PART A - Description of Need or Opportunity

I am the Technology Specialist at Clio High School.  One of my responsibilities is to manage the reservation binders for the 3 computer labs.  The three labs are in the Library, D-4 (a classroom), and the Career Resource Center (CRC).  The Library and D-4 reservation binders are in the Library, and the CRC binder is in the CRC.  If teachers want to reserve any of the labs, they have to go to one of these locations, check to see if it is available, then sign up.  If it is not available, they have to go to the other binder (potentially in another location), and try again.

There are a few problems with the status quo.  First of all, three binders are spread across two locations.  Since teachers have limited planning time due to meetings and other obligations, it is inconvenient for them to have to go to two different rooms in the hopes of reserving a computer lab.  If they are at home, planning during the weekend, there is no way for them to check to see if and when a lab is available.  Another concern is that a student or dishonest teacher could erase another teacher's name from the reservation sheet. While most people are mostly good, all it would take is one person to throw the binder in the trash, and the whole rest of the year's reservations would be gone.

The less time that teachers have to spend on reserving computer labs, the more time they can spend planning lessons.  If there was a way for teachers to check whether a lab was open from home, they would be able to plan from home.

Calendar from a Teacher's View

Google has recently released a new feature in Google Calendar called Appointment Slots.  As the Calendar owner, I created Appointment Slots similarly to how I would create Events.  I created two 45-minute Appointment Slots for every class period.  Teachers can reserve any slots they want.  The major advantage with this is that they can do it from home, their phone, their classroom, or anywhere with an Internet connection.

I would like Google Calendar to replace our current system at the beginning of the school year.  All teachers will reserve computer labs using this system.  The binders will be retired.

An important aspect to any change involving technology is professional development.  I will lead a professional development session showing teachers how to reserve computer labs.  It will be important that I justify why we are doing this, how it will simplify their lives, and save paper (teachers have been trying to use less paper at my school).  I also plan to create a short tutorial (or short tutorials) on how to do this.  That way, if a teacher wants to reserve a lab for the first time while they are planning during a weekend in October, they can.

Since this class ends before the school year begins, I will only be able to start the implementation for this project.  I need to plan for the live and online professional development.  I should have my presentation for the live one created and ready to go.  I should have the online tutorial done ready to post online.

Before any technology change is implemented, it is important to put it through some kind of pilot test program.  I will have a few teacher friends try this out with me.  They will have various degrees of technology competency (per the questionnaire they all completed for me last year).  An important early indicator for success will positive feedback on my Post-Pilot Program Questionnaire.  An indicator of success once everything has been implemented will be usage logs.  I will compare this year's usage with last year's.  If the labs are being used at least 95% as often as last year (or potentially more than last year), then the new reservation system is at least as good as last year's or better, while also providing much better security and mitigating the risk for all of the data and future reservations being lost.