- Be sure to make your posting meaningful and relevant.
- It’s acceptable to post findings from other websites, just be sure to give the website credit.
- Avoid deleting information of another user unless it is redundant or edited to improve.
I have discovered technology has a positive way of helping to decrease the number of daily tasks teachers must complete. Between updating lesson plans, replying to parent emails, teaching all the standards within a short amount of time, and correcting the endless numbers of papers, teacher can easily work 12 hour days. Finding just the right technical tool to help decrease the workload is a gold mine.
In the past, I would send home student directory forms for the parents to complete requesting parent contact information, student’s allergies, academic strengths and weakness, and much more. Unfortunately, not all the students returned the papers and I would have to keep track of who needed a second, third, and even fourth duplicate copy of the directory paper. Then I would spend hours transferring their information onto a spreadsheet. Many times, their writing was illegible, and this lead to many blanks on my classroom directory. The process was exhausting! This year I have discovered the advantages of using Google, a web 2.0 tool. With Google Drive, I can create a presentation, spreadsheet, and drawing, or a simple document (Soloman & Schrum, 2014). This tool is like a huge supermarket of technology time savers! This tool does all the work for me! At the beginning of this school year, I used Google Survey to collect pertinent student information and compile it into a Bahrville Classroom Directory. For my students with diverse learning needs, I reached out to the ESOL teacher for assistance with the interpretation and translation to Spanish. She also provided a time for them to use the computer lab in the morning during breakfast time. It saved me a huge amount of time.
Currently, I used the Google survey to collect my peer educators’ opinion regarding our technology usage in the building. The survey converted their responses into an excel bar chart, which made it very easy to read. It was a huge time saver! Here is an example of my Google Survey and the results.
Justin Reich, Richard Murnane, John Willett (2012). The State of Wiki Usage in U.S. K–12 Schools. Educational Researcher 41, Issue 1. DOI 10.3102/0013189X11427083
Soloman, G. & Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0 How-To For Educators. (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: International Society for Technology in Education.