For the past couple of weeks I have been working with the technology department in my school to help my school transition from Outlook to Google Mail. The transition hasn't been incredibly easy. In fact, I have had to go to every teacher, individually, to install a migration program and transfer all of their files to gmail. We're talking hours. However, I think the transition will be best for the school in the end.
With Outlook we were receiving a ton of spam emails and the features weren't too good considering what we were paying. And well, gmail is free, and there are significantly less security issues with gmail. So far, so good. But the tech. department and I are all starting to realize is that the staff's ability regarding Google Apps varies significantly. Some people are contacting the technology department because they need help logging in to their gmail account. This is the lower end of the spectrum, but it is indeed an issue that must be addressed, and unfortunately, I don't think that the technology department planned on such a need. So, I've volunteered to help. I met with the head of the technology department and the technology coach to discuss what the next plan should be. We all agreed that we can't really help until we know what people can or can't do. Therefore, the first step will be a general survey on Google mail, calendar, and drive. After we know what people can and can't do, we can start targeting the major areas of need in the staff. Hopefully this works. My worry is that the staff that don't know how to login to gmail at this point will really need a lot of one-to-one time and training in the tool. Change is hard for everyone, but some just have a bit more trouble with it than others. Last week I contemplated the best way to address the individual needs of people in my school who are struggling with a new migration to Google Apps. I wasn't sure what people knew, nor how I should proceed with helping people of varying abilities. After speaking with my principal about my concern, he suggested that I use some of our scheduled professional time to address the issue. I only had an hour, but it was better than nothing. I made a survey that was composed of about 25 questions ranging from, "Can you login to Gmail?" all the way to, "Can you video chat using Gmail?" It took me about an hour to make, and I used a three point Likert scale to get the best range of answers. I don't know if the options I chose for the answers were the best, but I didn't see any confused comments. So, I am assuming everyone did ok with it. I sent the survey out this Monday and asked people to complete it before the end of the day (my professional time was on Wednesday). The results I received were really interesting. All people could login, but there were major discrepancies with the calendar, drive, and more complex features of gmail. The ability levels of the staff are varied. So, I was faced with the age old question in teaching a group of people with varying abilities anything, which is, "HOW DO I DIFFERENTIATE?!?!" Don't worry. I figured it out. I created a sign up sheet for people who wanted to meet and needed help. I had 10 minute time slots with anyone who wanted to meet. People had to enter in two topics they wanted to cover with me, and I came to them. Everything went really well, and I had a number of people say that they were really happy to have one-on-one help. Overall, I feel like the approach I have taken, thus far, has worked quite well. The only challenge I will have in the future is how to best enhance the use of Google Apps by those people who are more advanced users. My Twitter profile reads something like, "world traveler, inconsistent tweeter," and this couldn't be more true. I absolutely ignore twitter for professional development. I also ignore twitter for personal uses. I just don't think about it. But I know this isn't the norm. I know that the potential for Twitter to impact me professionally is enormous. The question then becomes, how do I start using it.
I've only used Twitter for two different things: one- to have my students tweet an account called "Shakespeare Lyrics", which is essentially popular songs tweeted in Elizabethan English (I teach British literature, and this has been awesome regardless of how much my students begrudgingly use Twitter); two, to follow a wildfire that had broken out in my hometown. I couldn't help evacuate animals or work in shelters, but I used the hashtag feature to learn about where it was spreading and how to spread news to those who were nearby about how to help. The last time my administrator gave the staff a "pep talk," (you know the ones, everyone learns the new direction of the school and gets super jazzed about it) he used Twitter. And not quietly. He invited everyone to follow him on Twitter, and as his presentation went on he asked that we tweeted with a specific hashtag. This opened my eyes a bit to the power of hashtags. Trends in education certainly can be aggregated with specific hashtags and the use of a very powerful Twitter group can help to spread the word about new and exciting technologies. |
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