Samantha is part of the Customer Success Team, see just what that means, her favourite piece of EdTech and just what it is that she does for schools…

What is your role at Elementary Technology and how did you get here?

I work alongside Multi-Academy Trusts, maintaining and building long-lasting relationships. Since joining, my role has developed to further encapsulate Elementary Technology’s vision to help provide better education.

I come from a strong sales background, and this has helped within my current role, as I enjoy meeting new people. This has been a great position for me as since having my son, helping children in education and helping them learn and develop is very important to me.

How do you help schools with EdTech?

I help Multi-Academy Trusts utilise their technology to improve learning outcomes. I do this by helping them understand where they’re at, what they’ve got, what they need and then helping them use technology to deliver better education. This also aids in helping the Multi-Academy trust to understand, at a granular level, their technology and training needs.

I also help schools to prioritise and strategically plan their IT development centrally. I help them achieve this by arranging their training sessions with our Training Manager, Frazer Williams! This helps ensure they get the most out of their brand new EdTech.

What’s your favourite part of the job?

My favourite part of the job has to be when I get to see the incredible impact that we have on the schools that we work with. Honestly, hearing we have truly made a difference from the school or the schools that we have worked with, it just makes me proud to know we really are helping out.

 What’s your biggest challenge?

I would have to say that the biggest challenge that I will often face, is during that original first call, trying to build up trust with schools and academies. They’re always a little bit wary of the person on the other end of the phone, which I completely understand! But once that trust has been built, it is such an amazing feeling to be able to help that school or academy.

What is your favourite piece of EdTech?

For me, this would be the Get Set Go training portal. We don’t just sell the schools hardware; we are part of the journey from start to finish. I find the most important thing is getting the basics right, and by using our training portal teachers can get themselves up to date with the basics and then build on their knowledge at their own pace as it’s all teacher-focused training. It helps teachers with everything they need to know (and that little bit more) to get started.

If you could give one piece of advice to a teacher using EdTech for the first time, what would it be?

Make sure that you set aside some time to get used to it, so you feel confident when you are using it. Teachers are incredibly busy and sometimes the thought of dedicating some time aside to try to learn all about this new piece of technology in your room and really get to grips with it so you feel confident enough to deliver lessons on it can be incredibly daunting.

My advice would be to make sure that you set a little bit of time aside as soon as you can, go at your own pace and do what you feel comfortable with and you’ll be surprised at how many time-saving things there are e.g. live assessment marking (no more taking big heavy books back home etc.)

What do you get up to outside of work?

I’m very family orientated and enjoy the simple things. My son, Frankie keeps me very busy, but I still find the time to go to the gym and enjoy time out with friends and family.