It is Beautifully Rewarding to Use Technology to Give Back to My Community

One example is Fond du Lac Community, which I originally created as a proof of concept based on an issue I encountered through my work as a School Resource Officer.

As an SRO, I believe accountability is an important part of helping young people recognize the consequences of their actions and, ultimately, steering them toward a successful path.

However, I observed a significant problem with the way financial consequences could affect students and their families. In many cases, the financial burden associated with a citation ultimately fell upon the student's parent or guardian rather than the student. For some families, that burden was significant. For others, the family simply could not afford the associated fine.

That created a serious gap in accountability. A student could become desensitized to the consequence because someone else was responsible for paying it, or because the family did not have the ability to pay it in the first place.

For numerous years, I advocated for restoring meaningful community-service opportunities as an alternative form of accountability for students whose behavior warranted citations.

Fond du Lac had previously discontinued a community-service program because of legitimate and important liability concerns. When a limited version of community service was eventually brought back, another problem remained. Students and their families were largely responsible for finding their own community-service opportunities. There was no centralized resource listing potential organizations, and no standardized system for documenting or tracking completed hours.

I created Fond du Lac Community as a proof of concept to demonstrate how technology could help fill that gap.

The concept was designed so that a private organization or nonprofit could potentially take over the project at no cost, or use it as inspiration to create its own system.

Today, a local nonprofit organization has taken the initiative and is working toward implementing its own version of the concept, incorporating additional suggestions developed through conversations with me and other community stakeholders.

The concept was also intentionally designed with student privacy in mind. The system does not collect student-identifying information and is structured to respect FERPA considerations, with responsibility for maintaining individual records and documentation remaining with the appropriate individual rather than creating a centralized student database.

For me, the website was never about building a website for the sake of building one. It was about asking a simple question: is there a better way to solve this problem?

Another example is School Safety Guider, which I created with the hope of helping the thousands of educators and school staff who train every year for active-shooter and critical-incident response.

As a member of the Fond du Lac School District Crisis Response Team, I have made a deliberate effort to continually learn about active-shooter response, critical-incident response, school safety, and emergency preparedness. I have also worked to continually improve our district-wide techniques, drills, audits, and educational efforts from year to year.

One thing that repeatedly stood out to me was the enormous amount of information available on school safety.

Our teachers and staff are incredibly dedicated, accomplished, and highly educated professionals. Yet across the country, there remains a challenge when it comes to taking the many guidelines, studies, standards, policies, recommendations, and white papers surrounding critical-incident response and turning them into information that is simple, concise, accessible, and easy to remember.

That matters because emergencies are not ordinary circumstances.

During periods of extreme stress, the human body can alter how we process information and prioritize sensory input. At the same time, school staff may be responsible for students, classrooms, communication, accountability, lockdown procedures, reunification considerations, and countless other responsibilities.

I wanted to create something that could help simplify that information.

School Safety Guider was created as an accessible resource for school staff to use during their everyday training and preparation, while also providing clear direction that can be quickly accessed during a crisis.

The ultimate goal is simple: help keep educators trained, help keep students safe, and help keep communities prepared.

School Monitor was created to address another relatively simple but important problem: managing school bell times, passing periods, and hallway monitoring.

The web application provides school staff and School Resource Officers with an easy way to see the current educational period or block, how much instructional time remains, and how much time remains during hallway passing periods.

While the concept is simple, the underlying issue is important.

Hallway monitoring is not simply about making sure students are where they are supposed to be. Consistent truancy and time spent outside the classroom can become both an educational and a safety concern.

When students regularly miss class, they miss valuable instruction. When students are consistently unaccounted for or spending excessive amounts of time outside their assigned areas, that can also create additional safety and accountability concerns.

School Monitor was my attempt to make that process simpler, more visible, and easier for the adults responsible for maintaining a safe and productive school environment.

Not every project has to solve a major community problem. Some are simply about creating something fun.

Cribology is an example of a web application I created around the game of cribbage. The purpose was much simpler: provide an easy way for people to play, connect, relax, and enjoy some friendly competition.

I believe those things matter too.

Technology can be used to solve serious problems, but it can also create opportunities for bonding, recreation, relaxation, and positive social interaction. Sometimes giving back simply means creating something that gives people an opportunity to have fun together.

Whatever the website or application, the underlying reason is usually the same.

I see something that could work better. I see an organization that could benefit from technology but may not have the resources to invest thousands of dollars into developing it. I see a process that is unnecessarily complicated. Or I simply have an idea that I believe could help. So I build it.

Some projects remain proofs of concept. Some inspire others to create their own solutions. Some may eventually become fully implemented resources, and some are simply experiments that demonstrate what is possible.

I do not build these projects because I expect something in return. I build them because I believe that skills are most valuable when they can be used to help other people.

In many cases, these projects have been provided completely free of charge. On the rare occasions when I have charged for work, it has generally been at substantially below what comparable professional development would cost.

That is intentional.

Every community has people who contribute their time, money, talents, experience, or physical labor to make it better. This is one of the ways I have found to contribute.

I may not be able to solve every problem in my community. But if I can use technology, creativity, and the skills I have developed to make even one process easier, help one organization preserve resources, give one community group a tool it otherwise could not afford, or help one person find a better solution to a problem, then the work is worth doing.