Collaboration #6

Collaboration #6: Collaborate

Imagine the following scenario:

Dissatisfaction has grown in your school and/or school district about a specific practice, such as the current grading policy. Due to your reputations as technology experts, you and your partner have been asked to select a free or low cost tool for select stakeholders from the school and community to use to collaborate on alternatives to the current practice.

With your partner, select and describe a practice to be changed.
Describe to your partner any digital tools or resources you, your school and/or school district currently use to gather information from employees, parents, community members and students. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the tool(s) you currently use?
Working with your partner, locate an online survey instrument (such as Survey Monkey or Zoomerang you can use to gather information from staff, parents, and community members about the policy you have selected.
Create a sample questionnaire of at least ten questions using the online instrument you have selected, keeping notes about ease of use and problems you encounter. Save a copy of this survey for your portfolio.
Would you as a teacher use the same tool with your students and their parents? Why or why not?
When using an online data collection tool in your school community, will community access be an issue? Will your community need access to school resources or an information campaign to learn where computers are available? Answer this question in the portfolio entry (3b) you will create from this activity.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Rachel Welch on November 7, 2011 at 6:18pm

I don't know.............goodness!

One problem I often here about is student progress and lack of reporting to parents. For example, suzy has a D in history but her parents don't feel as if they were properly informed of her progress. One tool that we could use is engrade https://www.engrade.com/. It has many features. Some of them include:

Discussions
24/7 parent/student access
HW calendar
Quizzes
Attendance
Teacher grade book
etc.

I am not saying this is what we have to do. Just taking stab in the dark. Do you have a better idea?

Permalink Reply by Christine on November 8, 2011 at 10:10am

I say we go ahead with this. I dont see a survey tool, but maybe we can use the quiz [prtion to build the survey for the parents? Let me invesitigate this tool a little more...

Permalink Reply by Rachel Welch on November 8, 2011 at 10:12am

the engrade doesn't need a survey section. We create a survey using an outsided source such as survery monkey

Permalink Reply by Christine on November 8, 2011 at 10:29am

oooh ok. Gotcha. So I am still a little confused. Is the survey we create asking parents, community member etc. about the tool we selected? I feel like a moron. I can always post this to the help section.

Permalink Reply by Christine on November 9, 2011 at 11:15am

Does your school system happen to use Edline? That is what we use for parent and community communication, as well as for grade uploads.

Also - I want to start coming up with survey questions...I believe it can be for any topic. Maybe a survey to parents and/or students about the use of technology at home and online safety?

Do you have access to a computer at home
Do you have internet access at home
Does at least one member of your family have a smart phone that connects to the internet
Do you have a social media account (facebook, twitter...)
Do you or a parent have a working email account? If so, please provide this account to the teacher for communication
Would you log in weekly to see grades if they were uploaded to a secure, online location

thats all I can think of right now!

Permalink Reply by Rachel Welch on November 11, 2011 at 6:47pm

We do not have or use edline. In fact, at this point we use nothing. Does yours have a cost? I don't mind using yours for the assignment if that is what you are familar with.

I like your 7 questions! We need at least 10. What do you think of these:

Would loging in to a secure site to see your child's grades make you feel more informed about your child's progress?
What information would you like to be able to access online about your child, his/her class, and his/her performance? (this could be a fill in box for parents for example attendance, grades, missing work, etc.)
How would you like to recieve daily/weekly updates regarding general classroom announcements? (facebook, twitter, email, engrade, edline, etc.)

If you like these I will be happy to create our survey for us using survey monkey.

What is your preference for software? I don't care either way.

Permalink Reply by Christine on November 14, 2011 at 12:30pm

These sound great! Edline is expensive. It is our tool for parent communtication, grade and progress reports (middle and high), and teacher webpages. We also do blogs and wikis on it.

Unfortunately, it is so secure, that I think we are better off using a tool that we can both see and play around with like the one you listed.

I am going out of town Friday and plan on doing no work this weekend. Therefore I am goign to try to get all fo this finished in the next 3 days. I think i am nuts.

I am going to use engrade in session 5 3_b since that is the session about collaboration 6.

Permalink Reply by Christine on November 14, 2011 at 12:44pm

So take a look at 3b when you get time. Does it seem to do more with the survey, the tool to communicate, or a little but of everything? It seems like we need to use our personal practices, so it is a little hard to use just one communication and collaboration tool. I want to use examples like sharepoint/edline blogs and wikis, email, online collaboration sites, etc. I am just going to use what we came up with as a small portion of it.

Permalink Reply by Rachel Welch on November 14, 2011 at 5:24pm

I am so proud of your goal! Mine on the other hand will be to be done by Sunday! LOL!

I am going to work on the survey now. Will look at 3b right after I send you the link :)

Permalink Reply by Rachel Welch on November 14, 2011 at 5:37pm

Here is the link to our survey. Let me know if any changes need to be made.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/M7PK7PR

Permalink Reply by Rachel Welch on November 14, 2011 at 5:45pm

Can you tell by my multiple posts that I seem to be suffering form ADHD tonight! Sorry!

3B looks to me to be more of the survey and the process that we used to get there along with the problem that we are addressing. I looked at a few of the examples and that seems to be what they are including as well. I feel like I almost copy some of the examples :)

I will also use engrade, since that is what I have access to. Thanks for being flexible with that.

So where is the big trip to? Hopefully somewhere warm, sunny, and has drinks with umbrellas!

Permalink Reply by Rachel Welch on November 14, 2011 at 5:50pm

I saw you help post about 2a, b, c, and d.

Where did you find the refleciton piece that you are speaking of. I don't see it in my assignments. I have done the entries but not seeing where I need to go back.