NORMAL, Ill. (WMBD) — McLean County Unit 5 School District took the unsung heroes of a modern education system out to lunch as a way to show their appreciation.
Tuesday, Sept. 16 is National IT Professional Day, where people around the country celebrate the people who work behind the scenes to make sure all of the technology works correctly.
Unit 5 made a special post honoring those workers and all they do for their schools.
“We make everything happen, everything from when you go to logging into your computer to keeping your computer and everything on the Internet safe, to being able to access data and be able to pull up information or just going about the educational curriculum. We are all part of it. Whether or not you were there or not,” said Daniel Zobel, director of technology for the school district.
The district also dropped off donuts to the IT workers and plans to go to lunch to celebrate the day and work on team building.
Over the summer, the IT department installed 800 new display panels to replace the smartboards and projectors to make teaching even easier. This new panel will also allow students to learn in new ways.
It will also make it easier for the IT workers to perform maintenance on the displays without disturbing class and to keep the learning at full speed.
“We just made it so that as everybody goes through their day, they are accessing their technology as seamless as possible. That way, as all of our techs and everybody here inside of our department, they can go about it and just kind of silently go behind the scenes, be able to help and support all the teachers, all the students, and make it so that the education inside of the district can happen,” Zobel said.
The department services 24 different buildings within the district, and does so with only 18 workers, each playing a critical part in the tech puzzle they work with every day.
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