Adjusting Roster of Participants

blog.turbotax.intuit.com

Casualty, but providing valuable knowledge for the overall program.

Friday afternoon the Spanish teacher came to me visibly overwhelmed with his part of the program [he was to teach Spanish through the cloud with one of his students who was a previous student of this class]. We were allowing her to use her Spanish class as her topic for the research class.

When first discussed in mid-December, this teacher was very excited and openly stated his gratitude for being considered as a part of this pilot program using Chromebooks and digital learning. At the time we looked at Voki and other options for the vocalizations, and hashed out a broad plan for her assignments and assessments, ultimately developing a tour of Spanish countries using Maps as her final project. Later, in early January, he requested my notes from that meeting since he had lost his copy [in hindsight this was the first sign I did not heed]. I thought it all looked good since the principal approved the plan, the Director of Instructional Services approved was excited by the possibilities, and the parent and student were willing....everyone was a go.

But then it was difficult to connect with the teacher again [second sign when bells should have clanged loudly]. Meeting times were difficult to arrange due to his schedule, emails were not answered, and before I knew it the semester had begun.

Initially, we spent the first week of the semester working with IT to set up the laptops we had and the students' blogs since the Chromebooks would not be in for a month or more. Blog accounts were made and the students began with their PRISMS lessons. I found out the Spanish teacher did not have a school Google domain account though he thought he did. That was arranged so he could send the first assignments. Two weeks into the semester the student finally got a study guide, a handout, and a PPT assessment which takes her two days to complete. Now she's 2 1/2 weeks behind her peers.

When the teacher came to me, he did not like how she had done the assessment digitally and wanted me to have her re-do it and save it to Word before sending it back again, clearly not understanding this program is not using Word but working with Google Docs. He had yet to look at her blog and see the assignments she had posted there along with other Spanish research beginning the Spanish tour.

I have narrowed the problem to two issues:

 1) The learning curve for the teacher organizing lessons through the Cloud was too steep at this point to match the student's needs,.
2) A side issue is that the online speaking apps intended for her case cannot run on the laptops currently used. Since it is unclear when the proper equipment will arrive, the original concept did not happen. I don't think the teacher would have been able to learn and use them in a timely manner anyway.

Since my intention and my commitment to both parent and student was that her grade would not be affected by participation in this study, she has been returned to the Spanish class. The teacher has agreed to tutor her during lunch until she is comfortable with her lessons. She will keep the blog as a Spanish diary for enrichment as she moves through the semester and works on her Spanish final project.