App for educators
If your plan is for one year, plant rice.
If your plan is for ten years, plant trees.
If your plan is for one hundred years, educate children.
(Confucius)
Motivation
I firmly believe that kids are the future and there is nothing more valuable we can give them than education.
We were therefore more than happy when we received a request to build an app for educators.
Let me tell you about the app we built for an online school.
When we start building an app, we always start with the most important thing.
Who is the user?
Users
First of all - who are the intended users?
It is the educators.
- The teachers who lead online classes for a group of students.
- The "after-school" assistants who regulary review lessons with individual students.
- The managers who keep things organized.
- The teachers who write and update teaching materials.
Now all these educators have a common goal which is to educate the students.
However, each type of user has obviously a slightly different time scale and user group to think of.
Thus we ask the second most important thing:)
What are the teacher's needs?
Time management
Schools keep a predictable and rather fixed schedule.
Still, we found that a shared calendar with all classes is very valuable.
Especially when a new cycle (e.g. semester) starts, and the times are not yet in memory.
Or when a teacher has to cover a class for somebody else.
Sometimes classes have to be moved due to holidays or unforseen circumstances (like a flu-holiday).
Or a class could even get cancelled.
Things change, and we have to adapt. Having a central place where we can see what's going on is therefore very valuable.
Content management
There are many things a teacher has to prepare for a class.
Our app (frankly no app) can help with all of them.
One of the things we can help with, is to keep the relevant content for a class at hand.
Thus each class has all the learning materials just one click away.
Whether it is the main content for the lesson.
Or a plan for the class or suggested excercises.
Or even a video of the same lesson in the past.
To make it easier for the teachers preparing the materials, we've integrated the app with MS Sharepoint.
This way, nothing has to be copied and tracked, but instead we have a single source.
Feedback and Improvement
All teachers strive to improve their skills and to best match the classes to the current student group.
To support them, we’ve built a very simple feedback-notes taking feature.
Now, after each lesson, the teacher can directly write down their feedback.
What worked great in the class? What are the topics or excercises the students struggled with?
What we found is that it is not only the teachers who benefit.
Of course, it is great to review the notes before the next class.
But the class might be tought by someone else!
Or the students have a follow up one-on-one lesson with an assistant.
These teachers can use the information to tie their teaching into a coherent story.
Student progress
Ultimately, we built the app to support students on their path to education.
Thus one of the important features was to track the student attendance and progress notes.
Collaboration
What is the best enabler for collaboration?
Simply, having a central place to track the classes with all information about time, content, feedback and student progress.
Teachers can quickly adjust to changes in the schedule or student attendance.
Lesson content can be modified mid-flight, if necessary, according to the feedback.
But it is also possible to observe the big picture.
How each student is advancing in their classes.
Whether they need additional support and of what kind.
For a better future
We are very happy that we got the opportunity to build an app like this.
If you feel that you have similar needs, please let us know.
We would love to support you.
Happy teaching!