Wicked Problem Project Part D: Findings and Implications

Formative: Did the project get implemented as planned?
Absolutely not! We began our project knowing that communication would be a huge part of our success, and technology “allowances” within our district a potential threat to our plan. We first approached our administrators within the building and they immediately gave us support, followed by fellow colleagues who were willing to do anything to save some time! We began immediately and quickly learned that we may also need to communicate with the head of the technology department. We explained our plan for our project and requested that he allow us access to Blogger so that we may collaborate our work and findings for the implementation of our project. We explained that it was all for educational purposes and that everyone involved would benefit directly. This began the downward spiral of access to what was already, to say the least, limited.

In the early stages of implementing our project, we learned that many of the high school teachers were already using Weebly for their teacher sites to communicate with students and parents as well as to share their lesson plans. Initially, this was exciting as we assumed it meant the district would support our endeavor! Whether by coincidence or not, just before our mid-winter break, Weebly was inexplicably and suddenly blocked! This “Oh-no-you-don’t” wave of the hand made completing our project cumbersome. Personally, I was thrilled to have a week off of work so that I could have some more of that resource I am so short on as a teacher; Time. I was going to have time to complete graduate work and further help other teachers in our building save on their time in addition to bringing them more up-to-date technologically. The rug was pulled out from under our feet. We inquired why this would happen and were only told that Weebly “violates district policy”, a meeting was planned, and all we could do was wait. Upon return from our break, a district wide email from the head of technology was sent out. It addressed
a complaint received that there was inappropriate material on the web site Weebly.com. After review of the content, he determined that site indeed had inappropriate material that students should not be exposed to. Further investigations found many additional pages on Weebly.com which contained inappropriate material. The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) was sited and all in-district access to that Weebly was blocked.

Teacher backlash began as many were using Weebly to support their classroom pages and district administrators saw these pages as superb resources for additional guidance and support. However, the District is obligated to protect both students and teachers online activity. Preference that all pages be stored on a secure server which can be verified not to contain inappropriate material was sited and credit was given to our current school web server as being capable of storing individual teacher web pages.Then the email admitted that “the interface, setup, and display of those pages are not as "user friendly" as it needs to be for easy updating and viewing.”

While I understand and respect that students need to be protected, I don’t think that I, as a teacher, need that “protection”. I even felt that this so-called need for teacher protection was a slap in the face of our professional judgment! In most cases, the Weebly sites created by teachers, would be viewed by students and parents at home! Nothing is blocked when students are online at home, and according to the online survey I created earlier this semester, students say they spend more time “learning” new things on their computers AT HOME! How is this district blockage protecting them there?! I think that the students checking these teacher created pages from home should be commended for their technological resourcefulness, self-discipline, and diligence for their value of education! I also beg the question of are we really protecting them by blocking Weebly at school or are teachers just being hindered in so doing?! Until a more user-friendly solution is found, why can the district not just add a not that by clicking on a teachers site, students are leaving the district web server and is not responsible for inappropriate content within?!

The district’s solution to “continue supporting teacher pages” was this:
“until a time that the district can obtain a web server which has an easy to use, friendly, and flexibly interface similar to Weebly.com, it has been decided to open only the individual teacher pages on Weebly. Please send an e-mail with your full site name (i.e. mrsjones.weebly.com) to weebly@wcskids.net we'll put an entry in our firewall exception table to allow full access to your teacher page.”

While, at a glance, this “solution” seemed appropriate, it only allows teachers to view their pages because, of course, in order to edit a page, one must log in from the Weebly home page.

Summative: Evidence of success in addressing the problem of practice
In the time we did have implementing our project by teaching our colleagues how to create lesson plans on Google Calendar and embedding them in Weebly sites, I believe that we did have some success. Our problem of practice were the following: lack of teacher time, limited communication to the home, especially outside of school hours, and an embarrassingly out of date system for lesson plans that was in no way one that was user-friendly or forward thinking use of technology! I have no doubt that we eased these problems for teachers who implemented our plan. Below is some feedback from one teacher trained in our initiative:


Pros about Google Calendar:
-easy to maneuver through the steps to create events/ lesson plans
-I like the fact that only a brief descriptions shows, but when you click on it, more info can be edited in
the option to view day/week/month is helpful
-long term viewing (month) works well when planning units
-the fact that we can share calendars is awesome! Essentially, we could have one calendar per subject -area per grade and then the individual teacher could adjust the description as needed.

This same teacher is one who has little time as she heads our student council. She saw our plan as one that could streamline her approach to communication with students, parents, and the entire school community by also creating a calendar for student council activities! The beauty in this whole implementation, especially with this teacher, is that it is a perfect example of re-purposing of a technological tool that was likely not ever intended for educational use. It is a fluent molding of form, function, and the art of being an educator.

Other trained teachers have found this to be a perfect collaboration method as many same grade/subject teachers complete their lesson plans together. Another time saving bonus is that both teachers don’t have to update their individual site more than once as embedding it feeds directly to the calendar. Also, collaborating teachers plan together, only one has to enter the information on the shared calendar. Thus freeing time for other teachers in the same grade and subject area.

How would you approach another project of this type differently given what you’ve learned here?
This is a tough question considering all that we’ve been through in this process. I know that in my MACUL tip/trick, I reminded readers to expect glitches in technology. I thought that in communicating with and attaining support from administrators early on in the project would be all we needed as we found sites within our district allowance to use to implement our project. I did not plan our technology glitch to come in the middle of our project and be so monumental within the district. However, I think that some things I would do differently in a similar project are 1) Better familiarize myself with district tech policies. 2) Never underestimate the power of people. TPACK is a valuable resource in planning the Wicked Problem Project but does not take into account the value of people skills. 3) Even with “people skills”, they don’t communicate the same via technology as they do in face-to-face interaction. While I know that time is valuable to everyone, especially in education, I think I would attempt to meet with people such as the head of technology to present and discuss our plan with him opposed to technology methods where I am simply another name/email in such a sizable district.

What are the lessons learned that others might benefit from knowing about?
The most important lesson I learned is that nothing comes easy and perseverance is a must! As much as we’d like to change the world, we have to remember that change is work because it makes people think differently and actually have to do something instead of their comfortable some old routine. It’s unfortunate that change is viewed by some as a power struggle and that so much of what anyone does as a career is overburdened by liabilities to protect us from the ignorance of the general public. I learned that implementing change should come with a warning label, “This will be hard”.

In what ways will you endeavor to do the same project again?
Again?! Goodness! Complete this one first! While our original plan stated a goal that was specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound, we did not realize that our time frame would undergo such a change or that our plan would become unattainable due to our support tolls being taken from us. Although we have not trained all staff members and gone to the district wide level we hoped for, we did save some teachers time and began something bigger. Conversations occurring thanks to this whole Weebly blockage fiasco have stirred ideas that our policies governing technology use may need to be rewritten. We know technology out dates itself quickly, I think that inevitably, written policies for it, so too become out dated and need to be regularly revisited. If schools want to be reaching and engaging their digital native learners as well as support their digital immigrant teachers, policies and expectations of pedagogy have to evolve or we are doomed by fear of liabilities. Honestly however, is the liability from the world wide web greater to us than that of potentially not effectively teaching our learners and preparing them for a world that sees past it?!