Picture of Regina Barrett reading: K-12 Technology Integration Specialist, Office of Education Technology: "The thing I love most about this job is helping good people do good work for the students of the Commonwealth."

Regina Barrett is one of the two Kentucky K-12 integration specialists in the Kentucky Department of Education’s (KDE’s) Office of Education Technology. She has been in this position since August of 2014.

Before she was hired, the Woodford County native worked as the information manager at Kentucky Emergency Management (KYEM.)

When Barrett joined KDE in 2014, she wanted to combine her interest in education and her work experience in information technology (IT.)

“I got my bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Eastern Kentucky University,” she said. “So, originally, I came to KDE so I could combine the IT work I had been doing at KYEM with my original field of study.”

Within the Division of School Technology Services, Barrett provides strategies to introduce new technologies, facilitate adoption, drive ease of use and ensure supportability for education technologies for schools, districts and KDE.

“To sum up what Beth Gravett and I both do, we make sure KDE staff are able to best utilize the digital toolbox available to them to do their jobs efficiently and effectively,” she said.

Alongside her daily responsibilities, Barrett is involved in the lives of students who participate in KDE’s Student Technology Leadership Program (STLP). Barrett runs the Code Lab at the STLP state championship, which is an opportunity for students to try block coding activities in a hands-on lab experience.

“Code Lab includes robots that don’t require strong literacy skills,” she said. “This is a great way to introduce young students to coding.”

Code Lab also has a service category, where Barrett gets to work with middle and high school students who assist in teaching younger students about the concepts in coding lab.

“This service category, the Block Code Crew, gives older students an opportunity to try their hand at teaching coding,” she said.

Barrett’s favorite part of her job is like many other employees’ at KDE: the people.

“The thing I love most about this job is helping good people do good work for the students of the Commonwealth,” she said. “There are so many people here at KDE who care deeply for the impact of their work, and they make it easy to love it here.”

Barrett lives in Versailles with her husband Justin and their dog Dora. She enjoys traveling to her family’s farm to work with the horses and spend time with her parents, two brothers, a niece and a nephew.