Try It Yourself First
Whenever you create something digital and you want the students or parents to use it, try it yourself first before expecting them to do it. If you share a worksheet for them to open, make sure you can open it before using it in class. Broken links, passwords, and different access rights all mess with your digital work. I am humiliated by this all the time. If possible, use a student account when testing your stuff. Sal supposedly created student email accounts for all Los Alamos teachers specifically for this purpose. Use them. Also, have a backup plan in case the lesson falls apart. Been there, done that, will do that again unfortunately.
Time
Moving things to a digital platform takes time. Some things are quick to go digital and some things take a long time.
- How much time are you going to invest in moving a things to a digital platform?
- What are you going to move to a digital platform, a worksheet, teaching notes, a lesson, an assignment, a unit, or the entire curriculum?
- Do you have to learn the software or platform first before doing your work?
- How much time do you have?
Access for Students and Parents
- How will the students access the material?
- Is the Internet or other platform required to access the information?
- Will parents need access?
- What passwords or other security will be needed to access it?
- What software will the students/parents need to access it?
- Will the students need to turn this back in?
Updating and Modifying
- Is this something that you will need to update or change?
- Will you need to update it daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly?
- Will it be easy to modify or update?
- Will the students need to read, write, or modify it?
- Is the Internet required to modify it?
- Can the information be moved to a different platform (e.g. Word to Google Docs) and then modified?
Longevity
- Will you use this only once or will you be able to use it again and again?
- Will I use it when my classroom returns to “normal”?
- If you leave the school or district, will you need this?
- If you retire, will you need this?
- If this requires resources that the school district is paying for and the district stops paying for it, will you still be able to use it (Powerschool, DiscoveryEd, textbook adoption curriculum, …)?
Cost
- Are there any costs with this work?
- Is it dependent on specific software or resources? If so, how much does the software cost?
- Is this a cost you are willing to incur yourself if the district will not pay for it?
- Who actually owns your content, you, the school, Google, Microsoft?