Looking around campus, staff can be found lecturing students or zooming around in a golf cart. One less visible but still integral staff member is Erik Briggs, San Marin’s Technology Support Technician. Briggs is a San Marin alumnus who graduated in 2007 and is now a Mustang staff member. He has worked in Novato Unified for 10 years.
“It feels good to support [the San Marin] community and the school that I went to, there are even some teachers that are here that I had and I always enjoy supporting them,” Briggs said.
Briggs manages to stay up to date on new issues that occur as the school modernizes its technology through the years.
“In my department, we have a lot of training that goes on. There is something called CITE, California IT in Education, and that is a good resource to see what trends are happening,” Briggs said.
AP European History teacher Robert Watson appreciates Briggs’ expertise and his contribution to making the school function.
“As [the school] has moved towards being more of a technology base, having somebody we can always go to, to help with broken Chromebooks, with internet troubles, is just such a help and so key to making this [school] work,” Watson said.
While many teachers, such as math teacher Kimberly Laabs, consider themselves to be very experienced with technology, there are things they still struggle with.
“I don’t consider myself [opposed to technology]… I’m pretty good with technology but there are a lot of times I just get totally stuck… [Mr.Briggs] responds quickly, he really thinks how important it is for the staff to get quick and quality help,” Laabs said.
Briggs’ most enjoyable part of the job is supporting students and staff who are most interested in what he does and how it can benefit them the most.
“My favorite part of doing my job is probably the students and teachers, and staff in general, who really get interested in what technology can do for them and are eager to learn…. In a way, I help people learn how technology can make their jobs easier,” Briggs said.
While Briggs has been working at San Marin for three years, he still deals with challenging discussions that come with the job.
“The hardest part of my job is when I have to tell people ‘no’ to things like if they want administrator access to their machine. We can’t do that for insurance reasons, so sometimes there’s some difficult conversations that I have to have,” Briggs said.
