Lately I have been discussing how some of our students are struggling with managing all of the digital content in their school day. We have Moodle and FirstClass for all students and teachers. These systems are very powerful and for the most part work quite well for our learning community. As I went to my “mailbox”, it hit me that we use a dual communication system. This has to have a huge impact on efficiency and effectiveness.
I have FirstClass for all sorts of digital communication. Even my voice mail is delivered to my Inbox. I could work with this system quite nicely as I know where to look for new items and can in fact find items from last year in my mailbox if needed.
But once a day I must travel back in time to my other Inbox where I am given a carbon based product that somehow I must merge into my digital system or try to maintain two systems. I now have a Fujitsu Scan Snap on my desk to bridge this divide. How much time is lost by me doing this conversion and maintainence of a dual system of communication?
Below are two images of what students must master along with Moodle and FirstClass.
Assignment Notebook: Write down all homework (also posted on Moodle with an automatic message in FirstClass if configured to)
7 Rotational Schedule for our need to make more time out of the day/week
How do our students also maintain dual communication systems? When will we drop the one and settle on only one system? What does it take for real change to happen?
Technorati Tags: class2.0, devices, learning
Hi,
If your system allows students to sign into a personal google account, the students could create their own calendar page where they could put their “analog” materials into a digital format. I have to scan in materials as well, and have set up fifteen minutes at the end of the day to complete this. I am then able to access it 24/7. You can also use google documents to establish your schedule using the spreadsheet option. Nice thing is the kids can also get access to it, in case they forget something.
Christopher,
Great idea and we do allow Google Docs to be accessed but block everything else. I am moving more of our students to using Google Docs as the access restrictions are critical. FirstClass just is not keeping up.
As far as the mail issue, our administrators have been sending a majority of our materials and announcements, formerly carbon, in email. The only thing I get a paper item for is a receipt for monies turned in. Everything else I have digitized to my computer and use within MS office and email, as this is how the school system has their system technology set up. I organize them into subfolders for reference, team leader, parent contacts, etc. It works well in finding information quickly.
Technology is a great tool when we can get the kinks in accessing it ironed out.