My last blog had to do with how do I keep the lines of communication open to everyone. This Blog, I want to reflect on the use of an organizational system to allow students access to information as needed when taking art in the middle levels.
Prior to this course, I used a system that I worked very hard on. I created a series of folders on the district "Shared Drive". I was the first teacher in my school to be doing this as part of how students rotated through my program. It was a huge struggle to try to get students and special educators to find the documents as needed for many reasons. In these folders, I created sub folders by projects that contained all worksheets, exemplars of the unit, background slide shows, and any other resources needed at that time. I also created a drop folder that had "Drop only" rites to it. Students could see what was in the folder but could not remove or change a document once it was placed in there. I have a system that students use to code their work prior to turning it in for a grade. The fundamentals were there but in practice, it was a nightmare. It was very difficult to reach everyone and a general file sharing knowledge curve was huge by everyone involved.
I am a little hesitant to use Google Drive for many reasons but my reasons are very similar to when using the Shared drive system I used in the past.
As of current, I will go with Google Drive because it connects the best with other Google Functions and it addresses some of the problems I currently come across. I work with the whole school so it is tuff when their are so many little variables that makes a simple system a difficult system. I will work around the fact it chops up 75% of my documents that I have already created because they have tables or charts in them. My file cabinets will grow as I create new documents with Google Forms, Google Spreadsheets, etc but until then, I will have to make do.
The learning curve will still be there for a few years. Time is not a commodity in a UA class. A fundamental knowledge of how Google works needs to be created in order for this type of informational system to work efficiently school wide. Once a baseline of knowledge has been established, I feel this tool can be effective. I also hope that Google creates an icon that allows you to easily find your "Drive" without having to open multiple windows to access "Google Drive".
All tools have their limits. Students need to be flexible since some tools aren't. But that is a skill that helps create Innovators!!!
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