"GOOBLY"
A Weebly/Google Calendar Initiative
Wicked Problem Project:
Showing posts with label Wicked Problem Project. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wicked Problem Project. Show all posts
3.14.2011
2.27.2011
PART D: Findings and Implications
Wicked Problem Project:
Google Calendar (& Weebly) Initiative
Formative: Did the project get implemented as planned?
NO. After emailing our district tech department to alert them to our plan and the sites (Weebly & Google) that we'd be using, we thought we had support. However, within a few weeks, Weebly suddenly become BLOCKED by our district. The reason being that it "violates district web policy". This was a HUGE stumbling block for us. Since we planned to train our colleagues in school, having the key site for their website creation COMPLETELY INACCESSIBLE made this impossible. Thankfully, we already had helped a few colleagues begin their Weebly work, so they were able to modify it further from home, but this was not our goal. Accessibility from home OR school was one of the key parts of our plan. Having our district flatten that possibility was disheartening, to say the least.
Summative: Evidence of Success in Addressing the Problem of Practice
The Problems of Practice were these: lack of teacher time, hindered communication with those at home (parents/guardians/students) due to outdated "Homework Hotlink" system, and lack of user-friendliness of current system
Were these problems addressed with those teachers who have started our Weebly/Google Calendar shift? Absolutely. Below is feedback provided by one teacher trained in our initiative:
"Pros about Google Calendar:
-easy to maneuver through the steps to create events/ lesson plans
-I like the fact that only a brief descriptions shows, but when you click on it, more info can be edited in
the option to view day/week/month is helpful
-long term viewing (month) works well when planning units
-the fact that we can share calendars is awesome! Essentially, we could have one calendar per subject -area per grade and then the individual teacher could adjust the description as needed.
Google Calendar (& Weebly) Initiative
Formative: Did the project get implemented as planned?
Summative: Evidence of Success in Addressing the Problem of Practice
The Problems of Practice were these: lack of teacher time, hindered communication with those at home (parents/guardians/students) due to outdated "Homework Hotlink" system, and lack of user-friendliness of current system
Were these problems addressed with those teachers who have started our Weebly/Google Calendar shift? Absolutely. Below is feedback provided by one teacher trained in our initiative:
-easy to maneuver through the steps to create events/ lesson plans
-I like the fact that only a brief descriptions shows, but when you click on it, more info can be edited in
the option to view day/week/month is helpful
-long term viewing (month) works well when planning units
-the fact that we can share calendars is awesome! Essentially, we could have one calendar per subject -area per grade and then the individual teacher could adjust the description as needed.
Cons:
-none at this time"
This same teacher has voiced that she has saved time not only in her own lesson planning and calendar updates, but also in her supervision of the school's Student Activity Council. She created another calendar specific to the SAC which has given her a great way to communicate with the students who are part of this council and parents who want to be more involved. Since the students on SAC are from all grade levels and have highly varied schedules, the Google Calendar has enabled their sponsor to centralize their updates and easily communicate with them about upcoming events.
How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you've learned here?
Pre-approval is huge. Making sure that not only your administrators, but also your District Technology Department are on board is essential to full and effective implementation. While I thought we already had all of these components when we started, next time I will be sure to check (and RE-CHECK) that we have the support of all stakeholders first. I also would like to create some web-based tutorials for any tech that I implement with staff so that they can easily access these from any computer and train at their own pace, on their own time, if needed.
What are the lessons learned that others might benefit from knowing about?
In what ways will you endeavor to do the same project again?
I will not let this filter issue keep me from helping make educator's lives more easy and communication improved with stakeholders at home. I plan to continue training those who are interested in Weebly and Google Calendar. My hope is that, once we are able to show how parents/guardians and students feel about the modified class sites, we will be able to get our district on board. This may require extensive data collection, presenting at board meetings, as well as volunteering to help make changes in district policies, but I believe that the overall goal of technological progression is worth the effort.
-none at this time"
How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you've learned here?
Pre-approval is huge. Making sure that not only your administrators, but also your District Technology Department are on board is essential to full and effective implementation. While I thought we already had all of these components when we started, next time I will be sure to check (and RE-CHECK) that we have the support of all stakeholders first. I also would like to create some web-based tutorials for any tech that I implement with staff so that they can easily access these from any computer and train at their own pace, on their own time, if needed.
What are the lessons learned that others might benefit from knowing about?
- Know your District's tech policy THOROUGHLY before you begin
- Communicate VERY CLEARLY with your Technology Director/Department & Administrators about your implementation and its components
- If necessary, have DATA READY to support your plan & show how it can positively impact your learning environment/community
In what ways will you endeavor to do the same project again?
2.22.2011
PART C: Implementation
Below is a slidecast regarding our implementation of a Weebly/Google Calendar initiative at our building. This portion of the Wicked Problem Project became one of the more painful parts due to a substantial bump in the road, as you will hear in my presentation. Thank you for listening and I look forward to any suggestions and/or feedback you can offer.
Click this link if above video doesn't load correctly: http://screencast.com/t/TVwkLqh5M
Click this link if above video doesn't load correctly: http://screencast.com/t/TVwkLqh5M
2.18.2011
PART B: Application of TPACK
First of all, let me clarify: TPACK = Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Clear as mud, right? In other words, TPACK is the intersection and interconnected nature of technology, content, and pedagogy, which is the ideal scenario for incorporating technology into educational practice. The idea is that, by considering those three elements when integrating technology, one should be able to ensure that the tech tool easily slides into practice rather than stands out as a separate entity. Sadly, what often happens, though, is that technology is treated as an independent, stand-alone element rather than something that is fully integrated into practice and a harmonious part of the educational experience.
For the next portion of the Wicked Problem Project, I will break down the technology initiative that Abbie and I have proposed into its different knowledge components and clarify how those elements intersect to reinforce the reasoning in our plan.
Google Calendar supports the teaching strategy of communicating with parents and students by allowing teachers to easily edit their daily course content and assignments with a few quick keystrokes. This allows for fast adjustments, requiring less time from teachers as well as leading to more accurate information on the teacher’s homework site (ease of use means they are more likely to make adjustments when things change). The pedagogical notion of parent/teacher/student communication is fully supported by the incorporation of Google Calendar because it allows an optimal venue for information to travel between school and home. Information can be shared in a visually pleasing format, can be viewed as soon as the teacher has created or modified it, and access is more seamless with Weebly and Google Calendar (Images 1B and 1C) than with the current Homework Hotlink system (Image 1A).
For the next portion of the Wicked Problem Project, I will break down the technology initiative that Abbie and I have proposed into its different knowledge components and clarify how those elements intersect to reinforce the reasoning in our plan.
Google Calendar supports the teaching strategy of communicating with parents and students by allowing teachers to easily edit their daily course content and assignments with a few quick keystrokes. This allows for fast adjustments, requiring less time from teachers as well as leading to more accurate information on the teacher’s homework site (ease of use means they are more likely to make adjustments when things change). The pedagogical notion of parent/teacher/student communication is fully supported by the incorporation of Google Calendar because it allows an optimal venue for information to travel between school and home. Information can be shared in a visually pleasing format, can be viewed as soon as the teacher has created or modified it, and access is more seamless with Weebly and Google Calendar (Images 1B and 1C) than with the current Homework Hotlink system (Image 1A).
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| Image 1A (Homework Hotlink Sample) |
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| Image 1B (Weebly Sample) |
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| Image 1C (Google Calendar Sample) |
The technology of Google Calendar increases intellectual accessibility by allowing those at home (parents/guardians/students) to view what is taking place in class easily via a well-organized website. This access can be gained through a computer, a cell phone, or any other gadget that has an Internet connection. Also, if parents or students already use Google Calendar on their own, they can easily add the teacher’s updates to their personal calendar—meaning that sharing is increasingly seamless and requires a few clicks--no printing or copying by hand.
Not only does the content become more easily accessible for those at home, but teachers can now modify their entries from anywhere with an Internet connection—they are no longer limited to editing their sites from school only. This is ideal for situations where a teacher might not be in his or her classroom (snow days, illnesses, etc.) and needs to change course details. Additionally, teachers are able to easily add further detail on any given task that the viewer can then read by clicking on that task (see Image 2 below). In Image 2, also note that Wednesday, February 2nd was a Snow Day and the teacher was able to easily readjust her calendar by simply changing the date on her tasks, a process that took less than one minute to complete.
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| Image 2 (Assignment Detail available by Clicking on Task) |
When considering the components of: teaching strategy (communication with those at home), content delivery (via the Internet in an appealing manner), and the pedagogical choices (a more user-friendly and time-saving system for viewers & teachers), it is clear that there is a strong "TPACK" intersection present in our initiative. All elements overlap nicely to justify our choice of technologies (Weebly & Google Calendar) and support our strategy for implementing them to better serve educators, parents/guardians, and students alike.
I am proud of the work we are doing and its positive repercussions for all stakeholders involved in the learning process.
2.06.2011
PART A: Description of Need or Opportunity
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
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