User:Tjjteacher/sandbox

Introduction
This Wikipedia Sandbox article is presented by way of a covering letter for the role of Community Capacity Manager, as advertised on the Wikimedia Foundation’s website. It has been created by the British school teacher Tim Jefferis.

Tim Jefferis has been a teacher in various British independent schools since 1999. He has always harboured an interest in technology, and particularly in the use of technology in the classroom. This post, therefore, holds particular appeal for him.

Collaborative pedagogy
In his current role as Deputy Headteacher he has capitalised on significant opportunities to drive forward innovation. Under his direction, Oswestry School became a Google Apps for Education school back in 2012 – a transition that he blogged about at the time. His own teaching is infused with Web 2.0 technologies and he has always been an enthusiastic champion of working openly and collaboratively. For example, his use of RealtimeBoard to supplement more conventional teaching methods, and to introduce very high levels of collaboration within the classroom, has been picked up upon by educators from around the world.

Finance & management
In working in a small independent school, with an extremely international pupil body, he has a deeper grasp of marketing and financial management than do most teachers. At the last count, Oswestry School was home to pupils from 22 different nations. Thus Tim Jefferis, who plays a major role in admissions and recruitment, is well accustomed to working internationally, across different time zones, and with customers from very different socio-cultural backgrounds. With direct responsibility for all the academic budgets in the school, and involvement in financial decision making alongside the school governors his ability to find effective workarounds in situations with limited resources derives as much from experience as it does from theory.

Digital team building
He has demonstrated his suitability for working in a fast-moving digital environment, such as that found at Wikimedia Foundation, through his management of Oswestry's intranet. This intranet, known as 'OsNet' to employees, has been created using Google Sites and now possesses several hundred pages. Tim Jefferis saw the project through from its inception.He manages and copy-edits the site, controls editing permissions and marshals a geographically dispersed workforce - spread across two sites - as they work collaboratively in carrying out their daily tasks.

Additionally, he regularly runs drop-in sessions for staff and pupils to help them manage their workflow online. He leads a team of 'Digital Champions' who further disseminate best practice across the organisation. As an illustration of his technical expertise, various scripts run off OsNet. For example, there is a script that sends an e-mail reminder to staff who are on duty, whilst another that sends out a daily digest of announcements posted on the digital message board. Tim Jefferis harnessed the power the internet to teach himself how to write code in Google Apps Script - clear evidence of his ability to indulge in bootstrapping. As would be expected of someone who embraces the open source ethic so enthusiastically, all his teaching resources are posted online for all to use and to share, as are all of Oswestry School's policies.

Strategic thinking
Tim Jefferis supplements his expertise in various forms of online learning with all the more conventional managerial and leadership skills that would be expected from someone holding a senior position within a school. He is regularly called upon to deputise for the Headmaster in the fullest sense of that word. Here he has experience of acting in the capacity of CEO, with all the responsibility that such a position entails. In this vein, Tim Jefferis drew up the school’s academic development plan. He also had major input in drawing up all the school's other development plans a task that drew heavily on his skills as a project manager in a workplace that, like the Wikimedia Foundation, needs to be fleet of foot and responsive to change.

Community involvement
Added to the skills listed above, Tim Jefferis is an accomplished public speaker. He was recently invited to speak alongside Sir Anthony Seldon, one of the UK’s most famous educators, in a debate about the ethics of private education. In organising and running Shropshire’s first TeachMeet last year, he was able to capitalise on his strength as an orator, whilst also helping to disseminate best practice across the West Midlands. He also recently hosted a major conference on Medical Education, at which teachers and pupils from 12 schools across the region came to hear senior medical professionals talk about their careers. The conference was advertised on BBC Radio 2 and received rave reviews in the local press. Indeed, he regularly involves himself in outreach activities with other schools, with local teachers and with the members of the local community. Another recent example of this being a debate on the UK’s place in Europe – an event that was very well attended by people not immediately connected to the school as well as by our local member of parliament, The Right Honorable Owen Paterson.

Reasearch & social media
Throughout his career he has made concerted efforts to engage with the political and professional discourse surrounding education. He has had several articles published in the professional press, has completed an MSc in Educational Leadership. Having been fortunate always to have worked in establishments with generous staff training budgets, has enjoyed a rich and varied diet of professional development courses over the years. His latest project has been the completion of a professional doctorate. He is currently in the closing stages of this, writing up his thesis on the use of Twitter by senior leaders in schools. This research has led him to start writing his own blog (tjjteacher.com) and engage more deeply with various online communities.

Concluding remarks
Tim Jefferis' commitment to open working, to education, and to internationalism, makes him ideally suited to the position of Community Capacity Manager at the Wikimedia Foundation. He admires all that the organisation stands for. The open, free and collaborative model of information dissemination it champions is exactly what Tim Berners-Lee had in mind for his creation.

Tim Jefferis would relish the opportunity to further the Wikimedia Foundation’s goals by coming to work for the organisation.