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Collaboration is often at the heart of the successful learning
enterprise -- and technology can help your district accomplish
this goal. With the help of software solutions and web-based services,
administrators and teachers can work together electronically and
share pertinent school information with parents and students.
But as you probably know if you've done a modest bit of research
and are now faced with making buying decisions, finding your way
through the jungle of groupware, intranets, and extranets can
be a tough expedition.
The instructional and administrative promise of collaborative
solutions is clear. In general, these applications allow a group
of users to work together easily over a computer network. (See
the sidebar for a look at selected applications.)
Groupware can let your teachers work together on enhancing classroom
activities with group projects, assignment calendars, and progress
reports. Intranets can offer web-enabled access to student information
systems and other material for school staff. And extranets let
parents and students access assignments, projects, and grades
from their homes -- while teachers monitor student progress, communicate
directly with parents, update student files, and offer online
feedback on assignments. Whether you want a large-scale intranet
or a classroom-specific web site, collaborative solutions can
provide a wealth of benefits if you tailor them to your specific
needs.
But first, you need to find your way through a thicket of competing
claims and come-ons. Luckily, many technically sound products
are available to choose from, and luckily, too, there's a sensible
way into technology-enhanced collaboration. In fact, all successful
information technology projects begin the same way and follow
a similar set of steps:
1. Don't let technology lead the project. Vendors' product
brochures and sales presentations all laud the advantages of collaborative
technology solutions, and all seem to say their product is the
best, but be aware that you can achieve nearly the same results
with a variety of packages and platforms. And be aware that no
one product can do it all. Set aside the feature lists and boffo
demo software and start from scratch. Ask the right questions
of your school and school administration first.
"Find out what you'll teach, and how you'll teach it first,"
says Anne Miller, communications director of New Technology High
School in Napa, Calif. "Only after you have subjects and methodology
decided should you begin to look at hardware and software for
classroom groupware." Miller and the Napa Valley Unified School
District are strongly committed to technology, but they believe
teaching should drive implementation.
As a "school of choice," New Technology High School has 220
11th- and 12th-grade students from 18 different feeder schools.
The school's entire curriculum is based on Lotus Development Corp.'s
Notes, Domino, and LearningSpace software. "We decided early on
that collaborative, online learning was the way to teach students,"
Miller says.
The school's aim is to foster student learning and achievement
that can easily translate into employment in the high-tech industry,
and feedback from the school's advisory board suggested that collaborative
projects and collaborative research skills were directly applicable
to the industry. That instructional approach drove the selection
of collaboration software for online projects in math, science,
and American studies. Although the stated goal is to prepare students
for jobs and postsecondary studies in technology, and although
computer-based learning is a centerpiece of the curriculum, Miller
says the project-based learning skills the students develop are
more important than any computer skills they might pick up.
2. Set priorities. Some schools might benefit the most
from implementing administrative projects first, then adding classroom-level
collaboration. If your priority is to inform administrators and
teachers, get those projects up and running before delving into
such labor-intensive tasks as implementing individual classroom
groupware. Or, if your initial focus is on the benefits of providing
parent-teacher extranet access, that's where you'll want to start.
In short, set your priorities, and work from the most important
areas outward.
For example, the Wayzata Independent School District 284, a
suburban district in Minnesota, found that consolidating and sharing
financial and student record data was the highest priority for
its districtwide computing network. According to Janet Galvin,
a software technician for the district, individual schools were
all using separate, largely incompatible systems. The first priority
was to consolidate, redeploy, then share data among the schools.
In a single step. "We needed something in house, that allowed
real-time reporting and data collection," says Galvin. "We couldn't
continue to use stand-alone systems."
In one three-month effort, the district implemented a web-enabled
student records program, allowing the district to centrally administer
and share data among all the schools. The resulting intranet handles
more than 9,000 student records in parts of eight different municipalities.
Student attendance, transcripts, and grades, as well as the district's
finance programs, all went up in the first step.
3. Decide whether you want dedicated groupware, an intranet,
an extranet -- or all three. Once you've decided how you want
to implement your collaborative system, your decision process
becomes easier. Still, there are some guidelines to follow.
Chief among them: Think in terms of growth. What technology
allows you to expand into other areas? Strictly speaking, the
most open technology is the best, but it might require more development
time to suit individual needs. For this reason, web-based or Internet-based
products will probably remain viable the longest, be easiest to
integrate, and give the greatest flexibility in implementing additional
groupware strategies. Many educational groupware packages might
be specifically targeted at solving one "problem" -- such as collaborative
learning on the K-4 level -- but they might not be easily integrated
into other groupware or intranet offerings. You might reap the
short-term benefit of easy implementation but suffer in the long
run when you need to expand your net into areas beyond the targeted
application.
For example, Napa Valley's New Technology High School built
its collaborative teaching modules on Lotus Notes and then expanded
to include attendance, teacher-parent communications, and homework
extranets for students.
Wayzata had expansion in mind as well when it chose Progress
Software's database and web-enabled front end to Skyward Inc.'s
student record programs, which let the district quickly integrate
web-based applications such as parental access to class schedules
and attendance.
4. Consider your budget. Once you have a handle on the
technology you need, prepare a budget that incorporates not only
the software and hardware, but the necessary maintenance and the
training. More than any other technology project you've ever undertaken,
collaborative systems require constant updating and maintenance.
If the content isn't up-to-date, the solution won't be useful.
So when you're budgeting, consider what will it cost to keep content
timely, who will need to be trained, and how long it will take.
And make sure you have researched the implementation of security
measures such as firewalls and configuring servers for secured
access.
5. Begin with pilot projects. Now you're ready to interview
those who would be most directly involved in the project. What
do they want? Who is responsible for content and updates? What
do they think should not be a part of the system, such as student
records or teacher reports? Using that input, design a list of
content areas and how these areas might relate to one another
-- for example, a teacher's intranet might include lesson plans
linked to online examples of exemplary student projects, internet
resource materials and library resources, and alternate lessons.
Be as thorough as possible. Imagine and plan for all eventual
possibilities, adding plenty of technology "elbow room" for natural
growth.
6. Roll out in stages. Before you open your system to
all users, post an outline of major content and application areas
with little or no content and ask a representative group of early
users for their reactions. You'll want to enlist technical experts
as well as novices and skeptics. At this point, you'll be testing
the navigation of the site, the applications, and the security.
Get feedback from the users again: Once a project begins to take
shape, you'd be amazed at the flood of feedback that finally comes
in. The challenge then is to weed out the bells and whistles from
the "must have" features. Security, a usable interface, and smooth
operation should head the list in early pilots.
Alan Aleshire, director of instructional technology at Harlingen
(Texas) Consolidated Independent School District, plans to use
Microsoft Office 2000 to publish grade, attendance, and other
student data on the district's private administrative intranet.
The web is tightly integrated into all Office 2000 applications.
Using Data Access Pages, administrators can publish Microsoft
Access databases on the Internet or on a local intranet. The database
maintains its link to the host file, so any changes made using
a web browser are stored in the database itself. The district
can use its existing network and web and build on them, rather
than commit to a whole new system. The district can then leverage
the existing network and web infrastructure, one application at
a time, without making heavy commitments to new software packages.
Wayzata's approach was more encompassing. "We had the core system
of Skyward and Progress software going after three months over
the summer at Wayzata," says Galvin. "Then we added teacher access.
Finally we've begun to add web-based access to parents."
7. Refine and expand. Next, begin to fill the content
areas -- just a few at a time -- and see how they are used and
updated. More changes will no doubt be needed at this stage. Finally,
when all content areas are ready to go, turn your system loose
to the widest possible audience. Poll all your users at regular
intervals, and use the results to add, expand, and even eliminate
elements in the design.
At this point, you can begin thinking about moving on to other
areas as well. If you started with a teacher's intranet for sharing
and developing lesson plans and curriculum, are any of the areas
appropriate for parent or student access? Are any areas appropriate
to link to administrative records? Again, move cautiously and
deliberately into each new area. One real problem with collaborative
solutions is their tendency to grow unchecked and untested, adding
applications that don't necessarily work together.
But realize that there are no dead ends when it comes to collaborative
technology. If you really must, you can start over, revamp, and
move forward. Along the way, through fits and starts, you'll discover
what works for your school or district. The hallmark of good groupware,
intranet, and extranet systems is their ability to grow, change,
and adapt to constantly evolving situations -- like school life.
Steve Bosak
is a freelance technical writer in Batavia, Ill.
SELECTED VENDORS
Chancery.
(800) 999-9931. Starting this spring, districts using Chancery's
MacSchool, WinSchool, and Open District student information systems
can take advantage of LearningLife.Net,
a web-based school-to-home communication gateway and extranet
that allows parents to access information about their children
and school. The web site is hosted at Chancery's facilities and
offers attendance reports, daily grades, homework help, school
calendars, parent-teacher communication, and more. Because data
are fed to the site automatically from the district's student
information system, duplicate data entry is not required.
Excelsior.
(800) 473-4572. Excelsior's Parent
Internet Viewer is a web server application that provides
an extranet for parents and students to access information directly
from Excelsior's Pinnacle gradebook system via the Internet. Information
available to parents and students includes grades, attendance,
teacher comments, assignments, discipline entries, and more.
Intranet
Communications. (949) 450-0545. The Destin@tions
portal provides a customized intranet for school districts that
can be personalized for each user. Hosted off-site, the system
allows authorized staff members and individual departments to
publish school information in a consistent and controlled manner
directly to the portal, bypassing the so-called "webmaster bottleneck."
Lotus. (617)
577-8500. Lotus' R5
Domino server and Notes client software provide a robust groupware
platform for e-mail, discussions, and development of customized
database applications. Lotus also offers LearningSpace,
a web-based platform for developing self-paced, collaborative
online courseware.
Microsoft.
(800) 426-9400. As a groupware combo, the Exchange
server and Outlook
client software provide messaging, calendars, and online discussions
for school district staff. Microsoft also provides workgroup collaboration
features in the Office
2000 software suite through the use of special Microsoft server
extensions. Using Office 2000 in conjunction with NT Server, teachers
and administrators can easily publish documents to a district
wide intranet, as well as attach comments and joint discussions
to any document.
NCS. (800) 736-4357.
With ParentCONNECTxp,
schools that have an investment in NCS' student information system
software can provide an extranet to parents and students with
information about assignments, grades, skill mastery, attendance,
discipline, and more. This web server application extracts student
data from operational systems with little or no manual intervention.
Novell. (800)
218-1700. The GroupWise
client-server groupware program offers mail, calendar, and scheduling
features as well as shared document management that allows district
staff and students to check documents in and out of the server.
PowerSchool.
(888) 470-0808. This intranet/extranet application runs on an
Apple Power Mac G3 and provides a browser-based, cross-platform
school management system that gives parents and students real-time
access to grades, attendance, assignments, and other information.
Project ACHIEVE.
(415) 625-0400. An online student information management system
with intranet and extranet features, Project ACHIEVE is hosted
off-site and requires only an Internet connection and standard
browsers for use. The system is designed to allow teachers to
easily share information about students with other educators --
as well as create reports, calculate grades, take attendance,
log discipline incidents, create standards-based lesson plans,
and more. In addition, parents can access grades and reports online.
Skyward.
(800) 236-7274. Skyward's integrated school management system
supports a web-enabled intranet that allows teachers to do all
student attendance and grading online using a web browser. An
extranet component allows parents to access information about
grades, attendance, discipline incidents, and food service account
balances via the web.
SoftArc.
(800) 763-8272. Now owned by MC2 Learning Systems,
SoftArc's FirstClass Collaborative Classroom Gold provides a low-cost
groupware solution for educators, students, and the community.
The program offers e-mail, web publishing, discussion groups,
and calendar functions with low hardware requirements for the
server.
Free web sites
* Bullwhip provides a
free, web-based groupware service offering group discussion, document
collaboration, e-mail, calendar, and voting functions for parents,
teachers, and students.
* Intranets.com offers
a free, customizable intranet, including features such as group
announcements, calendar, and shared documents.
* LearningGate provides
a free, web-based grade book, discussion groups, calendar, and
other collaborative features for teachers, students, and parents.
* nschool.com offers free,
web-based group calendar, scheduler, e-mail, announcements, discussion
forum, resource center, and home pages for educators, parents,
and students.
* SchoolCruiser
is a free groupware portal site that provides e-mail, bulletin
boards, schedules, contact management, and web publishing for
students, educators, administrators, and parents.
* ThinkWave integrates
a free classroom management application for teachers into a web
site that allows quick uploads of student information for parents
and kids to view at home.
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