Flip the Switch

What I Learned In School Today: It feels good when a process takes root and something technological becomes a normal tool.

Today we scheduled our pre-parent teacher conference data meetings where regular ed. teachers, special ed. teachers, reading specialists, and administrators review student data for one class at a time, determine if there is a student need not being addressed, and discuss resources that could meet those needs. It’s an important process as we strive to be a data driven school that plans student interventions based on as much information as possible.

What I learned today wasn’t about the data meeting itself, but the scheduling process. We use a site called Doodle.com to schedule group meetings, sign up for assembly times, and for overall building-wide scheduling of events. Doodle allows the event creator to quickly identify available times for the event, create parameters (i.e. two people can sign up for one time slot, only one response per user), and share the schedule. Teachers can then sign up for their desired times, which are sent back to the event creator and the schedule is made.

I was so happy with how easy it was for us to schedule our data meetings using Doodle. Aside from Doodle being useful, I was excited that in this situation the technology was not at the forefront of the task, but merely a tool to efficiently complete the task. That should be technology’s role in education. My district’s Director of Technology used the light bulb as an example. When we flip a switch, a light goes on. We don’t think about it. It just happens. That’s what technology should be in the classroom. We shouldn’t think about the technology. We should think about teaching and learning. The technology should just be there to help. I’m proud of my school for getting to the point in this area where we don’t have to think about the technology.