example of something someone has worked on where they were in a leadership role, teamwork certainly, training experience, or writing--these are all skills that stand out. Another thing that might be good is interpersonal skills--the ability to work with a variety of people. Co-Nect is an organization that provides consulting services and resources to educators who are interested in integrating technology into teaching and learning. We work with two kinds of schools in two kinds of ways. One, schools that are undergoing comprehensive school reform, which is to say they are low performing, in desperate need of help, and really under pressure to turn around their student results, we will come in and provide a kind of turnkey solution for them to address organizational issues, curriculum issues, and technology issues. We try to integrate the technology and project-based learning into the work we do to turn the school around. We also work with schools that are not underperforming, but are looking for professional resources to help them take advantage of the technology in their schools. It's not uncommon for us to hear the school district say they have been able to purchase or fund a substantial amount of technology infrastructure - computers, video conferencing--yet the teachers are not particularly well prepared to deal with this technology or make appropriate and productive use of it in their teaching. That's where we come in. We work with them and provide online resources and professional development to help them make the most of their technology. In terms of the kind of people we employ, it's largely educators in a few kinds of roles. We have a very large field group that is made up primarily of former teachers who are school consultants--i.e. a training role, a mentor role, a change agent role. They each work with a number of schools to help them implement our program and lead their schools to success. These are people who come out of the classroom, ideally who have potentially some training background and an interest and a personality suited to working with groups of people, sometimes in difficult situations, and being a facilitator. We also have education people who work in our product development group who work on the curriculum side--writing and preparing training workshops, working with teachers to prepare curriculum material and projects, and who work with teachers to get input and feedback on materials and programs that we are running. We actually have job listings on hotjobs for a number of openings, if anyone is interested.

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