| Date | Week of the Year | Comments |
| January 3, 2005 | Week 1 | . |
| January 10, 2005 | Week 2 | . |
| January 17, 2005 | Week 3 | . |
Page Author: Amber Starrett | Back
This section is scaffolding. That is, it is directions about what to do with this page and the two that link from this one that should be deleted after they have been read and understood. It is also discussion and debate about why this innovation should be considered.
The purpose of this page is to address several curriculum communication problems at the same time. The professional requirement is for a written lesson planner for the week, generally a booklet with a plastic spine that sits on every teacher's desk. Such work has several audiences. The first audience is the teacher herself or himself. You need to plan each week and plan ahead into other weeks as well. The second audience is your substitute teacher that must pick up where you left off if you are ill and who also needs to look back and see where the students have been. The third and perhaps most important audience is your parents and your students. With paper technology, they can only see this planning if they visit your classroom. With web pages, they can see your planning and determine assignments. This is especially important when the child comes home and parents or even the student raises questions about whether there is homework and what it is. It is especially valuable if they are sick and want to try to catch up before they return to school.
These weekly planner web pages provide layers of information. The weekly planner page shows the current week. When a week is finished, it can be saved by a new file name, and linked to this archive page.
The weekly planner has cells that expand to hold any and all information that is needed. This is an advantage over paper planners that provide spaces that are often too small and will not expand to fit what you need to say.
Lesson plans could be linked to the weekly calendar as well.
Dates and Details
For now, insert some dates that represent weeks during the time you are working with a cooperating teacher during Block, lst or 2nd semester Intern.
When your university supervisor requests, complete the planner web page using the NCSCS labels and numbers to indicate the objectives being met when you teach. This does not have to be the full objective, but rather much shorter, such as Math, 2.3 fractions.
For this course, choose the current or a recent week and complete the week's subjects and assignments for the weekly planner. Send your university supervisor the address of your weekly planner web page.
Objections
A couple of concerns have been raised about both the efficiency and the value of such work in the "real world" outside of university instruction.
The efficiency argument is heard most often. Won't web creation take too long? In fact, I invite teachers (both preservice and inservice) to get out their stop watch and see if this is so. Create a race between your paper planner and the web page. First, time the completion of the paper planner, with references to subjects, times, assignments, and NCSCS objectives. Second, use the web template provided to complete an identical or matching web page. Compare the times between the two. The web page may take a little longer this time. Now for the important part, do it again. That is, time the creation of a second week. The paper planner will have to be completely recreated on the two paper pages for the next week. However, the web page file merely needs to be opened and saved by a new file name, and edited. Once so saved, all the days, times, and subjects are already in place. You just make changes, generally advancing page numbers in assignments or topics to be covered during the same time. Uploading to the server takes seconds. Further, the results are much more readable. Also, this file can be kept on disk to take home for further work, uploaded to your web server from anywhere and printed out to be put in a three ring binder on your desktop at school in case the substitute teacher will need it the next day. Of course, if you are unfamiliar with the web process, web pages will take longer. But once proficient, web typing has advantages.Efficiency
The paper version communicates to the teacher and a substitute teacher but does not reach parents and students. The web version reaches all audiences. Once teachers become familiar with the web process, it takes less time.
Some feel that too few families have Internet access to make it worthwhile to put weekly planner information online. My observations as a parent indicate that this misses the point. My sons have always grabbed the telephone and called to check with other classmates on assignment details. Students will learn who has net access and call them for details when needed. In my surveys of students in my graduate classes, the data shows that K-12 classes in Western North Carolina report from 20 to 95 percent of their families have Internet access. Further, long term trends are clear. More and more families will have Internet access at home and many who do not have it at home, have it at work.Value
Some teachers fear misinterpretation by parents of assignments. Again speaking as a parent, there is far greater misinterpretation of assignments by students who do not get the details right in explaining them to their parents or deliberate misleading of parents about details such as due dates and extra features. A couple of teachers have also raised concerns about leaving an evidence trail for lawsuits brought by parents. As for the extremely rare case of assignment evidence trail, that already must exist on the teacher's desk. The web creates nothing new in content. Far better for assignment details to appear on web pages to head off parent concerns and to show your hard work, and to gain their support, then for them to think that you do not plan and do little based on concerns about their child's performance.Effective Schools
In fact, it is easy for parents to feel left out or not in a position to assist because they often do not have current or accurate details, let alone a larger sense of where the learner has come from or is going. Far more parents are rooting for the school's success than looking for weak points from which to make criticisms. Time and again, the research into effective schools shows that intense parent communication and involvement is key to successful schools and successful learners. Web page communication opens a new chapter of better communication for adults (teachers and parents) whose work keeps them from communicating adequately because they both at work at the same time. Better communication means better schools.
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R. Houghton