3.7 Communication & Collaboration
Candidates utilize digital communication and collaboration tools to communicate locally and globally with students, parents, peers, and the larger community.
(PSC 3.7/ISTE 3g)
(PSC 3.7/ISTE 3g)
Artifact: Weekly Goal Checklist
Reflection:
For the past two years I have worked with my colleagues on my seventh grade team at Dalton Middle School to produce and send home a Weekly Goal Checklist for our students and parents. We decided two years ago that we needed a quick way to communicate clearly with parents and students what was expected of them each week in their content classes. In addition to the communication piece with our students and families, this became a way to communicate with each other what we were doing in our classes so that we always knew what contents were being covered across the curriculum and also when we were requiring the students to complete projects and assessments so we did not overwhelm them with too much work at one time. I created a Google Doc that each teacher on my team contributes to and we send it home with students each Monday and require a parent signature to ensure that it is being seen each week. My individual contribution for this artifact was the original creation of the Google Doc, maintaining the science section of the checklist, and the final editing and printing of the final checklist each week.
For this artifact I used the digital communication and collaboration tool of Google Docs. By using this platform to create the Weekly Goals Checklist, each teacher on the team is able to contribute for their content area on the checklist in a timely manner from any device connected to the Internet. This allows me to communicate with my peers about what I am asking of the students in my class for the week as well as what they are requiring so we are realistic with our expectations. Sending home the Weekly Goals Checklist communicates locally and globally with our students and parents on a regular basis so they know what to expect for the week and provides them with a way of monitoring their progress during the week as we work through each thing listed on the checklist. Maintaining the checklist digitally allows us to also share and communicate with the larger community what is happening in a seventh grade classroom so we are transparent with all of our stakeholders who might be interested.
The creation of this particular Google Doc was one of the first of many I created for use of collaboration and communication between myself and my colleagues. From this artifact, I learned how beneficial using this digital tool can be in the educational setting and I now use it for documenting and collaborating with my peers on a regular basis. Instead of constantly emailing word documents that have to be downloaded, changed, saved, and sent back out to the group each time something was edited, we found we could all easily make changes to one document at the same time and have the changes saved automatically for us. One thing I have found that I would like to change for using this document next year is keeping the previous week’s checklist for archival purposes instead of just typing over the old information each week. I feel it would be easier to save these each week digitally instead of saving a hard copy in a folder.
Faculty development was impacted by the creation of this artifact. Communication and collaboration became significantly easier for our team, therefore encouraging us to do more of it on a daily basis. The impacts can be assessed through the effective usage of tools such as Google Docs by the teachers. Allowing us to be aware of what each other is requiring of our students impacts student learning because we are able to adjust what we are doing to allow students maximum opportunities to be prepared and stay organized with their learning. The impact on student learning can be assessed through conversations with students about how the Weekly Goal Checklists assists them as well as how the students perform on assignments and assessments when they are given ample communication regarding what is expected of them.
For the past two years I have worked with my colleagues on my seventh grade team at Dalton Middle School to produce and send home a Weekly Goal Checklist for our students and parents. We decided two years ago that we needed a quick way to communicate clearly with parents and students what was expected of them each week in their content classes. In addition to the communication piece with our students and families, this became a way to communicate with each other what we were doing in our classes so that we always knew what contents were being covered across the curriculum and also when we were requiring the students to complete projects and assessments so we did not overwhelm them with too much work at one time. I created a Google Doc that each teacher on my team contributes to and we send it home with students each Monday and require a parent signature to ensure that it is being seen each week. My individual contribution for this artifact was the original creation of the Google Doc, maintaining the science section of the checklist, and the final editing and printing of the final checklist each week.
For this artifact I used the digital communication and collaboration tool of Google Docs. By using this platform to create the Weekly Goals Checklist, each teacher on the team is able to contribute for their content area on the checklist in a timely manner from any device connected to the Internet. This allows me to communicate with my peers about what I am asking of the students in my class for the week as well as what they are requiring so we are realistic with our expectations. Sending home the Weekly Goals Checklist communicates locally and globally with our students and parents on a regular basis so they know what to expect for the week and provides them with a way of monitoring their progress during the week as we work through each thing listed on the checklist. Maintaining the checklist digitally allows us to also share and communicate with the larger community what is happening in a seventh grade classroom so we are transparent with all of our stakeholders who might be interested.
The creation of this particular Google Doc was one of the first of many I created for use of collaboration and communication between myself and my colleagues. From this artifact, I learned how beneficial using this digital tool can be in the educational setting and I now use it for documenting and collaborating with my peers on a regular basis. Instead of constantly emailing word documents that have to be downloaded, changed, saved, and sent back out to the group each time something was edited, we found we could all easily make changes to one document at the same time and have the changes saved automatically for us. One thing I have found that I would like to change for using this document next year is keeping the previous week’s checklist for archival purposes instead of just typing over the old information each week. I feel it would be easier to save these each week digitally instead of saving a hard copy in a folder.
Faculty development was impacted by the creation of this artifact. Communication and collaboration became significantly easier for our team, therefore encouraging us to do more of it on a daily basis. The impacts can be assessed through the effective usage of tools such as Google Docs by the teachers. Allowing us to be aware of what each other is requiring of our students impacts student learning because we are able to adjust what we are doing to allow students maximum opportunities to be prepared and stay organized with their learning. The impact on student learning can be assessed through conversations with students about how the Weekly Goal Checklists assists them as well as how the students perform on assignments and assessments when they are given ample communication regarding what is expected of them.