WebedtecH

Do your teachers and staff have the tools necessary to work together as a team?  Considering building an intranet?  That’s what we’re doing and I’ll explain how.  The amount of power and functionality that a school has access to through a system such as Google Apps gives a great opportunity to build a collaborative workspace for teachers and staff with virtually no cost.  However the idea isn’t without it’s challenges.  When planning any sort of collaborative web effort, I recommend starting with three key questions:

1. What do you NEED to do?
2. What do you WANT to do?
3. HOW do you want to do it?

The first question is without a doubt the most important.  The second and third will change, even be discarded, if they don’t meet the requirements of the first one.  Our needs right now are simple:

1. A central location for forms and reference materials that can be accessed by any staff member on or off the network.
2. A shared location for policies and procedures (currently we use a network drive)
3. A simple way to keep said policies and procedures current for everyone needing access

Now this set of needs could be served by any number of solutions so we’re still at an impass.  On to question 2…what do we WANT?

1. A system that is easy to use
2. Integrated with our current email system
3. Available from anywhere
4. Reliable
5. Adaptable
6. Minimal (no) cost

Not much more specific, but it does point out some key requirements in narrowing the field.  For example, “integrated with our current email system” points towards Google Apps since it is what we have been using for email for two years very successfully.    Also, “available from everywhere” eliminates most network centric solutions and points us back to the cloud.

Finally we come to the HOW.  This can be a tough one since by this point you still have a couple of options left on the table and you need to do a critical analysis, cost-benefit comparison, etc.  For us this was made a great deal simpler by the last WANT…minimal (no) cost.  Looks like we’ll be building our intranet with Google Sites and Google Apps.

Next…functional requirements.

Vicki Davis over at Cool Cat Teacher posted about “Loser Loops,” those administrative loops that suck the life and energy out of activities and teaching. Now rather than echo with, “I agree completely” I want to post some counterarguments and possible solutions.

I had an administrator that used to make me turn in every lesson plan for every class every week at the end of the prior week. He did not read them. They were for his file.

And IF I changed the lesson plan, I had to update it. I plan my lessons anyway… however, all of this paperwork really took the focus off of my STUDENT and made the PRINCIPAL my customer. The focus WAS on him NOT students. I often spent so much time making the lesson plans PRETTY that I wasn’t really ready to TEACH when it came time to implement the plan. That is ridiculous.

I honestly don’t know if I could have been able to do Flat Classroom or Horizon in such a scenario.

Now, I’m not advocating that we don’t plan our lessons. WE MUST PLAN AHEAD for our lessons. I plan out the year, the six weeks, the week, the day. However, often, these plans are a bit messy and working. I do them in pencil for the week and they end up with erasures and sometimes post it notes on them. They are working documents and they look like it! A BEAUTIFUL lesson plan is a report, not a lesson plan.

If you are mandated to provide this information on a weekly basis, why are you reproducing it multiple times? Wouldn’t it benefit you to share with your administrator the wonders of a wiki, Google Doc, or other tool that contained your lesson plans for the year, was always up to date with your changes and improvements, and by the way could be printed for permanent files when necessary?

I have friends who state that they spend 6-8 hours a WEEK on PAPERWORK. They say that real planning is an afterthought because the customer is all of the administrators and directors who are inspecting the paper.

Again, find a format that meets their needs as well as your own and you reduce your effort and time to delivery.

But teachers, don’t point your finger at administrators, because you have four pointing right back at you! Teachers are some of the worst at creating meaningless loops!

Why do we have the fill out worksheets? What if knowledge could be better imparted by experience?

Teachers often opt for the worksheet because it can be seen, touched, and “measured.” Experience cannot be filed in a box and handed to parents. Audio files and video are not as “tangible” as a piece of paper! We cannot touch a wiki or a blog!

We have to ask ourselves… what is the PURPOSE of what my students are creating? Can I expand the audience to be more than just the teacher? (IS it appropriate to expand the audience?) Can I better assess in another way?

This I will agree with. Teachers need to lead by example and help the administration learn by what can be accomplished within the classroom. Be able to demonstrate the value the technologies you have at your fingertips can bring to the administrative processes as well and you may just win a convert.

If you want to reduce the work you need to accomplish during the day, look for ways to deliver what is requested of you in a more efficient manner. Get over the thought, “if I can do more faster they’ll just ask me to do more.” That’s as self-defeating a position as you can take and you might as well just quit and go home. Get more efficient at your job and deliver things on their timeline, but on your schedule. You may not be able to eliminate the “loser loops” but that doesn’t mean you can’t find a way to shortcut them. Think “tesseract.”

If you’re striving to push your classes into new realms of technology and are secretly lusting after the idea of a classroom full of ultra-mini PCs for your students, then I’ve got news for you!

To get the funding you need…you need to sell the children.

Not literally of course. You need to market them, their projects, their skills, and their learnings. As educators we spend a lot of time talking with our peers about the cool things we’ve done. We share the web links, show the vlog postings, comment on the blogs, all reveling in how far we’re coming.

Administrators need to be able to justify budgetary expenditures and it’s much easier when we can show what is accomplished for the money put out. How can you help us help you get the funding necessary to keep all the cool things happening?

A I D A

In marketing parlance, AIDA refers to Awareness Interest Desire Action. It is the buying path for most consumer goods and can be put to very effective use when the “product” you’re selling is the success of your students.

Awareness

Administrators live in the world of meetings, emails, discussions, and committees. For the most part they don’t and can’t have the time to be in the classroom. As such they’re not aware of what is possible and what is being accomplished in classrooms all over the world. Make them aware of what’s going on. Send them emails with links to successful sites. Show them videos of what is happening in other schools. Set meetings with them not to beg for money but to share with them your successes. You’re giving them the ammunition to go hunt down your funds, an appreciation for what is successful, and demonstrating that your requests are justified by more than an “I want this.”

Interest

Once they’re aware of what’s possible and what’s being done you need to foster their interest in it and get their buy in. Showing what other schools are accomplishing is a great way since no administrator wants to be behind the others in their peer group. It’s more psychodynamic than it is scholastic. Talk with them and find out what their drivers are and direct your message to them.

Desire

Helping to foster their desire for success for the students, the school, the teachers, and themselves motivates administration to do what’s necessary to meet the needs that have been identified. Take the interest you spurred earlier and fan the flames. Get them worked up about a topic or idea that carries you towards your goal and help them share your desire to accomplish it.

Action

When you get to the point of taking the actions necessary to achieve your goal, help your administration out again. Do some of the leg work. Show them actual examples of technology that will do what you need. Put together a plan that results in the accomplishments you have been getting them fired up about. Most administrators are most effective as decision makers, so put the work in so all they need to do is make the decisions.

Your classroom projects and successes often are based on the level of technology you have on hand. If you need more, you need to justify why. The next time you’re in a staff meeting and says “How will we get this?” you can answer, “We’ll sell the children!”