I’m sure there are a million other people who have blogged, tweeted and written articles about the wonders of Google tools such as Google Calendar. Maybe I hadn’t considered just how useful an online calendar would be to teachers, but I now definitely see this as a springboard to generate interest in web-based tools for your teachers.
Share your schedule – whether it be assignments, reminders for students/parents on field trips, fund-raisers, school events, the all-important lunch menu, etc. The uses are limitless. For administrators, you schedule access to computer labs and use of district-owned vehicles, just to name a couple of examples.
Let’s take the next step, though. I’ll brag on Rusty Back for a moment. During a district PD for his teachers, he customized a Google Calendar session to work in conjunction with his Contribute web software. By showing his teachers how to embed a Google Calendar into their teacher web page, he’s now seeing more interest in the use of web-based tools and doors are opening to keep students, parents and the community informed. The process has been made easier, moving from only updating within the district and using Contribute to an environment where a teacher can update his/her calendar via any Internet connection, whether at home or via mobile phone. Teachers are not only editing calendars, but also embedding Picasa slideshows into their web page and publishing newsletters via blog.
We spend so much time introducing an endless stream of Web 2.0 tools to our users. It’s so overwhelming for most users. Think about it – if WE as technology leaders feel overwhelmed with all that’s out there, most users can’t help but feel very intimidated with all that’s out there. My advice would be to do what this district has done – choose a few tools that can be customized to work with your environment and train your users with step-by-step instructions on the proper use of these tools. If the staff member can see the benefit in the end result, then you should see some adoption of the tools you selected. The reward of seeing technology effectively integrated is well worth the effort…