As a spec ed teacher working in a distinct class with 5 ERW’s and 10 students; no two having even remotely similar needs, is it any wonder that scheduling is a challenge even at the best of times. Between school, work, family commitments, social activities and specialist appointments, parents and staff are juggling many things, trying to keep everything in order to help meet the needs of the students.
Traditional agendas and calendars have been the go to method for communication and scheduling with parents and colleagues. Recently however I was introduced to “Doodleâ” by the eLearn Magazine. An article written by Michael Näf, CEO of Doodleâ sparked my interest as it offered a “free online scheduling tool for individuals or organizations.” This seemed to either be too good to be true or the answer to my prayers.
The concept evolved out of the need to meet up with friends for a meal yet circumventing the cumbersome task of countless e-mails resulting in little or no results and consuming vast amounts of time. Doodle can be used for personal or professional purposes. In an educational setting Doodle will allow teachers to schedule PLC meetings that will encourage maximum participation. Furthermore, it can enhance parent-teacher conferencing by allowing both parties to schedule meetings that are mutually convenient without the tiresome task of back and forth messaging either via e-mail or voice mail. In the classroom, Doodle can be used to help students with multiple subjects and multiple teachers schedule study groups and possibly taking advantage of this apps capabilities by scheduling testing on days that are not already programmed in other subject areas with outings, presentations, etc. This will result in higher teacher / student satisfaction by decreasing the overlap of tests on the same day and disappointment of absenteeism due to extra-curricular outings in other subject areas. Overall a win win scenario as I see it.
Having said that however; being somewhat of a skeptic, I created my own Doodle account to test it out, and you guessed it, it couldn’t be easier. For anyone with a few minutes to poke around on the internet, this is definitely worth checking out. Use it with the Google Docs calendar application and you're golden.
Read the full article from eLearn Magazine here: http://elearnmag.acm.org/featured.cfm?aid=2003350
or to start using Doodle go to: http://doodle.com/
Now it’s time to schedule the next big summer event . . . back to school!
No comments:
Post a Comment