Thing 15: Collaboration--Take Two

I am really excited about how the wikis I have created are being used. I now have updated them both to be more useful. For example, for the ninth grade academy wiki, I have finished attaching the Wednesday lesson plans and have attached the minutes from the last meeting. I also created a "Frequently Asked Questions" link and answered some questions that I anticipated people might ask.

The newest thing that I added was that for each advisor I have included on their own page a list of their advisees with the link leader that is mentoring the advisee. This will cut down on a lot of paperwork and paper-chasing. This way, advisors can edit their lists as new students are added or leave the advisory when they need to versus in past years when we (the ninth grade academy coordinators) generate a paper list twice a year. Then each advisor edits the list and hopefully returns the list to us, which doesn't always happen so then we have to chase the advisors around until we get all of them turned in again. Then we take the paper copy and adjust our records. Then, we pass out the lists to the link leaders so they know who is added/subtracted from their list (...and we have expected them to be mentoring those students who they/we didn't know about...ridiculous!). This will allow advisors to have control of this process and it will allow the records to be updated when they see fit and everyone can see the records as well. I love that each time the wiki is updated, I will get an email about it which means I don't have to check the wiki unless I get notified of a change--and that no one else needs to get these notifications if they don't want them because unwanted emails are the last thing we are trying to generate. Link leaders will be able to mentor their ninth graders more effectively and efficiently as well which is the goal!

On top of all those benefits, it introduces the wiki concept to so many teachers. One teacher has already gotten on their page and updated their list of students and formatted the page the way she wanted. She was really excited about it too, which really is the end goal. The ninth grade academy coordinators have prided ourselves on creating a user friendly program that is effective. I am happy to add this new technology to enhancing this mission. (This wiki has not been publicized yet. We will introduce it to the advisors at our next meeting October 23rd. The people that are testing it out are the other ninth grade academy coordinators).

The other new feature I added to the English department wiki is for each individual English teacher's page I have typed their room number and schedule so we have easy access to when people are teaching which subject and when their prep is. I also started to add links to the curriculum I have created so that people can use it when they want to. It gives new teachers some additional support as well as gives them insights on the expectations we have as a department. The department is currently reorganizing our books and once we have this data available, I am going to add the book list for each class. This way we can see who teaches what and which books belong in which class.

It also gives administration another resource as well. If a parent wants to know what the curriculum is for each class, the administration will have a place to go. Currently, the administrator has to track down who teaches the class and then ask them to print out their lessons which is time absorbing. The parent may or may not pick it up, which creates waste of time and resources. Lastly, we all know of those teachers who are not quite following the prescribed curriculum and say they didn't know any better. Despite the fact that they should know better, this gives everyone another place where she/he can take responsibility to look at what the curriculum is for each course.

The greatest thing, though, is we can really collaborate with each other and share best practices. We can actually support each other on a common mission instead of recreating the wheel over and over. Each person can add things and collaborate when he/she has the time, a seemingly decreasing resource, and can find answers to questions when they have them. The opportunity to really share best practices is really exciting! I imagine that instead of taking the time to reinvent something someone else has, we can use that time to make everything that much better.