Focus Question- Identify a Technology Integration Best Practice you use. How did you learn about this best practice? Describe how you accomplished it. Why isn't everyone doing this Best Practice?
Identify- Using e-mail to communicate with teachers
How? How I learned about this best practice is by listening to others. First I have to explain that I am not a teacher, but I am a computer tech. The way the teachers use to communicate with me was through messages sent with students, or when they see me in the hall, or messages left in my mailbox. It was not very sufficient because I would lose the messages or I would forget who sent what message. In my district we have tech meeting every month where all the computer techs meet up and discuss problems or issues we have in the district. I overheard some of the others talk about receiving e-mails from the teachers. At that time, I thought about having the teachers at my site start communicating with me through e-mail.
Accomplish? The way I accomplished it was simple. First I created a flyer, the way teachers use to communicate with me and others, and I put one in every mailbox. What it contained was how to contact us ( the technology techer and myself) and it told the teachers that e-mail would be the better way to contact us. We even offered to set-up Microsoft Entourage on each of their laptops. This way there is no excuse to turn this idea down. At first the teachers thought of this as a way to avoid talking to the teachers and they thought it was a joke, but some have learned it is the better practice because they do not have to worry about finding me somewhere on campus to get their problems solved. Some even wondered why this wasn't done earlier. I even asked one of the teachers who helped me come up with the idea send out a letter to all the teachers telling how effective it was and how fast I responded to his e-mail.
Why not Everyone? Why some people are not using this best practice is because they are fine and comfortable with the way they communicate with eachother at their school site. Some are even afraid to change because they are comfortable with the way it is now. For example, I am going to start working at another school site this week and I am told the way they communicate with the previous computer tech was to write their name and room number down on a clipboard, and then the computer tech collects the clipboard and goes around and completes the tasks on the clipboard. I already see flaws in this system and I want to change this system to use the best practice of e-mailing to communicate with me.
Activity Log
2/9/09- Listen to podcast, e-mailed Dr. Newberry
2/10/09-Post my Blog, continue with my projects
Activity Log Session 10
17 years ago
It is amazing how teachers, or any staff, who use e-mail in their home life, find it a bother for work. I, as you do, encourage my staff to see the benefits of e-mail, how it actually saves them time, and allows them to follow a thread of an idea from one person to another. Also, the joys of attachments, and how this allows all to share ideas in a digital realm. I like your use of an old fashioned notes to attract teachers to the use of e-mail. I will give that a try.
ReplyDeleteI understand exactly what you mean about how teacher's tend to get in touch with their techs. At my school, we are more likely to call a secretary or another teacher to see if they've seen the tech before we e-mail him. This is partly because we used to have to go through the secretary and its hard to break old habits. Most of the teachers are pretty good now about communicating with each other by e-mail but we are still trying to get our principal to use it more and stop wasting paper. He can't however, because we have some teachers who do not check their e-mail on a regular basis.
ReplyDelete