Wicked Problem Project: Part A
In my six years as a teacher, I have noticed that the demands of this career have increased steadily over time. Every year I am expected to complete more paperwork, address an increasing number of student needs, get more hours of training/education, communicate more thoroughly with parents, etc., while still accomplishing my regular daily teaching tasks. Yet, while the demands on my time rapidly increase, the number of hours in a day remains the same.
In other words, while the expectations of teachers grow constantly, we still have the same limited amount of time to accomplish these items while simultaneously lesson-planning, grading, learning from student data, and so on. Thus, a major educational problem is that teachers lack time.
Increasingly effective communication with parents/guardians and students is another key requirement of teachers. However, making 200 phone calls daily is impossible and often weekly newsletters are problematic due to the ever-changing nature of lesson plans and the heightened demand on schools to cut back on paper and mailing costs.
Parents/guardians and students generally want to know what is happening in our classes daily and, specifically, what homework or practice is expected of the student for that day or week. In our district, “Homework Hotlinks”, or teacher websites that are basically snapshots of Word documents edited on a weekly basis, are the suggested solution to this problem.
While the “Homework Hotlink” does provide a place for teachers to communicate with those at home about daily tasks, the format leaves much to be desired. For one, teachers are limited to including only one week’s tasks at a time. Also, teachers have to create new documents for each separate course that they teach. When the daily plan is altered due to new developments in class or unexpected changes in the schedule (snow days, for example), this means the teacher has to then find time to edit the documents or leave them as-is, inaccurate and no longer useful. This is a drain on time, provides limited information, and does not offer much in terms of interactivity/user-friendly format.
As a potential solution to the problems of teacher, parent/guardian, and student communication and the increasingly limited amount of time teachers have available to them, my colleague, Abbie, and I suggest the following:
Abbie will train teachers on Weebly so that they can create their own websites easily and quickly--including separate pages within their sites for each course they teach. Meanwhile I will teach them how to use Google Calendar. Together we will show our colleagues how to embed customized links to their calendars on Weebly for each of their classes. 
Google Calendar will allow teachers to manage multiple courses simultaneously, quickly make adjustments when needed from any computer that has Internet access, show their entire year’s-worth of assignments, and, if they choose, divide the task of posting to Google Calendar among their department to easily collaborate, edit, and unify their lessons.
We believe that this two-fold training will help save teachers time overall, allow them to easily share common tasks/plans for courses, and provide a more user-friendly, accessible, and interactive method of communicating with students and those at home.
We have already begun to implement this plan with five colleagues in our school. This represents the beta-testing group of our initiative. Based on how these teachers react and interact with Weebly and Google Calendar, we will then be able to plan a broader, building-wide training initiative. It is our hope that those who are currently in training will then be able to assist others with trouble-shooting as they begin this process. Ideally, by the end of this school year we will be able to train at least half of our staff (roughly 15 people) in these technologies. Additional training could then take place during our summer/fall 2011 orientation to get everyone up-to-speed in time for the start of the next school year. This would enable us to start the 2011-2012 school year with a fully renovated “Homework Hotlink” system in place that should prove more effective for all parties involved.
Also, in 2011-2012, students and parents/guardians could then be trained on Google Calendar so that they can easily click on a teacher’s calendar and have those tasks instantly embedded into their own, personal calendars. If embraced by enough students, this fully integrated personal class/task calendar could essentially replace our current paper-based “Student Agenda” system (saving resources such as paper, printing costs, etc.) and enable students and those at home to see daily/weekly tasks at a glance with minimal extra effort required.
On an even larger scale, we are hoping that our efforts in our building will prove effective enough that these same tools would be embraced district-wide so that a seamless system of communication would be present from building to building and from the classroom to district-level.
Regardless of how much this training is able to be spread, we will consider this project successful if we are able to: decrease the amount of time teachers spend in maintaining their class sites/calendars (Homework Hotlink), improve the communication that teachers have with parents/guardians and students, and alter the perception of our school’s Homework Hotlink system (i.e. users will note that the new system is more user-friendly, more useful overall, a better format in general, etc.).The following are links to relevant research and resources regarding Google Calendar and its use as a communication tool for teachers specifically or in professional settings in general:
PRINT SOURCES:
Adams, D. C. (2008). Gaga for Google in the Twenty-First Century Advanced Placement Language Classroom. The Clearing House, 82(2), 96-100. Heldref Publications. Retrieved from http://heldref.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&id=doi:10.3200/TCHS.82.2.96-100
Claburn, Thomas. "New York Schools Get Google Apps Option." InformationWeek 1282 (2010): 22. General OneFile. Web. 5 Feb. 2011.
Feddern-Bekcan, Tanya. "Google Calendar." Journal of the Medical Library Association 96.4 (2008): 394+. Academic OneFile. Web. 5 Feb. 2011.
Hargadon, Steve. "Mind the time: busy? Online tools can help you manage that schedule." School Library Journal 55.6 (2009): 19. Educator's Reference Complete. Web. 5 Feb. 2011.
WEB RESOURCES:
Online Calendars: Virtual Schedules Help Busy Educators
Google Calendar/Apps Pros & Cons (Collection of Links on a Wiki)
http://teachweb2.wikispaces.com/Google+Calendar
Gives links to articles that present strengths, weaknesses, challenges, Opportunities, Threats, and some examples of uses in the classroom.
http://teachweb2.wikispaces.com/Google+Calendar
Gives links to articles that present strengths, weaknesses, challenges, Opportunities, Threats, and some examples of uses in the classroom.
http://edutraining.googleapps.com/
Specific Module for Calendar
http://edutraining.googleapps.com/Training-Home/module-3-calendar
4 comments:
I think this idea is fabulous. I have a weebly website that I use and love it because it is so user friendly. When you are training your staff are you training one-on-one or do you have some sort of tutorial for them to follow? One of the teachers in my building created a how-to-guide with screen shots for a program that we use called ExamView and it was very helpful and it something to go back to each year if we forget. Just an idea.
I really hope this works out for you. It really is a wonderful idea! Good luck!
Thanks, Amanda. As of right now, we're doing one-on-one training, but I agree that a how-to video/online resource would be ideal.
Great idea Wheatley (and Abbie)! My district currently uses Blackboard which does have a lot of features available for teachers and students. I think the Weebly idea is awesome - especially since it will give you so many more options. I am constantly looking for an easier way to communicate with parents/students and a website announcement is always a great way of letting users know of important information. Love the idea of saving teachers time - something we clearly don't have enough of!
Well, with all of our emailing and face to face conversations, I forgot that I should probably say something here to "officially" give you feedback!
I'm really excited that we are doing this. I have despised homework hotlink for years. As a teacher that generally has 5 different classes to prepare for in a year,this being the first I am not teaching all six hours, this will save me alone time. I really don't like that hassle of our current homework hotlink system Its ugly, not user friendly and can only be done at school. There are so many perks to our plan and I can't wait for everything to unfold. We will be like the saviors of our school. Time is of the essence! I suspect however, that with the opening of "free" time, it will be quickly and easily filled with added expectation and data as proof or something. Even if the time is short, I will enjoy every second that is saved for myself as well as rejoice at the happiness of our newly tech-savvy colleagues!
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