SOSD employee wins gold service award
Danielle Williamsmcgee, who serves as the Technology Integration Specialist and Data Management Coordinator for the Starkville Oktibbeha School District, has been selected as one of the three recipients for the 2022 International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Presidential Gold Service Award.
The Presidential Gold Service Award was founded in 2003 to recognize the important role of volunteers in America's strength and national identity. This award honors individuals whose service positively impacts communities in every corner of the nation and inspires those around them to take action as well.
Mcgee has been in educational technology for a little over 20 years, getting her initial start at Mississippi State University working with their Academic Outreach, Continuing Education, and Distance Learning programs. Mcgee later worked as an educational technologist for a local company, Synergetics Diversified Computer Services, providing training and facilitation services throughout the South for schools and businesses. She has been with Starkville Schools since 2012, briefly serving Family-centered Programs as the Career Counselor and serving the Technology Department as the Technology Integration Specialist and Data Management Coordinator and an unofficial technician when needed.
“I am truly humbled to have been selected as the first Mississippian to serve as an ISTE Community Leader several years ago and to now be recognized nationally for the work that I do as an educational technology professional. It is also a testament of the longtime dedication and commitment of the technology team of the Starkville Oktibbeha Consolidated School District,” Megee said.
Mcgee has presented at several conferences and served on a number of committees such as ISTE, the Mississippi Educational Computing Association (MECA), and SMART Ambassadors. Mcgee has also most recently worked part-time as a Business Analyst and Learning Technologies Administra
tor for the Harvard Business School located in Boston.
In 2015, Mcgee was the first Mississippian selected to attend the SEE Summit held in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, an educational mentoring event held for educators and technology enthusiasts from several countries across the world. She was invited to return as a mentor in 2017 to present a session titled “Preparing All Children for a Productive Future,” and was awarded the SEE Summit Mentor Award.
Mcgee has also served as a MECA presenter and most recently as an ISTE conference and Expert Webinar series presenter, and Edge Podcast co-host. She closed out the 2022 year with over 900 registered guests as
ISTE'S final presenter and Twitter Chat guest, with her “Put Me in Coach: An Unofficial Guide to Instructional Coaching” presentation. The video and resources for that presentation can be viewed at www.iste.org.
A Starkville High School alumna, Mcgee began working to provide many advancements to the students, staff, and parents through several processes and procedures she had successfully used in
other districts throughout the southeast. In an effort to prepare students for instructional delivery methods they would use in higher education or other career pathways outside of K12, Mcgee began working to set up online learning management systems in 2018, which allowed our district to easily pivot into online learning during the most critical points of the pandemic in 2020.