Congratulations, it’s a new school year and you are about to walk into the new term as an Instructional Technology Coach.  
The first thing that usually goes through your mind is a ton of questions.

What is a Tech Coach?
What does my school district think a tech coach is?
How will my staff find me and my thoughts and ideas?

What is most important to any Tech Coach is the ability to hit the ground running on the first day.  
But how do you do this?
There are many blog posts that agree that the most important thing that you need when starting your school year is an open mind and the ability to make positive relationships?  I absolutely agree that strong working relationships are the key to any successful Instructional Technology program.
But what can we do before we meet our staff members?  
The best thing that we can do when we meet our staff members is to be completely engaged in their needs and be ready to meet their challenges hand in hand.  Your role as an Instructional Technology Coach is to make the teachers life a little bit easier and the only way you can do this is if you walk into the new school year with these three things neatly tucked into your back pocket.
1) Instructional Technology Website
When starting off the school year, it’s important to have an organized collection of resources from which you can not only deploy at a moment’s notice but share with your staff when they are seeking support.  
When planning your website, it’s important to remember that you are creating this website for your teachers and NOT for yourself.  You don’t want to make the mistake of creating the perfect website that you adore but is not useful and friendly to your teachers.
When planning your website, think about the low hanging fruit in your district and ask yourself if THEY will be able to find what they need when you send them a link to your resource site.
Here are a few options from which you can build your resource website
WordPress
Over the last few years, WordPress has grown into a pretty amazing platform. So much so, that WordPress as an online environment now incorporates more than 29% of the entire internet.  
So why not use it for your Tech Coach website?
For many, it’s simply overkill.  Too many things moving around and too much time to keep it all organized with its many plugins and website themes.  However, if you are looking to use WordPress for your Tech Coach blog, then here are some solutions that you might be interested in.
For more information about WordPress, check out our online resources today.
Edublogs
If you are seeking a very easy to learn WordPress solution, I strongly suggest checking out EduBlogs.  Hosting more than 4 MILLION educational websites, it’s one of the easiest and safest ways to create your home blog, or your tech coach website.
WordPress.com
A few years ago, I wouldn’t consider sharing WordPress.com on a review post such as this.  However, recently, the mighty home of all things WP has grown up greatly.  For free, WordPress.com has several free themes and options available for using the world's most popular web platform.  

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