Oneville Wiki - User contributions [en]

Expanded story: Data dashboards

2011-11-04T14:03:08Z

68.107.118.212: /* The community’s need for the work */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Jedd Cohen, and Josh Wairi for the dashboard project, with dashboard development by local technologist Seth Woodworth.

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|Overview and key findings]] '''on this project.

=The Details of the Work=
'''The expanded story behind our efforts, our communication and implementation ¡Ahas!, and our turning points!

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|Overview and key findings]] '''on this project.

'''Starting off, and developing our goals:

As we began the OneVille Project back in summer 2009, we proposed to create a “dashboard” displaying basic data linking many youth- and child-related databases in the city. That was because many policymakers and researchers have a sense these days that the more data seen by more people, the better (see our [[Research Base]] page). But we quickly became unsure that “seeing everything” on young people was necessarily good – and especially, not clearly necessary at the level of the individual, family, teacher, and school administrator (does a teacher actually need to know a student’s police record in order to serve him better? Who exactly should see health data on children?). And anyway, the district was first interested in getting all of its own basic data viewable, quickly -- and that’s what we ended up working on in the end.

We also moved away from multi “sector”-database linking because SomerPromise, the Mayor's new site-based initiative to provide comprehensive youth services, was also interested in tackling the issue of linking databases across agencies, and we felt they were better positioned to pursue that goal even as we worked to lay groundwork for the effort by creating administrative and family-level views of school data alone. So, the goal became to create a simple data display that could help educators and families of youth in a single school see some basic data from district’s data warehousing software, Aspen X2, in a single view. This included creating a translated display easily understandable by an immigrant parent.

Throughout, we also became convinced that a dashboard shouldn’t just show data – it should help people communicate about it. Our rationale: Data displays in schools have traditionally been a) on paper and b) one-way. Think a report card or a quarterly report on one’s “scores”: schools or districts just “display” student scores to students and parents or show parents their child’s absences. Since OneVille’s goal is to support diverse partners in running communication about pursuing the success of young people, we wanted to make sure that parents could communicate back ABOUT data, to teachers -- and that tutors, teachers, and parents could over time communicate with one another.

'''¡Aha! In addition to having the ability to quickly see and sort such basic data, diverse partners in young people’s lives need supports to communicate ABOUT basic data.

In talking to families, teachers, and other service providers, we realized that just "getting data" on a student is never enough: people need to then converse (online, in person, or otherwise) about how the young person is doing and how they might be assisted. Just knowing how many days a child is absent is the first step, but then you need to have a conversation about why and what to do about it!

=='''The community’s need for the work==

Our work was shaped by a number of insights about necessary communications at the levels of student and family, teacher and classroom, school, and community.

'''¡Aha! One-Stop Shopping: It is crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

Our dashboard sits “above” X2, the district’s current database, and displays its data in a more easily readable format for more people.

Parents, teachers, and afterschool providers all had a range of concerns about the accessibility of the data as stored in the district’s current database, Aspen X2:

[[Image:Aspen_X2_3.jpg|Aspen X2 screenshot]]

At the Healey School, older students and parents can log into X2, the student information system, to see updates on their grades, absences, etc. But many don't know that they do have passwords, and students told us they often forgot them. Any dashboard needs a password too, though, so it was really other issues that made a dashboard seem necessary: once some of these users would get to X2, they found the format of the data there hard to understand. In particular, information isn't translated for non-English speakers.

When a teacher logged into X2, for another example, it was hard to see any student’s growth over time (i.e., test score growth). As Josh pointed out, test scores are kept in pure chronological order and since students take many tests, it was hard for anyone looking at X2 to see growth on a single test from year to year. Further, the “fields,” or “boxes,” keeping data in X2 didn’t have calculations like test score growth: they just showed one score, then the next. Seth spent lots of time building “tubes” to make the dashboard automatically calculate this growth. Additionally, while the District's new report card importantly had sections for comments by teachers, those comments -- on particular skills listed on the report card -- only could be chosen from a drop-down list. Teachers could add longer summary comments on student progress only once per quarter, in the days when report cards “open” for updating and before they “close.” X2 also cuts off teacher comments at a certain length. So, the individual-level dashboard we designed has comment boxes next to each issue on the dashboard, for users to say whatever they want.

From an administrator’s perspective, it was hard to compare different aspects of student data simultaneously. For example, a request to the central office was required to link a table of attendance by student name with a table of MCAS score by student name. Principals also had to click through numerous choices within X2 before seeing any data at all. While queries to a busy central office could get a data report from staff, getting new data on demand -- during a staff meeting, for immediate discussion -- had not been feasible. 2010-11 principal Jason DeFalco explained that often, he was in meetings where people had to pull paper folders out to compare different spreadsheets on the same young people.

Finally, while some afterschool providers have direct access to X2, many don’t, meaning they had trouble knowing basic information like whether students who were coming to afterschool were going to school. For that reason, some important data fields were not kept in X2 at all yet, like the afterschool program in which children were enrolled or their attendance in that program. These providers typically kept their information in separate computer databases or on paper. Again and again, people voiced the need to see all the data in one place.

And perhaps most interesting, the existing X2 system was set up only to house student data -- not to help people talk about it. In talking about the individual-view dashboard prototype with parents, the major feature everyone emphasized was the ability to immediately comment ON data, rather than simply “look at it.”

Finally, our dashboard conversations with DeFalco and Vadhera showed us that all the data supporters needed to see did not come from the same place. Test score growth and years at Healey had to be calculated based on separate data in X2, and crucial data fields were not kept in X2 at all, like afterschool program. Incorporating data into our dashboards impressed upon us how much work, by many different people at the school, was necessary to track comprehensive data on any student.

We ultimately had to leave out some data we considered using because it was not yet kept in X2 (e.g., afterschool attendance, and specific in-school tutoring services students received). X2 is itself modifiable, so Somerville X2 users have at times considered whether they want to enter these additional fields into X2.

=='''Development Process==

From the very beginning, in the 2009-2010 school year, we collaborated with a range of Healey community members to design the dashboard’s user interface. As it turned out, Greg Nadeau, Somerville resident and Healey dad, had already made a color-coded Excel spreadsheet for the Healey Principal the year before we began work on the dashboard. It was an early Excel version of what we came to call the Admin View. Here’s the earliest version of our Admin View:

[[Image:Greg_nadeau_view.jpg]]

Before we made the dashboard version of this view “live” by connecting it to X2, the school’s main need at the time was entering updated data into the Excel spreadsheet -- by hand. We knew that we would eventually develop a dashboard to automatically transfer data from X2, but the school needed to integrate the data sets immediately. So Susan Klimczak, from the South End Technology Center at Tent City, who would later become the lead organizer for the eportfolio project, did some valiant handiwork, assisted by colleague Al Willis. They cleaned up the current year’s spreadsheet and added new data typically not kept in X2 that the principal also wanted to see, like afterschool enrollment. We also had some regular meetings via phone conference with Greg and the principal to consider the patterns the principal wanted to see and the new "fields" for data that the principal felt needed to be created permanently in the district student information system (e.g., attendance in the afterschool programs. Afterschool programs weren't keeping this data in Somerville's core data system, X2, and still don’t.)

'''Turning point: The Teacher View

Josh Wairi, a 5th grade teacher at the Healey, got interested in the dashboard design when we stopped by his classroom one day after school in the winter of 2011. Looking together at his computer and printouts, we realized he was already creating spreadsheets of student data from X2 by hand. He was interested in quickly displaying and sorting basic data, to supplement his face-to-face and phone conversations with students and parents. His work showed us the need for what would become the “Teacher View,” a version of the Administrator View in which all the students come from the same homeroom.

Between this stage and the final version of the admin and teacher views (below), Mica, Seth, and Jedd met with Principal DeFalco several times during the 2010-2011 year and new Principal Vadhera beginning during the summer of 2011 to figure out the highest priority data fields for the admin view and to brainstorm potential uses. Based on DeFalco’s feedback, and with Seth’s programming skill, we developed a dashboard to automatically transfer data from X2 to a user-friendly view. Seeing Greg’s initial prototype, above, sparked DeFalco to suggest additional data fields: years at Healey, score growth on the MAP, ELL status, MEPA scores (English language learner assessments), IEP status, and afterschool program name (in the end, we did not add program name to the dashboard, because it was never made a real field in X2.) From this feedback, we developed the view below (names are fictional to ensure anonymity):

[[Image:Schooldash.jpg]]

All data fields are visible on one screen – so there is no need to click through multiple windows to view the desired data. Viewers can sort up to three columns at a time simply by clicking at the top of each while holding down the shift key. With Vadhera, over the summer of 2011, we brainstormed additional uses for the admin staff, which are described below in the second-to-last ¡Ahas!, “Data really can launch a conversation.”

'''Turning Point: Making the report card online and interactive
Stories of parents and afterschool providers trying to communicate with teachers about students’ report cards prompted us to push forward on an “Individual View” that included the report card instead of just absences, grades, and test scores. Mica, Seth, Josh, and Jedd had many meetings in the spring of 2011 to brainstorm the design for this view, considering parent needs for accessibility and common communication challenges between teachers and parents. Josh was a critical resource on these issues.

We had also been inspired by the New Visions for New Schools project, which has had success with a view that gives parents and students a quick understanding of student performance on quantifiable measures. (http://www.hfrp.org/var/hfrp/storage/fckeditor/File/9thGradeTracker.pdf) Compared with New Visions' view, we wanted to include the additional feature of allowing parents - and afterschool providers - to comment on any child's progress, send these comments to the teacher, and begin a conversation about how to support the student at home and in school. New Visions emphasizes a verbal agreement between family and teacher, called an “Improvement Plan,” so we created space on the dashboard page to write down this agreement. In our initial prototype, we did this by adding actual “Improvement Plan” text boxes in the right-hand side of the screen:

[[Image: New visions view.jpg]]

As we continued to develop the dashboard and add new types of basic data for viewing, we wanted to keep all the info on a single page for easy access, but new developments convinced us to spread the info out across several pages. At the time we were designing the “Individual View,” the District was ceasing to assign its elementary students numerical grades, or their equivalents on the typical A, B, C scale, and moving to a standards-based K-6 report card that asked teachers to grade students as proficient on a range of grade-level skills. So, we made Somerville's new K-6 report card (handed out on paper to families) online and color-coded. We also decided that we wanted the text boxes to prompt more of an ongoing conversation, rather than a formal quarterly agreement. So, we put these text boxes next to each chunk of data, with a prompt embedded in the “save comment” click button to encourage parents to write comments or questions. With the help of local technologist Evan Burchard, whom Seth recruited, we developed a revised version. The image below includes a sample tutor comment. That’s because in the months to come, we would realize that any approved viewer of the dashboard could comment:

[[Image:Individual view grades.jpg|grades]]

As we added the report card to the dashboard, we realized it was substantial enough that it needed its own page (above). In order to make the individual view as accessible as possible, even to families that are not used to looking at lots of quantitative data in one place, we spread the rest of the individual view’s information across several other pages, the names of which are visible as tabs at the top of each page. The individual view is now organized like a slideshow: Clicking on different tabs allows the viewer to see and comment on different parts of each student’s profile. We combined info about the student’s attendance and MCAS and MAP scores into the Individual View, which also includes the teacher’s quarterly summary comments from the report card:

[[Image:Attendance.jpg|Attendance]]

[[Image:Test scores.jpg|Test scores]]

[[Image:Teacher comments.jpg|Teacher comments]]

At this point, the Individual View offered many text box opportunities for parents and other service providers to enter comments. So, we created a “Comments” page, which captures all the comments entered for review before sending to the teacher. In thinking this through with Josh, we figured that the main (“homeroom”) teacher really had to be the “point person” for younger students in particular; so, all comments go to him/her as a starting point. On the dashboard’s final page, the parent or afterschool provider can also request that the teacher reply to their comments or make an appointment with them:

[[Image: indivviewcommentsummary.jpg]]

Parents or other service providers can specify any new contact info and convenient meeting times. After receiving these comments, the homeroom teacher can forward any relevant parts to the appropriate subject area teachers via email. (Rather than have parents automatically “reply to all” on comments perhaps best designed for the homeroom teacher, Josh felt that homeroom teachers would like to take the lead in responding to and informing other involved teachers or service providers about families’ comments. Testing how these conversational dynamics actually go was to be an important piece of the pilot.)

As we’ve worked to import the district’s translations of the basic report card rubrics, we’ve considered encouraging immigrant parents to use Google Translate as a first step to translate teachers’ own comments and to write back to teachers about their reactions. In the future, we’d like to offer a translated version of the basic individual view in Spanish, Portuguese, perhaps Haitian Creole, and other major languages at the Healey School.

Overall, knowing all the work that families and schools face on a daily basis, we’ve designed these tools to spark specific kinds of interaction around particular chunks of student data. How people use the tools will be up to them – but rather than have the tools just “display” data, we wanted the individual view, in particular, to also prompt and encourage communication about data.

==Feedback==

'''¡Aha! Many parents welcome an invitation into a conversation with their child’s teachers, and even if these parents are unfamiliar with technology, these parents often see technology as an opportunity for connection, rather than an obstacle.

We’ve asked for feedback repeatedly on the dashboard views, showing it to administrators, families, and afterschool providers, including doing focused interviews with parents and students from Josh’s own class (parents participating in the pilot this year will continue to be co-designers). In recent interviews, several immigrant parents emphasized the way the individual view dashboard could spark parent involvement: Smiling, one said, "Parents are not just left out of the school. With this, you are bringing them in, sucking them into the school curriculum!" When asked whether the dashboard might feel like extra work, another parent articulated his/her vision of parent involvement: “Not extra – you have children, you spend time to communicate. The more time you spend, the better students do.” One English-speaking parent with three children at the school explained that the dashboard’s comment and scheduling features solved a long-standing problem for her: After being a Healey parent for 11 years, she had only ever had time to meet with each of her children’s core academic teachers during PTA nights, but never the specialty teachers, e.g., music, art, support room teachers. Our dashboard could enable and encourage parents like her to submit their questions, requests for meetings, and updated contact info to the student’s homeroom teacher, who could forward it to the specials teachers. Another parent was especially enthusiastic about online access: “I do everything on the computer now.” And another immigrant parent said he does “everything” on his smart phone!

'''¡Aha! Data really ''can ''launch a conversation.

In a recent meeting with OneVille staff, Principal Vadhera described the potential value of the integrated dashboard tools, in contrast to the old system of requesting info from many different people: “Right now, in just five minutes, I have seen a complete picture of the kid. Without even checking in with folks [other staff]. Normally, I would have to wait for them to get back to me, and bring charts and graphs to meetings. What a great way to launch conversation.”

Online access to this data also could help close an even more basic communication gap, as Vadhera noted: “Even having this [individual view] up there [online] for parents to go back to,” could help when “the report card didn’t get in the backpack, or whatever.” She could see it being a powerful tool in conversations with parents who come in to see her, as there were often crossed wires about things as basic as students’ absences.

Purnima explained that on the admin view, she is interested in “anything that shows a gap.” Similarly, sorting attendance data by grade, for example, would save hours for staff who have typically printed the daily reports and then spent “a week” looking for patterns among the different pages.

In addition, she noted, students with IEPs and 504 plans sometimes need accommodations on the MCAS, and Purnima often spends “hours” going over the paper lists and checking with the teachers to ensure that everyone’s accommodation needs have been met. Our tool will allow her to sort by IEP and 504 status, so that all these students appear together, and, as she said, “so we don’t have moments when things fall through the cracks.”

Purnima and Josh both suggested that the dashboards could enhance teamwork among educators at Healey: In staff team meetings, access to each view could allow teachers and administrators to collaboratively assess a student’s needs, discuss and design targeted interventions, and, if desired, record their plan by submitting it as subject-specific comments that get archived in the homeroom (lead) teacher’s email. Such team conversations could involve the school’s “student support team,” a standing group of educators that Purnima described as “the central nervous system of the building,” including Purnima, the Vice Principal, Nurse, and Adjustment/Redirect Counselor. Josh explained that another advantage to the individual view is that in contrast to his whole-class spreadsheets, it could allow him to present a single student’s data in one of these team meetings without revealing all the other students’ grades unnecessarily (a breach of confidentiality). Finally, another relevant team that could use the dashboard to look at data together (even remotely) is made up of each student’s individualized group of supporters, e.g. their homeroom teacher, Special Ed or ELL specialists, and reading/math resource room staff. Josh expressed interest in piloting the dashboard this way.

'''¡Aha! The families whose children most need assistance are often the hardest to reach with technology, but they are also the most in need of such rapid access to information.

We planned to continue substantial parent outreach during the pilot phase to show parents how to use the dashboard. We would face the same challenges with the individual view as anyone working to enhance collaboration around students across barriers of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Not all parents have home access to computers and internet (though phones with internet access are increasingly popular – and our dashboard can be accessed through a smartphone), and some parents are not functionally literate in their home language. The same work schedules that make parent-teacher meetings hard also make it hard for some parents to coordinate their schedules with the computer labs at local libraries or in the housing projects where some families live. (Also, to look at an online data display together, educators too need internet access -- not always easy if people meet in a room without a computer, wireless, or a laptop to plug into an ethernet cable.)

Several years from now, the proliferation of smartphones and iphones will likely shrink this challenge dramatically, making it easier than ever for partners to join the conversation about student data.

As of mid-October, 2011, the prototypes of the administrative and teacher views were complete pending new data from the District (which required building final "tubes" to the district's student information system), and the individual view was nearly complete. We hope that these dashboards will be useful enough, wherever they’re implemented, to help supporters ensure that students’ needs are met, spark collaboration among educators and families, and if useful, catch on. As Principal Vadhera explained about our planned incremental approach to implementation at the Healey School, “A lot of ideas start like THIS (gestures big with hands). And then they fail. This is a guinea pig, Josh could always share back, move forward in small increments. Teachers might just want to get on board with this!”

We planned to pilot our three “views” at the Healey in fall, 2011 and report out what we learned. However, the young local technologist who created these great products to community specifications went so slowly on our limited budget that our grant dried up and we weren’t able to pilot them. One classroom’s teacher, families, students, and supporting teachers were ready to test the dashboard in fall 2011, as were their principal and local afterschool providers, but the developer’s slowness and unreliability prompted a district administrator to pull the plug on the pilot – so the crack in the infrastructure remains.

The lesson here involves the timeline of software development, and the risks associated with community-based design research: The working relationship with the community partner (e.g., the school district) becomes asymmetrical when developing a software application from scratch - lots of work on the developer's end without immediate results for the community partner, leaving them with “cold feet” by the time the product is ready. We're optimistic that another community can pick up right where we left off, rather than starting from scratch like we did. The code for these dashboard products is now available online and free to the next developer. '''Our goal has always been to launch an open source dashboard design that could contribute not only in Somerville if it proved useful, but elsewhere through iterative development.

'''One piece of this project that has unflagging community support is our plan to work this year with the Healey PTA to create a model of basic computer and email training run by parents for other parents who need this support. '''We’ve already established a computer in the PTA room, available for parent use at prescheduled times, and we’re reaching out to other computing facilities in the school and community organizations. We’ll be reaching out in particular to parents in Mr. Wairi’s new class about how to support them to access the Internet.

Overview and key findings: Data dashboards

2011-11-04T13:28:41Z

68.107.118.212: /* Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Jedd Cohen, and Josh Wairi for the dashboard project, with dashboard development by local technologist Seth Woodworth

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

==Communication we hoped to improve==

''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?
:''(Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish?)

In an era when you can log on to any computer and get quick updates from friends, there shouldn't be a reason why all the people who need to know basic info in order to serve young people can’t know it immediately. Quantitative measures or summary data about young people (e.g., a report card) never show "the whole child" (eportfolios can help with that!), but they still provide information crucial to the process of tracking student progress, and they do tend to predict important events like “dropping out.”

Unfortunately, access to the data systems needed to provide this info varies widely among districts. Those that can afford it are increasingly investing in sophisticated data systems. Lower income districts can’t afford to. And when districts do have online data display tools, called “data dashboards,” they typically aren't designed by educators or parents.

We - local technologists, teachers, and researchers - have been working with families, afterschool providers, principals, and central administration in the Somerville School District to meet the need for a user-friendly, affordable way to view lots of student data in one place. The result of our work is a suite of three “data dashboards” - open source web applications designed to link the family, teachers, principal, and afterschool providers in communication about student data to support each student’s success. We got to the brink of piloting these tools in our first phase of work. The code for them, available to anyone, is at the end of this page.

Considering who usefully sees what data on children has been core to the dashboard project so far. Guided by a collaborative design process that drew on representatives of all the community stakeholders above, Somerville technologists Seth Woodworth and Evan Burchard created the core of three views: an “admin view” for principals, which shows data on all students in the school; a “teacher view,” which shows a teacher data on the students in his or her class; and an “individual view,” designed to link teachers, afterschool providers, and families in communication about the details of an individual student’s profile. Our plan has been to pilot each of these views at Somerville’s Healey School this fall: 5th grade teacher (and author) Josh Wairi and his parents have wanted to pilot the individual and teacher views, and Principal Purnima Vadhera has wanted to pilot the admin view. Technological development went slower than we hoped -- always an issue in making tools from scratch, especially on a budget -- and so we ended our Phase 1 at the brink of piloting.

We felt that it was crucial to collaborate with the Somerville community to design open-source educational tools that link the partners in young people’s education in regular communication about their learning. Here are the main reasons:

'''A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

Principals Vadhera and DeFalco, teacher Josh Wairi, and various students we talked to in our other pilots all mentioned instances where a student “fell through the cracks” because of a piece of missing data -- for example, a student who received an unexpectedly poor grade at the end of the semester, with the parent, the homeroom teacher, or the administrator surprised by the news. These main partners also described how seeing new patterns, and faster, could support timely interventions -- from MCAS accommodations to targeted academic support.

'''One-Stop Shopping: It seems crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

To clarify: Somerville, like a typical district, already has a “student information system” - a database that stores or “warehouses” student information. The issue is that such data have been hard for people to view quickly all in one place. Many schools, and also, afterschool programs, do not have easy tools for quickly displaying basic information to multiple partners at once, for putting that data all in one place for viewing, or letting them sort the data for patterns. Our "dashboards" have been designed to sit on top of the student information system for easy viewing OF data. In Somerville, while the data on these "dashboards" all exist in Somerville's student info system, lots of people still talked about the need to improve data display for parents and students, teachers, afterschool providers, and administrators.

In Somerville, administrators have had to send data analysis requests to a central office (filled with great staff!) and the staff would send patterns back to them. Or, teachers had to create their own Excel spreadsheets or printouts and analyze them by hand. Administrators also told us of time wasted in meetings as staff flipped through multiple folders or drawers to find data; further, staff wasted lots of time preparing for meetings by trying hand-analyze patterns across such data sources.

The data was inaccessible for other reasons, too: when they could access the student information system with a password, many parents and some teachers had a hard time understanding the way the system displayed data, and the data is only in English. And finally, the data display couldn't easily launch a conversation between the people in a student's life: many viewers (e.g, parents) cannot comment ON the data in the student information system, but can only view it.

Finally, even in districts that have created expensive data display systems, often the problem is getting actual use. So, we wanted to try to design tools to community specifications.

Here was another key piece of our logic in designing dashboards for Somerville from scratch: Rather than suggesting that Somerville buy a tool "off the shelf," we decided to develop an open source data viewing tool because we figured an open source tool (made with "free to modify" software modifiable by any skilled programmer anywhere) could save Somerville and other districts lots of money.

'''Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.

Others had offered to make Somerville data-viewing tools for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then require tens of thousands of dollars for annual upkeep. We figured that with our grant, we could work with a local technologist to develop an open source tool to educators' and parents' specifications; any next district or developer could then have the software for their own use.

Our logic: If open source development produces a free tool, districts don't have to buy the product itself or renew the license to use it. Those using free tools only have to pay for services (upkeep and troubleshooting the tool), which can be a fraction of the cost. Our local technologist Seth put it this way: “Take the quarterly profit of a company like Blackboard INC (Quarter 1, 2010) and break it down into services and license fees. In just one quarter, Blackboard made only $7.3 million in services [tech support], but made $93.7 million dollars in 'product revenues' (licenses to run their software). In the K-12 context, a freely available and documented open source competitor to store-bought communication tools would free up a lot of money back to US schools.”

Districts also pay lots of money for store-bought, "off the shelf" dashboard tools and then find them unused by the community. We wanted to try to build something to community specifications instead.

Based on a model created in Excel by Healey dad Greg Nadeau, and designed in partnership with Principals Jason DeFalco and Purnima Vahdera and teacher Josh Wairi during the 2010-2011 school year, the admin and teacher view dashboards we made are designed to provide quick views for teams of teachers and administrators to compare students in a group and discern patterns. All data fields are visible on one screen, so there is no need to click through multiple windows to view the desired data (as users do to see data in the district's student information system). Viewers can sort up to three columns at a time simply by clicking at the top of each while holding down the shift key. Whereas the admin view lists all students in the school, the teacher view presents similar information for a single class of students. Here is the admin view, with fictional data to maintain confidentiality:

[[Image:NewAdminDash.jpg|NewAdminDash.jpg]]

Our individual view (below) is designed to be used by educators, parents, and afterschool providers; it complements the "admin" and "teacher views" with additional student data that was identified by Healey parents, students, afterschool providers, and teachers as being especially relevant to their communications with each other.

Importantly to the OneVille Project, this "individual view" also is designed to give parent and afterschool provider viewers the chance to comment ON the data and send these comments to the teacher's email inbox, sparking an exchange that can continue over email or in person. Here is the individual view’s final page, where viewers can review and submit their comments:

[[Image:NewComments.jpg|NewComments.jpg]]

Note the tabs for viewing other pages at the top of the screenshot. The images below show the pages connected to each of these tabs, covering grades, test scores, attendance, and teacher summary comments.

[[Image:IndivDashSummary.jpg|IndivDashSummary.jpg]]

[[Image:Test scores.jpg|Test scores.jpg]]

[[Image:Attendance.jpg|Attendance.jpg]]

[[Image:Teacher comments.jpg|Teacher comments.jpg]]

In creating the individual view, we drew on a data display model from the New Visions schools in New York (http://www.hfrp.org/var/hfrp/storage/fckeditor/File/9thGradeTracker.pdf)
combined it with Somerville’s locally designed K-6 report card, and worked with teacher Josh Wairi and his families (with advice from his students and afterschool providers) to integrate everyone’s insights into the testable product.

Our goal in fall 2011-12 has been to pilot and tweak these three tools with a group of interested educators, administrators, families, students, and afterschool providers. We have all wanted to now explore the ways these tools actually can support information-sharing and conversation among all these people, in meetings, one-to-one interactions, and email-based conversations about the data.

In all this, we've encountered the core problem with designing and creating tools from scratch, to community specifications and on a budget: relying on individual technologists rather than large companies. While our local technologist worked to produce tools to community specifications, he went too slowly, and when we wanted to start the pilot as our grant ended Sept 1, the views weren't ready.

Our entire Ford grant would have been eaten up in buying Somerville a tool off the shelf; but in designing locally, to community specifications, for small amounts of money, local technologists created the core of the tools but ran out of time and money to do more than a very small pilot.

Even if the tools don't seed in Somerville in the end, the open source code can support next efforts at free educational data displays for districts or programs too often spending fortunes on storebought tools. We have added a tool to the “kit” by producing an open source dashboard and code next developers can modify. Still, we note that the OneVille projects in which we used preexisting tools – Google sites or wikispaces for eportfolio software, and texting software like Google Voice – seeded the most longstanding local change most quickly and actually got people communicating.

We note that professional (more expensive) open source developers able to produce tools more quickly, or local technologists on larger budgets, might provide more immediately ready open source infrastructure for schools and districts. For example, after the same local young technologist struggled to complete our Parent Connector Network hotline, the hotline was finally made by Leo Burd, a new colleague at MIT's Center for Civic Media who specialized in such open source tools and was inspired enough by the Parent Connector project that he did it for free.

==Our work, and our '''¡Ahas!==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? At this point, what are our main ¡Ahas! about improving communications in public education? What communication and implementation ¡Ahas! and turning points did we have over time?

'''Our main ¡Ahas! over time have been these:

'''¡Aha! A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

'''¡Aha! One-Stop Shopping: People say it's crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

'''¡Aha! Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.

'''¡Aha! The families whose children most need assistance are often the hardest to reach with technology, but they are also the most in need of such rapid access to information. Rather than say parents "won't use" technology, how about training?

===Communication and implementation ¡Ahas!, and turning points!===

We had many ¡Aha! in sequence on this project over two years. '''To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ¡Ahas!, click [[Expanded story: Data dashboards|here!]]'''

In addition to our '''Main ¡Ahas! about data dashboards, we had other key discoveries along the way:

'''¡Aha! In addition to having the ability to quickly see and sort such basic data, diverse partners in young people’s lives need supports to communicate ABOUT basic data.

'''¡Aha! Many parents welcome an invitation into a conversation with their child’s teachers, and even if these parents are unfamiliar with technology, these parents often see technology as an opportunity for connection, rather than an obstacle.

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

Throughout the design process, we’ve gotten feedback from parents, teachers, and administrators about the dashboards’ potential value. In recent interviews, for example, several immigrant parents emphasized the way the individual view dashboard could spark parent involvement: Smiling, one said, "Parents are not just left out of the school. With this, you are bringing them in, sucking them into the school curriculum!"

In a recent planning meeting with OneVille staff, Principal Vadhera described the value of the integrated dashboard tools, in contrast to the old system of requesting info from many different people: “Right now, in just five minutes, I have seen a complete picture of the kid. Without even checking in with folks [other staff]. Normally, I would have to wait for them to get back to me, and bring charts and graphs to meetings. What a great way to launch conversation.”

Purnima and Josh both suggested that the dashboards could enhance teamwork among educators at Healey: In staff team meetings, access to each view could allow teachers and administrators to collaboratively assess a student’s needs, design targeted interventions, and, if desired, record their plan by submitting it as subject-specific comments that get archived in the homeroom (lead) teacher’s email.

'''The families whose children most need assistance are often the hardest to reach with technology, but they are also the most in need of such rapid access to information. Rather than say parents "won't use" technology, how about training?''' We’d need to continue training outreach on the dashboards during a pilot phase, because we face the same challenges with the individual view as anyone working to enhance collaboration around students across barriers of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Not all parents have home access to computers and internet (though phones with internet access are increasingly popular), and some parents are not functionally literate in their home language. These communication barriers block parents from understanding data even if it is on paper or shared verbally; technology training at least offers parents skills for checking data on demand.

'''While some at the Healey are disappointed not to try the dashboard in a broad way this fall, one piece of this project that has unflagging community support is our plan to work this year with the Healey PTA to create a model of basic computer and email training run by parents for other parents who need this support. Our goal was to link this training to the dashboard training for parents; instead our hook will be the school's newly schoolwide listserv. '''We’ve already established a computer in the PTA room, available for parent use at prescheduled times, and we’re reaching out to other computing facilities in the school and community organizations. We’ll be reaching out in particular to parents in Mr. Wairi’s new class about how to support them to access the Internet.

The ultimate lesson here involves the timeline of software development, and the risks associated with community-based design research if one is literally designing a new technological tool from scratch. Developing a software application from scratch means lots of work on the developer's end without immediate use by the community partner, unless major funding remains to keep modifying the product over time. The reality is that the young local technologist who created these products to community specifications went so slowly on our limited budget that we weren’t able to pilot them. We might lose confidence in local open source development, but the reality is that a tool for easily seeing data "all in one place" otherwise will not exist in Somerville due to the expense of "off the shelf" tools. We're optimistic that if not in Somerville, another community and next developer can pick up right where we left off, rather than starting from scratch like we did. That's how open source development works, in fact. The code for these dashboard products is now available online and free to the next developer (see below, Technological How-Tos).

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:
:➢Can everyone who needs to get and share important progress information, get and share it when they need to?
:➢If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?
:➢To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?
:➢What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?
:➢What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people? Which conversations should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment to test which works for what?
:➢Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?
:➢ If so, how might low cost tech development or, professional development on the tools you already have, support such information-sharing?
:➢ ***How can you ensure resources for ongoing tech modifications and tech support after you have developed your initial tool?

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

[https://github.com/sethwoodworth/SchoolDash Admin/Teacher View Source Code]
(written in the Django framework)

[https://github.com/sethwoodworth/OnevilleReportCard/ Individual View Source Code]
(written in the Ruby on Rails framework)

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

Overview and key findings: Data dashboards

2011-11-04T13:25:11Z

68.107.118.212: /* Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Jedd Cohen, and Josh Wairi for the dashboard project, with dashboard development by local technologist Seth Woodworth

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

==Communication we hoped to improve==

''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?
:''(Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish?)

In an era when you can log on to any computer and get quick updates from friends, there shouldn't be a reason why all the people who need to know basic info in order to serve young people can’t know it immediately. Quantitative measures or summary data about young people (e.g., a report card) never show "the whole child" (eportfolios can help with that!), but they still provide information crucial to the process of tracking student progress, and they do tend to predict important events like “dropping out.”

Unfortunately, access to the data systems needed to provide this info varies widely among districts. Those that can afford it are increasingly investing in sophisticated data systems. Lower income districts can’t afford to. And when districts do have online data display tools, called “data dashboards,” they typically aren't designed by educators or parents.

We - local technologists, teachers, and researchers - have been working with families, afterschool providers, principals, and central administration in the Somerville School District to meet the need for a user-friendly, affordable way to view lots of student data in one place. The result of our work is a suite of three “data dashboards” - open source web applications designed to link the family, teachers, principal, and afterschool providers in communication about student data to support each student’s success. We got to the brink of piloting these tools in our first phase of work. The code for them, available to anyone, is at the end of this page.

Considering who usefully sees what data on children has been core to the dashboard project so far. Guided by a collaborative design process that drew on representatives of all the community stakeholders above, Somerville technologists Seth Woodworth and Evan Burchard created the core of three views: an “admin view” for principals, which shows data on all students in the school; a “teacher view,” which shows a teacher data on the students in his or her class; and an “individual view,” designed to link teachers, afterschool providers, and families in communication about the details of an individual student’s profile. Our plan has been to pilot each of these views at Somerville’s Healey School this fall: 5th grade teacher (and author) Josh Wairi and his parents have wanted to pilot the individual and teacher views, and Principal Purnima Vadhera has wanted to pilot the admin view. Technological development went slower than we hoped -- always an issue in making tools from scratch, especially on a budget -- and so we ended our Phase 1 at the brink of piloting.

We felt that it was crucial to collaborate with the Somerville community to design open-source educational tools that link the partners in young people’s education in regular communication about their learning. Here are the main reasons:

'''A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

Principals Vadhera and DeFalco, teacher Josh Wairi, and various students we talked to in our other pilots all mentioned instances where a student “fell through the cracks” because of a piece of missing data -- for example, a student who received an unexpectedly poor grade at the end of the semester, with the parent, the homeroom teacher, or the administrator surprised by the news. These main partners also described how seeing new patterns, and faster, could support timely interventions -- from MCAS accommodations to targeted academic support.

'''One-Stop Shopping: It seems crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

To clarify: Somerville, like a typical district, already has a “student information system” - a database that stores or “warehouses” student information. The issue is that such data have been hard for people to view quickly all in one place. Many schools, and also, afterschool programs, do not have easy tools for quickly displaying basic information to multiple partners at once, for putting that data all in one place for viewing, or letting them sort the data for patterns. Our "dashboards" have been designed to sit on top of the student information system for easy viewing OF data. In Somerville, while the data on these "dashboards" all exist in Somerville's student info system, lots of people still talked about the need to improve data display for parents and students, teachers, afterschool providers, and administrators.

In Somerville, administrators have had to send data analysis requests to a central office (filled with great staff!) and the staff would send patterns back to them. Or, teachers had to create their own Excel spreadsheets or printouts and analyze them by hand. Administrators also told us of time wasted in meetings as staff flipped through multiple folders or drawers to find data; further, staff wasted lots of time preparing for meetings by trying hand-analyze patterns across such data sources.

The data was inaccessible for other reasons, too: when they could access the student information system with a password, many parents and some teachers had a hard time understanding the way the system displayed data, and the data is only in English. And finally, the data display couldn't easily launch a conversation between the people in a student's life: many viewers (e.g, parents) cannot comment ON the data in the student information system, but can only view it.

Finally, even in districts that have created expensive data display systems, often the problem is getting actual use. So, we wanted to try to design tools to community specifications.

Here was another key piece of our logic in designing dashboards for Somerville from scratch: Rather than suggesting that Somerville buy a tool "off the shelf," we decided to develop an open source data viewing tool because we figured an open source tool (made with "free to modify" software modifiable by any skilled programmer anywhere) could save Somerville and other districts lots of money.

'''Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.

Others had offered to make Somerville data-viewing tools for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then require tens of thousands of dollars for annual upkeep. We figured that with our grant, we could work with a local technologist to develop an open source tool to educators' and parents' specifications; any next district or developer could then have the software for their own use.

Our logic: If open source development produces a free tool, districts don't have to buy the product itself or renew the license to use it. Those using free tools only have to pay for services (upkeep and troubleshooting the tool), which can be a fraction of the cost. Our local technologist Seth put it this way: “Take the quarterly profit of a company like Blackboard INC (Quarter 1, 2010) and break it down into services and license fees. In just one quarter, Blackboard made only $7.3 million in services [tech support], but made $93.7 million dollars in 'product revenues' (licenses to run their software). In the K-12 context, a freely available and documented open source competitor to store-bought communication tools would free up a lot of money back to US schools.”

Districts also pay lots of money for store-bought, "off the shelf" dashboard tools and then find them unused by the community. We wanted to try to build something to community specifications instead.

Based on a model created in Excel by Healey dad Greg Nadeau, and designed in partnership with Principals Jason DeFalco and Purnima Vahdera and teacher Josh Wairi during the 2010-2011 school year, the admin and teacher view dashboards we made are designed to provide quick views for teams of teachers and administrators to compare students in a group and discern patterns. All data fields are visible on one screen, so there is no need to click through multiple windows to view the desired data (as users do to see data in the district's student information system). Viewers can sort up to three columns at a time simply by clicking at the top of each while holding down the shift key. Whereas the admin view lists all students in the school, the teacher view presents similar information for a single class of students. Here is the admin view, with fictional data to maintain confidentiality:

[[Image:NewAdminDash.jpg|NewAdminDash.jpg]]

Our individual view (below) is designed to be used by educators, parents, and afterschool providers; it complements the "admin" and "teacher views" with additional student data that was identified by Healey parents, students, afterschool providers, and teachers as being especially relevant to their communications with each other.

Importantly to the OneVille Project, this "individual view" also is designed to give parent and afterschool provider viewers the chance to comment ON the data and send these comments to the teacher's email inbox, sparking an exchange that can continue over email or in person. Here is the individual view’s final page, where viewers can review and submit their comments:

[[Image:NewComments.jpg|NewComments.jpg]]

Note the tabs for viewing other pages at the top of the screenshot. The images below show the pages connected to each of these tabs, covering grades, test scores, attendance, and teacher summary comments.

[[Image:IndivDashSummary.jpg|IndivDashSummary.jpg]]

[[Image:Test scores.jpg|Test scores.jpg]]

[[Image:Attendance.jpg|Attendance.jpg]]

[[Image:Teacher comments.jpg|Teacher comments.jpg]]

In creating the individual view, we drew on a data display model from the New Visions schools in New York (http://www.hfrp.org/var/hfrp/storage/fckeditor/File/9thGradeTracker.pdf)
combined it with Somerville’s locally designed K-6 report card, and worked with teacher Josh Wairi and his families (with advice from his students and afterschool providers) to integrate everyone’s insights into the testable product.

Our goal in fall 2011-12 has been to pilot and tweak these three tools with a group of interested educators, administrators, families, students, and afterschool providers. We have all wanted to now explore the ways these tools actually can support information-sharing and conversation among all these people, in meetings, one-to-one interactions, and email-based conversations about the data.

In all this, we've encountered the core problem with designing and creating tools from scratch, to community specifications and on a budget: relying on individual technologists rather than large companies. While our local technologist worked to produce tools to community specifications, he went too slowly, and when we wanted to start the pilot as our grant ended Sept 1, the views weren't ready.

Our entire Ford grant would have been eaten up in buying Somerville a tool off the shelf; but in designing locally, to community specifications, for small amounts of money, local technologists created the core of the tools but ran out of time and money to do more than a very small pilot.

Even if the tools don't seed in Somerville in the end, the open source code can support next efforts at free educational data displays for districts or programs too often spending fortunes on storebought tools. We have added a tool to the “kit” by producing an open source dashboard and code next developers can modify. Still, we note that the OneVille projects in which we used preexisting tools – Google sites or wikispaces for eportfolio software, and texting software like Google Voice – seeded the most longstanding local change most quickly and actually got people communicating.

We note that professional (more expensive) open source developers able to produce tools more quickly, or local technologists on larger budgets, might provide more immediately ready open source infrastructure for schools and districts. For example, after the same local young technologist struggled to complete our Parent Connector Network hotline, the hotline was finally made by Leo Burd, a new colleague at MIT's Center for Civic Media who specialized in such open source tools and was inspired enough by the Parent Connector project that he did it for free.

==Our work, and our '''¡Ahas!==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? At this point, what are our main ¡Ahas! about improving communications in public education? What communication and implementation ¡Ahas! and turning points did we have over time?

'''Our main ¡Ahas! over time have been these:

'''¡Aha! A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

'''¡Aha! One-Stop Shopping: People say it's crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

'''¡Aha! Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.

'''¡Aha! The families whose children most need assistance are often the hardest to reach with technology, but they are also the most in need of such rapid access to information. Rather than say parents "won't use" technology, how about training?

===Communication and implementation ¡Ahas!, and turning points!===

We had many ¡Aha! in sequence on this project over two years. '''To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ¡Ahas!, click [[Expanded story: Data dashboards|here!]]'''

In addition to our '''Main ¡Ahas! about data dashboards, we had other key discoveries along the way:

'''¡Aha! In addition to having the ability to quickly see and sort such basic data, diverse partners in young people’s lives need supports to communicate ABOUT basic data.

'''¡Aha! Many parents welcome an invitation into a conversation with their child’s teachers, and even if these parents are unfamiliar with technology, these parents often see technology as an opportunity for connection, rather than an obstacle.

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

Throughout the design process, we’ve gotten feedback from parents, teachers, and administrators about the dashboards’ potential value. In recent interviews, for example, several immigrant parents emphasized the way the individual view dashboard could spark parent involvement: Smiling, one said, "Parents are not just left out of the school. With this, you are bringing them in, sucking them into the school curriculum!"

In a recent planning meeting with OneVille staff, Principal Vadhera described the value of the integrated dashboard tools, in contrast to the old system of requesting info from many different people: “Right now, in just five minutes, I have seen a complete picture of the kid. Without even checking in with folks [other staff]. Normally, I would have to wait for them to get back to me, and bring charts and graphs to meetings. What a great way to launch conversation.”

Purnima and Josh both suggested that the dashboards could enhance teamwork among educators at Healey: In staff team meetings, access to each view could allow teachers and administrators to collaboratively assess a student’s needs, design targeted interventions, and, if desired, record their plan by submitting it as subject-specific comments that get archived in the homeroom (lead) teacher’s email.

'''The families whose children most need assistance are often the hardest to reach with technology, but they are also the most in need of such rapid access to information. Rather than say parents "won't use" technology, how about training?''' We’d need to continue training outreach on the dashboards during a pilot phase, because we face the same challenges with the individual view as anyone working to enhance collaboration around students across barriers of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Not all parents have home access to computers and internet (though phones with internet access are increasingly popular), and some parents are not functionally literate in their home language. These communication barriers block parents from understanding data even if it is on paper or shared verbally; technology training at least offers parents skills for checking data on demand.

'''While some at the Healey are disappointed not to try the dashboard in a broad way this fall, one piece of this project that has unflagging community support is our plan to work this year with the Healey PTA to create a model of basic computer and email training run by parents for other parents who need this support. Our goal was to link this training to the dashboard training for parents; instead our hook will be the school's newly schoolwide listserv. '''We’ve already established a computer in the PTA room, available for parent use at prescheduled times, and we’re reaching out to other computing facilities in the school and community organizations. We’ll be reaching out in particular to parents in Mr. Wairi’s new class about how to support them to access the Internet.

The ultimate lesson here involves the timeline of software development, and the risks associated with community-based design research if one is literally designing a new technological tool from scratch. Developing a software application from scratch means lots of work on the developer's end without immediate use by the community partner, unless major funding remains to keep modifying the product over time. The reality is that the young local technologist who created these products to community specifications went so slowly on our limited budget that we weren’t able to pilot them. We might lose confidence in local open source development, but the reality is that a tool for easily seeing data "all in one place" otherwise will not exist in Somerville due to the expense of "off the shelf" tools. We're optimistic that if not in Somerville, another community and next developer can pick up right where we left off, rather than starting from scratch like we did. That's how open source development works, in fact. The code for these dashboard products is now available online and free to the next developer (see below, Technological How-Tos).

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:
:➢Can everyone who needs to get and share important progress information, get and share it when they need to?
:➢If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?
:➢To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?
:➢What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?
:➢What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people? Which conversations should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment to test which works for what?
:➢Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?
:➢ If so, how might low cost tech development support such information-sharing, and design something local people would actually use?
:➢ ***How can you ensure resources for ongoing tech modifications and tech support, including after you have developed your initial tool?

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

[https://github.com/sethwoodworth/SchoolDash Admin/Teacher View Source Code]
(written in the Django framework)

[https://github.com/sethwoodworth/OnevilleReportCard/ Individual View Source Code]
(written in the Ruby on Rails framework)

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

Overview and key findings: Data dashboards

2011-11-04T13:25:01Z

68.107.118.212: /* Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Jedd Cohen, and Josh Wairi for the dashboard project, with dashboard development by local technologist Seth Woodworth

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

==Communication we hoped to improve==

''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?
:''(Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish?)

In an era when you can log on to any computer and get quick updates from friends, there shouldn't be a reason why all the people who need to know basic info in order to serve young people can’t know it immediately. Quantitative measures or summary data about young people (e.g., a report card) never show "the whole child" (eportfolios can help with that!), but they still provide information crucial to the process of tracking student progress, and they do tend to predict important events like “dropping out.”

Unfortunately, access to the data systems needed to provide this info varies widely among districts. Those that can afford it are increasingly investing in sophisticated data systems. Lower income districts can’t afford to. And when districts do have online data display tools, called “data dashboards,” they typically aren't designed by educators or parents.

We - local technologists, teachers, and researchers - have been working with families, afterschool providers, principals, and central administration in the Somerville School District to meet the need for a user-friendly, affordable way to view lots of student data in one place. The result of our work is a suite of three “data dashboards” - open source web applications designed to link the family, teachers, principal, and afterschool providers in communication about student data to support each student’s success. We got to the brink of piloting these tools in our first phase of work. The code for them, available to anyone, is at the end of this page.

Considering who usefully sees what data on children has been core to the dashboard project so far. Guided by a collaborative design process that drew on representatives of all the community stakeholders above, Somerville technologists Seth Woodworth and Evan Burchard created the core of three views: an “admin view” for principals, which shows data on all students in the school; a “teacher view,” which shows a teacher data on the students in his or her class; and an “individual view,” designed to link teachers, afterschool providers, and families in communication about the details of an individual student’s profile. Our plan has been to pilot each of these views at Somerville’s Healey School this fall: 5th grade teacher (and author) Josh Wairi and his parents have wanted to pilot the individual and teacher views, and Principal Purnima Vadhera has wanted to pilot the admin view. Technological development went slower than we hoped -- always an issue in making tools from scratch, especially on a budget -- and so we ended our Phase 1 at the brink of piloting.

We felt that it was crucial to collaborate with the Somerville community to design open-source educational tools that link the partners in young people’s education in regular communication about their learning. Here are the main reasons:

'''A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

Principals Vadhera and DeFalco, teacher Josh Wairi, and various students we talked to in our other pilots all mentioned instances where a student “fell through the cracks” because of a piece of missing data -- for example, a student who received an unexpectedly poor grade at the end of the semester, with the parent, the homeroom teacher, or the administrator surprised by the news. These main partners also described how seeing new patterns, and faster, could support timely interventions -- from MCAS accommodations to targeted academic support.

'''One-Stop Shopping: It seems crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

To clarify: Somerville, like a typical district, already has a “student information system” - a database that stores or “warehouses” student information. The issue is that such data have been hard for people to view quickly all in one place. Many schools, and also, afterschool programs, do not have easy tools for quickly displaying basic information to multiple partners at once, for putting that data all in one place for viewing, or letting them sort the data for patterns. Our "dashboards" have been designed to sit on top of the student information system for easy viewing OF data. In Somerville, while the data on these "dashboards" all exist in Somerville's student info system, lots of people still talked about the need to improve data display for parents and students, teachers, afterschool providers, and administrators.

In Somerville, administrators have had to send data analysis requests to a central office (filled with great staff!) and the staff would send patterns back to them. Or, teachers had to create their own Excel spreadsheets or printouts and analyze them by hand. Administrators also told us of time wasted in meetings as staff flipped through multiple folders or drawers to find data; further, staff wasted lots of time preparing for meetings by trying hand-analyze patterns across such data sources.

The data was inaccessible for other reasons, too: when they could access the student information system with a password, many parents and some teachers had a hard time understanding the way the system displayed data, and the data is only in English. And finally, the data display couldn't easily launch a conversation between the people in a student's life: many viewers (e.g, parents) cannot comment ON the data in the student information system, but can only view it.

Finally, even in districts that have created expensive data display systems, often the problem is getting actual use. So, we wanted to try to design tools to community specifications.

Here was another key piece of our logic in designing dashboards for Somerville from scratch: Rather than suggesting that Somerville buy a tool "off the shelf," we decided to develop an open source data viewing tool because we figured an open source tool (made with "free to modify" software modifiable by any skilled programmer anywhere) could save Somerville and other districts lots of money.

'''Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.

Others had offered to make Somerville data-viewing tools for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then require tens of thousands of dollars for annual upkeep. We figured that with our grant, we could work with a local technologist to develop an open source tool to educators' and parents' specifications; any next district or developer could then have the software for their own use.

Our logic: If open source development produces a free tool, districts don't have to buy the product itself or renew the license to use it. Those using free tools only have to pay for services (upkeep and troubleshooting the tool), which can be a fraction of the cost. Our local technologist Seth put it this way: “Take the quarterly profit of a company like Blackboard INC (Quarter 1, 2010) and break it down into services and license fees. In just one quarter, Blackboard made only $7.3 million in services [tech support], but made $93.7 million dollars in 'product revenues' (licenses to run their software). In the K-12 context, a freely available and documented open source competitor to store-bought communication tools would free up a lot of money back to US schools.”

Districts also pay lots of money for store-bought, "off the shelf" dashboard tools and then find them unused by the community. We wanted to try to build something to community specifications instead.

Based on a model created in Excel by Healey dad Greg Nadeau, and designed in partnership with Principals Jason DeFalco and Purnima Vahdera and teacher Josh Wairi during the 2010-2011 school year, the admin and teacher view dashboards we made are designed to provide quick views for teams of teachers and administrators to compare students in a group and discern patterns. All data fields are visible on one screen, so there is no need to click through multiple windows to view the desired data (as users do to see data in the district's student information system). Viewers can sort up to three columns at a time simply by clicking at the top of each while holding down the shift key. Whereas the admin view lists all students in the school, the teacher view presents similar information for a single class of students. Here is the admin view, with fictional data to maintain confidentiality:

[[Image:NewAdminDash.jpg|NewAdminDash.jpg]]

Our individual view (below) is designed to be used by educators, parents, and afterschool providers; it complements the "admin" and "teacher views" with additional student data that was identified by Healey parents, students, afterschool providers, and teachers as being especially relevant to their communications with each other.

Importantly to the OneVille Project, this "individual view" also is designed to give parent and afterschool provider viewers the chance to comment ON the data and send these comments to the teacher's email inbox, sparking an exchange that can continue over email or in person. Here is the individual view’s final page, where viewers can review and submit their comments:

[[Image:NewComments.jpg|NewComments.jpg]]

Note the tabs for viewing other pages at the top of the screenshot. The images below show the pages connected to each of these tabs, covering grades, test scores, attendance, and teacher summary comments.

[[Image:IndivDashSummary.jpg|IndivDashSummary.jpg]]

[[Image:Test scores.jpg|Test scores.jpg]]

[[Image:Attendance.jpg|Attendance.jpg]]

[[Image:Teacher comments.jpg|Teacher comments.jpg]]

In creating the individual view, we drew on a data display model from the New Visions schools in New York (http://www.hfrp.org/var/hfrp/storage/fckeditor/File/9thGradeTracker.pdf)
combined it with Somerville’s locally designed K-6 report card, and worked with teacher Josh Wairi and his families (with advice from his students and afterschool providers) to integrate everyone’s insights into the testable product.

Our goal in fall 2011-12 has been to pilot and tweak these three tools with a group of interested educators, administrators, families, students, and afterschool providers. We have all wanted to now explore the ways these tools actually can support information-sharing and conversation among all these people, in meetings, one-to-one interactions, and email-based conversations about the data.

In all this, we've encountered the core problem with designing and creating tools from scratch, to community specifications and on a budget: relying on individual technologists rather than large companies. While our local technologist worked to produce tools to community specifications, he went too slowly, and when we wanted to start the pilot as our grant ended Sept 1, the views weren't ready.

Our entire Ford grant would have been eaten up in buying Somerville a tool off the shelf; but in designing locally, to community specifications, for small amounts of money, local technologists created the core of the tools but ran out of time and money to do more than a very small pilot.

Even if the tools don't seed in Somerville in the end, the open source code can support next efforts at free educational data displays for districts or programs too often spending fortunes on storebought tools. We have added a tool to the “kit” by producing an open source dashboard and code next developers can modify. Still, we note that the OneVille projects in which we used preexisting tools – Google sites or wikispaces for eportfolio software, and texting software like Google Voice – seeded the most longstanding local change most quickly and actually got people communicating.

We note that professional (more expensive) open source developers able to produce tools more quickly, or local technologists on larger budgets, might provide more immediately ready open source infrastructure for schools and districts. For example, after the same local young technologist struggled to complete our Parent Connector Network hotline, the hotline was finally made by Leo Burd, a new colleague at MIT's Center for Civic Media who specialized in such open source tools and was inspired enough by the Parent Connector project that he did it for free.

==Our work, and our '''¡Ahas!==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? At this point, what are our main ¡Ahas! about improving communications in public education? What communication and implementation ¡Ahas! and turning points did we have over time?

'''Our main ¡Ahas! over time have been these:

'''¡Aha! A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

'''¡Aha! One-Stop Shopping: People say it's crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

'''¡Aha! Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.

'''¡Aha! The families whose children most need assistance are often the hardest to reach with technology, but they are also the most in need of such rapid access to information. Rather than say parents "won't use" technology, how about training?

===Communication and implementation ¡Ahas!, and turning points!===

We had many ¡Aha! in sequence on this project over two years. '''To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ¡Ahas!, click [[Expanded story: Data dashboards|here!]]'''

In addition to our '''Main ¡Ahas! about data dashboards, we had other key discoveries along the way:

'''¡Aha! In addition to having the ability to quickly see and sort such basic data, diverse partners in young people’s lives need supports to communicate ABOUT basic data.

'''¡Aha! Many parents welcome an invitation into a conversation with their child’s teachers, and even if these parents are unfamiliar with technology, these parents often see technology as an opportunity for connection, rather than an obstacle.

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

Throughout the design process, we’ve gotten feedback from parents, teachers, and administrators about the dashboards’ potential value. In recent interviews, for example, several immigrant parents emphasized the way the individual view dashboard could spark parent involvement: Smiling, one said, "Parents are not just left out of the school. With this, you are bringing them in, sucking them into the school curriculum!"

In a recent planning meeting with OneVille staff, Principal Vadhera described the value of the integrated dashboard tools, in contrast to the old system of requesting info from many different people: “Right now, in just five minutes, I have seen a complete picture of the kid. Without even checking in with folks [other staff]. Normally, I would have to wait for them to get back to me, and bring charts and graphs to meetings. What a great way to launch conversation.”

Purnima and Josh both suggested that the dashboards could enhance teamwork among educators at Healey: In staff team meetings, access to each view could allow teachers and administrators to collaboratively assess a student’s needs, design targeted interventions, and, if desired, record their plan by submitting it as subject-specific comments that get archived in the homeroom (lead) teacher’s email.

'''The families whose children most need assistance are often the hardest to reach with technology, but they are also the most in need of such rapid access to information. Rather than say parents "won't use" technology, how about training?''' We’d need to continue training outreach on the dashboards during a pilot phase, because we face the same challenges with the individual view as anyone working to enhance collaboration around students across barriers of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Not all parents have home access to computers and internet (though phones with internet access are increasingly popular), and some parents are not functionally literate in their home language. These communication barriers block parents from understanding data even if it is on paper or shared verbally; technology training at least offers parents skills for checking data on demand.

'''While some at the Healey are disappointed not to try the dashboard in a broad way this fall, one piece of this project that has unflagging community support is our plan to work this year with the Healey PTA to create a model of basic computer and email training run by parents for other parents who need this support. Our goal was to link this training to the dashboard training for parents; instead our hook will be the school's newly schoolwide listserv. '''We’ve already established a computer in the PTA room, available for parent use at prescheduled times, and we’re reaching out to other computing facilities in the school and community organizations. We’ll be reaching out in particular to parents in Mr. Wairi’s new class about how to support them to access the Internet.

The ultimate lesson here involves the timeline of software development, and the risks associated with community-based design research if one is literally designing a new technological tool from scratch. Developing a software application from scratch means lots of work on the developer's end without immediate use by the community partner, unless major funding remains to keep modifying the product over time. The reality is that the young local technologist who created these products to community specifications went so slowly on our limited budget that we weren’t able to pilot them. We might lose confidence in local open source development, but the reality is that a tool for easily seeing data "all in one place" otherwise will not exist in Somerville due to the expense of "off the shelf" tools. We're optimistic that if not in Somerville, another community and next developer can pick up right where we left off, rather than starting from scratch like we did. That's how open source development works, in fact. The code for these dashboard products is now available online and free to the next developer (see below, Technological How-Tos).

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:
:➢Can everyone who needs to get and share important progress information, get and share it when they need to?
:➢If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?
:➢To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?
:➢What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?
:➢What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people? Which conversations should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment to test which works for what?
:➢Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?
:➢ If so, how might low cost tech development support such information-sharing, and design something local people would actually use?
:➢ ***How can you ensure resources for ongoing tech modifications and tech support, including for piloting after you have developed your initial tool?

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

[https://github.com/sethwoodworth/SchoolDash Admin/Teacher View Source Code]
(written in the Django framework)

[https://github.com/sethwoodworth/OnevilleReportCard/ Individual View Source Code]
(written in the Ruby on Rails framework)

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

Overview and key findings: Data dashboards

2011-11-04T13:23:52Z

68.107.118.212: /* Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Jedd Cohen, and Josh Wairi for the dashboard project, with dashboard development by local technologist Seth Woodworth

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

==Communication we hoped to improve==

''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?
:''(Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish?)

In an era when you can log on to any computer and get quick updates from friends, there shouldn't be a reason why all the people who need to know basic info in order to serve young people can’t know it immediately. Quantitative measures or summary data about young people (e.g., a report card) never show "the whole child" (eportfolios can help with that!), but they still provide information crucial to the process of tracking student progress, and they do tend to predict important events like “dropping out.”

Unfortunately, access to the data systems needed to provide this info varies widely among districts. Those that can afford it are increasingly investing in sophisticated data systems. Lower income districts can’t afford to. And when districts do have online data display tools, called “data dashboards,” they typically aren't designed by educators or parents.

We - local technologists, teachers, and researchers - have been working with families, afterschool providers, principals, and central administration in the Somerville School District to meet the need for a user-friendly, affordable way to view lots of student data in one place. The result of our work is a suite of three “data dashboards” - open source web applications designed to link the family, teachers, principal, and afterschool providers in communication about student data to support each student’s success. We got to the brink of piloting these tools in our first phase of work. The code for them, available to anyone, is at the end of this page.

Considering who usefully sees what data on children has been core to the dashboard project so far. Guided by a collaborative design process that drew on representatives of all the community stakeholders above, Somerville technologists Seth Woodworth and Evan Burchard created the core of three views: an “admin view” for principals, which shows data on all students in the school; a “teacher view,” which shows a teacher data on the students in his or her class; and an “individual view,” designed to link teachers, afterschool providers, and families in communication about the details of an individual student’s profile. Our plan has been to pilot each of these views at Somerville’s Healey School this fall: 5th grade teacher (and author) Josh Wairi and his parents have wanted to pilot the individual and teacher views, and Principal Purnima Vadhera has wanted to pilot the admin view. Technological development went slower than we hoped -- always an issue in making tools from scratch, especially on a budget -- and so we ended our Phase 1 at the brink of piloting.

We felt that it was crucial to collaborate with the Somerville community to design open-source educational tools that link the partners in young people’s education in regular communication about their learning. Here are the main reasons:

'''A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

Principals Vadhera and DeFalco, teacher Josh Wairi, and various students we talked to in our other pilots all mentioned instances where a student “fell through the cracks” because of a piece of missing data -- for example, a student who received an unexpectedly poor grade at the end of the semester, with the parent, the homeroom teacher, or the administrator surprised by the news. These main partners also described how seeing new patterns, and faster, could support timely interventions -- from MCAS accommodations to targeted academic support.

'''One-Stop Shopping: It seems crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

To clarify: Somerville, like a typical district, already has a “student information system” - a database that stores or “warehouses” student information. The issue is that such data have been hard for people to view quickly all in one place. Many schools, and also, afterschool programs, do not have easy tools for quickly displaying basic information to multiple partners at once, for putting that data all in one place for viewing, or letting them sort the data for patterns. Our "dashboards" have been designed to sit on top of the student information system for easy viewing OF data. In Somerville, while the data on these "dashboards" all exist in Somerville's student info system, lots of people still talked about the need to improve data display for parents and students, teachers, afterschool providers, and administrators.

In Somerville, administrators have had to send data analysis requests to a central office (filled with great staff!) and the staff would send patterns back to them. Or, teachers had to create their own Excel spreadsheets or printouts and analyze them by hand. Administrators also told us of time wasted in meetings as staff flipped through multiple folders or drawers to find data; further, staff wasted lots of time preparing for meetings by trying hand-analyze patterns across such data sources.

The data was inaccessible for other reasons, too: when they could access the student information system with a password, many parents and some teachers had a hard time understanding the way the system displayed data, and the data is only in English. And finally, the data display couldn't easily launch a conversation between the people in a student's life: many viewers (e.g, parents) cannot comment ON the data in the student information system, but can only view it.

Finally, even in districts that have created expensive data display systems, often the problem is getting actual use. So, we wanted to try to design tools to community specifications.

Here was another key piece of our logic in designing dashboards for Somerville from scratch: Rather than suggesting that Somerville buy a tool "off the shelf," we decided to develop an open source data viewing tool because we figured an open source tool (made with "free to modify" software modifiable by any skilled programmer anywhere) could save Somerville and other districts lots of money.

'''Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.

Others had offered to make Somerville data-viewing tools for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then require tens of thousands of dollars for annual upkeep. We figured that with our grant, we could work with a local technologist to develop an open source tool to educators' and parents' specifications; any next district or developer could then have the software for their own use.

Our logic: If open source development produces a free tool, districts don't have to buy the product itself or renew the license to use it. Those using free tools only have to pay for services (upkeep and troubleshooting the tool), which can be a fraction of the cost. Our local technologist Seth put it this way: “Take the quarterly profit of a company like Blackboard INC (Quarter 1, 2010) and break it down into services and license fees. In just one quarter, Blackboard made only $7.3 million in services [tech support], but made $93.7 million dollars in 'product revenues' (licenses to run their software). In the K-12 context, a freely available and documented open source competitor to store-bought communication tools would free up a lot of money back to US schools.”

Districts also pay lots of money for store-bought, "off the shelf" dashboard tools and then find them unused by the community. We wanted to try to build something to community specifications instead.

Based on a model created in Excel by Healey dad Greg Nadeau, and designed in partnership with Principals Jason DeFalco and Purnima Vahdera and teacher Josh Wairi during the 2010-2011 school year, the admin and teacher view dashboards we made are designed to provide quick views for teams of teachers and administrators to compare students in a group and discern patterns. All data fields are visible on one screen, so there is no need to click through multiple windows to view the desired data (as users do to see data in the district's student information system). Viewers can sort up to three columns at a time simply by clicking at the top of each while holding down the shift key. Whereas the admin view lists all students in the school, the teacher view presents similar information for a single class of students. Here is the admin view, with fictional data to maintain confidentiality:

[[Image:NewAdminDash.jpg|NewAdminDash.jpg]]

Our individual view (below) is designed to be used by educators, parents, and afterschool providers; it complements the "admin" and "teacher views" with additional student data that was identified by Healey parents, students, afterschool providers, and teachers as being especially relevant to their communications with each other.

Importantly to the OneVille Project, this "individual view" also is designed to give parent and afterschool provider viewers the chance to comment ON the data and send these comments to the teacher's email inbox, sparking an exchange that can continue over email or in person. Here is the individual view’s final page, where viewers can review and submit their comments:

[[Image:NewComments.jpg|NewComments.jpg]]

Note the tabs for viewing other pages at the top of the screenshot. The images below show the pages connected to each of these tabs, covering grades, test scores, attendance, and teacher summary comments.

[[Image:IndivDashSummary.jpg|IndivDashSummary.jpg]]

[[Image:Test scores.jpg|Test scores.jpg]]

[[Image:Attendance.jpg|Attendance.jpg]]

[[Image:Teacher comments.jpg|Teacher comments.jpg]]

In creating the individual view, we drew on a data display model from the New Visions schools in New York (http://www.hfrp.org/var/hfrp/storage/fckeditor/File/9thGradeTracker.pdf)
combined it with Somerville’s locally designed K-6 report card, and worked with teacher Josh Wairi and his families (with advice from his students and afterschool providers) to integrate everyone’s insights into the testable product.

Our goal in fall 2011-12 has been to pilot and tweak these three tools with a group of interested educators, administrators, families, students, and afterschool providers. We have all wanted to now explore the ways these tools actually can support information-sharing and conversation among all these people, in meetings, one-to-one interactions, and email-based conversations about the data.

In all this, we've encountered the core problem with designing and creating tools from scratch, to community specifications and on a budget: relying on individual technologists rather than large companies. While our local technologist worked to produce tools to community specifications, he went too slowly, and when we wanted to start the pilot as our grant ended Sept 1, the views weren't ready.

Our entire Ford grant would have been eaten up in buying Somerville a tool off the shelf; but in designing locally, to community specifications, for small amounts of money, local technologists created the core of the tools but ran out of time and money to do more than a very small pilot.

Even if the tools don't seed in Somerville in the end, the open source code can support next efforts at free educational data displays for districts or programs too often spending fortunes on storebought tools. We have added a tool to the “kit” by producing an open source dashboard and code next developers can modify. Still, we note that the OneVille projects in which we used preexisting tools – Google sites or wikispaces for eportfolio software, and texting software like Google Voice – seeded the most longstanding local change most quickly and actually got people communicating.

We note that professional (more expensive) open source developers able to produce tools more quickly, or local technologists on larger budgets, might provide more immediately ready open source infrastructure for schools and districts. For example, after the same local young technologist struggled to complete our Parent Connector Network hotline, the hotline was finally made by Leo Burd, a new colleague at MIT's Center for Civic Media who specialized in such open source tools and was inspired enough by the Parent Connector project that he did it for free.

==Our work, and our '''¡Ahas!==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? At this point, what are our main ¡Ahas! about improving communications in public education? What communication and implementation ¡Ahas! and turning points did we have over time?

'''Our main ¡Ahas! over time have been these:

'''¡Aha! A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

'''¡Aha! One-Stop Shopping: People say it's crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

'''¡Aha! Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.

'''¡Aha! The families whose children most need assistance are often the hardest to reach with technology, but they are also the most in need of such rapid access to information. Rather than say parents "won't use" technology, how about training?

===Communication and implementation ¡Ahas!, and turning points!===

We had many ¡Aha! in sequence on this project over two years. '''To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ¡Ahas!, click [[Expanded story: Data dashboards|here!]]'''

In addition to our '''Main ¡Ahas! about data dashboards, we had other key discoveries along the way:

'''¡Aha! In addition to having the ability to quickly see and sort such basic data, diverse partners in young people’s lives need supports to communicate ABOUT basic data.

'''¡Aha! Many parents welcome an invitation into a conversation with their child’s teachers, and even if these parents are unfamiliar with technology, these parents often see technology as an opportunity for connection, rather than an obstacle.

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

Throughout the design process, we’ve gotten feedback from parents, teachers, and administrators about the dashboards’ potential value. In recent interviews, for example, several immigrant parents emphasized the way the individual view dashboard could spark parent involvement: Smiling, one said, "Parents are not just left out of the school. With this, you are bringing them in, sucking them into the school curriculum!"

In a recent planning meeting with OneVille staff, Principal Vadhera described the value of the integrated dashboard tools, in contrast to the old system of requesting info from many different people: “Right now, in just five minutes, I have seen a complete picture of the kid. Without even checking in with folks [other staff]. Normally, I would have to wait for them to get back to me, and bring charts and graphs to meetings. What a great way to launch conversation.”

Purnima and Josh both suggested that the dashboards could enhance teamwork among educators at Healey: In staff team meetings, access to each view could allow teachers and administrators to collaboratively assess a student’s needs, design targeted interventions, and, if desired, record their plan by submitting it as subject-specific comments that get archived in the homeroom (lead) teacher’s email.

'''The families whose children most need assistance are often the hardest to reach with technology, but they are also the most in need of such rapid access to information. Rather than say parents "won't use" technology, how about training?''' We’d need to continue training outreach on the dashboards during a pilot phase, because we face the same challenges with the individual view as anyone working to enhance collaboration around students across barriers of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Not all parents have home access to computers and internet (though phones with internet access are increasingly popular), and some parents are not functionally literate in their home language. These communication barriers block parents from understanding data even if it is on paper or shared verbally; technology training at least offers parents skills for checking data on demand.

'''While some at the Healey are disappointed not to try the dashboard in a broad way this fall, one piece of this project that has unflagging community support is our plan to work this year with the Healey PTA to create a model of basic computer and email training run by parents for other parents who need this support. Our goal was to link this training to the dashboard training for parents; instead our hook will be the school's newly schoolwide listserv. '''We’ve already established a computer in the PTA room, available for parent use at prescheduled times, and we’re reaching out to other computing facilities in the school and community organizations. We’ll be reaching out in particular to parents in Mr. Wairi’s new class about how to support them to access the Internet.

The ultimate lesson here involves the timeline of software development, and the risks associated with community-based design research if one is literally designing a new technological tool from scratch. Developing a software application from scratch means lots of work on the developer's end without immediate use by the community partner, unless major funding remains to keep modifying the product over time. The reality is that the young local technologist who created these products to community specifications went so slowly on our limited budget that we weren’t able to pilot them. We might lose confidence in local open source development, but the reality is that a tool for easily seeing data "all in one place" otherwise will not exist in Somerville due to the expense of "off the shelf" tools. We're optimistic that if not in Somerville, another community and next developer can pick up right where we left off, rather than starting from scratch like we did. That's how open source development works, in fact. The code for these dashboard products is now available online and free to the next developer (see below, Technological How-Tos).

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:
:➢Can everyone who needs to get and share important progress information, get and share it when they need to?
:➢If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?
:➢To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?
:➢What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?
:➢What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people? Which conversations should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment to test which works for what?
:➢Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?
:➢ If so, how could low cost tech development support such information-sharing, and design something local people would actually use?
:➢ ***How can you ensure resources for ongoing tech modifications and tech support after you have developed your initial tool?

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

[https://github.com/sethwoodworth/SchoolDash Admin/Teacher View Source Code]
(written in the Django framework)

[https://github.com/sethwoodworth/OnevilleReportCard/ Individual View Source Code]
(written in the Ruby on Rails framework)

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

Overview and key findings: Data dashboards

2011-11-04T13:18:11Z

68.107.118.212: /* Our work, and our ¡Ahas! */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Jedd Cohen, and Josh Wairi for the dashboard project, with dashboard development by local technologist Seth Woodworth

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

==Communication we hoped to improve==

''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?
:''(Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish?)

In an era when you can log on to any computer and get quick updates from friends, there shouldn't be a reason why all the people who need to know basic info in order to serve young people can’t know it immediately. Quantitative measures or summary data about young people (e.g., a report card) never show "the whole child" (eportfolios can help with that!), but they still provide information crucial to the process of tracking student progress, and they do tend to predict important events like “dropping out.”

Unfortunately, access to the data systems needed to provide this info varies widely among districts. Those that can afford it are increasingly investing in sophisticated data systems. Lower income districts can’t afford to. And when districts do have online data display tools, called “data dashboards,” they typically aren't designed by educators or parents.

We - local technologists, teachers, and researchers - have been working with families, afterschool providers, principals, and central administration in the Somerville School District to meet the need for a user-friendly, affordable way to view lots of student data in one place. The result of our work is a suite of three “data dashboards” - open source web applications designed to link the family, teachers, principal, and afterschool providers in communication about student data to support each student’s success. We got to the brink of piloting these tools in our first phase of work. The code for them, available to anyone, is at the end of this page.

Considering who usefully sees what data on children has been core to the dashboard project so far. Guided by a collaborative design process that drew on representatives of all the community stakeholders above, Somerville technologists Seth Woodworth and Evan Burchard created the core of three views: an “admin view” for principals, which shows data on all students in the school; a “teacher view,” which shows a teacher data on the students in his or her class; and an “individual view,” designed to link teachers, afterschool providers, and families in communication about the details of an individual student’s profile. Our plan has been to pilot each of these views at Somerville’s Healey School this fall: 5th grade teacher (and author) Josh Wairi and his parents have wanted to pilot the individual and teacher views, and Principal Purnima Vadhera has wanted to pilot the admin view. Technological development went slower than we hoped -- always an issue in making tools from scratch, especially on a budget -- and so we ended our Phase 1 at the brink of piloting.

We felt that it was crucial to collaborate with the Somerville community to design open-source educational tools that link the partners in young people’s education in regular communication about their learning. Here are the main reasons:

'''A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

Principals Vadhera and DeFalco, teacher Josh Wairi, and various students we talked to in our other pilots all mentioned instances where a student “fell through the cracks” because of a piece of missing data -- for example, a student who received an unexpectedly poor grade at the end of the semester, with the parent, the homeroom teacher, or the administrator surprised by the news. These main partners also described how seeing new patterns, and faster, could support timely interventions -- from MCAS accommodations to targeted academic support.

'''One-Stop Shopping: It seems crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

To clarify: Somerville, like a typical district, already has a “student information system” - a database that stores or “warehouses” student information. The issue is that such data have been hard for people to view quickly all in one place. Many schools, and also, afterschool programs, do not have easy tools for quickly displaying basic information to multiple partners at once, for putting that data all in one place for viewing, or letting them sort the data for patterns. Our "dashboards" have been designed to sit on top of the student information system for easy viewing OF data. In Somerville, while the data on these "dashboards" all exist in Somerville's student info system, lots of people still talked about the need to improve data display for parents and students, teachers, afterschool providers, and administrators.

In Somerville, administrators have had to send data analysis requests to a central office (filled with great staff!) and the staff would send patterns back to them. Or, teachers had to create their own Excel spreadsheets or printouts and analyze them by hand. Administrators also told us of time wasted in meetings as staff flipped through multiple folders or drawers to find data; further, staff wasted lots of time preparing for meetings by trying hand-analyze patterns across such data sources.

The data was inaccessible for other reasons, too: when they could access the student information system with a password, many parents and some teachers had a hard time understanding the way the system displayed data, and the data is only in English. And finally, the data display couldn't easily launch a conversation between the people in a student's life: many viewers (e.g, parents) cannot comment ON the data in the student information system, but can only view it.

Finally, even in districts that have created expensive data display systems, often the problem is getting actual use. So, we wanted to try to design tools to community specifications.

Here was another key piece of our logic in designing dashboards for Somerville from scratch: Rather than suggesting that Somerville buy a tool "off the shelf," we decided to develop an open source data viewing tool because we figured an open source tool (made with "free to modify" software modifiable by any skilled programmer anywhere) could save Somerville and other districts lots of money.

'''Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.

Others had offered to make Somerville data-viewing tools for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then require tens of thousands of dollars for annual upkeep. We figured that with our grant, we could work with a local technologist to develop an open source tool to educators' and parents' specifications; any next district or developer could then have the software for their own use.

Our logic: If open source development produces a free tool, districts don't have to buy the product itself or renew the license to use it. Those using free tools only have to pay for services (upkeep and troubleshooting the tool), which can be a fraction of the cost. Our local technologist Seth put it this way: “Take the quarterly profit of a company like Blackboard INC (Quarter 1, 2010) and break it down into services and license fees. In just one quarter, Blackboard made only $7.3 million in services [tech support], but made $93.7 million dollars in 'product revenues' (licenses to run their software). In the K-12 context, a freely available and documented open source competitor to store-bought communication tools would free up a lot of money back to US schools.”

Districts also pay lots of money for store-bought, "off the shelf" dashboard tools and then find them unused by the community. We wanted to try to build something to community specifications instead.

Based on a model created in Excel by Healey dad Greg Nadeau, and designed in partnership with Principals Jason DeFalco and Purnima Vahdera and teacher Josh Wairi during the 2010-2011 school year, the admin and teacher view dashboards we made are designed to provide quick views for teams of teachers and administrators to compare students in a group and discern patterns. All data fields are visible on one screen, so there is no need to click through multiple windows to view the desired data (as users do to see data in the district's student information system). Viewers can sort up to three columns at a time simply by clicking at the top of each while holding down the shift key. Whereas the admin view lists all students in the school, the teacher view presents similar information for a single class of students. Here is the admin view, with fictional data to maintain confidentiality:

[[Image:NewAdminDash.jpg|NewAdminDash.jpg]]

Our individual view (below) is designed to be used by educators, parents, and afterschool providers; it complements the "admin" and "teacher views" with additional student data that was identified by Healey parents, students, afterschool providers, and teachers as being especially relevant to their communications with each other.

Importantly to the OneVille Project, this "individual view" also is designed to give parent and afterschool provider viewers the chance to comment ON the data and send these comments to the teacher's email inbox, sparking an exchange that can continue over email or in person. Here is the individual view’s final page, where viewers can review and submit their comments:

[[Image:NewComments.jpg|NewComments.jpg]]

Note the tabs for viewing other pages at the top of the screenshot. The images below show the pages connected to each of these tabs, covering grades, test scores, attendance, and teacher summary comments.

[[Image:IndivDashSummary.jpg|IndivDashSummary.jpg]]

[[Image:Test scores.jpg|Test scores.jpg]]

[[Image:Attendance.jpg|Attendance.jpg]]

[[Image:Teacher comments.jpg|Teacher comments.jpg]]

In creating the individual view, we drew on a data display model from the New Visions schools in New York (http://www.hfrp.org/var/hfrp/storage/fckeditor/File/9thGradeTracker.pdf)
combined it with Somerville’s locally designed K-6 report card, and worked with teacher Josh Wairi and his families (with advice from his students and afterschool providers) to integrate everyone’s insights into the testable product.

Our goal in fall 2011-12 has been to pilot and tweak these three tools with a group of interested educators, administrators, families, students, and afterschool providers. We have all wanted to now explore the ways these tools actually can support information-sharing and conversation among all these people, in meetings, one-to-one interactions, and email-based conversations about the data.

In all this, we've encountered the core problem with designing and creating tools from scratch, to community specifications and on a budget: relying on individual technologists rather than large companies. While our local technologist worked to produce tools to community specifications, he went too slowly, and when we wanted to start the pilot as our grant ended Sept 1, the views weren't ready.

Our entire Ford grant would have been eaten up in buying Somerville a tool off the shelf; but in designing locally, to community specifications, for small amounts of money, local technologists created the core of the tools but ran out of time and money to do more than a very small pilot.

Even if the tools don't seed in Somerville in the end, the open source code can support next efforts at free educational data displays for districts or programs too often spending fortunes on storebought tools. We have added a tool to the “kit” by producing an open source dashboard and code next developers can modify. Still, we note that the OneVille projects in which we used preexisting tools – Google sites or wikispaces for eportfolio software, and texting software like Google Voice – seeded the most longstanding local change most quickly and actually got people communicating.

We note that professional (more expensive) open source developers able to produce tools more quickly, or local technologists on larger budgets, might provide more immediately ready open source infrastructure for schools and districts. For example, after the same local young technologist struggled to complete our Parent Connector Network hotline, the hotline was finally made by Leo Burd, a new colleague at MIT's Center for Civic Media who specialized in such open source tools and was inspired enough by the Parent Connector project that he did it for free.

==Our work, and our '''¡Ahas!==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? At this point, what are our main ¡Ahas! about improving communications in public education? What communication and implementation ¡Ahas! and turning points did we have over time?

'''Our main ¡Ahas! over time have been these:

'''¡Aha! A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

'''¡Aha! One-Stop Shopping: People say it's crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

'''¡Aha! Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.

'''¡Aha! The families whose children most need assistance are often the hardest to reach with technology, but they are also the most in need of such rapid access to information. Rather than say parents "won't use" technology, how about training?

===Communication and implementation ¡Ahas!, and turning points!===

We had many ¡Aha! in sequence on this project over two years. '''To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ¡Ahas!, click [[Expanded story: Data dashboards|here!]]'''

In addition to our '''Main ¡Ahas! about data dashboards, we had other key discoveries along the way:

'''¡Aha! In addition to having the ability to quickly see and sort such basic data, diverse partners in young people’s lives need supports to communicate ABOUT basic data.

'''¡Aha! Many parents welcome an invitation into a conversation with their child’s teachers, and even if these parents are unfamiliar with technology, these parents often see technology as an opportunity for connection, rather than an obstacle.

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We’ve gotten feedback from parents, teachers, and administrators about the dashboards’ potential value. In recent interviews, for example, several immigrant parents emphasized the way the individual view dashboard could spark parent involvement: Smiling, one said, "Parents are not just left out of the school. With this, you are bringing them in, sucking them into the school curriculum!"

In a recent planning meeting with OneVille staff, Principal Vadhera described the value of the integrated dashboard tools, in contrast to the old system of requesting info from many different people: “Right now, in just five minutes, I have seen a complete picture of the kid. Without even checking in with folks [other staff]. Normally, I would have to wait for them to get back to me, and bring charts and graphs to meetings. What a great way to launch conversation.”

Purnima and Josh both suggested that the dashboards could enhance teamwork among educators at Healey: In staff team meetings, access to each view could allow teachers and administrators to collaboratively assess a student’s needs, design targeted interventions, and, if desired, record their plan by submitting it as subject-specific comments that get archived in the homeroom (lead) teacher’s email.

'''The families whose children most need assistance are often the hardest to reach with technology, but they are also the most in need of such rapid access to information. '''We’d need to continue this kind of outreach during a pilot phase, because we face the same challenges with the individual view as anyone working to enhance collaboration around students across barriers of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Not all parents have home access to computers and internet (though phones with internet access are increasingly popular), and some parents are not functionally literate in their home language.

As described above, we planned to pilot our three “views” in fall 2011 and report out what we learned. One classroom’s teacher, families, students, and supporting teachers were ready to test the dashboard in fall 2011, as were their principal and local afterschool providers. However, the young local technologist who created these products to community specifications went so slowly on our limited budget that we weren’t able to pilot them beyond a rapid test of use. A district administrator wanted to pull the plug on the pilot, having lost confidence in open source development, but he recognized too that a tool for easily seeing data "all in one place" otherwise will not exist in Somerville due to the expense of "off the shelf" tools. So the crack in the infrastructure remains.

The lesson here involves the timeline of software development, and the risks associated with community-based design research. The working relationship with the community partner (e.g., the school district) becomes asymmetrical when developing a software application from scratch - lots of work on the developer's end without immediate results for the community partner, potentially leaving them with “cold feet” by the time the product is ready unless major funding remains to keep modifying the product over time. We're optimistic that if not in Somerville, another community and next developer can pick up right where we left off, rather than starting from scratch like we did. That's how open source development works, in fact. The code for these dashboard products is now available online and free to the next developer (see below, Technological How-Tos).

'''While some at the Healey are disappointed not to try the dashboard in a broad way, one piece of this project that has unflagging community support is our plan to work this year with the Healey PTA to create a model of basic computer and email training run by parents for other parents who need this support. Our goal was to link this training to the dashboard training for parents; instead our hook will be the school's newly schoolwide listserv. '''We’ve already established a computer in the PTA room, available for parent use at prescheduled times, and we’re reaching out to other computing facilities in the school and community organizations. We’ll be reaching out in particular to parents in Mr. Wairi’s new class about how to support them to access the Internet.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:
:➢Can everyone who needs to get and share important progress information, get and share it when they need to?
:➢If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?
:➢To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?
:➢What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?
:➢What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people? Which conversations should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment to test which works for what?
:➢Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?
:➢ If so, how could low cost tech development support such information-sharing, and design something local people would actually use?
:➢ ***How can you ensure resources for ongoing tech modifications and tech support after you have developed your initial tool?

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

[https://github.com/sethwoodworth/SchoolDash Admin/Teacher View Source Code]
(written in the Django framework)

[https://github.com/sethwoodworth/OnevilleReportCard/ Individual View Source Code]
(written in the Ruby on Rails framework)

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

Overview and key findings: Data dashboards

2011-11-04T13:17:26Z

68.107.118.212: /* Communication we hoped to improve */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Jedd Cohen, and Josh Wairi for the dashboard project, with dashboard development by local technologist Seth Woodworth

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

==Communication we hoped to improve==

''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?
:''(Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish?)

In an era when you can log on to any computer and get quick updates from friends, there shouldn't be a reason why all the people who need to know basic info in order to serve young people can’t know it immediately. Quantitative measures or summary data about young people (e.g., a report card) never show "the whole child" (eportfolios can help with that!), but they still provide information crucial to the process of tracking student progress, and they do tend to predict important events like “dropping out.”

Unfortunately, access to the data systems needed to provide this info varies widely among districts. Those that can afford it are increasingly investing in sophisticated data systems. Lower income districts can’t afford to. And when districts do have online data display tools, called “data dashboards,” they typically aren't designed by educators or parents.

We - local technologists, teachers, and researchers - have been working with families, afterschool providers, principals, and central administration in the Somerville School District to meet the need for a user-friendly, affordable way to view lots of student data in one place. The result of our work is a suite of three “data dashboards” - open source web applications designed to link the family, teachers, principal, and afterschool providers in communication about student data to support each student’s success. We got to the brink of piloting these tools in our first phase of work. The code for them, available to anyone, is at the end of this page.

Considering who usefully sees what data on children has been core to the dashboard project so far. Guided by a collaborative design process that drew on representatives of all the community stakeholders above, Somerville technologists Seth Woodworth and Evan Burchard created the core of three views: an “admin view” for principals, which shows data on all students in the school; a “teacher view,” which shows a teacher data on the students in his or her class; and an “individual view,” designed to link teachers, afterschool providers, and families in communication about the details of an individual student’s profile. Our plan has been to pilot each of these views at Somerville’s Healey School this fall: 5th grade teacher (and author) Josh Wairi and his parents have wanted to pilot the individual and teacher views, and Principal Purnima Vadhera has wanted to pilot the admin view. Technological development went slower than we hoped -- always an issue in making tools from scratch, especially on a budget -- and so we ended our Phase 1 at the brink of piloting.

We felt that it was crucial to collaborate with the Somerville community to design open-source educational tools that link the partners in young people’s education in regular communication about their learning. Here are the main reasons:

'''A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

Principals Vadhera and DeFalco, teacher Josh Wairi, and various students we talked to in our other pilots all mentioned instances where a student “fell through the cracks” because of a piece of missing data -- for example, a student who received an unexpectedly poor grade at the end of the semester, with the parent, the homeroom teacher, or the administrator surprised by the news. These main partners also described how seeing new patterns, and faster, could support timely interventions -- from MCAS accommodations to targeted academic support.

'''One-Stop Shopping: It seems crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

To clarify: Somerville, like a typical district, already has a “student information system” - a database that stores or “warehouses” student information. The issue is that such data have been hard for people to view quickly all in one place. Many schools, and also, afterschool programs, do not have easy tools for quickly displaying basic information to multiple partners at once, for putting that data all in one place for viewing, or letting them sort the data for patterns. Our "dashboards" have been designed to sit on top of the student information system for easy viewing OF data. In Somerville, while the data on these "dashboards" all exist in Somerville's student info system, lots of people still talked about the need to improve data display for parents and students, teachers, afterschool providers, and administrators.

In Somerville, administrators have had to send data analysis requests to a central office (filled with great staff!) and the staff would send patterns back to them. Or, teachers had to create their own Excel spreadsheets or printouts and analyze them by hand. Administrators also told us of time wasted in meetings as staff flipped through multiple folders or drawers to find data; further, staff wasted lots of time preparing for meetings by trying hand-analyze patterns across such data sources.

The data was inaccessible for other reasons, too: when they could access the student information system with a password, many parents and some teachers had a hard time understanding the way the system displayed data, and the data is only in English. And finally, the data display couldn't easily launch a conversation between the people in a student's life: many viewers (e.g, parents) cannot comment ON the data in the student information system, but can only view it.

Finally, even in districts that have created expensive data display systems, often the problem is getting actual use. So, we wanted to try to design tools to community specifications.

Here was another key piece of our logic in designing dashboards for Somerville from scratch: Rather than suggesting that Somerville buy a tool "off the shelf," we decided to develop an open source data viewing tool because we figured an open source tool (made with "free to modify" software modifiable by any skilled programmer anywhere) could save Somerville and other districts lots of money.

'''Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.

Others had offered to make Somerville data-viewing tools for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then require tens of thousands of dollars for annual upkeep. We figured that with our grant, we could work with a local technologist to develop an open source tool to educators' and parents' specifications; any next district or developer could then have the software for their own use.

Our logic: If open source development produces a free tool, districts don't have to buy the product itself or renew the license to use it. Those using free tools only have to pay for services (upkeep and troubleshooting the tool), which can be a fraction of the cost. Our local technologist Seth put it this way: “Take the quarterly profit of a company like Blackboard INC (Quarter 1, 2010) and break it down into services and license fees. In just one quarter, Blackboard made only $7.3 million in services [tech support], but made $93.7 million dollars in 'product revenues' (licenses to run their software). In the K-12 context, a freely available and documented open source competitor to store-bought communication tools would free up a lot of money back to US schools.”

Districts also pay lots of money for store-bought, "off the shelf" dashboard tools and then find them unused by the community. We wanted to try to build something to community specifications instead.

Based on a model created in Excel by Healey dad Greg Nadeau, and designed in partnership with Principals Jason DeFalco and Purnima Vahdera and teacher Josh Wairi during the 2010-2011 school year, the admin and teacher view dashboards we made are designed to provide quick views for teams of teachers and administrators to compare students in a group and discern patterns. All data fields are visible on one screen, so there is no need to click through multiple windows to view the desired data (as users do to see data in the district's student information system). Viewers can sort up to three columns at a time simply by clicking at the top of each while holding down the shift key. Whereas the admin view lists all students in the school, the teacher view presents similar information for a single class of students. Here is the admin view, with fictional data to maintain confidentiality:

[[Image:NewAdminDash.jpg|NewAdminDash.jpg]]

Our individual view (below) is designed to be used by educators, parents, and afterschool providers; it complements the "admin" and "teacher views" with additional student data that was identified by Healey parents, students, afterschool providers, and teachers as being especially relevant to their communications with each other.

Importantly to the OneVille Project, this "individual view" also is designed to give parent and afterschool provider viewers the chance to comment ON the data and send these comments to the teacher's email inbox, sparking an exchange that can continue over email or in person. Here is the individual view’s final page, where viewers can review and submit their comments:

[[Image:NewComments.jpg|NewComments.jpg]]

Note the tabs for viewing other pages at the top of the screenshot. The images below show the pages connected to each of these tabs, covering grades, test scores, attendance, and teacher summary comments.

[[Image:IndivDashSummary.jpg|IndivDashSummary.jpg]]

[[Image:Test scores.jpg|Test scores.jpg]]

[[Image:Attendance.jpg|Attendance.jpg]]

[[Image:Teacher comments.jpg|Teacher comments.jpg]]

In creating the individual view, we drew on a data display model from the New Visions schools in New York (http://www.hfrp.org/var/hfrp/storage/fckeditor/File/9thGradeTracker.pdf)
combined it with Somerville’s locally designed K-6 report card, and worked with teacher Josh Wairi and his families (with advice from his students and afterschool providers) to integrate everyone’s insights into the testable product.

Our goal in fall 2011-12 has been to pilot and tweak these three tools with a group of interested educators, administrators, families, students, and afterschool providers. We have all wanted to now explore the ways these tools actually can support information-sharing and conversation among all these people, in meetings, one-to-one interactions, and email-based conversations about the data.

In all this, we've encountered the core problem with designing and creating tools from scratch, to community specifications and on a budget: relying on individual technologists rather than large companies. While our local technologist worked to produce tools to community specifications, he went too slowly, and when we wanted to start the pilot as our grant ended Sept 1, the views weren't ready.

Our entire Ford grant would have been eaten up in buying Somerville a tool off the shelf; but in designing locally, to community specifications, for small amounts of money, local technologists created the core of the tools but ran out of time and money to do more than a very small pilot.

Even if the tools don't seed in Somerville in the end, the open source code can support next efforts at free educational data displays for districts or programs too often spending fortunes on storebought tools. We have added a tool to the “kit” by producing an open source dashboard and code next developers can modify. Still, we note that the OneVille projects in which we used preexisting tools – Google sites or wikispaces for eportfolio software, and texting software like Google Voice – seeded the most longstanding local change most quickly and actually got people communicating.

We note that professional (more expensive) open source developers able to produce tools more quickly, or local technologists on larger budgets, might provide more immediately ready open source infrastructure for schools and districts. For example, after the same local young technologist struggled to complete our Parent Connector Network hotline, the hotline was finally made by Leo Burd, a new colleague at MIT's Center for Civic Media who specialized in such open source tools and was inspired enough by the Parent Connector project that he did it for free.

==Our work, and our '''¡Ahas!==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? At this point, what are our main ¡Ahas! about improving communications in public education? What communication and implementation ¡Ahas! and turning points did we have over time?

'''Our main ¡Ahas! over time have been these:

'''¡Aha! A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

'''¡Aha! One-Stop Shopping: People say it's crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

'''¡Aha! Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.

'''¡Aha! The families whose children most need assistance are often the hardest to reach with technology, but they are also the most in need of such rapid access to information.

===Communication and implementation ¡Ahas!, and turning points!===

We had many ¡Aha! in sequence on this project over two years. '''To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ¡Ahas!, click [[Expanded story: Data dashboards|here!]]'''

In addition to our '''Main ¡Ahas! about data dashboards, we had other key discoveries along the way:

'''¡Aha! In addition to having the ability to quickly see and sort such basic data, diverse partners in young people’s lives need supports to communicate ABOUT basic data.

'''¡Aha! Many parents welcome an invitation into a conversation with their child’s teachers, and even if these parents are unfamiliar with technology, these parents often see technology as an opportunity for connection, rather than an obstacle.

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We’ve gotten feedback from parents, teachers, and administrators about the dashboards’ potential value. In recent interviews, for example, several immigrant parents emphasized the way the individual view dashboard could spark parent involvement: Smiling, one said, "Parents are not just left out of the school. With this, you are bringing them in, sucking them into the school curriculum!"

In a recent planning meeting with OneVille staff, Principal Vadhera described the value of the integrated dashboard tools, in contrast to the old system of requesting info from many different people: “Right now, in just five minutes, I have seen a complete picture of the kid. Without even checking in with folks [other staff]. Normally, I would have to wait for them to get back to me, and bring charts and graphs to meetings. What a great way to launch conversation.”

Purnima and Josh both suggested that the dashboards could enhance teamwork among educators at Healey: In staff team meetings, access to each view could allow teachers and administrators to collaboratively assess a student’s needs, design targeted interventions, and, if desired, record their plan by submitting it as subject-specific comments that get archived in the homeroom (lead) teacher’s email.

'''The families whose children most need assistance are often the hardest to reach with technology, but they are also the most in need of such rapid access to information. '''We’d need to continue this kind of outreach during a pilot phase, because we face the same challenges with the individual view as anyone working to enhance collaboration around students across barriers of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Not all parents have home access to computers and internet (though phones with internet access are increasingly popular), and some parents are not functionally literate in their home language.

As described above, we planned to pilot our three “views” in fall 2011 and report out what we learned. One classroom’s teacher, families, students, and supporting teachers were ready to test the dashboard in fall 2011, as were their principal and local afterschool providers. However, the young local technologist who created these products to community specifications went so slowly on our limited budget that we weren’t able to pilot them beyond a rapid test of use. A district administrator wanted to pull the plug on the pilot, having lost confidence in open source development, but he recognized too that a tool for easily seeing data "all in one place" otherwise will not exist in Somerville due to the expense of "off the shelf" tools. So the crack in the infrastructure remains.

The lesson here involves the timeline of software development, and the risks associated with community-based design research. The working relationship with the community partner (e.g., the school district) becomes asymmetrical when developing a software application from scratch - lots of work on the developer's end without immediate results for the community partner, potentially leaving them with “cold feet” by the time the product is ready unless major funding remains to keep modifying the product over time. We're optimistic that if not in Somerville, another community and next developer can pick up right where we left off, rather than starting from scratch like we did. That's how open source development works, in fact. The code for these dashboard products is now available online and free to the next developer (see below, Technological How-Tos).

'''While some at the Healey are disappointed not to try the dashboard in a broad way, one piece of this project that has unflagging community support is our plan to work this year with the Healey PTA to create a model of basic computer and email training run by parents for other parents who need this support. Our goal was to link this training to the dashboard training for parents; instead our hook will be the school's newly schoolwide listserv. '''We’ve already established a computer in the PTA room, available for parent use at prescheduled times, and we’re reaching out to other computing facilities in the school and community organizations. We’ll be reaching out in particular to parents in Mr. Wairi’s new class about how to support them to access the Internet.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:
:➢Can everyone who needs to get and share important progress information, get and share it when they need to?
:➢If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?
:➢To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?
:➢What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?
:➢What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people? Which conversations should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment to test which works for what?
:➢Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?
:➢ If so, how could low cost tech development support such information-sharing, and design something local people would actually use?
:➢ ***How can you ensure resources for ongoing tech modifications and tech support after you have developed your initial tool?

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

[https://github.com/sethwoodworth/SchoolDash Admin/Teacher View Source Code]
(written in the Django framework)

[https://github.com/sethwoodworth/OnevilleReportCard/ Individual View Source Code]
(written in the Ruby on Rails framework)

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

Summary: Data dashboards

2011-11-04T12:50:48Z

68.107.118.212:

Click here for the '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|Overview and key findings]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

===What communication challenges did this project address?===

In diverse districts across the country, educators are often unable to quickly show parents or teachers basic patterns affecting students – like their absences, test scores, grades, and credits, often due to the high cost of cutting-edge student data systems. Families, for their part, are often unsure how to find all the relevant data on their children, how to read data once they are given it (e.g., a report card), and how to communicate with schools about it. (see http://www.nationalpirc.org/engagement_webinars/webinar-student-data.html)

As both educators and parents know, gaps in available basic data also can create gaps in student service, because people in charge of supporting a young person remain unaware about some key aspects of their situation (was Jose absent five days last month, or not?)

Over the past two years, local technologists, teachers, and researchers have been working with families, afterschool providers, and principals in the Somerville School District to help create tools enabling key people (as appropriate) to go to a single place – on the web – to find comprehensive data on each student, class of students, and the entire school. We’ve been working together to design tools that not only display data, but also launch a focused conversation among stakeholders involved about how to support each student.

The first dashboard below shows data on a school or classroom of students. The dashboard beneath it shows additional data on an individual student to teachers, parents, and approved afterschool providers, and allows them to communicate with each other through the “comment boxes.” (Names are fictional to preserve anonymity.)

[[Image:NewAdminDash*.jpg|NewAdminDash*.jpg]]

[[Image:IndivDashSummary.jpg|IndivDashSummary.jpg]]

===Why is it important to improve communications?===
What we found:

:*'''¡Aha! A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

:*'''¡Aha! One-Stop Shopping: People say it's crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

:*'''¡Aha! Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.

:*'''¡Aha! In addition to having the ability to quickly see and sort such basic data, diverse partners in young people’s lives need supports to communicate ABOUT basic data.

===How do the dashboards work? How might they be designed?===

:*You can see how we designed our dashboards in '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|Overview and key findings]] '''and '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]]'''.

===How do you know if your school could improve communication?===
'''Questions to ask about the current system in your school:

:➢ To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?
:➢ How does your school make data on student learning visible to school administrators, classroom teachers, and afterschool providers? And how about parents?
:➢ What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people?
:➢ Which conversations about data should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment where you live to test which works for what?
:➢ What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?
:➢ Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?
:➢ If so, how might low cost tech development or, professional development on the tools you already have, support such information-sharing?
:➢ ***How can you ensure resources for ongoing tech modifications and tech support after you have developed your initial tool?

Click here for the '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|Overview and key findings]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

Summary: Data dashboards

2011-11-04T12:46:38Z

68.107.118.212: /* What communication challenges did this project address? */

Click here for the '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|Overview and key findings]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

===What communication challenges did this project address?===

In diverse districts across the country, educators are often unable to quickly show parents or teachers basic patterns affecting students – like their absences, test scores, grades, and credits, often due to the high cost of cutting-edge student data systems. Families, for their part, are often unsure how to find all the relevant data on their children, how to read data once they are given it (e.g., a report card), and how to communicate with schools about it. (see http://www.nationalpirc.org/engagement_webinars/webinar-student-data.html)

As both educators and parents know, gaps in available basic data also can create gaps in student service, because people in charge of supporting a young person remain unaware about some key aspects of their situation (was Jose absent five days last month, or not?)

Over the past two years, local technologists, teachers, and researchers have been working with families, afterschool providers, and principals in the Somerville School District to help create tools enabling key people (as appropriate) to go to a single place – on the web – to find comprehensive data on each student, class of students, and the entire school. We’ve been working together to design tools that not only display data, but also launch a focused conversation among stakeholders involved about how to support each student.

The first dashboard below shows data on a school or classroom of students. The dashboard beneath it shows additional data on an individual student to teachers, parents, and approved afterschool providers, and allows them to communicate with each other through the “comment boxes.” (Names are fictional to preserve anonymity.)

[[Image:NewAdminDash*.jpg|NewAdminDash*.jpg]]

[[Image:IndivDashSummary.jpg|IndivDashSummary.jpg]]

===Why is it important to improve communications?===
What we found:

:*'''¡Aha! A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

:*'''¡Aha! One-Stop Shopping: People say it's crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

:*'''¡Aha! Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, IF design goes fast enough, IF community users are ready to use the tools, and IF tech support for open source tools remains available locally.

:*'''¡Aha! In addition to having the ability to quickly see and sort such basic data, diverse partners in young people’s lives need supports to communicate ABOUT basic data.

===How do the dashboards work? How would they be implemented?===

:*You can see how we designed our dashboards in '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|Overview and key findings]] '''and '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]]'''.

===How do you know if your school could improve communication?===
'''Questions to ask about the current system in your school:

:➢ To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?
:➢ How does your school make data on student learning visible to school administrators, classroom teachers, and afterschool providers? And how about parents?
:➢ What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people?
:➢ Which conversations about data should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment where you live to test which works for what?
:➢ What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?
:➢ Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?
:➢ If so, how could low cost tech development support such information-sharing, and design something local people would actually use?
:➢ ***How can you ensure resources for ongoing tech modifications and tech support after you have developed your initial tool?

Click here for the '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|Overview and key findings]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

About Us: Our Work

2011-10-28T19:13:10Z

68.107.118.212:

Click [[Six working groups|here]] to see mini descriptions of all six projects.

In various ways, we all touched upon these questions in our six smaller projects.

:'''To support young people, who needs to communicate which information to whom?
:'''What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome?
:'''Which channels (media, tools, and strategies) might support particular necessary communications?
:'''Can basic tech help increase community cooperation in young people’s success, by supporting diverse students, teachers, parents, administrators, service providers, and other community members to share ideas, resources, and information and to build relationships? What are the limitations to technology use?

Some of us (Mica in particular) have come to call our work [[Research base|“improving the communication infrastructure of public education.”]] That's because we're seeing that if you embed free/low cost communication tools and strategies in schools and communities, you can make it normal for new kinds of partnership to happen. Improving communication infrastructure means working to ensure that on a daily basis, the people who need to communicate information and ideas so they can collaborate in young people’s success can do it. Click here to learn more about other [[Research base|research]] supporting our work.

We've been doing [[Participatory design research|participatory design research]], where people work together to improve something and document/analyze that work as they do it. Click here to learn more about the [[principles]] guiding this work.

Our model has become to work with diverse community members of all ages to

:a) consider existing communication needs;
:b) test existing free tech tools and low-cost strategies, to ensure they support necessary communications in a diverse community;
:c) consider which new tools and strategies need to be created, and build/test/develop them together so they seed in actual diverse schools;
:d) share our efforts online, even if we're still learning -- so that others can learn from what we’ve done or teach us something new.

[[Image:infrastructureslidephase1.jpg|infrastructureslidephase1.jpg]]

Finally, our goal with this website is to create and share documentation that

:*helps educators, families, and young people to tackle similar issues where they live;
:*helps researchers and the public to think differently about communications in public education;
:*helps connect us to others doing similar things.

Lots of documentation of innovation in education just tells you final accomplishments. In talking to people across the education field, we've heard a need for more descriptions of "how," even if part of the story is mistakes! We feel we are about halfway through piloting and analyzing everything we’ve been doing. Still, we wanted to begin to share the following:

:*our ¡Ahas! about our attempts to improve communication;
:*our overall realizations and products;
:*examples of "how to" do everything we tried, including technical documentation.

See [[Vision for OneVille documentation]] for more specifics.

Beyond the actual work done in Somerville, we hope that our deepest contribution with this website will be to get people thinking about:

:*the infrastructure needed to support the full range of necessary communications and partnership among members of a diverse educational community;
:*how low cost/free tech, brought into the “core” of public schools, can help a full range of people communicate and collaborate in new ways to support young people;
:*how people of all ages in a diverse community can work together to innovate all sorts of solutions for public education.

Click here to learn more about our [[Next Steps|next steps.]]

About Us: Our Work

2011-10-28T19:11:45Z

68.107.118.212:

Click [[Six working groups|here]] to see mini descriptions of all six projects.

In various ways, we all touched upon these questions in our six smaller projects.

:'''To support young people, who needs to communicate which information to whom?
:'''What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome?
:'''Which tools or strategies might support particular necessary communications?
:'''Can basic tech help increase community cooperation in young people’s success, by supporting diverse students, teachers, parents, administrators, service providers, and other community members to share ideas, resources, and information and to build relationships? What are the limitations to technology use?

Some of us (Mica in particular) have come to call our work [[Research base|“improving the communication infrastructure of public education.”]] That's because we're seeing that if you embed free/low cost communication tools and strategies in schools and communities, you can make it normal for new kinds of partnership to happen. Improving communication infrastructure means working to ensure that on a daily basis, the people who need to communicate information and ideas so they can collaborate in young people’s success can do it. Click here to learn more about other [[Research base|research]] supporting our work.

We've been doing [[Participatory design research|participatory design research]], where people work together to improve something and document/analyze that work as they do it. Click here to learn more about the [[principles]] guiding this work.

Our model has become to work with diverse community members of all ages to

:a) consider existing communication needs;
:b) test existing free tech tools and low-cost strategies, to ensure they support necessary communications in a diverse community;
:c) consider which new tools and strategies need to be created, and build/test/develop them together so they seed in actual diverse schools;
:d) share our efforts online, even if we're still learning -- so that others can learn from what we’ve done or teach us something new.

[[Image:infrastructureslidephase1.jpg|infrastructureslidephase1.jpg]]

Finally, our goal with this website is to create and share documentation that

:*helps educators, families, and young people to tackle similar issues where they live;
:*helps researchers and the public to think differently about communications in public education;
:*helps connect us to others doing similar things.

Lots of documentation of innovation in education just tells you final accomplishments. In talking to people across the education field, we've heard a need for more descriptions of "how," even if part of the story is mistakes! We feel we are about halfway through piloting and analyzing everything we’ve been doing. Still, we wanted to begin to share the following:

:*our ¡Ahas! about our attempts to improve communication;
:*our overall realizations and products;
:*examples of "how to" do everything we tried, including technical documentation.

See [[Vision for OneVille documentation]] for more specifics.

Beyond the actual work done in Somerville, we hope that our deepest contribution with this website will be to get people thinking about:

:*the infrastructure needed to support the full range of necessary communications and partnership among members of a diverse educational community;
:*how low cost/free tech, brought into the “core” of public schools, can help a full range of people communicate and collaborate in new ways to support young people;
:*how people of all ages in a diverse community can work together to innovate all sorts of solutions for public education.

Click here to learn more about our [[Next Steps|next steps.]]

About Us: Our Work

2011-10-28T19:10:56Z

68.107.118.212:

Click [[Six working groups|here]] to see mini descriptions of all six projects.

In various ways, we all touched upon these questions in our six smaller projects.

:'''To support young people, who needs to communicate which information to whom?
:'''What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome?
:'''Which channels might support particular necessary communications?
:'''Can basic tech help increase community cooperation in young people’s success, by supporting diverse students, teachers, parents, administrators, service providers, and other community members to share ideas, resources, and information and to build relationships? What are the limitations to technology use?

Some of us (Mica in particular) have come to call our work [[Research base|“improving the communication infrastructure of public education.”]] That's because we're seeing that if you embed free/low cost communication tools and strategies in schools and communities, you can make it normal for new kinds of partnership to happen. Improving communication infrastructure means working to ensure that on a daily basis, the people who need to communicate information and ideas so they can collaborate in young people’s success can do it. Click here to learn more about other [[Research base|research]] supporting our work.

We've been doing [[Participatory design research|participatory design research]], where people work together to improve something and document/analyze that work as they do it. Click here to learn more about the [[principles]] guiding this work.

Our model has become to work with diverse community members of all ages to

:a) consider existing communication needs;
:b) test existing free tech tools and low-cost strategies, to ensure they support necessary communications in a diverse community;
:c) consider which new tools and strategies need to be created, and build/test/develop them together so they seed in actual diverse schools;
:d) share our efforts online, even if we're still learning -- so that others can learn from what we’ve done or teach us something new.

[[Image:infrastructureslidephase1.jpg|infrastructureslidephase1.jpg]]

Finally, our goal with this website is to create and share documentation that

:*helps educators, families, and young people to tackle similar issues where they live;
:*helps researchers and the public to think differently about communications in public education;
:*helps connect us to others doing similar things.

Lots of documentation of innovation in education just tells you final accomplishments. In talking to people across the education field, we've heard a need for more descriptions of "how," even if part of the story is mistakes! We feel we are about halfway through piloting and analyzing everything we’ve been doing. Still, we wanted to begin to share the following:

:*our ¡Ahas! about our attempts to improve communication;
:*our overall realizations and products;
:*examples of "how to" do everything we tried, including technical documentation.

See [[Vision for OneVille documentation]] for more specifics.

Beyond the actual work done in Somerville, we hope that our deepest contribution with this website will be to get people thinking about:

:*the infrastructure needed to support the full range of necessary communications and partnership among members of a diverse educational community;
:*how low cost/free tech, brought into the “core” of public schools, can help a full range of people communicate and collaborate in new ways to support young people;
:*how people of all ages in a diverse community can work together to innovate all sorts of solutions for public education.

Click here to learn more about our [[Next Steps|next steps.]]

Summary: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-10-24T05:30:36Z

68.107.118.212: /* How does texting for rapid youth support work? How would it be implemented? */

Click here for the '''[[Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support|Overview and key findings]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Texting for Rapid Youth Support|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|Shelia: the joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

===What communication challenges did this project address?===

There is often a gap in rapid support communications with young people in schools. People don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. Many students at risk of dropping out are absent from school quite a lot. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school and other supporters are unaware of how youth are doing in school. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication with young people more normal than ever in schools!

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also fabulous young people, and great research partners.

Our initial vision was to enable an entire support “team” to communicate rapidly, using whatever media would work best. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire 2010-11 year. We’ll continue to test one-to-one texting between more teachers and their students in 2011-12, allowing us to see what happens when people new to texting get rolling. We’ll also now test a group texting tool supporting rapid communication between “teams” of youths’ chosen supporters. We’ll also test a tool allowing teachers to “blast” texts to all of their students at once.

[[Image:TextingNetworkDiagramOneville.jpg|TextingNetworkDiagramOneville.jpg]]

===Why is it important to improve communications?===

What we found:

:*'''¡Aha! Texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.
:*'''¡Aha! Texting is a “common-denominator” tool that allows more people to communicate. People can use regular phones, smart phones, and computers to communicate via text message.
:*'''We tried texting between teachers and individual students; we’ll next try communication among a “team” of supporters of students’ choice.

===How does texting for rapid youth support work? How would it be implemented?===

:*'''Go with those teachers (and students) that are excited. '''It’s crucial to start with people who really want to communicate in a particular way—that are motivated by the students, the technology or the flexibility. These people are most likely to innovate a new piece of communication infrastructure.
:*'''Spend enough time training teachers on the technology. '''Google Voice allows teachers to use their phones or their computers to review and send text messages.
:*'''Spend enough time discussing potential and actual uses for the texting communication and support. '''When will teachers be available? For what? How often? Will they focus on specific students or try to connect with all students equally? What supports will the teachers have within the school, especially if students express serious needs? The district?
:*'''Set expectations and ground rules for texting communication through a face-to-face meeting '''where everybody’s concerns and suggestions are heard. Draw up a contract so everybody is clear on what is appropriate.
:*'''Connect each teacher with all the students who want to participate in texting.

===How do you know if your school could improve communication?===

'''Questions to ask about the current system in your school:

:➢ In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?
:➢ How do teachers supplement their often-limited interactions with students during the school day?
:➢ How much do teachers communicate with students and families outside of the classroom?
:➢ What type of relationships and interactions do teachers have with their students, both in and outside of the classroom?
:➢ What policies, structures, and norms do teachers and students have for interacting outside of class?
:➢ Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

Click here for the '''[[Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support|Overview and key findings]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Texting for Rapid Youth Support|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

Overview and key findings: Data dashboards

2011-10-24T05:24:54Z

68.107.118.212: /* Communication and implementation ¡Ahas!, and turning points! */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Jedd Cohen, Josh Wairi, and Seth Woodworth for the dashboard project.

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

==Communication we hoped to improve==

''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?
:''(Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish?)

In an era when you can log on to any computer and get quick updates from friends, there’s no reason why all the people who need to know basic info in order to serve young people can’t know it immediately! Quantitative measures or summary data about young people (e.g., a report card) never show "the whole child" (eportfolios can help with that!), but they still provide information crucial to the process of tracking student progress, and they do tend to predict important events like “dropping out.”

Unfortunately, access to the data systems needed to provide this info varies widely among districts. Those that can afford it are increasingly investing in sophisticated data systems. Lower income districts can’t afford to. And when districts do have online data display tools, called “data dashboards,” they typically aren't designed by educators or parents.

We - local technologists, teachers, and researchers - have been working with families, afterschool providers, principals, and central administration in the Somerville School District to meet the need for a user-friendly, affordable way to view lots of student data in one place. The result of our work is a suite of three “data dashboards” - open source web applications designed to link the family, teachers, principal, and afterschool providers in communication about student data to support each student’s success.

Considering who usefully sees what data on children has been core to the dashboard project. Guided by a collaborative design process that drew on representatives of all the community stakeholders above, Somerville technologists Seth Woodworth and Evan Burchard created three views: an “admin view” for principals, which shows data on all students in the school; a “teacher view,” which shows a teacher data on the students in his or her class; and an “individual view,” designed to link teachers, afterschool providers, and families in communication about the details of an individual student’s profile. We’ll pilot each of these views at Somerville’s Healey School this fall: We’ll pilot the individual and teacher views with 5th grade teacher (and author) Josh Wairi and his students, and we’ll pilot the admin view with Principal Purnima Vadhera.

We felt that it was crucial to collaborate with the Somerville community to design open-source educational tools that link the partners in young people’s education in regular communication about their learning. Here are the main reasons:

'''A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

Principals Vadhera and DeFalco, teacher Josh Wairi, and various students we talked to in our other pilots all mentioned instances where a student “fell through the cracks” because of a piece of missing data -- for example, a student who received an unexpectedly poor grade at the end of the semester, with the parent, the homeroom teacher, or the administrator surprised by the news. These main partners also described how seeing new patterns, and faster, could support timely interventions -- from MCAS accommodations to targeted academic support.

'''One-Stop Shopping: It is crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

Lots of people in Somerville talked about the need to improve data display for parents and students, teachers, afterschool providers, and administrators. To clarify: A typical district has a “student information system” - a database that stores or “warehouses” student information. However, many districts do not have any easy tools for quickly displaying that information to multiple partners at once or letting them sort the data for patterns.

In Somerville, administrators had to send data analysis requests to a central office (filled with great staff!) and the staff would send patterns back to them. Or, teachers had to create their own Excel spreadsheets or printouts and analyze them by hand. The data was inaccessible for other reasons, too: People had a hard time understanding the way the system displayed data, the data is only in English, and viewers cannot comment ON the data.

Administrators also told us of time wasted in meetings as staff flipped through multiple folders or drawers to find data; further, staff wasted lots of time preparing for meetings by trying hand-analyze patterns across such data sources.

'''Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, if tech support for open source tools were available locally.

We decided to develop an open source solution for one simple reason: Open source tools can save districts lots of money. With open source, districts don’t have to buy the product itself or renew the license to use; they only have to pay for services (upkeep and troubleshooting the tool), which can be a fraction of the cost. Our technologist Seth put it this way: “Take the quarterly profit of a company like Blackboard INC (Quarter 1, 2010) and break it down into services and license fees. In just one quarter, Blackboard made only $7.3 million in services [tech support], but made $93.7 million dollars in 'product revenues' (licenses to run their software). In the K-12 context, a freely available and documented open source competitor to store-bought communication tools would free up a lot of money back to US schools.”

Based on a model created in Excel by Healey parent Greg Nadeau, and designed in partnership with Principals Jason DeFalco and Purnima Vahdera, and teacher Josh Wairi during the 2010-2011 school year, the admin dashboards provide quick views for teams of teachers and administrators to compare students in a group and discern patterns. All data fields are visible on one screen, so there is no need to click through multiple windows to view the desired data. Viewers can sort up to three columns at a time simply by clicking at the top of each while holding down the shift key. Whereas the admin view lists all students in the school, the teacher view presents similar information for a single class of students. Here is the admin view, with fictional data to maintain confidentiality:

[[Image:NewAdminDash.jpg|NewAdminDash.jpg]]

Our individual view (below) complements this with additional student data that was identified by parents, students, afterschool providers, and teachers as being especially relevant to their communications with each other. This view also gives parent and afterschool provider viewers the chance to comment on the data and send these comments to the teacher, sparking an exchange that can continue over email or in person. Here is the individual view’s final page, where viewers can review and submit their comments:

[[Image:NewComments.jpg|NewComments.jpg]]

Note the tabs for viewing other pages at the top of the screenshot. The images below show the pages connected to each of these tabs:

[[Image:IndivDashSummary.jpg|IndivDashSummary.jpg]]

[[Image:Test scores.jpg|Test scores.jpg]]

[[Image:Attendance.jpg|Attendance.jpg]]

[[Image:Teacher comments.jpg|Teacher comments.jpg]]

In creating the individual view, we drew on a data display model from the New Visions schools in New York (http://www.hfrp.org/var/hfrp/storage/fckeditor/File/9thGradeTracker.pdf)
combined it with Somerville’s locally designed K-6 report card, and worked with teacher Josh Wairi and his families (with advice from his students and afterschool providers) to integrate everyone’s insights into the testable product.

'''Our goal in 2011-12 is to pilot and tweak these three tools with educators, administrators, families, students, and afterschool providers. We’ll explore the ways these tools can support teamwork among all these people – in meetings, one-to-one interactions, and email-based conversations about the data.

==Our work, and our '''¡Ahas!==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? At this point, what are our main ¡Ahas! about improving communications in public education? What communication and implementation ¡Ahas!, and turning points, did we have over time?

'''Our main ¡Ahas! over time have been these:

'''¡Aha! A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

'''¡Aha! The families whose children most need assistance are often the hardest to reach with technology, but they are also the most in need of such rapid access to information.

'''¡Aha! One-Stop Shopping: It is crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display. Otherwise people waste time flipping between file folders, spreadsheets, or drawers.

'''¡Aha! Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, if tech support for open source tools were available locally.

===Communication and implementation ¡Ahas!, and turning points!===

We had many ¡Aha! in sequence on this project over two years. '''To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ¡Ahas!, click [[Expanded story: Data dashboards|here!]]'''

Our '''¡Aha! about data dashboards included the following:

In addition to our main ahas, we had several other key discoveries along the way:

'''¡Aha! In addition to having the ability to quickly see and sort such basic data, diverse partners in young people’s lives need supports to communicate ABOUT basic data.

'''¡Aha! Many parents welcome an invitation into a conversation with their child’s teachers, and even if these parents are unfamiliar with technology, these parents often see technology as an opportunity for connection, rather than an obstacle.

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

The prototypes of the administrative, teacher, and individual views are nearly complete. '''We plan to pilot our three “views” this fall and will report out what we learn.

We’ve gotten feedback from parents, teachers, and administrators about the dashboards’ potential value. In recent interviews, several immigrant parents emphasized the way the individual view dashboard sparks parent involvement: Smiling, one said, "Parents are not just left out of the school. With this, you are bringing them in, sucking them into the school curriculum!"

In a recent planning meeting with OneVille staff, Principal Vadhera described the value of the integrated dashboard tools, in contrast to the old system of requesting info from many different people: “Right now, in just five minutes, I have seen a complete picture of the kid. Without even checking in with folks [other staff]. Normally, I would have to wait for them to get back to me, and bring charts and graphs to meetings. What a great way to launch conversation.”

Purnima and Josh both suggested that the dashboards may enhance teamwork among educators at Healey: In staff team meetings, access to each view could allow teachers and administrators to collaboratively assess a student’s needs, design targeted interventions, and, if desired, record their plan by submitting it as subject-specific comments that get archived in the homeroom (lead) teacher’s email. '''We’ll see if any of this becomes possible!

'''The families whose children most need assistance are often the hardest to reach with technology, but they are also the most in need of such rapid access to information. '''We’ll need to continue this kind of outreach during the pilot phase, because we face the same challenges with the individual view as anyone working to enhance collaboration around students across barriers of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Not all parents have home access to computers and internet (though phones with internet access are increasingly popular), and some parents are not functionally literate in their home language.

'''We plan to work this year with the Healey PTA to create a model of basic computer and email training run by parents for other parents who need this support. '''We’ve already established a computer in the PTA room, available for parent use at prescheduled times, and we’re reaching out to other computing facilities in the school and community organizations. We’ll be reaching out to parents in Mr. Wairi’s new class about how to support them to access the Internet.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

'''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:
:➢Can everyone who needs to get and share important progress information, get and share it when they need to?
:➢If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?
:➢Is your district spending tons of money on data display tools to get basic data in front of people?
:➢ If so, how could low cost tech support such information-sharing?
:➢To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?
:➢What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?
:➢What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people? Which conversations should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment where you live to test which works for what?

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

[https://github.com/sethwoodworth/SchoolDash Application Source Code]

Click here for the '''[[Summary: Data dashboards|Summary]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

Summary: Data dashboards

2011-10-24T05:15:22Z

68.107.118.212:

Click here for the '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|Overview and key findings]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

===What communication challenges did this project address?===

In diverse districts across the country, educators are often unable to quickly show parents or teachers basic patterns affecting students – like their absences, test scores, grades, and credits, due to the high cost of cutting-edge student data systems. Families, for their part, are often unsure how to find all the relevant data on their children, how to read data once they are given it (e.g., a report card), and how to communicate with schools about it. (see http://www.nationalpirc.org/engagement_webinars/webinar-student-data.html)

Gaps in available basic data also can create gaps in student service, because people in charge of supporting a young person remain unaware about some key aspects of their situation (was Jose absent five days last month, or not?)

Over the past two years, local technologists, teachers, and researchers have been working with families, afterschool providers, principals, and central administration in the Somerville School District to help create tools enabling key people to go to a single place – on the web – to find comprehensive data (as appropriate) on each student, class of students, and the entire school. We’ve been working together to design tools that not only display data, but also launch a focused conversation among stakeholders involved about how to support each student.

The first dashboard below shows data on a school or classroom of students. The dashboard beneath it shows additional data on an individual student to teachers, parents, and approved afterschool providers, and allows them to communicate with each other through the “comment boxes.” (Names are fictional to preserve anonymity.)

[[Image:NewAdminDash*.jpg|NewAdminDash*.jpg]]

[[Image:IndivDashSummary.jpg|IndivDashSummary.jpg]]

===Why is it important to improve communications?===
What we found:

:*'''¡Aha! A gap in student data equals a gap in service.

:*'''¡Aha! One-Stop Shopping: It is crucial to be able to see different kinds of student data at the same time, in a single display.

:*'''¡Aha! In addition to having the ability to quickly see and sort such basic data, diverse partners in young people’s lives need supports to communicate ABOUT basic data.

:*'''¡Aha! Open source data tools could save schools across the country significant costs, if tech support for open source tools were available locally.

===How do the dashboards work? How would they be implemented?===

:*You can see how we designed our dashboards in '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|Overview and key findings]] '''and '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]]'''. We’ll know how they work for administrators, teachers and parents once we pilot this fall!

===How do you know if your school could improve communication?===
'''Questions to ask about the current system in your school:

:➢ To support young people, what “data” should show up on any data display, and why?
:➢ How does your school make data on student learning visible to school administrators, classroom teachers, and afterschool providers? And how about parents?
:➢ What infrastructure would support actual conversations ABOUT "data," between the people who share young people?
:➢ Which conversations about data should happen in person and which could be supported online? Could you do an experiment where you live to test which works for what?
:➢ What data isn’t found in any “student information system” but should still be known?

Click here for the '''[[Overview and key findings: Data dashboards|Overview and key findings]] '''on this project; click here for the '''[[Expanded story: Data dashboards|Expanded story]] '''on this project.

Participatory design research

2011-10-10T13:49:22Z

68.107.118.212:

==What is participatory design research?==

Design research has researchers participating in trying to actually solve a problem or improve upon a situation, while studying the effort and its snags and redirecting accordingly (Dede 2005; Joseph 2004).

We call what we’re doing "participatory design research" because we’ve put community members of all ages in the driver’s seat of naming communication barriers of concern and then testing and considering communication solutions. In fact, we feel this is the only way to learn about which tools and strategies will actually work and “stick.” We’ve ended up pairing ethnographic researchers, technologists, and community organizers with educators, families, and young people, all innovating communication solutions together while studying the work!

Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. Our work has proceeded in stages but in a more rolling manner: we’ve made ongoing course corrections in reaction to students’, educators’, and families’ ideas, interests and efforts. (We created a multilingual coffee hour and during one coffee hour, parents suggested we make a hotline. Local technologists made a hotline and bilingual parents and staff then clarified how to get information on to it more effectively!) When something didn’t work, we tried what participants thought would work better.

What has been particularly exciting to us about working in Somerville is that we've had the chance to engage young people, families and teachers in design efforts to bring tech into the everyday core of life and communication in “traditional” public schools (that is, rather than schools with unusual freedoms or, new schools created from scratch). That's somewhat unusual because researchers and companies typically design tech tools for education and then head to schools to try them; many avoid the bottlenecks of public schools altogether. Policymakers typically just tell youth and educators regulations constraining such tools’ use in public schools. Put together, this leaves young people, families, and educators in “traditional” public schools with little power to direct the use of technology in 21st century public education.

The OneVille Project has been a fully cooperative (and inter-group and intergenerational!) exploration of how commonplace technology might help diverse people share information, efforts, and resources for young people's success.
------

==Our participatory design approach==

We've put several research methods together in our participatory design research. Ethnography, a method from anthropology and sociology, involves participating in the everyday life of a community and documenting people's everyday actions in detail. Design research has researchers participating in trying to actually solve a problem or improve upon a situation, while studying the effort and redirecting it toward success. Participatory action research engages members of a community in analyzing and thoughtfully improving community life. We put all of these together: in our [[texting]] project, for example, we engaged as researchers, teachers and students in trying out texting as a way to improve student support. We analyzed the texting experience and actual texts together, and we took notes throughout on our conversations and interactions so that we had data to draw conclusions from. And to even get to the point of innovating with texting, we had to form friendships that made us all want to try things together.

With just a few exceptions, we all lived in Somerville and working to improve the lives of young people there meant improving our shared community.

Many of us had done community research before but not any community organizing; others had done organizing or tech design but not research. Some of us started our projects knowing tons of people in Somerville; others of us knew few people and had to make friends quickly. Those of us who do research for a living haven’t combined these methods before and, we certainly haven’t published our first thoughts online. So this project has taken a lot of adventurous spirit, from all involved!
------

===Learning from community feedback===
We began our work in Somerville with a year of fieldwork, interviews, friendship-building, and trial and error exploration, to understand current communication issues in Somerville and to test ways of linking people in efforts to support young people. For example, we piloted multilingual coffee hours to get diverse parents talking to one another for the first time across boundaries of program, income, and language about shared issues in their schools. In that work, we learned about the massive resource of the bilingual parent. We piloted academic “Reading Night” events to partner families who shared a K-3 hallway, but had had never talked before about their children’s education. In this work, we learned the crucial nature of face to face gatherings for building community spirit, but also the need for better infrastructure for sharing out information to all parents. We also held some public dialogues to support a school struggling with the decision of “unifying” several programs, and we learned how some parents had far more access to information and input than others. That work led to our schoolwide information toolkit and Parent Connector Network efforts. As we had discussions across the school about improving translation, tech access/training, and public information, we found our first Parent Connectors.

More examples: with permission during our first year, we participated in the typical data drudgery of schooling, by entering K-8 student data by hand into a school spreadsheet to help the principal analyze it. In that work, we learned which information was and wasn’t kept in the district database and which was kept in folders in drawers, to the frustration of educators who needed to access it; that work funneled into our dashboard project. We started an afterschool club and began to test a private social network allowing students to communicate about school and life outside of class with "teams" of peers and potentially teachers. In that work, we learned that students were motivated by media but needed to be engaged by richer (and already-social!) conversations about their actual learning experiences; the eportfolio project would pick up on several of these threads. In summer school, with a SHS teacher and two classes of summer school students, we explored the concept of convening a support team around every student, using technology to communicate about the student's progress. Students made clear that texting was the most natural tool for everyday support conversations, which led to our pilot of texting.
------

===The community as our guide===
We also took a big hint from community organizing: listen, then work with those excited to try a particular approach. We worked for a year with Somerville High’s principal, to build on bubbling interest in his school and school site council in transitioning paper portfolios kept in a filing cabinet to ePortfolios that could display work in vocational as well as typical academic subjects. At Somerville’s alternative school, we found teachers immediately interested in experimenting with texting, to facilitate their role as “teacher-counselors” trying to reach students often hard to get to school. We designed a “dashboard” with a teacher tired of creating and printing out spreadsheets in Excel and, with a principal tired of getting people around a table with paper folders. We built on the Excel spreadsheet the school was already using, designed by a parent at the school (with a career in data management); for a parent view, we combined some existing successful paper models from elsewhere (Taveras et al 2010) with Somerville’s new report card. To support local efforts to improve [[computer infrastructure]], we linked a Somerville High graduate wanting to test software to a computer center in a housing project hoping to staff computer programs, and funded a young intern for the effort.

And in all this, we learned to see a city as an ecosystem of communication about young people, in which infrastructure did or did not exist to support various participants to share information and ideas they wanted to share to support student success.

Each effort we participated in itself indicated the need for more communication infrastructure. Reading Night required a mix of paper-based, emailed, and personal communication for advertising the very event. Busy working parents then couldn’t organize (or debrief) Reading Night together without email and a schoolwide listserv. Those who attended couldn’t easily share out the tips with those who didn’t.

Core communication issues percolated throughout any attempt to partner people in student support.

In fall 2010, we broke up the project more explicitly into 6 working groups each tackling a different aspect of communication to help people partner in youth success.
------

==Main AHA==
Those of us who are researchers have come to believe that joining educators, youth, and families in efforts to improve schools, while rigorously studying those efforts in detail, may be one of the most important ways available to us of actually improving education in general.

Participatory design research

2011-10-10T13:42:44Z

68.107.118.212:

==What is participatory design research?==

''Notes by Mica Pollock

Design research has researchers participating in trying to actually solve a problem or improve upon a situation, while studying the effort and its snags and redirecting accordingly (Dede 2005; Joseph 2004).

We call what we’re doing "participatory design research" because we’ve put community members of all ages in the driver’s seat of naming communication barriers of concern and then testing and considering communication solutions. In fact, we feel this is the only way to learn about which tools and strategies will actually work and “stick.” We’ve ended up pairing ethnographic researchers, technologists, and community organizers with educators, families, and young people, all innovating communication solutions together while studying the work!

Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. Our work has proceeded in stages but in a more rolling manner: we’ve made ongoing course corrections in reaction to students’, educators’, and families’ ideas, interests and efforts. (We created a multilingual coffee hour and during one coffee hour, parents suggested we make a hotline. Local technologists made a hotline and bilingual parents and staff then clarified how to get information on to it more effectively!) When something didn’t work, we tried what participants thought would work better.

What has been particularly exciting to us about working in Somerville is that we've had the chance to engage young people, families and teachers in design efforts to bring tech into the everyday core of life and communication in “traditional” public schools (that is, rather than schools with unusual freedoms or, new schools created from scratch). That's somewhat unusual because researchers and companies typically design tech tools for education and then head to schools to try them; many avoid the bottlenecks of public schools altogether. Policymakers typically just tell youth and educators regulations constraining such tools’ use in public schools. Put together, this leaves young people, families, and educators in “traditional” public schools with little power to direct the use of technology in 21st century public education.

The OneVille Project has been a fully cooperative (and inter-group and intergenerational!) exploration of how commonplace technology might help diverse people share information, efforts, and resources for young people's success.
------

==Our participatory design approach==

We've put several research methods together in our participatory design research. Ethnography, a method from anthropology and sociology, involves participating in the everyday life of a community and documenting people's everyday actions in detail. Design research has researchers participating in trying to actually solve a problem or improve upon a situation, while studying the effort and redirecting it toward success. Participatory action research engages members of a community in analyzing and thoughtfully improving community life. We put all of these together: in our [[texting]] project, for example, we engaged as researchers, teachers and students in trying out texting as a way to improve student support. We analyzed the texting experience and actual texts together, and we took notes throughout on our conversations and interactions so that we had data to draw conclusions from. And to even get to the point of innovating with texting, we had to form friendships that made us all want to try things together.

With just a few exceptions, we all lived in Somerville and working to improve the lives of young people there meant improving our shared community.

Many of us had done community research before but not any community organizing; others had done organizing or tech design but not research. Some of us started our projects knowing tons of people in Somerville; others of us knew few people and had to make friends quickly. Those of us who do research for a living haven’t combined these methods before and, we certainly haven’t published our first thoughts online. So this project has taken a lot of adventurous spirit, from all involved!
------

===Learning from community feedback===
We began our work in Somerville with a year of fieldwork, interviews, friendship-building, and trial and error exploration, to understand current communication issues in Somerville and to test ways of linking people in efforts to support young people. For example, we piloted multilingual coffee hours to get diverse parents talking to one another for the first time across boundaries of program, income, and language about shared issues in their schools. In that work, we learned about the massive resource of the bilingual parent. We piloted academic “Reading Night” events to partner families who shared a K-3 hallway, but had had never talked before about their children’s education. In this work, we learned the crucial nature of face to face gatherings for building community spirit, but also the need for better infrastructure for sharing out information to all parents. We also held some public dialogues to support a school struggling with the decision of “unifying” several programs, and we learned how some parents had far more access to information and input than others. That work led to our schoolwide information toolkit and Parent Connector Network efforts. As we had discussions across the school about improving translation, tech access/training, and public information, we found our first Parent Connectors.

More examples: with permission during our first year, we participated in the typical data drudgery of schooling, by entering K-8 student data by hand into a school spreadsheet to help the principal analyze it. In that work, we learned which information was and wasn’t kept in the district database and which was kept in folders in drawers, to the frustration of educators who needed to access it; that work funneled into our dashboard project. We started an afterschool club and began to test a private social network allowing students to communicate about school and life outside of class with "teams" of peers and potentially teachers. In that work, we learned that students were motivated by media but needed to be engaged by richer (and already-social!) conversations about their actual learning experiences; the eportfolio project would pick up on several of these threads. In summer school, with a SHS teacher and two classes of summer school students, we explored the concept of convening a support team around every student, using technology to communicate about the student's progress. Students made clear that texting was the most natural tool for everyday support conversations, which led to our pilot of texting.
------

===The community as our guide===
We also took a big hint from community organizing: listen, then work with those excited to try a particular approach. We worked for a year with Somerville High’s principal, to build on bubbling interest in his school and school site council in transitioning paper portfolios kept in a filing cabinet to ePortfolios that could display work in vocational as well as typical academic subjects. At Somerville’s alternative school, we found teachers immediately interested in experimenting with texting, to facilitate their role as “teacher-counselors” trying to reach students often hard to get to school. We designed a “dashboard” with a teacher tired of creating and printing out spreadsheets in Excel and, with a principal tired of getting people around a table with paper folders. We built on the Excel spreadsheet the school was already using, designed by a parent at the school (with a career in data management); for a parent view, we combined some existing successful paper models from elsewhere (Taveras et al 2010) with Somerville’s new report card. To support local efforts to improve [[computer infrastructure]], we linked a Somerville High graduate wanting to test software to a computer center in a housing project hoping to staff computer programs, and funded a young intern for the effort.

And in all this, we learned to see a city as an ecosystem of communication about young people, in which infrastructure did or did not exist to support various participants to share information and ideas they wanted to share to support student success.

Each effort we participated in itself indicated the need for more communication infrastructure. Reading Night required a mix of paper-based, emailed, and personal communication for advertising the very event. Busy working parents then couldn’t organize (or debrief) Reading Night together without email and a schoolwide listserv. Those who attended couldn’t easily share out the tips with those who didn’t.

Core communication issues percolated throughout any attempt to partner people in student support.

In fall 2010, we broke up the project more explicitly into 6 working groups each tackling a different aspect of communication to help people partner in youth success.
------

==Main AHA==
Those of us who are researchers have come to believe that joining educators, youth, and families in efforts to improve schools, while rigorously studying those efforts in detail, may be one of the most important ways available to us of actually improving education in general.

Research base

2011-10-10T13:40:29Z

68.107.118.212:

==Research Base: Why should we improve the communication infrastructure of public education?==

''Notes by Mica Pollock

[[Image:Onevillesocialnetworkslide.jpg|Onevillesocialnetworkslide.jpg]]

If we can’t communicate successfully in public school communities, we can’t collaborate successfully either. Substantial research shows that to partner in students’ development, key supporters in young people’s lives need to communicate regularly about students’ progress, interests, and experiences, and about available resources. More specifically, we know that youth do better when they get regular feedback from teachers on their classroom performance (Hattie 2008); teachers teach better when youth, other teachers, and administrators offer feedback on improving their teaching (Jones and Yonezawa 2008/2009; Daly et al 2010; Cochran-Smith and Lytle 2009; Boudett et al 2005); parents and teachers support children’s progress better when they communicate about children’s activity in the other setting (Taveras et al 2010; González, Moll, and Amanti 2005; Lawrence-Lightfoot 2003). Families, youth, and teachers tap local resources better when they talk about what’s available (Mickelson and Cousins 2008). Nonprofits who share regions are realizing that supporting their own routine communication is key to partnership (http://www.strivetogether.org/). Research on data-driven decision-making (Boudett et al 2005), family and community engagement (Mediratta et al 2009, Oakes and Rogers 2006; Henderson et al 2007), and youth engagement and mentoring (Yonezawa, Jones and McLure forthcoming; Grossman and Bulle 2006) all suggests that when students’ supporters communicate regularly about things the others don’t know but need to know, they are each more equipped to attend to students’ life experiences, to intervene rapidly to reduce moments of failure and reinforce moments of success, and to offer resources available to help. So, supporting regular communication between current and potential partners is key to improving today’s schools.

We might say that three major factors affect educational communications today: a lack of resources and time (e.g., Torlakson 2011), a need to integrate diverse educators, families, and students in a common enterprise (Author 2008a, b), and the explosion of commonplace and free technology, now used by millions of diverse Americans to communicate outside of school (Watkins 2009). So how might that low-cost and commonplace technology, employed in the daily operations of diverse public school communities, help link partners in rapid communications about supporting young people? How might such communications be shaped purposefully to link partners across lines of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy? In the OneVille Project, we have begun to test ways to employ commonplace tech tools (and free, open source technologies) for routinely connecting the people who share a diverse educational community.

Lots of research shows that if people have a "high expectations, high help" frame of mind about doing what it takes to support young people's full potential (Ferguson 2008), students do better when the key people in their lives communicate about how they are doing and what they can do -- and about the resources available to help.

To partner in young people’s success, people need tools and strategies helping them to communicate about the individual children they share (What does Jose love to learn? How is he doing on credits toward graduation?); about the classrooms they share (what’s the homework? Who has an idea on the assignment?), about the schools they share (what afterschool opportunities are available for children? What actions would improve the school?), and about the city they share (where’s the free science fair? How might we improve education here?).

Finally, supporting young people requires a combination of face to face communications (like a parent-teacher meeting, an afterschool discussion between student and teacher, or a parent coffee hour where people share information and build relationships), print communications (like a handout in a backpack, a sign on the wall informing a parent of an opportunity, or a copy of student work at a parent-teacher conference), and electronic communications (like a student checking her grades online or a parent posting a local resource on a school listserv).

But the communication infrastructure of partnership in public education is pretty underdeveloped, in an era when commonplace and free technology could make communication and information-sharing in education easier than ever.

We speak often of students “falling through the cracks” in education, which implies a momentary gap in a human network of information-sharing, relationship, and response. More accurate is to speak of structural cracks -- communication barriers that routinely block people from knowing and sharing necessary information. Think of rare face to face support team meetings, backpack fliers in English in multilingual schools, and paper portfolios kept in inaccessible cabinets: each communication habit fails to enable supporters to communicate in necessary ways (or in a timely manner) about supporting young people.

Examples of education’s antiquated communication infrastructure abound: across the country, many administrators serving low-income children remain unable to quickly show parents or teachers basic patterns affecting students, because they can’t afford the cutting-edge software to do it. Reliant on rare face-to-face meetings that are hard to schedule, many overloaded teachers and afterschool providers rarely communicate about what students need to work on. Due to translation barriers, many immigrant parents remain unaware of educational opportunities available in their schools or community. Many students and teachers rarely exchange information on how students are doing personally or what they love to learn – even as youth of all social groups communicate constantly about both via tech outside of school (see, e.g., Ito et al, 2008: Watkins 2009; Noveck 2009; Shirky 2006; Taveras et al 2010; Mickelson and Cousins 2008).

Wealthy districts are investing in expensive technology for information-sharing between partners. We've wanted to test the potential of free and commonplace technology and low-cost communication strategies for supporting diverse partners in young people’s lives to collaborate. And, we've wanted to do this in collaboration with diverse educators, youth, families, and technologists.

So, we’ve been working to test -- and then, as necessary, create -- free, open-source, and low-cost tools and strategies for linking diverse partners in desired communications across lines of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Our goal has become to hone, over time and in collaboration with folks elsewhere, a toolkit of such tools and strategies enabling diverse supporters to collaborate in student success. We've been doing this through participatory design research, which involves a group of people trying to solve a problem, figuring out what needs to happen next, and redirecting work toward success.

So far, we’ve built new tools only when we found no free tool available to test (our dashboards and hotline). We've also been testing existing free tools, to see how they can help link diverse partners. We’ve tested Google Voice in our texting pilot (and modified it to afford one-to-many texting). We’ve tested Google Translate, Googledocs, Google spreadsheets, and Gmail in our schoolwide toolkit. We’ve tested Googlesites in our ePortfolio pilot, as well as Wikispaces, and we’ve used Wordpress to blog out and Mediawiki to organize our ideas for this website!

While testing technologies, we are also figuring out ways to tap local people power more efficiently. For example, bilingual parents have been figuring out how they, as volunteers, might be willing to make monthly calls to other immigrant parents as “Connectors” or translate key info from a Googleform onto a hotline.

We've also been training more people to use the technology around them (the [[ePortfolio]] project is a great example) and, making the case for better and more available hardware and internet access in public schools too.

I've been calling all this "improving the communication infrastructure of public education." Our goal now is to connect with people doing similar work in other places.

A listserv, hotline, or Googleform can help people quickly share information with many people at once. People can quickly access and sort online data in a way they can’t do with paper folders. Posted photos and videos can show a young person’s or teacher’s accomplishments in a way that test scores and grades alone can’t. With technology, supportive information can come at faster speeds: paper report cards come three times a year or study teams meet once a month, but tech can make even daily check-ins about and with a young person possible. And when you include people with important knowledge in the conversation, many hands make lighter work. As Clay Shirky puts it of social media generally, "here comes everybody"!

So, we now have the ability to move beyond rare support team meetings, one-way fliers in backpacks, and paper portfolios kept in inaccessible cabinets, to supporters able to communicate far more easily to support young people at any time. That's what we mean by "improving the communication infrastructure of public education."

Research base

2011-10-10T13:40:16Z

68.107.118.212:

==Research Base: Why should we improve the communication infrastructure of public education?==

'''Notes by Mica Pollock

[[Image:Onevillesocialnetworkslide.jpg|Onevillesocialnetworkslide.jpg]]

If we can’t communicate successfully in public school communities, we can’t collaborate successfully either. Substantial research shows that to partner in students’ development, key supporters in young people’s lives need to communicate regularly about students’ progress, interests, and experiences, and about available resources. More specifically, we know that youth do better when they get regular feedback from teachers on their classroom performance (Hattie 2008); teachers teach better when youth, other teachers, and administrators offer feedback on improving their teaching (Jones and Yonezawa 2008/2009; Daly et al 2010; Cochran-Smith and Lytle 2009; Boudett et al 2005); parents and teachers support children’s progress better when they communicate about children’s activity in the other setting (Taveras et al 2010; González, Moll, and Amanti 2005; Lawrence-Lightfoot 2003). Families, youth, and teachers tap local resources better when they talk about what’s available (Mickelson and Cousins 2008). Nonprofits who share regions are realizing that supporting their own routine communication is key to partnership (http://www.strivetogether.org/). Research on data-driven decision-making (Boudett et al 2005), family and community engagement (Mediratta et al 2009, Oakes and Rogers 2006; Henderson et al 2007), and youth engagement and mentoring (Yonezawa, Jones and McLure forthcoming; Grossman and Bulle 2006) all suggests that when students’ supporters communicate regularly about things the others don’t know but need to know, they are each more equipped to attend to students’ life experiences, to intervene rapidly to reduce moments of failure and reinforce moments of success, and to offer resources available to help. So, supporting regular communication between current and potential partners is key to improving today’s schools.

We might say that three major factors affect educational communications today: a lack of resources and time (e.g., Torlakson 2011), a need to integrate diverse educators, families, and students in a common enterprise (Author 2008a, b), and the explosion of commonplace and free technology, now used by millions of diverse Americans to communicate outside of school (Watkins 2009). So how might that low-cost and commonplace technology, employed in the daily operations of diverse public school communities, help link partners in rapid communications about supporting young people? How might such communications be shaped purposefully to link partners across lines of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy? In the OneVille Project, we have begun to test ways to employ commonplace tech tools (and free, open source technologies) for routinely connecting the people who share a diverse educational community.

Lots of research shows that if people have a "high expectations, high help" frame of mind about doing what it takes to support young people's full potential (Ferguson 2008), students do better when the key people in their lives communicate about how they are doing and what they can do -- and about the resources available to help.

To partner in young people’s success, people need tools and strategies helping them to communicate about the individual children they share (What does Jose love to learn? How is he doing on credits toward graduation?); about the classrooms they share (what’s the homework? Who has an idea on the assignment?), about the schools they share (what afterschool opportunities are available for children? What actions would improve the school?), and about the city they share (where’s the free science fair? How might we improve education here?).

Finally, supporting young people requires a combination of face to face communications (like a parent-teacher meeting, an afterschool discussion between student and teacher, or a parent coffee hour where people share information and build relationships), print communications (like a handout in a backpack, a sign on the wall informing a parent of an opportunity, or a copy of student work at a parent-teacher conference), and electronic communications (like a student checking her grades online or a parent posting a local resource on a school listserv).

But the communication infrastructure of partnership in public education is pretty underdeveloped, in an era when commonplace and free technology could make communication and information-sharing in education easier than ever.

We speak often of students “falling through the cracks” in education, which implies a momentary gap in a human network of information-sharing, relationship, and response. More accurate is to speak of structural cracks -- communication barriers that routinely block people from knowing and sharing necessary information. Think of rare face to face support team meetings, backpack fliers in English in multilingual schools, and paper portfolios kept in inaccessible cabinets: each communication habit fails to enable supporters to communicate in necessary ways (or in a timely manner) about supporting young people.

Examples of education’s antiquated communication infrastructure abound: across the country, many administrators serving low-income children remain unable to quickly show parents or teachers basic patterns affecting students, because they can’t afford the cutting-edge software to do it. Reliant on rare face-to-face meetings that are hard to schedule, many overloaded teachers and afterschool providers rarely communicate about what students need to work on. Due to translation barriers, many immigrant parents remain unaware of educational opportunities available in their schools or community. Many students and teachers rarely exchange information on how students are doing personally or what they love to learn – even as youth of all social groups communicate constantly about both via tech outside of school (see, e.g., Ito et al, 2008: Watkins 2009; Noveck 2009; Shirky 2006; Taveras et al 2010; Mickelson and Cousins 2008).

Wealthy districts are investing in expensive technology for information-sharing between partners. We've wanted to test the potential of free and commonplace technology and low-cost communication strategies for supporting diverse partners in young people’s lives to collaborate. And, we've wanted to do this in collaboration with diverse educators, youth, families, and technologists.

So, we’ve been working to test -- and then, as necessary, create -- free, open-source, and low-cost tools and strategies for linking diverse partners in desired communications across lines of income, racial/ethnic background, language difference and tech literacy. Our goal has become to hone, over time and in collaboration with folks elsewhere, a toolkit of such tools and strategies enabling diverse supporters to collaborate in student success. We've been doing this through participatory design research, which involves a group of people trying to solve a problem, figuring out what needs to happen next, and redirecting work toward success.

So far, we’ve built new tools only when we found no free tool available to test (our dashboards and hotline). We've also been testing existing free tools, to see how they can help link diverse partners. We’ve tested Google Voice in our texting pilot (and modified it to afford one-to-many texting). We’ve tested Google Translate, Googledocs, Google spreadsheets, and Gmail in our schoolwide toolkit. We’ve tested Googlesites in our ePortfolio pilot, as well as Wikispaces, and we’ve used Wordpress to blog out and Mediawiki to organize our ideas for this website!

While testing technologies, we are also figuring out ways to tap local people power more efficiently. For example, bilingual parents have been figuring out how they, as volunteers, might be willing to make monthly calls to other immigrant parents as “Connectors” or translate key info from a Googleform onto a hotline.

We've also been training more people to use the technology around them (the [[ePortfolio]] project is a great example) and, making the case for better and more available hardware and internet access in public schools too.

I've been calling all this "improving the communication infrastructure of public education." Our goal now is to connect with people doing similar work in other places.

A listserv, hotline, or Googleform can help people quickly share information with many people at once. People can quickly access and sort online data in a way they can’t do with paper folders. Posted photos and videos can show a young person’s or teacher’s accomplishments in a way that test scores and grades alone can’t. With technology, supportive information can come at faster speeds: paper report cards come three times a year or study teams meet once a month, but tech can make even daily check-ins about and with a young person possible. And when you include people with important knowledge in the conversation, many hands make lighter work. As Clay Shirky puts it of social media generally, "here comes everybody"!

So, we now have the ability to move beyond rare support team meetings, one-way fliers in backpacks, and paper portfolios kept in inaccessible cabinets, to supporters able to communicate far more easily to support young people at any time. That's what we mean by "improving the communication infrastructure of public education."

Next Steps

2011-10-10T13:16:49Z

68.107.118.212: /* Our next steps */

==Our next steps==

Starting this year, we hope to work with people in other communities toward a "toolkit" for public education, by creating and testing free/low cost tools and strategies for supporting communication and collaboration between the diverse people who share young people's lives.

In Somerville in 2011-12, we'll:

:-continue to test texting "teams"
:-pilot and tweak our dashboard views with principal, teachers and families, and continue to develop the efforts of the Parent Connector Network and the broader schoolwide communication toolkit.
:-We also want to learn what happens when the ePortfolio seeds across Somerville High School!

In 2011-12, with funding from the Digital Media and Learning Hub at UC Irvine (itself funded by the MacArthur Foundation) and with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, we'll be inviting OneVille participants to share their work and ideas in person and online with people concerned with how youth and adults in public schools can innovate such uses of everyday tech.

One goal for the year will be to keep honing online documentation like this wiki's. What online reporting would best support other diverse communities exploring such uses of commonplace and low-cost tech in public school communities?

Uche will be leading the Boston-area coordination, Jedd will keep helping with gluing documentation together, and the authors of the main working group pages on this website, with some additions, will be reporting out on their ongoing work!

Mica has started a West Coast effort and is working to link San Diego innovators to Somerville innovators! She has moved to direct CREATE (the Center for Research on Equity, Assessment, and Teaching Excellence) at the University of California San Diego (http://www.create.ucsd.edu). There, with new colleagues and community, she's focusing first on testing communication tools for enabling partnership between university people and local K-12 teachers, families, and young people. CREATE has particular strength in teacher professional development programs and youth development efforts, so Mica will be working with West Coast colleagues to learn how to help network local teachers to each other, youth to teachers, and mentors to youth.

So, we'll now be working bicoastally to improve everyday communications in public education. Our goal has become to hone, over time and in collaboration with folks in multiple communities, a toolkit of free/low-cost communication tools and strategies enabling diverse supporters to collaborate in student success.

== The Next Layer: Connecting to Folks Doing Similar Work in Other Communities.==

We'd love to spark a lively exchange between people working on similar things.

===Want to talk further?===

Are you working on improving communications in your own school or community?

Contact us directly at mipollock@ucsd.edu

===How'd we do in sharing our own first efforts?===

We want to connect to more people improving communications in public education and so, we've been experimenting with sharing our own work online!

Tell us:

*Did we format our examples in useful ways?
*Did we offer too much information on what we did, or not enough?
*Do you want to know more about what we've been doing?
*Would you contact us to share what you've been doing?

Some issues we’ve been thinking about (related to our [[Vision for OneVille documentation]]) and haven't resolved:

* Audience: can researchers, teachers, families, and youth all share one form of documentation? (That’s what we’ve tried to do here.)
* How do you most effectively show examples of local efforts and innovations in public education? How many words can you use? When might you use pictures or videos? How/when can words and visuals go together?

==Another Next Layer: National Networks for Sharing Local Efforts Like These?==

Think about it: What might happen if lots of youth, families, and educators started sharing out their educational innovations more generally, online?

Next Steps

2011-10-10T13:09:36Z

68.107.118.212: /* Another Next Layer: National Networks for Sharing Local Efforts Like These? */

==Our next steps==

Our goal has become to hone, over time and in collaboration with folks elsewhere, a toolkit of free/low-cost communication tools and strategies enabling diverse supporters to collaborate in student success.

In Somerville in 2011-12, we'll:

:-continue to test texting "teams"
:-pilot and tweak our dashboard views with principal, teachers and families, and continue to develop the efforts of the Parent Connector Network and the broader schoolwide communication toolkit.
:-We also want to learn what happens when the ePortfolio seeds across Somerville High School!

In 2011-12, with funding from the Digital Media and Learning Hub at UC Irvine (itself funded by the MacArthur Foundation) and with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, we'll be inviting OneVille participants to share their work and ideas in person and online with people concerned with how youth and adults in public schools can innovate such uses of everyday tech.

One goal for the year will be to keep honing online documentation like this wiki's. What online reporting would best support other diverse communities exploring such uses of commonplace and low-cost tech in public school communities?

Uche will be leading the Boston-area coordination, Jedd will keep helping with gluing documentation together, and the authors of the main working group pages on this website, with some additions, will be reporting out on their ongoing work!

Mica has started a West Coast effort and is working to link San Diego innovators to Somerville innovators! She has moved to direct CREATE (the Center for Research on Equity, Assessment, and Teaching Excellence) at the University of California San Diego (http://www.create.ucsd.edu). There, with new colleagues and community, she's focusing first on testing communication tools for enabling partnership between university people and local K-12 teachers, families, and young people. CREATE has particular strength in teacher professional development programs and youth development efforts, so Mica will be working with West Coast colleagues to learn how to help network local teachers to each other, youth to teachers, and mentors to youth.

So, we'll now be working bicoastally to improve everyday communications in public education. Starting this year, we hope to work with people in other communities toward a "toolkit" for public education, by creating and testing free/low cost tools and strategies for supporting communication and collaboration between the diverse people who share young people's lives.

== The Next Layer: Connecting to Folks Doing Similar Work in Other Communities.==

We'd love to spark a lively exchange between people working on similar things.

===Want to talk further?===

Are you working on improving communications in your own school or community?

Contact us directly at mipollock@ucsd.edu

===How'd we do in sharing our own first efforts?===

We want to connect to more people improving communications in public education and so, we've been experimenting with sharing our own work online!

Tell us:

*Did we format our examples in useful ways?
*Did we offer too much information on what we did, or not enough?
*Do you want to know more about what we've been doing?
*Would you contact us to share what you've been doing?

Some issues we’ve been thinking about (related to our [[Vision for OneVille documentation]]) and haven't resolved:

* Audience: can researchers, teachers, families, and youth all share one form of documentation? (That’s what we’ve tried to do here.)
* How do you most effectively show examples of local efforts and innovations in public education? How many words can you use? When might you use pictures or videos? How/when can words and visuals go together?

==Another Next Layer: National Networks for Sharing Local Efforts Like These?==

Think about it: What might happen if lots of youth, families, and educators started sharing out their educational innovations more generally, online?

Next Steps

2011-10-10T13:09:05Z

68.107.118.212: /* The Next Layer: Connecting to Folks Doing Similar Work in Other Communities. */

Next Steps

2011-10-10T13:07:44Z

68.107.118.212: /* Our next steps */

==Our next steps==

Our goal has become to hone, over time and in collaboration with folks elsewhere, a toolkit of free/low-cost communication tools and strategies enabling diverse supporters to collaborate in student success.

In Somerville in 2011-12, we'll:

:-continue to test texting "teams"
:-pilot and tweak our dashboard views with principal, teachers and families, and continue to develop the efforts of the Parent Connector Network and the broader schoolwide communication toolkit.
:-We also want to learn what happens when the ePortfolio seeds across Somerville High School!

In 2011-12, with funding from the Digital Media and Learning Hub at UC Irvine (itself funded by the MacArthur Foundation) and with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, we'll be inviting OneVille participants to share their work and ideas in person and online with people concerned with how youth and adults in public schools can innovate such uses of everyday tech.

One goal for the year will be to keep honing online documentation like this wiki's. What online reporting would best support other diverse communities exploring such uses of commonplace and low-cost tech in public school communities?

Uche will be leading the Boston-area coordination, Jedd will keep helping with gluing documentation together, and the authors of the main working group pages on this website, with some additions, will be reporting out on their ongoing work!

Mica has started a West Coast effort and is working to link San Diego innovators to Somerville innovators! She has moved to direct CREATE (the Center for Research on Equity, Assessment, and Teaching Excellence) at the University of California San Diego (http://www.create.ucsd.edu). There, with new colleagues and community, she's focusing first on testing communication tools for enabling partnership between university people and local K-12 teachers, families, and young people. CREATE has particular strength in teacher professional development programs and youth development efforts, so Mica will be working with West Coast colleagues to learn how to help network local teachers to each other, youth to teachers, and mentors to youth.

So, we'll now be working bicoastally to improve everyday communications in public education. Starting this year, we hope to work with people in other communities toward a "toolkit" for public education, by creating and testing free/low cost tools and strategies for supporting communication and collaboration between the diverse people who share young people's lives.

== The Next Layer: Connecting to Folks Doing Similar Work in Other Communities.==

We'd love to spark a lively exchange on this website between people working on similar things. It takes a local network to raise a child; it takes a national network to brainstorm the infrastructure for doing it. So, we've tried to create a lot of places where people could add comments.

===Want to talk further?===

Our goal with this website has been to connect to, inform, and support people doing related work elsewhere.

Are you working on improving communications in your own school or community?

Contact us directly at xxxxx ['''add someone's email? or cut this?].'''

===How'd we do in sharing our own first efforts?===

We want to connect to more people improving communications in public education and so, we've been experimenting with sharing our own work online!

Tell us:

*Did we format our examples in useful ways?
*Did we offer too much information on what we did, or not enough?
*Do you want to know more about what we've been doing?
*Would you contact us to share what you've been doing?

Some issues we’ve been thinking about (related to our [[Vision for OneVille documentation]]) and haven't resolved:

* Audience: can researchers, teachers, families, and youth all share one form of documentation? (That’s what we’ve tried to do here.)
* How do you most effectively show examples of local efforts and innovations in public education? How many words can you use? When might you use pictures or videos? How/when can words and visuals go together?

==Another Next Layer: National Networks for Sharing Local Efforts Like These?==

Think about it: What might happen if lots of youth, families, and educators started sharing out their educational innovations more generally, online? Innovating solutions for public education is fun -- and it pulls people together. In an era where lots of people are criticizing public schools' teachers, parents, and students, we need to connect to others who believe that there’s no limit to what these partners can do.

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-09-30T05:45:12Z

68.107.118.212: /* Summary */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|Shelia: the joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

''Written by Mica Pollock, Uche Amaechi, Maureen Robichaux, and Ted O'Brien for the texting project, with input from students at Full Circle/Next Wave

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also fabulous young people, and great research partners.

In the texting pilot, we all set forth to learn how texting might enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person -- both about how he/she was doing personally and academically and about actions that might enable his/her success. There is often a gap in such rapid support communications in schools. People don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. After the school day ends, communication becomes very difficult: increasingly, people don’t have (or answer) home phones. Many students at risk of dropping out are absent from school quite a lot. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school and other supporters are unaware of how youth are doing in school. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication with young people more normal than ever in schools!

Our initial vision was to enable an entire support “team” to communicate rapidly, using whatever media would work best. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll continue to test one-to-one texting between more teachers and their students in fall 2011, allowing us to see what happens when people new to texting get rolling. We’ll also now test a group texting tool supporting rapid communication between “teams” of youths’ chosen supporters. We’ll also test a tool allowing teachers to “blast” texts to all of their students at once.

So far, then, we have been testing one-to-one (private) texting between teachers and students, and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from the Harvard Graduate School of Education who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts along with teachers to see if they were helpful -- with students’ advance, overall permission. (GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.)

Since starting, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. In the fall, we plan to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via group texting.

Here’s what we currently think about texting’s potential in schools:

'''MAIN AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

We think this point is made best by the texts themselves. Most of the actual texts can be found [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here,]] but we wanted to show you a few examples of what supportive teacher-student texting can look like:


'''Teacher: Everything ok? 9:30 AM

'''Student: Ted? 10:39 AM

'''Teacher: Yup 11:02 AM

'''Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class 11:05 AM

'''Teacher: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM

'''Student: Alright 11:09 AM

'''Teacher: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM

'''Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM

'''Teacher: Use it! 3:27 PM

'''Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM

'''Student: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM

'''Teacher: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM

'''Teacher: Hurry up! 7:49 AM

'''Student: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM

'''Teacher: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM

'''Student: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM

'''Teacher: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM

'''Student: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 AM

'''Teacher: Like I said, you need to get it from him. Be on time for school today 7:00 AM

'''Teacher: You’re doing great 7:00 AM

'''Student: I will and u woke me up .thanks 7:01 AM

'''Teacher: You’re welcome 7:03 AM

''' Want to see more texts? Click [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here!]]

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting had two key benefits: individualized, timely student support and the ability to strengthen student-teacher relationships. Students argued that supportive texts from teachers were giving them the motivation or information necessary to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Over the semester, we also saw texting teachers and students having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

In sum: most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours. But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age. As Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

Of the various technologies in our lives, it is cell phones that are with us all day, and keep us most connected and available. Texting (often called “SMS”) and other mobile text based communications (like instant messaging) give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore, and responses to texts often arrive in seconds -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support (see the full story [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here.]].

Further, texting has been shown to be a particularly used channel for youth communication today: according to a 2010 Pew Research Center study on teenage use of mobile phones, teen use of texting has increased dramatically since 2006 (Campbell et al, 2010). Between 2006 and 2010, the percentage of all teens that used text messaging doubled from 27% to 54%. The only other communication medium that increased during those dates showed more muted gains: cell phone calls increased from 34-38% and the use of social networking sites increased from 21-25%. While calls remained a “critically important function” for teens, especially when communicating with parents, teens were clearly taking to texting in a much more dramatic way than any other communication medium. By 2009, the use of texting had increased among young people between the ages of 12 and 17: on average, older teens were even more likely to text than younger ones (Campbell et al, 2010). Furthermore, the Pew Polls have found that 70% of teens use texting to do "things related to school work," and a smaller but more dedicated 23% of teens use texting for school at least daily. Texting seems to be used more for general school-related communications than for detailed discussions of assignments and homework: 30% of all students and 45% of poor students specifically report never texting about school assignments (Campbell et al, 2010). In its small character capacity, texting may not be an obvious choice for discussions of the details of homework. But by providing a channel for anytime sharing of basic information and typically informal, individualized information about life and school experiences, texting could support the sort of ongoing personalized attention we know is necessary for supporting young people in schools.

Still, do a Google search for student-teacher texting and most of what you will find is fear: districts considering bans on texting or teachers quietly posting updates about their own personal experiences with trying it. Many view texting as an inappropriate mode of communication between teachers and students, for several main reasons. Even more a year ago than now, texting feels like a “youth”-owned medium. Also, because texting really feels like a private “tube” between two people, the sort of support texting can offer immediately seems particularly personal. That privacy is exactly what scares some people about misuse: teachers and students somehow seem more “alone together” while texting (even though private classroom conversations after school are equally “alone”). Texting also extends the boundaries of potential communication with students outside the school day and into teachers’ own afterschool lives.

Instead of just fearing texting, we decided to learn together what it could offer public school communities. So, we – teachers, researchers, and students -- rolled out a texting pilot with 40 students across multiple classrooms.

In some ways, our site -- Full Circle/Next Wave, Somerville’s alternative school -- is a special school: all teachers work in what our participating high school teacher Ted called “teacher-counselor mode” and expect personal support relationships as part of their job. Each teacher has a co-counseling group that meets twice a week, where he/she gets to know more about young people’s personal struggles. Teachers work in a “triangle” with clinicians and students’ other counselors. But really, teachers at FC/NW are simply encouraged by their school to build teacher-student support relationships, something every teacher has to do but may not have the time or the administrative support to do.

As we describe in more detail [Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|[here,]] some teachers in Somerville weren’t ready to try texting for reaching their students; these students and teachers were. They really were pioneers in testing how a communication tool already in the hands of most young people in the building could be pulled in for everyday student support.

''AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

'''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. As stated earlier, we wanted to test rapid support communications among a “team” of youths’ chosen supporters. We began with testing a school-based online social network and eventually moved toward testing one-to-one texting instead, with the vision of testing out “team” texting next.

So, our work proceeded in stages and also in a rolling manner over two years, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ insights and interests re. support communications that might assist youth.

Throughout, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? And, we came to ask: how might texting enable (or not enable) the rapid exchanges of information and caring often so needed to support young people?

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick at Somerville High School, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some type or series of communications could help make a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week) for their extra time piloting the tool and analyzing data, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal “research day,” and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot. For course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people who wanted to share questions or thoughts via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention in the [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!||full story]], logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts at the school. Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. Everyone was invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ahas, click [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here!]] 

Our ahas about texting included the following.

''1 AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.

'''2 AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.

'''3 AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.

'''4 AHA: We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.

'''5 AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.

'''6 AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.

'''7 AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to more informed face to face conversation.

'''8 AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!

'''9 AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.

'''10 AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”

'''11 AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.

'''12 AHA: Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.

'''13 AHA: Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other.

'''14 AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!

'''15 AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.

'''16 AHA: In our brief test of texting between HGSE students and the FC/NW students, we began to see that texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.

'''17 AHA: Finally, face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.

[[Image:textingresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Students and teachers analyzing (anonymized) examples of student-teacher texts: Research Day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, April 2011]]

[[Image:Textingjuneresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Teachers and students analyzing texting again in June 2011.]]

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting at Full Circle/Next Wave and have dozens of students and four new teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in expanding use of texting to include other current and former teachers within the school. While many teachers still didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some are newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

Both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for communication with young people that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter. We have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

At our April Research Day at Harvard, Obens, one of the students, summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting helped him focus overall on school, but couldn’t keep him focused during class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement. Many students also made clear that while improving student-teacher communication was key, linking in other people in their lives was crucial too. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

So, our next step is to see how texting works with new student and teacher users and also, to test texting “teams.”

As we test group texting among “teams” of students’ chosen supporters this fall, we’re going with youth-constructed teams of supporters and we’ll see where they take a group texting tool. We have lots of questions. Is the private and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not? Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. So, can a “team” use texting to communicate rapidly about student support, or will the “group” communication make texting less desirable? Which communications should be private, which public to a “team”? And who should be in a texting “team”? As one student said, she was now up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” As Ted put it, to “honor the kids’ sense of privacy,” “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both?”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to test “team” texting.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

:-In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

:-Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

===Technological how-tos===

Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. Google Voice provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as co-researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement. Beyond the research, the teachers also found it useful to be able to review their own texting exchanges.

With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without texting charges. Teachers can also take advantage of a computer’s larger screen and familiar interface to view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can check received messages on their smart phones via specially designed apps, or they can choose to have the service forward any texts to their feature phones’ regular text messaging accounts. (A feature phone is a cell phone that does not have installable apps from an app store.)

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. Seth, our developer, connected the teachers’ Google Voice accounts to group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class messaging. The setup created a proxy phone number for a new “group” of all of the teacher’s students. The teacher only had to send a message to that number and the associated students would all receive the message. (With regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time). However, because of the difficulty in maintaining and updating the custom designed software, we will be trying out commercial software such as GroupMe or Beluga for group and whole-class texting going forward. These application/services, like Google Voice, can operate through an app on a smart phone, or by forwarding messages to phone numbers on feature phones.

In fall 2011, we’ll continue teacher-student texting with additional teachers and youth, start teacher-full class texting, and test group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-09-30T05:44:53Z

68.107.118.212: /* Summary */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|Shelia: the joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

''Written by Mica Pollock, Uche Amaechi, Maureen Robichaux, and Ted O'Brien for the texting project, with input from students at Full Circle/Next Wave

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also fabulous young people, and great research partners.

In the texting pilot, we all set forth to learn how texting might enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person -- both about how he/she was doing personally and academically and about actions that might enable his/her success. There is often a gap in such rapid support communications in schools. People don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. After the school day ends, communication becomes very difficult: increasingly, people don’t have (or answer) home phones. Many students at risk of dropping out are absent from school quite a lot. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school and other supporters are unaware of how youth are doing in school. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication with young people more normal than ever in schools!

Our initial vision was to enable an entire support “team” to communicate rapidly, using whatever media would work best. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll continue to test one-to-one texting between more teachers and their students in fall 2011, allowing us to see what happens when people new to texting get rolling. We’ll also now test a group texting tool supporting rapid communication between “teams” of youths’ chosen supporters. We’ll also test a tool allowing teachers to “blast” texts to all of their students at once.

So far, then, we have been testing one-to-one (private) texting between teachers and students, and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from the Harvard Graduate School of Education who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts along with teachers to see if they were helpful -- with students’ advance, overall permission. (GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.)

Since starting, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. In the fall, we plan to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via group texting.

Here’s what we currently think about texting’s potential in schools:

'''MAIN AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

We think this point is made best by the texts themselves. Most of the actual texts can be found [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here]] but we wanted to show you a few examples of what supportive teacher-student texting can look like:


'''Teacher: Everything ok? 9:30 AM

'''Student: Ted? 10:39 AM

'''Teacher: Yup 11:02 AM

'''Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class 11:05 AM

'''Teacher: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM

'''Student: Alright 11:09 AM

'''Teacher: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM

'''Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM

'''Teacher: Use it! 3:27 PM

'''Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM

'''Student: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM

'''Teacher: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM

'''Teacher: Hurry up! 7:49 AM

'''Student: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM

'''Teacher: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM

'''Student: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM

'''Teacher: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM

'''Student: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 AM

'''Teacher: Like I said, you need to get it from him. Be on time for school today 7:00 AM

'''Teacher: You’re doing great 7:00 AM

'''Student: I will and u woke me up .thanks 7:01 AM

'''Teacher: You’re welcome 7:03 AM

''' Want to see more texts? Click [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here!]]

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting had two key benefits: individualized, timely student support and the ability to strengthen student-teacher relationships. Students argued that supportive texts from teachers were giving them the motivation or information necessary to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Over the semester, we also saw texting teachers and students having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

In sum: most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours. But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age. As Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

Of the various technologies in our lives, it is cell phones that are with us all day, and keep us most connected and available. Texting (often called “SMS”) and other mobile text based communications (like instant messaging) give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore, and responses to texts often arrive in seconds -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support (see the full story [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here.]].

Further, texting has been shown to be a particularly used channel for youth communication today: according to a 2010 Pew Research Center study on teenage use of mobile phones, teen use of texting has increased dramatically since 2006 (Campbell et al, 2010). Between 2006 and 2010, the percentage of all teens that used text messaging doubled from 27% to 54%. The only other communication medium that increased during those dates showed more muted gains: cell phone calls increased from 34-38% and the use of social networking sites increased from 21-25%. While calls remained a “critically important function” for teens, especially when communicating with parents, teens were clearly taking to texting in a much more dramatic way than any other communication medium. By 2009, the use of texting had increased among young people between the ages of 12 and 17: on average, older teens were even more likely to text than younger ones (Campbell et al, 2010). Furthermore, the Pew Polls have found that 70% of teens use texting to do "things related to school work," and a smaller but more dedicated 23% of teens use texting for school at least daily. Texting seems to be used more for general school-related communications than for detailed discussions of assignments and homework: 30% of all students and 45% of poor students specifically report never texting about school assignments (Campbell et al, 2010). In its small character capacity, texting may not be an obvious choice for discussions of the details of homework. But by providing a channel for anytime sharing of basic information and typically informal, individualized information about life and school experiences, texting could support the sort of ongoing personalized attention we know is necessary for supporting young people in schools.

Still, do a Google search for student-teacher texting and most of what you will find is fear: districts considering bans on texting or teachers quietly posting updates about their own personal experiences with trying it. Many view texting as an inappropriate mode of communication between teachers and students, for several main reasons. Even more a year ago than now, texting feels like a “youth”-owned medium. Also, because texting really feels like a private “tube” between two people, the sort of support texting can offer immediately seems particularly personal. That privacy is exactly what scares some people about misuse: teachers and students somehow seem more “alone together” while texting (even though private classroom conversations after school are equally “alone”). Texting also extends the boundaries of potential communication with students outside the school day and into teachers’ own afterschool lives.

Instead of just fearing texting, we decided to learn together what it could offer public school communities. So, we – teachers, researchers, and students -- rolled out a texting pilot with 40 students across multiple classrooms.

In some ways, our site -- Full Circle/Next Wave, Somerville’s alternative school -- is a special school: all teachers work in what our participating high school teacher Ted called “teacher-counselor mode” and expect personal support relationships as part of their job. Each teacher has a co-counseling group that meets twice a week, where he/she gets to know more about young people’s personal struggles. Teachers work in a “triangle” with clinicians and students’ other counselors. But really, teachers at FC/NW are simply encouraged by their school to build teacher-student support relationships, something every teacher has to do but may not have the time or the administrative support to do.

As we describe in more detail [Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|[here,]] some teachers in Somerville weren’t ready to try texting for reaching their students; these students and teachers were. They really were pioneers in testing how a communication tool already in the hands of most young people in the building could be pulled in for everyday student support.

''AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

'''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. As stated earlier, we wanted to test rapid support communications among a “team” of youths’ chosen supporters. We began with testing a school-based online social network and eventually moved toward testing one-to-one texting instead, with the vision of testing out “team” texting next.

So, our work proceeded in stages and also in a rolling manner over two years, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ insights and interests re. support communications that might assist youth.

Throughout, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? And, we came to ask: how might texting enable (or not enable) the rapid exchanges of information and caring often so needed to support young people?

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick at Somerville High School, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some type or series of communications could help make a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week) for their extra time piloting the tool and analyzing data, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal “research day,” and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot. For course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people who wanted to share questions or thoughts via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention in the [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!||full story]], logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts at the school. Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. Everyone was invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ahas, click [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here!]] 

Our ahas about texting included the following.

''1 AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.

'''2 AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.

'''3 AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.

'''4 AHA: We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.

'''5 AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.

'''6 AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.

'''7 AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to more informed face to face conversation.

'''8 AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!

'''9 AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.

'''10 AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”

'''11 AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.

'''12 AHA: Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.

'''13 AHA: Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other.

'''14 AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!

'''15 AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.

'''16 AHA: In our brief test of texting between HGSE students and the FC/NW students, we began to see that texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.

'''17 AHA: Finally, face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.

[[Image:textingresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Students and teachers analyzing (anonymized) examples of student-teacher texts: Research Day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, April 2011]]

[[Image:Textingjuneresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Teachers and students analyzing texting again in June 2011.]]

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting at Full Circle/Next Wave and have dozens of students and four new teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in expanding use of texting to include other current and former teachers within the school. While many teachers still didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some are newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

Both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for communication with young people that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter. We have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

At our April Research Day at Harvard, Obens, one of the students, summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting helped him focus overall on school, but couldn’t keep him focused during class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement. Many students also made clear that while improving student-teacher communication was key, linking in other people in their lives was crucial too. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

So, our next step is to see how texting works with new student and teacher users and also, to test texting “teams.”

As we test group texting among “teams” of students’ chosen supporters this fall, we’re going with youth-constructed teams of supporters and we’ll see where they take a group texting tool. We have lots of questions. Is the private and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not? Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. So, can a “team” use texting to communicate rapidly about student support, or will the “group” communication make texting less desirable? Which communications should be private, which public to a “team”? And who should be in a texting “team”? As one student said, she was now up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” As Ted put it, to “honor the kids’ sense of privacy,” “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both?”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to test “team” texting.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

:-In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

:-Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

===Technological how-tos===

Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. Google Voice provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as co-researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement. Beyond the research, the teachers also found it useful to be able to review their own texting exchanges.

With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without texting charges. Teachers can also take advantage of a computer’s larger screen and familiar interface to view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can check received messages on their smart phones via specially designed apps, or they can choose to have the service forward any texts to their feature phones’ regular text messaging accounts. (A feature phone is a cell phone that does not have installable apps from an app store.)

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. Seth, our developer, connected the teachers’ Google Voice accounts to group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class messaging. The setup created a proxy phone number for a new “group” of all of the teacher’s students. The teacher only had to send a message to that number and the associated students would all receive the message. (With regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time). However, because of the difficulty in maintaining and updating the custom designed software, we will be trying out commercial software such as GroupMe or Beluga for group and whole-class texting going forward. These application/services, like Google Voice, can operate through an app on a smart phone, or by forwarding messages to phone numbers on feature phones.

In fall 2011, we’ll continue teacher-student texting with additional teachers and youth, start teacher-full class texting, and test group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-09-30T05:44:10Z

68.107.118.212: /* Summary */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|Shelia: the joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

''Written by Mica Pollock, Uche Amaechi, Maureen Robichaux, and Ted O'Brien for the texting project, with input from students at Full Circle/Next Wave

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also fabulous young people, and great research partners.

In the texting pilot, we all set forth to learn how texting might enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person -- both about how he/she was doing personally and academically and about actions that might enable his/her success. There is often a gap in such rapid support communications in schools. People don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. After the school day ends, communication becomes very difficult: increasingly, people don’t have (or answer) home phones. Many students at risk of dropping out are absent from school quite a lot. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school and other supporters are unaware of how youth are doing in school. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication with young people more normal than ever in schools!

Our initial vision was to enable an entire support “team” to communicate rapidly, using whatever media would work best. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll continue to test one-to-one texting between more teachers and their students in fall 2011, allowing us to see what happens when people new to texting get rolling. We’ll also now test a group texting tool supporting rapid communication between “teams” of youths’ chosen supporters. We’ll also test a tool allowing teachers to “blast” texts to all of their students at once.

So far, then, we have been testing one-to-one (private) texting between teachers and students, and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from the Harvard Graduate School of Education who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts along with teachers to see if they were helpful -- with students’ advance, overall permission. (GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.)

Since starting, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. In the fall, we plan to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via group texting.

Here’s what we currently think about texting’s potential in schools:

'''MAIN AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

We think this point is made best by the texts themselves. Most of the actual texts can be found [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here]] but we wanted to show you a few examples of what supportive teacher-student texting can look like:


'''Teacher: Everything ok? 9:30 AM

'''Student: Ted? 10:39 AM

'''Teacher: Yup 11:02 AM

'''Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class 11:05 AM

'''Teacher: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM

'''Student: Alright 11:09 AM

'''Teacher: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM

'''Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM

'''Teacher: Use it! 3:27 PM

'''Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM

'''Student: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM

'''Teacher: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM

'''Teacher: Hurry up! 7:49 AM

'''Student: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM

'''Teacher: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM

'''Student: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM

'''Teacher: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM

'''Student: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 AM

'''Teacher: Like I said, you need to get it from him. Be on time for school today 7:00 AM

'''Teacher: You’re doing great 7:00 AM

'''Student: I will and u woke me up .thanks 7:01 AM

'''Teacher: You’re welcome 7:03 AM

( Want to see more texts? Click [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here]] 

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting had two key benefits: individualized, timely student support and the ability to strengthen student-teacher relationships. Students argued that supportive texts from teachers were giving them the motivation or information necessary to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Over the semester, we also saw texting teachers and students having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

In sum: most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours. But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age. As Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

Of the various technologies in our lives, it is cell phones that are with us all day, and keep us most connected and available. Texting (often called “SMS”) and other mobile text based communications (like instant messaging) give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore, and responses to texts often arrive in seconds -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support (see the full story [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here.]].

Further, texting has been shown to be a particularly used channel for youth communication today: according to a 2010 Pew Research Center study on teenage use of mobile phones, teen use of texting has increased dramatically since 2006 (Campbell et al, 2010). Between 2006 and 2010, the percentage of all teens that used text messaging doubled from 27% to 54%. The only other communication medium that increased during those dates showed more muted gains: cell phone calls increased from 34-38% and the use of social networking sites increased from 21-25%. While calls remained a “critically important function” for teens, especially when communicating with parents, teens were clearly taking to texting in a much more dramatic way than any other communication medium. By 2009, the use of texting had increased among young people between the ages of 12 and 17: on average, older teens were even more likely to text than younger ones (Campbell et al, 2010). Furthermore, the Pew Polls have found that 70% of teens use texting to do "things related to school work," and a smaller but more dedicated 23% of teens use texting for school at least daily. Texting seems to be used more for general school-related communications than for detailed discussions of assignments and homework: 30% of all students and 45% of poor students specifically report never texting about school assignments (Campbell et al, 2010). In its small character capacity, texting may not be an obvious choice for discussions of the details of homework. But by providing a channel for anytime sharing of basic information and typically informal, individualized information about life and school experiences, texting could support the sort of ongoing personalized attention we know is necessary for supporting young people in schools.

Still, do a Google search for student-teacher texting and most of what you will find is fear: districts considering bans on texting or teachers quietly posting updates about their own personal experiences with trying it. Many view texting as an inappropriate mode of communication between teachers and students, for several main reasons. Even more a year ago than now, texting feels like a “youth”-owned medium. Also, because texting really feels like a private “tube” between two people, the sort of support texting can offer immediately seems particularly personal. That privacy is exactly what scares some people about misuse: teachers and students somehow seem more “alone together” while texting (even though private classroom conversations after school are equally “alone”). Texting also extends the boundaries of potential communication with students outside the school day and into teachers’ own afterschool lives.

Instead of just fearing texting, we decided to learn together what it could offer public school communities. So, we – teachers, researchers, and students -- rolled out a texting pilot with 40 students across multiple classrooms.

In some ways, our site -- Full Circle/Next Wave, Somerville’s alternative school -- is a special school: all teachers work in what our participating high school teacher Ted called “teacher-counselor mode” and expect personal support relationships as part of their job. Each teacher has a co-counseling group that meets twice a week, where he/she gets to know more about young people’s personal struggles. Teachers work in a “triangle” with clinicians and students’ other counselors. But really, teachers at FC/NW are simply encouraged by their school to build teacher-student support relationships, something every teacher has to do but may not have the time or the administrative support to do.

As we describe in more detail [Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|[here,]] some teachers in Somerville weren’t ready to try texting for reaching their students; these students and teachers were. They really were pioneers in testing how a communication tool already in the hands of most young people in the building could be pulled in for everyday student support.

''AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

'''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. As stated earlier, we wanted to test rapid support communications among a “team” of youths’ chosen supporters. We began with testing a school-based online social network and eventually moved toward testing one-to-one texting instead, with the vision of testing out “team” texting next.

So, our work proceeded in stages and also in a rolling manner over two years, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ insights and interests re. support communications that might assist youth.

Throughout, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? And, we came to ask: how might texting enable (or not enable) the rapid exchanges of information and caring often so needed to support young people?

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick at Somerville High School, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some type or series of communications could help make a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week) for their extra time piloting the tool and analyzing data, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal “research day,” and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot. For course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people who wanted to share questions or thoughts via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention in the [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!||full story]], logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts at the school. Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. Everyone was invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ahas, click [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here!]] 

Our ahas about texting included the following.

''1 AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.

'''2 AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.

'''3 AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.

'''4 AHA: We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.

'''5 AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.

'''6 AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.

'''7 AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to more informed face to face conversation.

'''8 AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!

'''9 AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.

'''10 AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”

'''11 AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.

'''12 AHA: Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.

'''13 AHA: Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other.

'''14 AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!

'''15 AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.

'''16 AHA: In our brief test of texting between HGSE students and the FC/NW students, we began to see that texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.

'''17 AHA: Finally, face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.

[[Image:textingresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Students and teachers analyzing (anonymized) examples of student-teacher texts: Research Day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, April 2011]]

[[Image:Textingjuneresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Teachers and students analyzing texting again in June 2011.]]

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting at Full Circle/Next Wave and have dozens of students and four new teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in expanding use of texting to include other current and former teachers within the school. While many teachers still didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some are newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

Both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for communication with young people that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter. We have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

At our April Research Day at Harvard, Obens, one of the students, summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting helped him focus overall on school, but couldn’t keep him focused during class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement. Many students also made clear that while improving student-teacher communication was key, linking in other people in their lives was crucial too. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

So, our next step is to see how texting works with new student and teacher users and also, to test texting “teams.”

As we test group texting among “teams” of students’ chosen supporters this fall, we’re going with youth-constructed teams of supporters and we’ll see where they take a group texting tool. We have lots of questions. Is the private and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not? Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. So, can a “team” use texting to communicate rapidly about student support, or will the “group” communication make texting less desirable? Which communications should be private, which public to a “team”? And who should be in a texting “team”? As one student said, she was now up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” As Ted put it, to “honor the kids’ sense of privacy,” “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both?”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to test “team” texting.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

:-In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

:-Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

===Technological how-tos===

Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. Google Voice provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as co-researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement. Beyond the research, the teachers also found it useful to be able to review their own texting exchanges.

With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without texting charges. Teachers can also take advantage of a computer’s larger screen and familiar interface to view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can check received messages on their smart phones via specially designed apps, or they can choose to have the service forward any texts to their feature phones’ regular text messaging accounts. (A feature phone is a cell phone that does not have installable apps from an app store.)

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. Seth, our developer, connected the teachers’ Google Voice accounts to group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class messaging. The setup created a proxy phone number for a new “group” of all of the teacher’s students. The teacher only had to send a message to that number and the associated students would all receive the message. (With regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time). However, because of the difficulty in maintaining and updating the custom designed software, we will be trying out commercial software such as GroupMe or Beluga for group and whole-class texting going forward. These application/services, like Google Voice, can operate through an app on a smart phone, or by forwarding messages to phone numbers on feature phones.

In fall 2011, we’ll continue teacher-student texting with additional teachers and youth, start teacher-full class texting, and test group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-09-30T05:43:18Z

68.107.118.212: /* Summary */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|Shelia: the joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

''Written by Mica Pollock, Uche Amaechi, Maureen Robichaux, and Ted O'Brien for the texting project, with input from students at Full Circle/Next Wave

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also fabulous young people, and great research partners.

In the texting pilot, we all set forth to learn how texting might enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person -- both about how he/she was doing personally and academically and about actions that might enable his/her success. There is often a gap in such rapid support communications in schools. People don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. After the school day ends, communication becomes very difficult: increasingly, people don’t have (or answer) home phones. Many students at risk of dropping out are absent from school quite a lot. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school and other supporters are unaware of how youth are doing in school. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication with young people more normal than ever in schools!

Our initial vision was to enable an entire support “team” to communicate rapidly, using whatever media would work best. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll continue to test one-to-one texting between more teachers and their students in fall 2011, allowing us to see what happens when people new to texting get rolling. We’ll also now test a group texting tool supporting rapid communication between “teams” of youths’ chosen supporters. We’ll also test a tool allowing teachers to “blast” texts to all of their students at once.

So far, then, we have been testing one-to-one (private) texting between teachers and students, and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from the Harvard Graduate School of Education who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts along with teachers to see if they were helpful -- with students’ advance, overall permission. (GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.)

Since starting, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. In the fall, we plan to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via group texting.

Here’s what we currently think about texting’s potential in schools:

'''MAIN AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

We think this point is made best by the texts themselves. Most of the actual texts can be found [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here]] but we wanted to show you a few examples of what supportive teacher-student texting can look like:


'''Teacher: Everything ok? 9:30 AM

'''Student: Ted? 10:39 AM

'''Teacher: Yup 11:02 AM

'''Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class 11:05 AM

'''Teacher: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM

'''Student: Alright 11:09 AM

'''Teacher: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM

'''Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM

'''Teacher: Use it! 3:27 PM

'''Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM

'''Student: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM

'''Teacher: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM

'''Teacher: Hurry up! 7:49 AM

'''Student: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM

'''Teacher: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM

'''Student: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM

'''Teacher: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM

'''Student: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 AM

'''Teacher: Like I said, you need to get it from him. Be on time for school today 7:00 AM

'''Teacher: You’re doing great 7:00 AM

'''Student: I will and u woke me up .thanks 7:01 AM

'''Teacher: You’re welcome 7:03 AM

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting had two key benefits: individualized, timely student support and the ability to strengthen student-teacher relationships. Students argued that supportive texts from teachers were giving them the motivation or information necessary to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Over the semester, we also saw texting teachers and students having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

In sum: most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours. But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age. As Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

Of the various technologies in our lives, it is cell phones that are with us all day, and keep us most connected and available. Texting (often called “SMS”) and other mobile text based communications (like instant messaging) give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore, and responses to texts often arrive in seconds -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support (see the full story [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here.]].

Further, texting has been shown to be a particularly used channel for youth communication today: according to a 2010 Pew Research Center study on teenage use of mobile phones, teen use of texting has increased dramatically since 2006 (Campbell et al, 2010). Between 2006 and 2010, the percentage of all teens that used text messaging doubled from 27% to 54%. The only other communication medium that increased during those dates showed more muted gains: cell phone calls increased from 34-38% and the use of social networking sites increased from 21-25%. While calls remained a “critically important function” for teens, especially when communicating with parents, teens were clearly taking to texting in a much more dramatic way than any other communication medium. By 2009, the use of texting had increased among young people between the ages of 12 and 17: on average, older teens were even more likely to text than younger ones (Campbell et al, 2010). Furthermore, the Pew Polls have found that 70% of teens use texting to do "things related to school work," and a smaller but more dedicated 23% of teens use texting for school at least daily. Texting seems to be used more for general school-related communications than for detailed discussions of assignments and homework: 30% of all students and 45% of poor students specifically report never texting about school assignments (Campbell et al, 2010). In its small character capacity, texting may not be an obvious choice for discussions of the details of homework. But by providing a channel for anytime sharing of basic information and typically informal, individualized information about life and school experiences, texting could support the sort of ongoing personalized attention we know is necessary for supporting young people in schools.

Still, do a Google search for student-teacher texting and most of what you will find is fear: districts considering bans on texting or teachers quietly posting updates about their own personal experiences with trying it. Many view texting as an inappropriate mode of communication between teachers and students, for several main reasons. Even more a year ago than now, texting feels like a “youth”-owned medium. Also, because texting really feels like a private “tube” between two people, the sort of support texting can offer immediately seems particularly personal. That privacy is exactly what scares some people about misuse: teachers and students somehow seem more “alone together” while texting (even though private classroom conversations after school are equally “alone”). Texting also extends the boundaries of potential communication with students outside the school day and into teachers’ own afterschool lives.

Instead of just fearing texting, we decided to learn together what it could offer public school communities. So, we – teachers, researchers, and students -- rolled out a texting pilot with 40 students across multiple classrooms.

In some ways, our site -- Full Circle/Next Wave, Somerville’s alternative school -- is a special school: all teachers work in what our participating high school teacher Ted called “teacher-counselor mode” and expect personal support relationships as part of their job. Each teacher has a co-counseling group that meets twice a week, where he/she gets to know more about young people’s personal struggles. Teachers work in a “triangle” with clinicians and students’ other counselors. But really, teachers at FC/NW are simply encouraged by their school to build teacher-student support relationships, something every teacher has to do but may not have the time or the administrative support to do.

As we describe in more detail [Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|[here,]] some teachers in Somerville weren’t ready to try texting for reaching their students; these students and teachers were. They really were pioneers in testing how a communication tool already in the hands of most young people in the building could be pulled in for everyday student support.

''AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

'''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. As stated earlier, we wanted to test rapid support communications among a “team” of youths’ chosen supporters. We began with testing a school-based online social network and eventually moved toward testing one-to-one texting instead, with the vision of testing out “team” texting next.

So, our work proceeded in stages and also in a rolling manner over two years, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ insights and interests re. support communications that might assist youth.

Throughout, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? And, we came to ask: how might texting enable (or not enable) the rapid exchanges of information and caring often so needed to support young people?

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick at Somerville High School, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some type or series of communications could help make a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week) for their extra time piloting the tool and analyzing data, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal “research day,” and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot. For course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people who wanted to share questions or thoughts via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention in the [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!||full story]], logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts at the school. Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. Everyone was invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ahas, click [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here!]] 

Our ahas about texting included the following.

''1 AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.

'''2 AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.

'''3 AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.

'''4 AHA: We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.

'''5 AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.

'''6 AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.

'''7 AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to more informed face to face conversation.

'''8 AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!

'''9 AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.

'''10 AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”

'''11 AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.

'''12 AHA: Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.

'''13 AHA: Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other.

'''14 AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!

'''15 AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.

'''16 AHA: In our brief test of texting between HGSE students and the FC/NW students, we began to see that texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.

'''17 AHA: Finally, face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.

[[Image:textingresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Students and teachers analyzing (anonymized) examples of student-teacher texts: Research Day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, April 2011]]

[[Image:Textingjuneresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Teachers and students analyzing texting again in June 2011.]]

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting at Full Circle/Next Wave and have dozens of students and four new teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in expanding use of texting to include other current and former teachers within the school. While many teachers still didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some are newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

Both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for communication with young people that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter. We have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

At our April Research Day at Harvard, Obens, one of the students, summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting helped him focus overall on school, but couldn’t keep him focused during class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement. Many students also made clear that while improving student-teacher communication was key, linking in other people in their lives was crucial too. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

So, our next step is to see how texting works with new student and teacher users and also, to test texting “teams.”

As we test group texting among “teams” of students’ chosen supporters this fall, we’re going with youth-constructed teams of supporters and we’ll see where they take a group texting tool. We have lots of questions. Is the private and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not? Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. So, can a “team” use texting to communicate rapidly about student support, or will the “group” communication make texting less desirable? Which communications should be private, which public to a “team”? And who should be in a texting “team”? As one student said, she was now up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” As Ted put it, to “honor the kids’ sense of privacy,” “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both?”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to test “team” texting.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

:-In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

:-Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

===Technological how-tos===

Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. Google Voice provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as co-researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement. Beyond the research, the teachers also found it useful to be able to review their own texting exchanges.

With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without texting charges. Teachers can also take advantage of a computer’s larger screen and familiar interface to view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can check received messages on their smart phones via specially designed apps, or they can choose to have the service forward any texts to their feature phones’ regular text messaging accounts. (A feature phone is a cell phone that does not have installable apps from an app store.)

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. Seth, our developer, connected the teachers’ Google Voice accounts to group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class messaging. The setup created a proxy phone number for a new “group” of all of the teacher’s students. The teacher only had to send a message to that number and the associated students would all receive the message. (With regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time). However, because of the difficulty in maintaining and updating the custom designed software, we will be trying out commercial software such as GroupMe or Beluga for group and whole-class texting going forward. These application/services, like Google Voice, can operate through an app on a smart phone, or by forwarding messages to phone numbers on feature phones.

In fall 2011, we’ll continue teacher-student texting with additional teachers and youth, start teacher-full class texting, and test group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-09-30T05:42:23Z

68.107.118.212: /* Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points! */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|Shelia: the joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

''Written by Mica Pollock, Uche Amaechi, Maureen Robichaux, and Ted O'Brien for the texting project, with input from students at Full Circle/Next Wave

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also fabulous young people, and great research partners.

In the texting pilot, we all set forth to learn how texting might enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person -- both about how he/she was doing personally and academically and about actions that might enable his/her success. There is often a gap in such rapid support communications in schools. People don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. After the school day ends, communication becomes very difficult: increasingly, people don’t have (or answer) home phones. Many students at risk of dropping out are absent from school quite a lot. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school and other supporters are unaware of how youth are doing in school. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication with young people more normal than ever in schools!

Our initial vision was to enable an entire support “team” to communicate rapidly, using whatever media would work best. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll continue to test one-to-one texting between more teachers and their students in fall 2011, allowing us to see what happens when people new to texting get rolling. We’ll also now test a group texting tool supporting rapid communication between “teams” of youths’ chosen supporters. We’ll also test a tool allowing teachers to “blast” texts to all of their students at once.

So far, then, we have been testing one-to-one (private) texting between teachers and students, and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from the Harvard Graduate School of Education who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts along with teachers to see if they were helpful -- with students’ advance, overall permission. (GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.)

Since starting, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. In the fall, we plan to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via group texting.

Here’s what we currently think about texting’s potential in schools:

'''MAIN AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

We think this point is made best by the texts themselves. Most of the actual texts can be found [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here]] but we wanted to show you a few examples of what supportive teacher-student texting can look like:

'''Teacher: Everything ok? 9:30 AM

'''Student: Ted? 10:39 AM

'''Teacher: Yup 11:02 AM

'''Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class 11:05 AM

'''Teacher: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM

'''Student: Alright 11:09 AM

'''Teacher: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM

'''Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM

'''Teacher: Use it! 3:27 PM

'''Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM

'''Student: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM

'''Teacher: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM

'''Teacher: Hurry up! 7:49 AM

'''Student: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM

'''Teacher: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM

'''Student: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM

'''Teacher: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM

'''Student: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 AM

'''Teacher: Like I said, you need to get it from him. Be on time for school today 7:00 AM

'''Teacher: You’re doing great 7:00 AM

'''Student: I will and u woke me up .thanks 7:01 AM

'''Teacher: You’re welcome 7:03 AM

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting had two key benefits: individualized, timely student support and the ability to strengthen student-teacher relationships. Students argued that supportive texts from teachers were giving them the motivation or information necessary to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Over the semester, we also saw texting teachers and students having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

In sum: most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours. But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age. As Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

Of the various technologies in our lives, it is cell phones that are with us all day, and keep us most connected and available. Texting (often called “SMS”) and other mobile text based communications (like instant messaging) give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore, and responses to texts often arrive in seconds -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support (see the full story [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here.]].

Further, texting has been shown to be a particularly used channel for youth communication today: according to a 2010 Pew Research Center study on teenage use of mobile phones, teen use of texting has increased dramatically since 2006 (Campbell et al, 2010). Between 2006 and 2010, the percentage of all teens that used text messaging doubled from 27% to 54%. The only other communication medium that increased during those dates showed more muted gains: cell phone calls increased from 34-38% and the use of social networking sites increased from 21-25%. While calls remained a “critically important function” for teens, especially when communicating with parents, teens were clearly taking to texting in a much more dramatic way than any other communication medium. By 2009, the use of texting had increased among young people between the ages of 12 and 17: on average, older teens were even more likely to text than younger ones (Campbell et al, 2010). Furthermore, the Pew Polls have found that 70% of teens use texting to do "things related to school work," and a smaller but more dedicated 23% of teens use texting for school at least daily. Texting seems to be used more for general school-related communications than for detailed discussions of assignments and homework: 30% of all students and 45% of poor students specifically report never texting about school assignments (Campbell et al, 2010). In its small character capacity, texting may not be an obvious choice for discussions of the details of homework. But by providing a channel for anytime sharing of basic information and typically informal, individualized information about life and school experiences, texting could support the sort of ongoing personalized attention we know is necessary for supporting young people in schools.

Still, do a Google search for student-teacher texting and most of what you will find is fear: districts considering bans on texting or teachers quietly posting updates about their own personal experiences with trying it. Many view texting as an inappropriate mode of communication between teachers and students, for several main reasons. Even more a year ago than now, texting feels like a “youth”-owned medium. Also, because texting really feels like a private “tube” between two people, the sort of support texting can offer immediately seems particularly personal. That privacy is exactly what scares some people about misuse: teachers and students somehow seem more “alone together” while texting (even though private classroom conversations after school are equally “alone”). Texting also extends the boundaries of potential communication with students outside the school day and into teachers’ own afterschool lives.

Instead of just fearing texting, we decided to learn together what it could offer public school communities. So, we – teachers, researchers, and students -- rolled out a texting pilot with 40 students across multiple classrooms.

In some ways, our site -- Full Circle/Next Wave, Somerville’s alternative school -- is a special school: all teachers work in what our participating high school teacher Ted called “teacher-counselor mode” and expect personal support relationships as part of their job. Each teacher has a co-counseling group that meets twice a week, where he/she gets to know more about young people’s personal struggles. Teachers work in a “triangle” with clinicians and students’ other counselors. But really, teachers at FC/NW are simply encouraged by their school to build teacher-student support relationships, something every teacher has to do but may not have the time or the administrative support to do.

As we describe in more detail [Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|[here,]] some teachers in Somerville weren’t ready to try texting for reaching their students; these students and teachers were. They really were pioneers in testing how a communication tool already in the hands of most young people in the building could be pulled in for everyday student support.

''AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

'''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. As stated earlier, we wanted to test rapid support communications among a “team” of youths’ chosen supporters. We began with testing a school-based online social network and eventually moved toward testing one-to-one texting instead, with the vision of testing out “team” texting next.

So, our work proceeded in stages and also in a rolling manner over two years, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ insights and interests re. support communications that might assist youth.

Throughout, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? And, we came to ask: how might texting enable (or not enable) the rapid exchanges of information and caring often so needed to support young people?

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick at Somerville High School, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some type or series of communications could help make a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week) for their extra time piloting the tool and analyzing data, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal “research day,” and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot. For course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people who wanted to share questions or thoughts via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention in the [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!||full story]], logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts at the school. Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. Everyone was invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ahas, click [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here!]] 

Our ahas about texting included the following.

''1 AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.

'''2 AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.

'''3 AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.

'''4 AHA: We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.

'''5 AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.

'''6 AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.

'''7 AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to more informed face to face conversation.

'''8 AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!

'''9 AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.

'''10 AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”

'''11 AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.

'''12 AHA: Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.

'''13 AHA: Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other.

'''14 AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!

'''15 AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.

'''16 AHA: In our brief test of texting between HGSE students and the FC/NW students, we began to see that texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.

'''17 AHA: Finally, face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.

[[Image:textingresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Students and teachers analyzing (anonymized) examples of student-teacher texts: Research Day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, April 2011]]

[[Image:Textingjuneresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Teachers and students analyzing texting again in June 2011.]]

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting at Full Circle/Next Wave and have dozens of students and four new teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in expanding use of texting to include other current and former teachers within the school. While many teachers still didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some are newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

Both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for communication with young people that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter. We have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

At our April Research Day at Harvard, Obens, one of the students, summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting helped him focus overall on school, but couldn’t keep him focused during class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement. Many students also made clear that while improving student-teacher communication was key, linking in other people in their lives was crucial too. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

So, our next step is to see how texting works with new student and teacher users and also, to test texting “teams.”

As we test group texting among “teams” of students’ chosen supporters this fall, we’re going with youth-constructed teams of supporters and we’ll see where they take a group texting tool. We have lots of questions. Is the private and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not? Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. So, can a “team” use texting to communicate rapidly about student support, or will the “group” communication make texting less desirable? Which communications should be private, which public to a “team”? And who should be in a texting “team”? As one student said, she was now up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” As Ted put it, to “honor the kids’ sense of privacy,” “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both?”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to test “team” texting.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

:-In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

:-Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

===Technological how-tos===

Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. Google Voice provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as co-researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement. Beyond the research, the teachers also found it useful to be able to review their own texting exchanges.

With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without texting charges. Teachers can also take advantage of a computer’s larger screen and familiar interface to view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can check received messages on their smart phones via specially designed apps, or they can choose to have the service forward any texts to their feature phones’ regular text messaging accounts. (A feature phone is a cell phone that does not have installable apps from an app store.)

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. Seth, our developer, connected the teachers’ Google Voice accounts to group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class messaging. The setup created a proxy phone number for a new “group” of all of the teacher’s students. The teacher only had to send a message to that number and the associated students would all receive the message. (With regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time). However, because of the difficulty in maintaining and updating the custom designed software, we will be trying out commercial software such as GroupMe or Beluga for group and whole-class texting going forward. These application/services, like Google Voice, can operate through an app on a smart phone, or by forwarding messages to phone numbers on feature phones.

In fall 2011, we’ll continue teacher-student texting with additional teachers and youth, start teacher-full class texting, and test group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-09-30T05:42:09Z

68.107.118.212: /* Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points! */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|Shelia: the joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

''Written by Mica Pollock, Uche Amaechi, Maureen Robichaux, and Ted O'Brien for the texting project, with input from students at Full Circle/Next Wave

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also fabulous young people, and great research partners.

In the texting pilot, we all set forth to learn how texting might enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person -- both about how he/she was doing personally and academically and about actions that might enable his/her success. There is often a gap in such rapid support communications in schools. People don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. After the school day ends, communication becomes very difficult: increasingly, people don’t have (or answer) home phones. Many students at risk of dropping out are absent from school quite a lot. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school and other supporters are unaware of how youth are doing in school. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication with young people more normal than ever in schools!

Our initial vision was to enable an entire support “team” to communicate rapidly, using whatever media would work best. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll continue to test one-to-one texting between more teachers and their students in fall 2011, allowing us to see what happens when people new to texting get rolling. We’ll also now test a group texting tool supporting rapid communication between “teams” of youths’ chosen supporters. We’ll also test a tool allowing teachers to “blast” texts to all of their students at once.

So far, then, we have been testing one-to-one (private) texting between teachers and students, and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from the Harvard Graduate School of Education who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts along with teachers to see if they were helpful -- with students’ advance, overall permission. (GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.)

Since starting, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. In the fall, we plan to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via group texting.

Here’s what we currently think about texting’s potential in schools:

'''MAIN AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

We think this point is made best by the texts themselves. Most of the actual texts can be found [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here]] but we wanted to show you a few examples of what supportive teacher-student texting can look like:

'''Teacher: Everything ok? 9:30 AM

'''Student: Ted? 10:39 AM

'''Teacher: Yup 11:02 AM

'''Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class 11:05 AM

'''Teacher: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM

'''Student: Alright 11:09 AM

'''Teacher: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM

'''Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM

'''Teacher: Use it! 3:27 PM

'''Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM

'''Student: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM

'''Teacher: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM

'''Teacher: Hurry up! 7:49 AM

'''Student: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM

'''Teacher: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM

'''Student: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM

'''Teacher: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM

'''Student: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 AM

'''Teacher: Like I said, you need to get it from him. Be on time for school today 7:00 AM

'''Teacher: You’re doing great 7:00 AM

'''Student: I will and u woke me up .thanks 7:01 AM

'''Teacher: You’re welcome 7:03 AM

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting had two key benefits: individualized, timely student support and the ability to strengthen student-teacher relationships. Students argued that supportive texts from teachers were giving them the motivation or information necessary to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Over the semester, we also saw texting teachers and students having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

In sum: most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours. But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age. As Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

Of the various technologies in our lives, it is cell phones that are with us all day, and keep us most connected and available. Texting (often called “SMS”) and other mobile text based communications (like instant messaging) give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore, and responses to texts often arrive in seconds -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support (see the full story [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here.]].

Further, texting has been shown to be a particularly used channel for youth communication today: according to a 2010 Pew Research Center study on teenage use of mobile phones, teen use of texting has increased dramatically since 2006 (Campbell et al, 2010). Between 2006 and 2010, the percentage of all teens that used text messaging doubled from 27% to 54%. The only other communication medium that increased during those dates showed more muted gains: cell phone calls increased from 34-38% and the use of social networking sites increased from 21-25%. While calls remained a “critically important function” for teens, especially when communicating with parents, teens were clearly taking to texting in a much more dramatic way than any other communication medium. By 2009, the use of texting had increased among young people between the ages of 12 and 17: on average, older teens were even more likely to text than younger ones (Campbell et al, 2010). Furthermore, the Pew Polls have found that 70% of teens use texting to do "things related to school work," and a smaller but more dedicated 23% of teens use texting for school at least daily. Texting seems to be used more for general school-related communications than for detailed discussions of assignments and homework: 30% of all students and 45% of poor students specifically report never texting about school assignments (Campbell et al, 2010). In its small character capacity, texting may not be an obvious choice for discussions of the details of homework. But by providing a channel for anytime sharing of basic information and typically informal, individualized information about life and school experiences, texting could support the sort of ongoing personalized attention we know is necessary for supporting young people in schools.

Still, do a Google search for student-teacher texting and most of what you will find is fear: districts considering bans on texting or teachers quietly posting updates about their own personal experiences with trying it. Many view texting as an inappropriate mode of communication between teachers and students, for several main reasons. Even more a year ago than now, texting feels like a “youth”-owned medium. Also, because texting really feels like a private “tube” between two people, the sort of support texting can offer immediately seems particularly personal. That privacy is exactly what scares some people about misuse: teachers and students somehow seem more “alone together” while texting (even though private classroom conversations after school are equally “alone”). Texting also extends the boundaries of potential communication with students outside the school day and into teachers’ own afterschool lives.

Instead of just fearing texting, we decided to learn together what it could offer public school communities. So, we – teachers, researchers, and students -- rolled out a texting pilot with 40 students across multiple classrooms.

In some ways, our site -- Full Circle/Next Wave, Somerville’s alternative school -- is a special school: all teachers work in what our participating high school teacher Ted called “teacher-counselor mode” and expect personal support relationships as part of their job. Each teacher has a co-counseling group that meets twice a week, where he/she gets to know more about young people’s personal struggles. Teachers work in a “triangle” with clinicians and students’ other counselors. But really, teachers at FC/NW are simply encouraged by their school to build teacher-student support relationships, something every teacher has to do but may not have the time or the administrative support to do.

As we describe in more detail [Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|[here,]] some teachers in Somerville weren’t ready to try texting for reaching their students; these students and teachers were. They really were pioneers in testing how a communication tool already in the hands of most young people in the building could be pulled in for everyday student support.

''AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

'''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. As stated earlier, we wanted to test rapid support communications among a “team” of youths’ chosen supporters. We began with testing a school-based online social network and eventually moved toward testing one-to-one texting instead, with the vision of testing out “team” texting next.

So, our work proceeded in stages and also in a rolling manner over two years, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ insights and interests re. support communications that might assist youth.

Throughout, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? And, we came to ask: how might texting enable (or not enable) the rapid exchanges of information and caring often so needed to support young people?

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick at Somerville High School, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some type or series of communications could help make a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week) for their extra time piloting the tool and analyzing data, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal “research day,” and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot. For course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people who wanted to share questions or thoughts via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention in the [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!||full story]], logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts at the school. Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. Everyone was invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ahas, click [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here!]]

Our ahas about texting included the following.

''1 AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.

'''2 AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.

'''3 AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.

'''4 AHA: We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.

'''5 AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.

'''6 AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.

'''7 AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to more informed face to face conversation.

'''8 AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!

'''9 AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.

'''10 AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”

'''11 AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.

'''12 AHA: Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.

'''13 AHA: Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other.

'''14 AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!

'''15 AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.

'''16 AHA: In our brief test of texting between HGSE students and the FC/NW students, we began to see that texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.

'''17 AHA: Finally, face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.

[[Image:textingresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Students and teachers analyzing (anonymized) examples of student-teacher texts: Research Day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, April 2011]]

[[Image:Textingjuneresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Teachers and students analyzing texting again in June 2011.]]

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting at Full Circle/Next Wave and have dozens of students and four new teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in expanding use of texting to include other current and former teachers within the school. While many teachers still didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some are newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

Both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for communication with young people that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter. We have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

At our April Research Day at Harvard, Obens, one of the students, summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting helped him focus overall on school, but couldn’t keep him focused during class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement. Many students also made clear that while improving student-teacher communication was key, linking in other people in their lives was crucial too. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

So, our next step is to see how texting works with new student and teacher users and also, to test texting “teams.”

As we test group texting among “teams” of students’ chosen supporters this fall, we’re going with youth-constructed teams of supporters and we’ll see where they take a group texting tool. We have lots of questions. Is the private and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not? Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. So, can a “team” use texting to communicate rapidly about student support, or will the “group” communication make texting less desirable? Which communications should be private, which public to a “team”? And who should be in a texting “team”? As one student said, she was now up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” As Ted put it, to “honor the kids’ sense of privacy,” “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both?”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to test “team” texting.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

:-In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

:-Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

===Technological how-tos===

Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. Google Voice provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as co-researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement. Beyond the research, the teachers also found it useful to be able to review their own texting exchanges.

With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without texting charges. Teachers can also take advantage of a computer’s larger screen and familiar interface to view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can check received messages on their smart phones via specially designed apps, or they can choose to have the service forward any texts to their feature phones’ regular text messaging accounts. (A feature phone is a cell phone that does not have installable apps from an app store.)

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. Seth, our developer, connected the teachers’ Google Voice accounts to group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class messaging. The setup created a proxy phone number for a new “group” of all of the teacher’s students. The teacher only had to send a message to that number and the associated students would all receive the message. (With regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time). However, because of the difficulty in maintaining and updating the custom designed software, we will be trying out commercial software such as GroupMe or Beluga for group and whole-class texting going forward. These application/services, like Google Voice, can operate through an app on a smart phone, or by forwarding messages to phone numbers on feature phones.

In fall 2011, we’ll continue teacher-student texting with additional teachers and youth, start teacher-full class texting, and test group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-09-30T05:41:45Z

68.107.118.212: /* Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points! */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|Shelia: the joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

''Written by Mica Pollock, Uche Amaechi, Maureen Robichaux, and Ted O'Brien for the texting project, with input from students at Full Circle/Next Wave

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also fabulous young people, and great research partners.

In the texting pilot, we all set forth to learn how texting might enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person -- both about how he/she was doing personally and academically and about actions that might enable his/her success. There is often a gap in such rapid support communications in schools. People don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. After the school day ends, communication becomes very difficult: increasingly, people don’t have (or answer) home phones. Many students at risk of dropping out are absent from school quite a lot. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school and other supporters are unaware of how youth are doing in school. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication with young people more normal than ever in schools!

Our initial vision was to enable an entire support “team” to communicate rapidly, using whatever media would work best. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll continue to test one-to-one texting between more teachers and their students in fall 2011, allowing us to see what happens when people new to texting get rolling. We’ll also now test a group texting tool supporting rapid communication between “teams” of youths’ chosen supporters. We’ll also test a tool allowing teachers to “blast” texts to all of their students at once.

So far, then, we have been testing one-to-one (private) texting between teachers and students, and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from the Harvard Graduate School of Education who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts along with teachers to see if they were helpful -- with students’ advance, overall permission. (GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.)

Since starting, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. In the fall, we plan to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via group texting.

Here’s what we currently think about texting’s potential in schools:

'''MAIN AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

We think this point is made best by the texts themselves. Most of the actual texts can be found [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here]] but we wanted to show you a few examples of what supportive teacher-student texting can look like:

'''Teacher: Everything ok? 9:30 AM

'''Student: Ted? 10:39 AM

'''Teacher: Yup 11:02 AM

'''Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class 11:05 AM

'''Teacher: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM

'''Student: Alright 11:09 AM

'''Teacher: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM

'''Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM

'''Teacher: Use it! 3:27 PM

'''Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM

'''Student: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM

'''Teacher: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM

'''Teacher: Hurry up! 7:49 AM

'''Student: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM

'''Teacher: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM

'''Student: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM

'''Teacher: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM

'''Student: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 AM

'''Teacher: Like I said, you need to get it from him. Be on time for school today 7:00 AM

'''Teacher: You’re doing great 7:00 AM

'''Student: I will and u woke me up .thanks 7:01 AM

'''Teacher: You’re welcome 7:03 AM

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting had two key benefits: individualized, timely student support and the ability to strengthen student-teacher relationships. Students argued that supportive texts from teachers were giving them the motivation or information necessary to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Over the semester, we also saw texting teachers and students having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

In sum: most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours. But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age. As Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

Of the various technologies in our lives, it is cell phones that are with us all day, and keep us most connected and available. Texting (often called “SMS”) and other mobile text based communications (like instant messaging) give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore, and responses to texts often arrive in seconds -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support (see the full story [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here.]].

Further, texting has been shown to be a particularly used channel for youth communication today: according to a 2010 Pew Research Center study on teenage use of mobile phones, teen use of texting has increased dramatically since 2006 (Campbell et al, 2010). Between 2006 and 2010, the percentage of all teens that used text messaging doubled from 27% to 54%. The only other communication medium that increased during those dates showed more muted gains: cell phone calls increased from 34-38% and the use of social networking sites increased from 21-25%. While calls remained a “critically important function” for teens, especially when communicating with parents, teens were clearly taking to texting in a much more dramatic way than any other communication medium. By 2009, the use of texting had increased among young people between the ages of 12 and 17: on average, older teens were even more likely to text than younger ones (Campbell et al, 2010). Furthermore, the Pew Polls have found that 70% of teens use texting to do "things related to school work," and a smaller but more dedicated 23% of teens use texting for school at least daily. Texting seems to be used more for general school-related communications than for detailed discussions of assignments and homework: 30% of all students and 45% of poor students specifically report never texting about school assignments (Campbell et al, 2010). In its small character capacity, texting may not be an obvious choice for discussions of the details of homework. But by providing a channel for anytime sharing of basic information and typically informal, individualized information about life and school experiences, texting could support the sort of ongoing personalized attention we know is necessary for supporting young people in schools.

Still, do a Google search for student-teacher texting and most of what you will find is fear: districts considering bans on texting or teachers quietly posting updates about their own personal experiences with trying it. Many view texting as an inappropriate mode of communication between teachers and students, for several main reasons. Even more a year ago than now, texting feels like a “youth”-owned medium. Also, because texting really feels like a private “tube” between two people, the sort of support texting can offer immediately seems particularly personal. That privacy is exactly what scares some people about misuse: teachers and students somehow seem more “alone together” while texting (even though private classroom conversations after school are equally “alone”). Texting also extends the boundaries of potential communication with students outside the school day and into teachers’ own afterschool lives.

Instead of just fearing texting, we decided to learn together what it could offer public school communities. So, we – teachers, researchers, and students -- rolled out a texting pilot with 40 students across multiple classrooms.

In some ways, our site -- Full Circle/Next Wave, Somerville’s alternative school -- is a special school: all teachers work in what our participating high school teacher Ted called “teacher-counselor mode” and expect personal support relationships as part of their job. Each teacher has a co-counseling group that meets twice a week, where he/she gets to know more about young people’s personal struggles. Teachers work in a “triangle” with clinicians and students’ other counselors. But really, teachers at FC/NW are simply encouraged by their school to build teacher-student support relationships, something every teacher has to do but may not have the time or the administrative support to do.

As we describe in more detail [Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|[here,]] some teachers in Somerville weren’t ready to try texting for reaching their students; these students and teachers were. They really were pioneers in testing how a communication tool already in the hands of most young people in the building could be pulled in for everyday student support.

''AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

'''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. As stated earlier, we wanted to test rapid support communications among a “team” of youths’ chosen supporters. We began with testing a school-based online social network and eventually moved toward testing one-to-one texting instead, with the vision of testing out “team” texting next.

So, our work proceeded in stages and also in a rolling manner over two years, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ insights and interests re. support communications that might assist youth.

Throughout, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? And, we came to ask: how might texting enable (or not enable) the rapid exchanges of information and caring often so needed to support young people?

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick at Somerville High School, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some type or series of communications could help make a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week) for their extra time piloting the tool and analyzing data, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal “research day,” and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot. For course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people who wanted to share questions or thoughts via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention in the [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!||full story]], logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts at the school. Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. Everyone was invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ahas, click [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here!]]

Our ahas about texting included the following.

''1 AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.

'''2 AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.

'''3 AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.

'''4 AHA: We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.

'''5 AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.

'''6 AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.

'''7 AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to more informed face to face conversation.

'''8 AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!

'''9 AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.

'''10 AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”

'''11 AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.

'''12 AHA: Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.

'''13 AHA: Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other.

'''14 AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!

'''15 AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.

'''16 AHA: In our brief test of texting between HGSE students and the FC/NW students, we began to see that texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.

'''17 AHA: Finally, face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.

[[Image:textingresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Students and teachers analyzing (anonymized) examples of student-teacher texts: Research Day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, April 2011]]

[[Image:Textingjuneresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Teachers and students analyzing texting again in June 2011.]]

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting at Full Circle/Next Wave and have dozens of students and four new teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in expanding use of texting to include other current and former teachers within the school. While many teachers still didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some are newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

Both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for communication with young people that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter. We have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

At our April Research Day at Harvard, Obens, one of the students, summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting helped him focus overall on school, but couldn’t keep him focused during class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement. Many students also made clear that while improving student-teacher communication was key, linking in other people in their lives was crucial too. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

So, our next step is to see how texting works with new student and teacher users and also, to test texting “teams.”

As we test group texting among “teams” of students’ chosen supporters this fall, we’re going with youth-constructed teams of supporters and we’ll see where they take a group texting tool. We have lots of questions. Is the private and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not? Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. So, can a “team” use texting to communicate rapidly about student support, or will the “group” communication make texting less desirable? Which communications should be private, which public to a “team”? And who should be in a texting “team”? As one student said, she was now up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” As Ted put it, to “honor the kids’ sense of privacy,” “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both?”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to test “team” texting.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

:-In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

:-Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

===Technological how-tos===

Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. Google Voice provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as co-researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement. Beyond the research, the teachers also found it useful to be able to review their own texting exchanges.

With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without texting charges. Teachers can also take advantage of a computer’s larger screen and familiar interface to view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can check received messages on their smart phones via specially designed apps, or they can choose to have the service forward any texts to their feature phones’ regular text messaging accounts. (A feature phone is a cell phone that does not have installable apps from an app store.)

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. Seth, our developer, connected the teachers’ Google Voice accounts to group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class messaging. The setup created a proxy phone number for a new “group” of all of the teacher’s students. The teacher only had to send a message to that number and the associated students would all receive the message. (With regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time). However, because of the difficulty in maintaining and updating the custom designed software, we will be trying out commercial software such as GroupMe or Beluga for group and whole-class texting going forward. These application/services, like Google Voice, can operate through an app on a smart phone, or by forwarding messages to phone numbers on feature phones.

In fall 2011, we’ll continue teacher-student texting with additional teachers and youth, start teacher-full class texting, and test group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-09-30T05:40:44Z

68.107.118.212: /* Communication we hoped to improve */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|Shelia: the joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

''Written by Mica Pollock, Uche Amaechi, Maureen Robichaux, and Ted O'Brien for the texting project, with input from students at Full Circle/Next Wave

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also fabulous young people, and great research partners.

In the texting pilot, we all set forth to learn how texting might enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person -- both about how he/she was doing personally and academically and about actions that might enable his/her success. There is often a gap in such rapid support communications in schools. People don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. After the school day ends, communication becomes very difficult: increasingly, people don’t have (or answer) home phones. Many students at risk of dropping out are absent from school quite a lot. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school and other supporters are unaware of how youth are doing in school. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication with young people more normal than ever in schools!

Our initial vision was to enable an entire support “team” to communicate rapidly, using whatever media would work best. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll continue to test one-to-one texting between more teachers and their students in fall 2011, allowing us to see what happens when people new to texting get rolling. We’ll also now test a group texting tool supporting rapid communication between “teams” of youths’ chosen supporters. We’ll also test a tool allowing teachers to “blast” texts to all of their students at once.

So far, then, we have been testing one-to-one (private) texting between teachers and students, and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from the Harvard Graduate School of Education who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts along with teachers to see if they were helpful -- with students’ advance, overall permission. (GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.)

Since starting, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. In the fall, we plan to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via group texting.

Here’s what we currently think about texting’s potential in schools:

'''MAIN AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

We think this point is made best by the texts themselves. Most of the actual texts can be found [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here]] but we wanted to show you a few examples of what supportive teacher-student texting can look like:

'''Teacher: Everything ok? 9:30 AM

'''Student: Ted? 10:39 AM

'''Teacher: Yup 11:02 AM

'''Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class 11:05 AM

'''Teacher: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM

'''Student: Alright 11:09 AM

'''Teacher: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM

'''Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM

'''Teacher: Use it! 3:27 PM

'''Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM

'''Student: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM

'''Teacher: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM

'''Teacher: Hurry up! 7:49 AM

'''Student: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM

'''Teacher: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM

'''Student: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM

'''Teacher: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM

'''Student: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 AM

'''Teacher: Like I said, you need to get it from him. Be on time for school today 7:00 AM

'''Teacher: You’re doing great 7:00 AM

'''Student: I will and u woke me up .thanks 7:01 AM

'''Teacher: You’re welcome 7:03 AM

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting had two key benefits: individualized, timely student support and the ability to strengthen student-teacher relationships. Students argued that supportive texts from teachers were giving them the motivation or information necessary to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Over the semester, we also saw texting teachers and students having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

In sum: most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours. But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age. As Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

Of the various technologies in our lives, it is cell phones that are with us all day, and keep us most connected and available. Texting (often called “SMS”) and other mobile text based communications (like instant messaging) give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore, and responses to texts often arrive in seconds -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support (see the full story [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here.]].

Further, texting has been shown to be a particularly used channel for youth communication today: according to a 2010 Pew Research Center study on teenage use of mobile phones, teen use of texting has increased dramatically since 2006 (Campbell et al, 2010). Between 2006 and 2010, the percentage of all teens that used text messaging doubled from 27% to 54%. The only other communication medium that increased during those dates showed more muted gains: cell phone calls increased from 34-38% and the use of social networking sites increased from 21-25%. While calls remained a “critically important function” for teens, especially when communicating with parents, teens were clearly taking to texting in a much more dramatic way than any other communication medium. By 2009, the use of texting had increased among young people between the ages of 12 and 17: on average, older teens were even more likely to text than younger ones (Campbell et al, 2010). Furthermore, the Pew Polls have found that 70% of teens use texting to do "things related to school work," and a smaller but more dedicated 23% of teens use texting for school at least daily. Texting seems to be used more for general school-related communications than for detailed discussions of assignments and homework: 30% of all students and 45% of poor students specifically report never texting about school assignments (Campbell et al, 2010). In its small character capacity, texting may not be an obvious choice for discussions of the details of homework. But by providing a channel for anytime sharing of basic information and typically informal, individualized information about life and school experiences, texting could support the sort of ongoing personalized attention we know is necessary for supporting young people in schools.

Still, do a Google search for student-teacher texting and most of what you will find is fear: districts considering bans on texting or teachers quietly posting updates about their own personal experiences with trying it. Many view texting as an inappropriate mode of communication between teachers and students, for several main reasons. Even more a year ago than now, texting feels like a “youth”-owned medium. Also, because texting really feels like a private “tube” between two people, the sort of support texting can offer immediately seems particularly personal. That privacy is exactly what scares some people about misuse: teachers and students somehow seem more “alone together” while texting (even though private classroom conversations after school are equally “alone”). Texting also extends the boundaries of potential communication with students outside the school day and into teachers’ own afterschool lives.

Instead of just fearing texting, we decided to learn together what it could offer public school communities. So, we – teachers, researchers, and students -- rolled out a texting pilot with 40 students across multiple classrooms.

In some ways, our site -- Full Circle/Next Wave, Somerville’s alternative school -- is a special school: all teachers work in what our participating high school teacher Ted called “teacher-counselor mode” and expect personal support relationships as part of their job. Each teacher has a co-counseling group that meets twice a week, where he/she gets to know more about young people’s personal struggles. Teachers work in a “triangle” with clinicians and students’ other counselors. But really, teachers at FC/NW are simply encouraged by their school to build teacher-student support relationships, something every teacher has to do but may not have the time or the administrative support to do.

As we describe in more detail [Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|[here,]] some teachers in Somerville weren’t ready to try texting for reaching their students; these students and teachers were. They really were pioneers in testing how a communication tool already in the hands of most young people in the building could be pulled in for everyday student support.

''AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

'''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. As stated earlier, we wanted to test rapid support communications among a “team” of youths’ chosen supporters. We began with testing a school-based online social network and eventually moved toward testing one-to-one texting instead, with the vision of testing out “team” texting next.

So, our work proceeded in stages and also in a rolling manner over two years, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ insights and interests re. support communications that might assist youth.

Throughout, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? And, we came to ask: how might texting enable (or not enable) the rapid exchanges of information and caring often so needed to support young people?

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick at Somerville High School, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some type or series of communications could help make a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week) for their extra time piloting the tool and analyzing data, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal “research day,” and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot. For course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people who wanted to share questions or thoughts via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention in the [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!||full story]], logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts at the school. Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. Everyone was invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ahas, click [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here!]]

Our ahas about texting included the following.

''1 AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.

'''2 AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.

'''3 AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.

'''4 AHA: We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.

'''5 AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.

'''6 AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.

'''7 AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to more informed face to face conversation.

'''8 AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!

'''9 AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.

'''10 AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”

'''11 AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.

'''12 AHA: Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.

'''13 AHA: Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other.

'''14 AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!

'''15 AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.

'''16 AHA: In our brief test of texting between HGSE students and the FC/NW students, we began to see that texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.

'''17 AHA: Finally, face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.

[[Image:textingresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Students and teachers analyzing (anonymized) examples of student-teacher texts: Research Day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, April 2011]]

[[Image:Textingjuneresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Teachers and students analyzing texting again in June 2011.]]

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting at Full Circle/Next Wave and have dozens of students and four new teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in expanding use of texting to include other current and former teachers within the school. While many teachers still didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some are newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

Both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for communication with young people that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter. We have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

At our April Research Day at Harvard, Obens, one of the students, summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting helped him focus overall on school, but couldn’t keep him focused during class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement. Many students also made clear that while improving student-teacher communication was key, linking in other people in their lives was crucial too. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

So, our next step is to see how texting works with new student and teacher users and also, to test texting “teams.”

As we test group texting among “teams” of students’ chosen supporters this fall, we’re going with youth-constructed teams of supporters and we’ll see where they take a group texting tool. We have lots of questions. Is the private and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not? Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. So, can a “team” use texting to communicate rapidly about student support, or will the “group” communication make texting less desirable? Which communications should be private, which public to a “team”? And who should be in a texting “team”? As one student said, she was now up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” As Ted put it, to “honor the kids’ sense of privacy,” “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both?”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to test “team” texting.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

:-In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

:-Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

===Technological how-tos===

Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. Google Voice provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as co-researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement. Beyond the research, the teachers also found it useful to be able to review their own texting exchanges.

With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without texting charges. Teachers can also take advantage of a computer’s larger screen and familiar interface to view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can check received messages on their smart phones via specially designed apps, or they can choose to have the service forward any texts to their feature phones’ regular text messaging accounts. (A feature phone is a cell phone that does not have installable apps from an app store.)

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. Seth, our developer, connected the teachers’ Google Voice accounts to group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class messaging. The setup created a proxy phone number for a new “group” of all of the teacher’s students. The teacher only had to send a message to that number and the associated students would all receive the message. (With regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time). However, because of the difficulty in maintaining and updating the custom designed software, we will be trying out commercial software such as GroupMe or Beluga for group and whole-class texting going forward. These application/services, like Google Voice, can operate through an app on a smart phone, or by forwarding messages to phone numbers on feature phones.

In fall 2011, we’ll continue teacher-student texting with additional teachers and youth, start teacher-full class texting, and test group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-09-30T05:40:17Z

68.107.118.212: /* Summary */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|Shelia: the joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

''Written by Mica Pollock, Uche Amaechi, Maureen Robichaux, and Ted O'Brien for the texting project, with input from students at Full Circle/Next Wave

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go? (For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?)

Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also fabulous young people, and great research partners.

In the texting pilot, we all set forth to learn how texting might enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person -- both about how he/she was doing personally and academically and about actions that might enable his/her success. There is often a gap in such rapid support communications in schools. People don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. After the school day ends, communication becomes very difficult: increasingly, people don’t have (or answer) home phones. Many students at risk of dropping out are absent from school quite a lot. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school and other supporters are unaware of how youth are doing in school. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication with young people more normal than ever in schools!

Our initial vision was to enable an entire support “team” to communicate rapidly, using whatever media would work best. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll continue to test one-to-one texting between more teachers and their students in fall 2011, allowing us to see what happens when people new to texting get rolling. We’ll also now test a group texting tool supporting rapid communication between “teams” of youths’ chosen supporters. We’ll also test a tool allowing teachers to “blast” texts to all of their students at once.

So far, then, we have been testing one-to-one (private) texting between teachers and students, and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from the Harvard Graduate School of Education who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts along with teachers to see if they were helpful -- with students’ advance, overall permission. (GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.)

Since starting, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. In the fall, we plan to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via group texting.

Here’s what we currently think about texting’s potential in schools:

'''MAIN AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

We think this point is made best by the texts themselves. Most of the actual texts can be found [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here]] but we wanted to show you a few examples of what supportive teacher-student texting can look like:

'''Teacher: Everything ok? 9:30 AM

'''Student: Ted? 10:39 AM

'''Teacher: Yup 11:02 AM

'''Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class 11:05 AM

'''Teacher: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM

'''Student: Alright 11:09 AM

'''Teacher: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM

'''Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM

'''Teacher: Use it! 3:27 PM

'''Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM

'''Student: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM

'''Teacher: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM

'''Teacher: Hurry up! 7:49 AM

'''Student: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM

'''Teacher: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM

'''Student: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM

'''Teacher: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM

'''Student: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 AM

'''Teacher: Like I said, you need to get it from him. Be on time for school today 7:00 AM

'''Teacher: You’re doing great 7:00 AM

'''Student: I will and u woke me up .thanks 7:01 AM

'''Teacher: You’re welcome 7:03 AM

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting had two key benefits: individualized, timely student support and the ability to strengthen student-teacher relationships. Students argued that supportive texts from teachers were giving them the motivation or information necessary to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Over the semester, we also saw texting teachers and students having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

In sum: most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours. But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age. As Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

Of the various technologies in our lives, it is cell phones that are with us all day, and keep us most connected and available. Texting (often called “SMS”) and other mobile text based communications (like instant messaging) give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore, and responses to texts often arrive in seconds -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support (see the full story [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!||here.]].

Further, texting has been shown to be a particularly used channel for youth communication today: according to a 2010 Pew Research Center study on teenage use of mobile phones, teen use of texting has increased dramatically since 2006 (Campbell et al, 2010). Between 2006 and 2010, the percentage of all teens that used text messaging doubled from 27% to 54%. The only other communication medium that increased during those dates showed more muted gains: cell phone calls increased from 34-38% and the use of social networking sites increased from 21-25%. While calls remained a “critically important function” for teens, especially when communicating with parents, teens were clearly taking to texting in a much more dramatic way than any other communication medium. By 2009, the use of texting had increased among young people between the ages of 12 and 17: on average, older teens were even more likely to text than younger ones (Campbell et al, 2010). Furthermore, the Pew Polls have found that 70% of teens use texting to do "things related to school work," and a smaller but more dedicated 23% of teens use texting for school at least daily. Texting seems to be used more for general school-related communications than for detailed discussions of assignments and homework: 30% of all students and 45% of poor students specifically report never texting about school assignments (Campbell et al, 2010). In its small character capacity, texting may not be an obvious choice for discussions of the details of homework. But by providing a channel for anytime sharing of basic information and typically informal, individualized information about life and school experiences, texting could support the sort of ongoing personalized attention we know is necessary for supporting young people in schools.

Still, do a Google search for student-teacher texting and most of what you will find is fear: districts considering bans on texting or teachers quietly posting updates about their own personal experiences with trying it. Many view texting as an inappropriate mode of communication between teachers and students, for several main reasons. Even more a year ago than now, texting feels like a “youth”-owned medium. Also, because texting really feels like a private “tube” between two people, the sort of support texting can offer immediately seems particularly personal. That privacy is exactly what scares some people about misuse: teachers and students somehow seem more “alone together” while texting (even though private classroom conversations after school are equally “alone”). Texting also extends the boundaries of potential communication with students outside the school day and into teachers’ own afterschool lives.

Instead of just fearing texting, we decided to learn together what it could offer public school communities. So, we – teachers, researchers, and students -- rolled out a texting pilot with 40 students across multiple classrooms.

In some ways, our site -- Full Circle/Next Wave, Somerville’s alternative school -- is a special school: all teachers work in what our participating high school teacher Ted called “teacher-counselor mode” and expect personal support relationships as part of their job. Each teacher has a co-counseling group that meets twice a week, where he/she gets to know more about young people’s personal struggles. Teachers work in a “triangle” with clinicians and students’ other counselors. But really, teachers at FC/NW are simply encouraged by their school to build teacher-student support relationships, something every teacher has to do but may not have the time or the administrative support to do.

As we describe in more detail [Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|[here,]] some teachers in Somerville weren’t ready to try texting for reaching their students; these students and teachers were. They really were pioneers in testing how a communication tool already in the hands of most young people in the building could be pulled in for everyday student support.

''AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

'''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. As stated earlier, we wanted to test rapid support communications among a “team” of youths’ chosen supporters. We began with testing a school-based online social network and eventually moved toward testing one-to-one texting instead, with the vision of testing out “team” texting next.

So, our work proceeded in stages and also in a rolling manner over two years, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ insights and interests re. support communications that might assist youth.

Throughout, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? And, we came to ask: how might texting enable (or not enable) the rapid exchanges of information and caring often so needed to support young people?

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick at Somerville High School, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some type or series of communications could help make a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week) for their extra time piloting the tool and analyzing data, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal “research day,” and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot. For course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people who wanted to share questions or thoughts via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention in the [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!||full story]], logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts at the school. Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. Everyone was invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ahas, click [[Texting: Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!|here!]]

Our ahas about texting included the following.

''1 AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.

'''2 AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.

'''3 AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.

'''4 AHA: We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.

'''5 AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.

'''6 AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.

'''7 AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to more informed face to face conversation.

'''8 AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!

'''9 AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.

'''10 AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”

'''11 AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.

'''12 AHA: Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.

'''13 AHA: Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other.

'''14 AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!

'''15 AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.

'''16 AHA: In our brief test of texting between HGSE students and the FC/NW students, we began to see that texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.

'''17 AHA: Finally, face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.

[[Image:textingresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Students and teachers analyzing (anonymized) examples of student-teacher texts: Research Day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, April 2011]]

[[Image:Textingjuneresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Teachers and students analyzing texting again in June 2011.]]

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting at Full Circle/Next Wave and have dozens of students and four new teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in expanding use of texting to include other current and former teachers within the school. While many teachers still didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some are newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

Both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for communication with young people that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter. We have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

At our April Research Day at Harvard, Obens, one of the students, summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting helped him focus overall on school, but couldn’t keep him focused during class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement. Many students also made clear that while improving student-teacher communication was key, linking in other people in their lives was crucial too. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

So, our next step is to see how texting works with new student and teacher users and also, to test texting “teams.”

As we test group texting among “teams” of students’ chosen supporters this fall, we’re going with youth-constructed teams of supporters and we’ll see where they take a group texting tool. We have lots of questions. Is the private and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not? Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. So, can a “team” use texting to communicate rapidly about student support, or will the “group” communication make texting less desirable? Which communications should be private, which public to a “team”? And who should be in a texting “team”? As one student said, she was now up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” As Ted put it, to “honor the kids’ sense of privacy,” “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both?”

This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to test “team” texting.

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!

Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

:-In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

:-Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

===Technological how-tos===

Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. Google Voice provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as co-researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement. Beyond the research, the teachers also found it useful to be able to review their own texting exchanges.

With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without texting charges. Teachers can also take advantage of a computer’s larger screen and familiar interface to view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can check received messages on their smart phones via specially designed apps, or they can choose to have the service forward any texts to their feature phones’ regular text messaging accounts. (A feature phone is a cell phone that does not have installable apps from an app store.)

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. Seth, our developer, connected the teachers’ Google Voice accounts to group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class messaging. The setup created a proxy phone number for a new “group” of all of the teacher’s students. The teacher only had to send a message to that number and the associated students would all receive the message. (With regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time). However, because of the difficulty in maintaining and updating the custom designed software, we will be trying out commercial software such as GroupMe or Beluga for group and whole-class texting going forward. These application/services, like Google Voice, can operate through an app on a smart phone, or by forwarding messages to phone numbers on feature phones.

In fall 2011, we’ll continue teacher-student texting with additional teachers and youth, start teacher-full class texting, and test group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

Expanded story: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-09-30T05:39:05Z

68.107.118.212:

We started working on a tech strategy for rapid youth support in a OneVille-organized afterschool club involving 4th-6th graders at the K-8 Healey School in 2009-10, and then in Somerville’s summer school 2010, with two high school classes of SHS teacher Sabrina Trinca. Our first goal: test a school-based online social network (Elgg software) for on-demand support communications between youth and a “team” of their supporters.

In both cases, we learned that media was inherently attractive to youth but it wasn’t attractive enough to use if it wasn’t social enough yet! Students in the afterschool club wanted to go on Wee World (http://www.weeworld.com/) to check in generally with all their local and online friends, instead of use our private “OneVille” social network to talk about school. So, we realized that students were used to rapid personal support communications, but that it would be difficult to form a new social network for these (what we came to call a “separate place to go”) without a critical mass of interested members.

(One successful exception to the “youth don’t automatically like media” rule: students were immediately interested in creating “vlogs,” where students spoke into a Flip camera or iPhone video to an intended audience of teachers and administrators about strategies that supported their learning in class. Students immediately grabbed the chance to speak to a camera, even though we didn’t have people lined up to watch! This thread took off later in the ePortfolio project, where SHS teachers and students realized that certain types of questions about students’ learning styles and interests could also get students “flowing” in typing about their learning online. But the rule holds: just because you put media in front of youth doesn’t mean they’re going to use it.)

In summer school 2010, we again tried supporting young people to communicate with each other via a new private social network. Where the previous network was created for a loosely connected group of mixed grade students in a new afterschool club, this network was created for two summer school classrooms with the explicit purpose of helping the teacher communicate with students daily for six weeks about class and homework. Still, the “separate place to go” didn’t work: even though the online homework was required, for most students there still wasn’t enough reason to “go there”! Because the network was computer based, some of the students--who didn’t have computers or internet access--were limited in their ability to connect outside of class time. But beyond this technical obstacle, many of the students also expressed limited interest in interacting with the teacher or peers on class topics via a computer, even when available. There simply weren’t enough compelling online school activities yet to draw them naturally to a separate online site.

(Again, the [[eportfolio project]] may solve this chicken and egg problem by prompting lots of online assignments, leading students to go online for work and conversations.)

We decided to spend time that summer talking to Trinca’s students about the overall support communications they had normally and how those communications could be improved. We found that:

'''AHA: Students focused on connecting with people that they felt close to, regardless of whether those people were “best” placed to provide them with resources and/or help.

One student looked for help from his teacher from the previous year on history assignments instead of seeking out his current history teacher, simply because he connected with the previous year’s teacher better.

'''AHA: Besides parents, guardians, peers, and key school personnel, students valued connecting (virtually or not) with “older buddies,” near peer mentor-like figures that would advise them on matters both personal and academic.

'''AHA: Students told us that they used different technologies to interact with different people.

For example, they might talk to their parents over the phone, hang out most with their best friend in real life (what some people today call “IRL”!) and text message with individual friends or classmates.

'''Uche: ADD SOME GRAPHICS HERE FROM THE SURVEYMONKEY WE DID.

Also, the students said they preferred texting, phone, and talking in person over other methods such as email, IM, and even Facebook--even though many of them had Facebook accounts. Students told us that even while they didn’t yet text with teachers, texting was generally the best way for anyone, including teachers, to reach them rapidly and a natural way for them to communicate back. The students initially expressed skepticism at interacting with teachers over text, because it was what they typically used with friends. But in the end, they agreed that it was the most reliable way to contact them. So we decided to try assembling texting “teams” around kids one member by one, by starting with student-teacher texting.

A big AHA came from a first fumble: at one administrator’s advice, we first asked a “cluster” of teachers at Somerville High if they wanted to work with us to test texting. (Some of these teachers would go on to be key leaders of the ePortfolio project!) The teachers worried that the use of texting between students and teachers might break a longstanding, and to them, necessary boundary between the formal/academic classroom sphere and each group’s private, informal social lives. The teachers also thought that using texting to remind students of events, help them with homework, and other transactional uses could result in “babying” the students. These were high school students, they argued, and as such should not need or be given such basic assistance. They also worried about supporting poor grammar and inappropriate language in texts.

We then called Mr. Willey, principal at FC/NW, who had already told us months earlier that he had major trouble reaching his youth’s parents and supporters and at times, youth themselves. He agreed immediately that young people seemed more likely to pick up texts than any other form of communication. He invited us to come in and talk to his teachers, and Mica and Uche gave a basic presentation in early fall 2010 where we discussed what students had said about texting as a key channel for youth support. One of the teachers around the table was Ted. “When can we start?” Ted asked. He and Mo, respectively high school and middle school teachers at Full Circle/Next Wave, were excited to try it out, and we began.

'''TURNING POINT: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Rather than assemble entire texting “teams” for each student, we decided to start with private student-teacher communication. Uche set Mo and Ted up with Google Voice. In January 2011, Mo and Ted and Uche/Mica held an open meeting with all of their students to see who would be interested. We brainstormed ground rules (e.g., don’t expect a text back before 7 a.m. and after 10 p.m.; no inappropriate language; no sharing of anyone else’s business), gave students the teachers’ new GoogleVoice numbers, invited students to share their numbers with teachers, and invited them all to text whenever they wanted. GoogleVoice recorded all of the texts for the teachers and allowed them to type from their computers (Mo and Ted still mostly used their phones). Young people received texts on their phones.

Some students already texted teachers at the school (“If I'm having problems at home I text Maureen, or Maryanne or Edith,” one student told us; she did this rather than have her own parents “"know her business."). Some had never texted teachers before and found the idea weird. Texting to them felt like something you did with friends or relatives. But as students would tell us later in June, there were two kinds of texting relationships with teachers that felt OK – businessy ones for school related things you had to get done, and more revealing personal texts sent to people you really trusted.

Over time, our overall AHA would be about the benefits of texting for student-teacher relationship. But we want to tell you how we got there! Below is a discussion of the “communication ahas” we had throughout the pilot, and example texts. We taped a lot of our conversations and so we talk about ourselves in the third person (Ted and Mo, Mica and Uche).

== AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.==

In February, Ted got last minute info in a staff meeting that a ski trip was available to a new student he’d recently met and had been helping with math. The “kid’s voicemail was full.” So, Ted texted the student using Google Voice, to tell him to bring needed info and a signed permission slip the next day. The student’s response? “Lots of exclamation points, ‘thank you,’” Ted said; there was now a “high level of communication” with the student. The exchange happened “in an 18 hour turnout” and “allowed us to make a strong connection right when he got to the school.”
Me: Bring in your insurance info tomorrow, the company and your policy number, with 10 bucks, yor going skiing thursday! 3:23 PM
Student: Thank you soo much ted! i will .. ill have it all tomarrow! 4:12 PM
Me: Are you going to school tomorrow? 6:59 PM
Student: Yea .. deffintly 9:36 PM

== AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.==
One student said that he lacked a home phone, so texting helped: “Sometimes they call your house when there’s no school, but I don’t have a house phone. They might call my mom but she never picks up. If he (Ted) hadn’t texted me (about the snow day), I wouldn’t have woken up for school.”
In another case, a student who had been kicked out of school texted Ted to find out what his situation was and whether he faced expulsion.
And here’s an e.g. of texting by Mo that helped reach a student who was literally absent from school:
Me: Worried about you!! 8:15 PM
Student: im feeling much better now I will deff see u tmr (: 8:16 PM
Me: Good we miss you!! Can mom right a note for the last 2 days 8:17 PM
Student: she called [School admininstrator] today telling him I was out sick not truent 8:18 PM :Me: Good..see you tomorrow..and glad your feeling better!! 8:19 PM
Student: thanks 8:24 PM

== AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.==

In early March, Uche and Mica got together with Mo and Ted and looked at the GoogleVoice record of all the texts. Our plan: to “pull out examples of texts that you find interesting,” to “label the “type” of communication that occurred,” and to “provide any evidence of any text’s effects on any student’s achievement/motivation/relationship with you.”
We noted first just how many different school-related subjects a teacher and student could text about. So far, Mo had been texting with students for wakeup calls, paperwork reminders, discussions of personal updates, updates on other students that students knew about, health check-ins, and discussions of absence. She bantered a lot with the students, too. We laughed often in the pilot about the number of exclamation points Mo tended to use in her texts!!!!!!!!
Ted had reviewed his own Google Voice record and “broke it up into categories – who talks to who about what.” “(There’s) a cluster about being on time. Another about dropout prevention, kids who haven’t been to school in a long time, what can we do to transition you out of here easier. And, checkins w/ students about miscellaneous—academics, work, home, if they’re heading toward that dropout prevention category . . . Also snow days, field trips, some kids need to bring attire for electives (gym attire, skates, something they may need for the next day). On being on time, staying a full day – if kids walk out I remind them about the day before. . . . And also, jobs. Kids that want jobs.”
Ted was texting with students about absences and lateness; afterschool activity (he coached a boxing club and led a lot of trips); and for personal checkins, which then often considered academic issues. “New electives, new teachers, new schedules – some confirmations on preparations for the next day – are we going skating, to boxing club tomorrow, to bring in the right clothes.” Students were checking in with him via text about academic issues like credits, the semester change, and their discipline records. One student had texted him to ask how he was doing after a fraught interaction, and how his weekend went. A few students had texted him for help in class. In some cases he was strongly pushing young people to attend class or keep up their motivation via text. The other texts Ted had been sending in February were “more like routine -- no school, a snowstorm, ‘you haven’t been in school where are ya’ type stuff. Some kids don’t respond to those at all, some kids do,” he said.
Neither teacher was fielding detailed questions about schoolwork via text. Instead, they were texting more about logistics, reminders, updates, absence explanations, and more -- and in the process, building relationships. As we read all these texts, Ted and Mo expressed surprise and satisfaction with “the language that the kids are using to thank (them)…It’s refreshing to know that they have that capability.” Some students expressed gratitude and other emotions through their texts that Ted and Mo hadn’t experienced with them in the classroom.

== AHA: Students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.==
If we judged texting by the immediate consequences of a given text, it could sometimes look unsuccessful. Ted said in February that the previous week, a doctor showed up at school for testing one of his students, but “the kid didn’t show up for school that day.” Ted texted the student at 10 (the appointment was scheduled for 9:00-11:00); “he texted me right back w/ what sounded like a confirmation that he was coming but then didn’t come. So that was almost a success story but not.”
Mo noted that some students she texted to wake up still came late. But, the same students were now using text to contact her with serious support needs, even during drug rehab placements. Mo was using her texting to support one young person with depression, so that the student eventually came in to school.
Mo had a major aha about texting in March: “Success for a depressed student in a sense is the engagement itself. Even having this exchange.” And as Ted said earlier in the year, “In some ways, it comes down to someone paying attention to them.” As Mo explained of one text she sent to a student in March, “I wanted to make her feel good before she went to bed.” And Mo reported in March that she had this talk with a student the previous day:
"I just wanna make sure you’re ok – when I text you I wanna know you’re ok, safe. We worry about you!” He had responded, “I know you guys do, I will definitely write you something.”
Over and over in the pilot, we talked about how texts showed not just connection but true caring. Students pointed out a bunch of examples on our April Research Day:
-Mo’s text to a student: “worried about you.” “It shows that she really cares,” Shelia explained.
-“You had a bad day yesterday”: a particularly caring teacher “check-in.”
-“you made 1 day last week.” “I like the encouragement,” said one student.
-“you’re a smart kid.” “That’s really nice because some kids might feel doubt and don’t get many compliments from people,” another student said.
-Mo pointed out that one student had asked Ted “how was your weekend.”
Shelia pointed out that overall, the texts could build relationship and simultaneously, the motivation to try. “You need to know [teachers] care in order to do stuff. Otherwise what’s the point in trying. If a person is ‘I’m here for you’ – you feel someone else cares, I should care too.”
So, texts built up consequences over time: in the texts below, the youth was still not in school, but a relationship was being built to get him in the next time. Note the three quick appreciative texts back after a compliment, which many students pointed out on Research Day:
Me: Hey is your mom coming in 8:20 AM
Student: Yah bro waiting for her that's y I ain't in school my G G=grandma lmao ur old 8:21 AM :Me: Not funny....lol 8:23 AM
Student: Ii hate the fact u don't apritiate my jokes 8:24 AM
Student: -_- 8:24 AM
Me: But I appreciate you:-) 8:26 AM
Student: Ahhh good made my morning 8:31 AM
Student: =) 8:32 AM
Student: Lol jk jk idc 8:32 AM
Me: Awwwww 8:33 AM
Similarly, in the texts below it was of course not the actual medical help Ted offered via text that could be supportive to the student, but the caring itself:
Hey I dont think im going to come to school tomorw im wicked sick 7:19 PM
Have a glass of o.j. and drink water often. Get some rest, and you'll feel great in the morning, ready for school 7:44 PM
Ive been doing that all day and it hasnt helped one bit 7:58 PM
Lets have a good full 1/2 day tomorrow 9:31 PM
Idont know if im goin to school tomorrow 9:46 PM
You haven't been putting consecutive full days together, push yourself to improve, you can do it! 9:49 PM

== AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.==
Just as in face to face conversation, there’s no either/or.
Here’s an exchange that went from a basic schedule update, to a communication about stickers (Somerville “Villen” gear), to fundamental questions about school deadlines:
Me: No school tomorrow 7:09 PM
Student: -_- aww .... Hey do you have any villen stickers by any chance :) jw 7:11 PM
Me: Haha, no 7:12 PM
Student: Aww :( .... I wish there was school tommorrow .... Hey do you think the school will extend the add drop day .... Like give us another week for add drop o 7:16 PM
Student: r no...??? Jw 7:16 PM
Me: Not sure 7:16 PM
Student: Okaii well I hope you have a nice day or two off :) 7:17 PM
Me: Thanks you too 7:19 PM
Student: Ill try -_- ..... :) 7:20 PM
Communications that started about serious school status questions could then turn into banter that was both joking and academically important. The exchanges below happened over several days:
Student: Ted do u kn how long I am suspened for 9:41 PM
Me: [Principal] wanted to have a meeting this week, I will call you tomorrow, sorry so late 10:48 PM
Student: No I kn that I just need to kn wen is the meeting 10:49 PM
Student: Thow 10:54 PM
Me: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM
Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM
Me: Use it! 3:27 PM
Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM
Another text exchange between Ted and a student mixed banter and serious stuff:
X: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM
Me: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM
Me: Hurry up! 7:49 AM
X: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM
Me: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM
X: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM
Me: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM
X: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 AM
X: Noo! almost closest ive been! 7:27 AM
Me: Good try though, we both have some studying to do over vacation 7:28 AM
X: thanks and i know my eyes will be glued to that rmv book 7:29 AM

== AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.==
Several students texted Ted about sports events: he said even one student (above with "silly goose") who had been asked to leave school a few months earlier “texted me after the Lakers beat the Celtics last week, at 10:30 pm”:
Student: Lol wat just happend to ur celtics 10:48 PM
Me: Ha 10:57 PM
When a HGSE student asked one of Ted’s students (who had not been responding to Ted’s texts) about whether texting with teachers was useful, the student suggested that he “finds (them) useful, but I just don’t want to text back.” But, he added, he’d like to hear from Ted over the weekend once in a while, even if just to see “how his weekend was going.” The student also wanted to know more about Ted outside of school: for example, “is he working anywhere else, or is he just a teacher?” Talking about this non school-related stuff, the student claimed, would “make their relationship grow even stronger.”
Many students made similar statements in private interviews and group discussions. Obens, another of Ted’s students, summed up the sentiment in our April Research Day: “When you’re texting you feel like you’re closer to the teacher.” Ted agreed with Obens: “(Texting) definitely strengthens our face to face, day to day relationships.”
“Have good conversations,” Yose advised other teachers considering texting with students as we ended our April Research Day. “Like don’t just talk about school. Also talk about how your day’s going, stuff like that. Don’t just keep it about school.”

== AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to a more informed face to face conversation.==

We often think about technology as supplanting face-to-face relationships. But can technology also enable more face to face encounters? For example, Ted texted a student this:
Me: I heard you had a bad afternoon at school. Check in first thing tomorrow 7:03 PM

Or this:
ìTeacher: You need to be in school way more my friend 10:12 AM
ìStudent: Ok ? 10:13 AM
ìTeacher: Everything ok? 10:14 AM
ìTeacher: You left early today, then I saw you down the street at dismissal. I'm quite concerned about your behaviors the past month, we should sit down and talk some time this week 9:22 PM

== AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!==

In our March conversation, we realized that it actually could be very useful to a teacher to have an entire “relationship” with a young person documented via texting.
For example, Ted’s first group text that winter prompted this response from a student who at first did not text at all with Ted:
Me: A reminder that tonight is Parent-Teacher night at NW/FC. Please notify your loved one at home that teachers are at school to meet them from 6:30-7:45pm.
9:05 AM Student: O please lol 9:10 AM
Through looking at Ted’s texts in March, Ted and Mo realized that the student had now built a texting and face to face relationship trusting enough that she could reveal serious personal struggles to Ted. In March, this student had texted Ted about a physical argument with someone; via text, Ted “said we could talk later [in person], and we did.” “She never told me that,” said Mo, adding that it showed real growth in the student-teacher relationship -- “That she could share something so big, with you, that she trusts you so much that she could tell you that.”
Teachers could share texts to catalyze student support in moments of crisis: In several other cases, Mo had shown texts with a depressed or self-destructive student to the principal, to say “look, I’m really worried.”
As Ted put it, documenting a relationship helped in less crucial cases as well:
“When I’m texting a kid I creep back up to the history to see what concerns have come up in the past – that’s helpful for me, just so I can keep it all together, keep track. To remind myself – that I would like to help them more, talk to them more frequently.” Shelia agreed on our April Research Day that texts kept a relationship around with you, for later viewing. “With a phone call, it’s out of your head,” Shelia explained. “With a text message it’s still there when you turn on your phone – it still reminds you. You have to delete it if you don’t want it – it’s there to remind you.”
Since texts were always “there to remind you,” reviewing a relationship could be distressing too, of course. Later in the pilot, Ted would also point out that it became a burden to look back at exchanges that were emotionally complicated. Sometimes, he said, you just wanted to start clean with a student the next day!

== AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.==
Mo and Ted agreed that the OneVille Project’s texting pilot made student-teacher texting seem normal and acceptable and so, allowed for student-teacher relationships to form faster. In the past, for example, Ted probably would not have asked a new student for his texting number so quickly. As Mo put it, “in the past I would wait until I developed a relationship w/ the kid and then get his texting number. I would have waited to overhear a conversation about texting, then say, ‘oh, you text? You don’t have my number!’ and then, start texting.”
Still, Ted finished our Research Day arguing that texting partners then had to “try” a little bit: “It’s up to both people to enhance the texting relationship. If the student is just responding “ok” or “yes” or “no,” that doesn’t allow the texting relationship to develop and to go towards communications that aren’t just ‘be on time.’”
== AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”==
Shelia and Mo had that aha on Research Day when looking again at Ted’s text “you need to be in school way more my friend.” Others noted on Research Day that students felt particularly comfortable with the medium of texting:
“Some people might feel more comfortable saying it via texting more than face to face --- because in person you might feel shy, awkward and not know what to say back,” a student said. “I’d rather text my parents than call them,” a student added.
We noted many times over the year that texting could also handle many “styles” of communication. Ted noted in March that, “Mo is more of a conversationalist with the way she is texting – mine are more announcement style, school 8 a.m. tomorrow, don’t forget boxing tomorrow, stuff they don’t have to respond to. I do that to protect myself a little bit – I don’t want to burden them or feel like I’m waiting for a response from them.” Mo added, “more an FYI type of thing.” Ted agreed: “if they have a follow up they text me back.” (Still, Ted later received and sent many joking and personalized texts as well.)
Ironically, even while some other Somerville teachers wary of texting’s writing style had suggested that the “poor grammar” of texting should make it off-limits to teachers, Ted noted in March that texting could immediately allow more “words” to be exchanged between student and teacher, rather than less. “One word answers [in person] with teenagers are more typical,” but via texting, “This is not one word answers. . .it’s better than “huh,” Ted said. As Uche put it, “it takes more effort to text than to talk.” Ted added: “even more than they know they are giving – it might seem mindless, just chatting, and next thing you’re their friend!”
By late spring, when Mica asked Ted what his response would be “to a teacher who might say ‘banter’ or misspellings that happen via text are a problem for education,” Ted had this to say, though not all teachers would agree:
“Lighten up. Anyone who does text is probably aware that the spellings and capitalization and punctuation are going to be all over the place. So we might need to say [against fear of this tech], ‘get used to this -- this is not going anywhere, this is what people are doing.’ It’s almost unhealthy to fear this at this point; this is where we are going. If you want the perfect sentences, do that in an English class, but that’s not what we’re trying to do.”
== AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.==
Pointing out uses of humor in the texts, Yose made another point about how texting could add to student-teacher relationships: people could communicate even if a student was in a bad mood. A face to face conversation might end with the student “shouting” out of anger, unable to help it; with texting, you could “be mad” and still “send a funny text.” With texting, you could show the recipient the “emotions” you wanted them to see, and not necessarily what you felt.
Another student elaborated from across the room: with texting, you could overcome the “intimidation” of possible “rejection” by the other person, by sending lighthearted texts across the private channel that did not have to be responded to immediately. Emotion was “easier to handle” via texts, another student said.
== AHA: Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.==
On our April Research Day at Harvard, students were immediately perceptive about another “pattern in the data”: students and teachers were noticeably polite to each other, texting “thanks and you’re welcome” after texts about permission slips, reminders, and personal check-ins on grades or life. “The kids haven’t been crossing boundaries in any way – no one has been inappropriate,” Mo said that day.
'''UCHE, PLEASE ADD VIDEO OF MO HERE FROM RESEARCH DAY?
Obens explained that for texting to be successful, students had to “keep it private, clean, respectful, stuff like that.” When pushed to define respect, he suggested that students should “give the teacher the same respect you’d give them in school. Don’t think that outside you should act different.”
Ted had commented in our March review of texts on the “language the students are using in thanking us...” – The students were more “receptive to positive talk” than they were in person. In person, he added, students didn’t necessarily “stop and appreciate you in moments” the way they were doing with texting. Students were “taking the time to write back, thanking you for letting them know about something – it strengthens the relationship with us and the school.”
In Research Day, several students pointed out the following texting exchange as interesting and important in its level of student-teacher respect. Starting from a text from student to teacher, the exchange turned into communications about “putting a grade up” in the class:
Student: Hope your alright man.sorry that happened too u 9:43 PM
Me: I'm cool, thanks tho, have a good weekend 9:47 PM
Student: Alright man have a good n 11:22 PM
Me: Everything ok? 9:30 AM
Student: Ted? 10:39 AM
Me: Yup 11:02 AM
Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class
11:05 AM Me: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM Student: Alright 11:09 AM

Other examples of “politeness while texting”:

Teacher: Like I said, you need to get it from him. Be on time for school today 7:00 AM
ìTeacher: You’re doing great 7:00 AM
ìStudent: I will and u woke me up .thanks 7:01 AM
ìTeacher: You’re welcome 7:03 AM
--------------------------------------
Students weren’t angelic with texting, of course: some tried to bend the rules against texting during school. In February, Ted reported that “kids are testing limits w/ texting me while they are standing next to me in school, to get a reaction, not get a reaction – b/c they know they can’t use their phone in school. but they’re not abusing it or anything, they are just testing it.“
In March, Mo noted that one student whose “mouth is a gutter” had “corrected himself” after using the “n word” in a text because “he knows I would say something.” In March, Ted also noted that “A good boundary has unintentionally or intentionally been set by the kids or us – a few texts over the weekend at night but they didn’t start coming in at one in the morning.” Ted and Mo both agreed that kids had done basically nothing inappropriate with the texts -- as our original ground rules had requested.

== AHA: To students, texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other.==

Texting somebody back “shows you appreciate the person and you’re thankful they helped you out,” Shelia said. Mo added: “They appreciate (Ted, our Full Circle teacher) taking time out of his own private life to send these texts.” Obens said that texts from Ted had gotten him to school on time.
When we analyzed this next example in Research Day, the students first noted the easy but respectful banter between student and teacher (“ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8”). Then, the student who had sent the texts pointed out that the fact that he “put in the effort” and the time to text back and forth about attendance rules showed he felt motivated to be there on time. He pointed out his responses, like “fine” and “I’ll make it [to school] by 8:10,” as evidence. “I sleep a lot – but I made it before 8:10. It did help. I was used to coming in around 8:30,” he said:
Me: School 8:00am manana 7:10 PM
Student: ok boss 9:33 PM
Me: 8am! 6:19 PM
Student: Ok lol 6:22 PM
Student: 8:10? 6:22 PM
Me: Try for 7:55, and get settled with something to read mi amigo 6:24 PM
Student: That's too early ted. I'm make it before 8:10 6:25 PM
Me: Nooooooo, 8! 6:26 PM
Student: Ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8 6:43 PM
Me: Arrive late, leave early, booo 3:26 PM
Student: I made it on time 3:34 PM
Me: School starts at 8, no later 3:36 PM
Me: You can do it! 3:37 PM
Student: But to be late its 8:10 4:00 PM
Wielding her highlighter in again pointing out Ted’s text to another student (“you need to be in school way more my friend”), Shelia explained that “I feel like it’s genuine concern.” “It shows connection,” Obens added. “It also shows courage.” He pointed out that Ted was “taking time to text people about stuff – taking time to get a person to school on time. That shows courage on the part of the teacher. Also on the student, by replying back.” Shelia agreed, adding, “It takes the courage to make that bond – from the teacher -- and also for the student to participate in the bond.”
The texting student above (who had texted “Ahhh jesus ted") added, “Who would want to text a teacher – there’s a lot you could be doing at that time. A lot of people won’t do it – that they do it means they really care about what they are doing.”
Ted highlighted this same point: students’ texts to teachers “show a level of investment. Even if (the text is) not school related, the student is checking in, making that contact, when they don’t have to. It’s really important to understand – the value of doing things not only when you have to do things.”

== AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!==
On Research Day, we left sure that texting had “helped” in these teachers’ classrooms but unsure how it might work in “a school of like 600,” as someone put it. Full Circle/Next Wave are particularly “personal” schools, some pointed out: “in other schools it’s less personal, you get five minutes with that teacher,” Shelia said.
We left with a question: does that sort of lack of “personal” time for face to face attention in other schools make something like texting more likely to get traction or not? More likely to help, or less?
As Ted put it in March, “if we had serious students who wanted help academically this could get out of control – multiple texts, multiple students, if students do their homework every night and want a question answered every night – so maybe structuring that with a [texting] office hours idea – [a group chat] a couple days a week.” While computers would be most useful for serious group homework help, “texting is better b/c they don’t need a computer” and many didn’t have them to use. Students also indicated that they always appreciated the (timeconsuming) strategy of being “nagged” with reminders, via texting or not: “I don’t like getting nagged but it’s what gets me to do stuff,” said a student.
But Ted pointed out that as with any channel, you could just choose how much support you did and didn’t offer as a texting teacher. As Ted put it re. wakeup texts, “I’m going to try not to go as far as the Next Wave (junior high) will go – I’m trying to put more responsibility on the high school student – I’m shying away from the pre-school conversation.”
In June, as paperwork and end-of-school activities took over, texting began to feel a bit “extra” to the teachers. Mo had stopped doing daily wakeup texts with a few students for now: “The last couple months I haven’t texted as much as I did in the first half of the year,” she said. “There’s so much crap you have to do – paperwork for SPED (Special Education); time gets consumed with life,” said Ted, whose wife had just had a baby. “Especially with the baby, I haven’t thought about texting kids that much – but I have texted them more on personal stuff b/c I haven’t been in the classroom so much.” Students had been texting him, though, asking “how’s your daughter . .They texted me when the Bruins won.”
While one-to-one relationship-building definitely took time, check-ins via text could of course also save time, by reaching absent students and by building relationships one could count on later. Some check-ins otherwise simply couldn’t happen in person during packed days. Looking at one of Mo’s texts on Research Day, Yose noted, “She’s making sure the kid doesn’t get in trouble – she asks him to call his mom and stuff. She couldn’t do this face to face b/c he wasn’t in school.” Similarly, Mo pointed out a quick student text requesting useful information: “hey do you think they’re gonna extend the add drop period?” In class, Oben explained, “I don’t feel like bothering (Ted) w/ those types of questions.“
In March, Mo had mentioned that to save time, she really needed a tweaked Google Voice that could help her text her entire class at once (Google Voice typically only allows a text to a group of 5 people). Seth had made that for her and she was planning on using it. Having “started out texting every Thursday for homework,” she had “got away from it b/c was a pain to do 5 and then 5 – to do all at once will make it a whole lot easier.” Ted agreed in June that a texting “blast” to all of his students would save him time. We’ll pilot GroupMe as a teacher-to-many “blast” texting tool this fall as well as a group texting tool for “teams.”
But time was still a core concern in one-to-one texting -- even as for now, the relationship-building made it worth it.
We had some final “ahas” about the use of texting in public schools:

==AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.==
Several times in the pilot, students lost phones, had their phones shut off b/c of not paying bills, or simply ran out of plan minutes. In March, Mo reported a range of student experiences: “Someone who lost their phone, someone who left it in a cousin’s car, someone who got it taken away – some got shut off – [xx] owes $500 on his phone, so he doesn’t have his phone any more. . .and they’re always changing numbers.”
In these cases, it was clear that economics matter in using texting for student support and that texting was hardly a foolproof method of reaching students. But this is the case regardless of whether people are using phones. And relying on phones may now be more equitable in some ways than relying on people to have the flexibility to meet you for face to face meetings whenever you’re free, or, expecting them to have computers, internet access, and home phone lines.
A student who had 78 texting minutes a month, period, put it this way to Mica:
“I think I have email on my phone but I have to pay for it. I could check email on my mom’s phone, she has a blackberry. If I’m near a computer. . I’ll check my facebook and then my email. [how often do you check your email?] not often. . I could try to check and let you know. . . I don’t have minutes and so I can’t text. Like when you get a cell phone, it runs off of minutes, [so] you have to pay for the cell phone, internet, and texts. When I have no minutes I have no text messages, no phone calls, nothing. [that’s the situation, til when?] till the 8th or 9th of April. [so If I text you you don’t even get it?] nope. . . . I don’t have a lot so it’s easy to run out – 78 minutes.”
This student later got a Droid that allowed her to do texting, internet, even “edit papers.”
And students also made their own solutions within economic limits. Another student showed us his ingenious phone arrangement: to save on texting and internet charges, he carried an unactivated iphone (purchased from a friend for $120) that he used at school to access the internet over the school’s wifi network. He used smartphone apps for different social networks and also did his texting over the internet, so he was able to approximate having a full-fledged smartphone while saving money. The student also carried a prepaid phone for calls and texts.

== AHA: Texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.==
A texting relationship also blossomed between some youth and those HGSE grad students who headed to the school multiple times for personal conversations (and, as one student put it, to crack a few jokes). In February, we had decided that the HGSE students needed a clearer “role” with the young people even just to check in with them via text on “how is texting going” or “how are you doing.” The FC/NW students also noted that a relationship was needed first before students could feel comfortable texting with new adults. Our decision: HGSE students would return with new roles as college/career readiness mentors on call as well as co-researchers.
One HGSE student then had this exchange with a student at FC/NW:
HGSE: Im happy to help you out. What way do you think I could help you best to be successful?
S: You tell me
HGSE: Well I think your teachers and counselor and fam and friends are a good support team. I could help w advice about graduation and college here and there
S: About geting me in 2 a gud collage for consoler for kids
S: I wonder how u get in 2 harvard
S: I need u 2 tell me where can I go and be a gud consoler wit a gud deagree
This exchange led to more exchanges about the student’s career path, with the HGSE student sharing links to colleges.
Another one of us had this extended conversation with one student, two months after we began: 9:17 p.m.
HGSE: Hey there – a mentor signed up with district but she wants to mentor in journalism carers. Not your thing, correct? Still seeking science and math person from them. And, any questions for me on college/academic stuff? I’m always here to be asked
Student: (immediately!): Do you have any info on culinary arts.
HGSE: I know someone starting a restaurant as a chef. And someone else who made it as a chef in NYC
S: Do you have anything on culinary colleges?
HGSE: I think the chef in NYC went to one. Want me to ask?
S: Yes thanks
HGSE: What’s your email address or how would I put him in touch with you? I have to go through his dad, etc.
S: (shares email address)
HGSE: Ps is it chef role you are interested in or something else?
S: chef. But I’m also interested in everything actually.
HGSE: everything in the world or everything about culinary school?
S: Culinary school. Lol
HGSE: How about the science of food btw? There’s a course at Harvard about that; maybe google it
S: I’ll google it.
HGSE: ((having googled it myself too)): How about this to get started too – Harvard lectures online from chefs on science and food! http://scientopia.org/blogs/everydaybiology/2011/03/03/harvard-lectures-the-science-of-cooking-and-molecular-gastronomy
S: (10:31): Awesome thanks. I’ll ttyl. Good night
HGSE: ((I have to google “ttyl” and learn it means “talk to you later” (!!!)))
As it turned out, she had no way to open these links without going to school to use the computers, because her phone had no access to the internet and she had no internet-linked computer at home. Still, a conversation began about her career interests that expanded in the months to come -- and she later got a smartphone.

==AHA: Face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.==
Having planned originally to test texting “teams” in 2010-11, we promised early on to bring new tutors and mentors on to students’ “teams” if they wanted them. But to match tutors and mentors to students, the district coordinator needed clearance from the principal and then, descriptions of students’ precise interests, which took time -- and it then was very hard to schedule the face to face afterschool meetings between the tutors and the students. One tutor, who also worked as a teacher, was only available after 5:00 and on weekends. And the student we were seeking this tutor for pointed out that her own work schedule at Kmart changed suddenly “every week”: she never knew how many hours she’d get and when, and she also sometimes had to work on the weekends. In the end, it took several weeks of coordinating texts, emails, and phone calls to try to get this tutor to meet 3 girls face to face in the school. After we finally set up a meeting between the tutor and the girls after school at a nearby Dunkin Donuts, just one student took the tutor up on the opportunity – after Mica sent multiple text messages urging the student to reschedule a conflict and advised the tutor via text through gridlock traffic. No better evidence that face-to-face mentoring just isn't possible all the time!

Next steps:

Our next step is to see how one-to-one texting works with new student and teacher users and also, to test texting “teams.” When we asked students who they’d want on their “teams,” young people suggested a range of people, from parents to best friends to inspiring older buddies who were “making it” in work and school (one student mentioned such a “get it done person” cousin who was a role model). Some wanted adults who had inspired them at summer jobs, or counselors or teachers also at the school. While we’d love to get local youth workers on students’ “teams” so they too can learn first hand the potential of texting for rapid youth support, we’ve learned by now that you can’t just add people in and start texting. Real relationship building gets texting started and texting takes the relationship further. (The principal also feels that interns there briefly, then gone after a while, would be less useful on a team. Additionally, for some students, a parent would be problematic to have on a “team”; for others, it could be helpful.) So, we will ask students to assemble their own texting “teams” in consultation with teachers and then see where they take the channel’s potential for rapid student support.

Expanded story: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-09-30T05:37:22Z

68.107.118.212:

We started working on a tech strategy for rapid youth support in a OneVille-organized afterschool club involving 4th-6th graders at the K-8 Healey School in 2009-10, and then in Somerville’s summer school 2010, with two high school classes of SHS teacher Sabrina Trinca. Our first goal: test a school-based online social network (Elgg software) for on-demand support communications between youth and a “team” of their supporters.

In both cases, we learned that media was inherently attractive to youth but it wasn’t attractive enough to use if it wasn’t social enough yet! Students in the afterschool club wanted to go on Wee World (http://www.weeworld.com/) to check in generally with all their local and online friends, instead of use our private “OneVille” social network to talk about school. So, we realized that students were used to rapid personal support communications, but that it would be difficult to form a new social network for these (what we came to call a “separate place to go”) without a critical mass of interested members.

(One successful exception to the “youth don’t automatically like media” rule: students were immediately interested in creating “vlogs,” where students spoke into a Flip camera or iPhone video to an intended audience of teachers and administrators about strategies that supported their learning in class. Students immediately grabbed the chance to speak to a camera, even though we didn’t have people lined up to watch! This thread took off later in the ePortfolio project, where SHS teachers and students realized that certain types of questions about students’ learning styles and interests could also get students “flowing” in typing about their learning online. But the rule holds: just because you put media in front of youth doesn’t mean they’re going to use it.)

In summer school 2010, we again tried supporting young people to communicate with each other via a new private social network. Where the previous network was created for a loosely connected group of mixed grade students in a new afterschool club, this network was created for two summer school classrooms with the explicit purpose of helping the teacher communicate with students daily for six weeks about class and homework. Still, the “separate place to go” didn’t work: even though the online homework was required, for most students there still wasn’t enough reason to “go there”! Because the network was computer based, some of the students--who didn’t have computers or internet access--were limited in their ability to connect outside of class time. But beyond this technical obstacle, many of the students also expressed limited interest in interacting with the teacher or peers on class topics via a computer, even when available. There simply weren’t enough compelling online school activities yet to draw them naturally to a separate online site.

(Again, the [[eportfolio project]] may solve this chicken and egg problem by prompting lots of online assignments, leading students to go online for work and conversations.)

We decided to spend time that summer talking to Trinca’s students about the overall support communications they had normally and how those communications could be improved. We found that:

'''AHA: Students focused on connecting with people that they felt close to, regardless of whether those people were “best” placed to provide them with resources and/or help.

One student looked for help from his teacher from the previous year on history assignments instead of seeking out his current history teacher, simply because he connected with the previous year’s teacher better.

'''AHA: Besides parents, guardians, peers, and key school personnel, students valued connecting (virtually or not) with “older buddies,” near peer mentor-like figures that would advise them on matters both personal and academic.

'''AHA: Students told us that they used different technologies to interact with different people.

For example, they might talk to their parents over the phone, hang out most with their best friend in real life (what some people today call “IRL”!) and text message with individual friends or classmates.

'''Uche: ADD SOME GRAPHICS HERE FROM THE SURVEYMONKEY WE DID.

Also, the students said they preferred texting, phone, and talking in person over other methods such as email, IM, and even Facebook--even though many of them had Facebook accounts. Students told us that even while they didn’t yet text with teachers, texting was generally the best way for anyone, including teachers, to reach them rapidly and a natural way for them to communicate back. The students initially expressed skepticism at interacting with teachers over text, because it was what they typically used with friends. But in the end, they agreed that it was the most reliable way to contact them. So we decided to try assembling texting “teams” around kids one member by one, by starting with student-teacher texting.

A big AHA came from a first fumble: at one administrator’s advice, we first asked a “cluster” of teachers at Somerville High if they wanted to work with us to test texting. (Some of these teachers would go on to be key leaders of the ePortfolio project!) The teachers worried that the use of texting between students and teachers might break a longstanding, and to them, necessary boundary between the formal/academic classroom sphere and each group’s private, informal social lives. The teachers also thought that using texting to remind students of events, help them with homework, and other transactional uses could result in “babying” the students. These were high school students, they argued, and as such should not need or be given such basic assistance. They also worried about supporting poor grammar and inappropriate language in texts.

We then called Mr. Willey, principal at FC/NW, who had already told us months earlier that he had major trouble reaching his youth’s parents and supporters and at times, youth themselves. He agreed immediately that young people seemed more likely to pick up texts than any other form of communication. He invited us to come in and talk to his teachers, and Mica and Uche gave a basic presentation in early fall 2010 where we discussed what students had said about texting as a key channel for youth support. One of the teachers around the table was Ted. “When can we start?” Ted asked. He and Mo, respectively high school and middle school teachers at Full Circle/Next Wave, were excited to try it out, and we began.

'''TURNING POINT: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Rather than assemble entire texting “teams” for each student, we decided to start with private student-teacher communication. Uche set Mo and Ted up with Google Voice. In January 2011, Mo and Ted and Uche/Mica held an open meeting with all of their students to see who would be interested. We brainstormed ground rules (e.g., don’t expect a text back before 7 a.m. and after 10 p.m.; no inappropriate language; no sharing of anyone else’s business), gave students the teachers’ new GoogleVoice numbers, invited students to share their numbers with teachers, and invited them all to text whenever they wanted. GoogleVoice recorded all of the texts for the teachers and allowed them to type from their computers (Mo and Ted still mostly used their phones). Young people received texts on their phones.

Some students already texted teachers at the school (“If I'm having problems at home I text Maureen, or Maryanne or Edith,” one student told us; she did this rather than have her own parents “"know her business."). Some had never texted teachers before and found the idea weird. Texting to them felt like something you did with friends or relatives. But as students would tell us later in June, there were two kinds of texting relationships with teachers that felt OK – businessy ones for school related things you had to get done, and more revealing personal texts sent to people you really trusted.

Over time, our overall AHA would be about the benefits of texting for student-teacher relationship. But we want to tell you how we got there! Below is a discussion of the “communication ahas” we had throughout the pilot, and example texts. We taped a lot of our conversations and so we talk about ourselves in the third person (Ted and Mo, Mica and Uche).

== COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.==

In February, Ted got last minute info in a staff meeting that a ski trip was available to a new student he’d recently met and had been helping with math. The “kid’s voicemail was full.” So, Ted texted the student using Google Voice, to tell him to bring needed info and a signed permission slip the next day. The student’s response? “Lots of exclamation points, ‘thank you,’” Ted said; there was now a “high level of communication” with the student. The exchange happened “in an 18 hour turnout” and “allowed us to make a strong connection right when he got to the school.”
Me: Bring in your insurance info tomorrow, the company and your policy number, with 10 bucks, yor going skiing thursday! 3:23 PM
Student: Thank you soo much ted! i will .. ill have it all tomarrow! 4:12 PM
Me: Are you going to school tomorrow? 6:59 PM
Student: Yea .. deffintly 9:36 PM

==COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.==
One student said that he lacked a home phone, so texting helped: “Sometimes they call your house when there’s no school, but I don’t have a house phone. They might call my mom but she never picks up. If he (Ted) hadn’t texted me (about the snow day), I wouldn’t have woken up for school.”
In another case, a student who had been kicked out of school texted Ted to find out what his situation was and whether he faced expulsion.
And here’s an e.g. of texting by Mo that helped reach a student who was literally absent from school:
Me: Worried about you!! 8:15 PM
Student: im feeling much better now I will deff see u tmr (: 8:16 PM
Me: Good we miss you!! Can mom right a note for the last 2 days 8:17 PM
Student: she called [School admininstrator] today telling him I was out sick not truent 8:18 PM :Me: Good..see you tomorrow..and glad your feeling better!! 8:19 PM
Student: thanks 8:24 PM

==[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.==

In early March, Uche and Mica got together with Mo and Ted and looked at the GoogleVoice record of all the texts. Our plan: to “pull out examples of texts that you find interesting,” to “label the “type” of communication that occurred,” and to “provide any evidence of any text’s effects on any student’s achievement/motivation/relationship with you.”
We noted first just how many different school-related subjects a teacher and student could text about. So far, Mo had been texting with students for wakeup calls, paperwork reminders, discussions of personal updates, updates on other students that students knew about, health check-ins, and discussions of absence. She bantered a lot with the students, too. We laughed often in the pilot about the number of exclamation points Mo tended to use in her texts!!!!!!!!
Ted had reviewed his own Google Voice record and “broke it up into categories – who talks to who about what.” “(There’s) a cluster about being on time. Another about dropout prevention, kids who haven’t been to school in a long time, what can we do to transition you out of here easier. And, checkins w/ students about miscellaneous—academics, work, home, if they’re heading toward that dropout prevention category . . . Also snow days, field trips, some kids need to bring attire for electives (gym attire, skates, something they may need for the next day). On being on time, staying a full day – if kids walk out I remind them about the day before. . . . And also, jobs. Kids that want jobs.”
Ted was texting with students about absences and lateness; afterschool activity (he coached a boxing club and led a lot of trips); and for personal checkins, which then often considered academic issues. “New electives, new teachers, new schedules – some confirmations on preparations for the next day – are we going skating, to boxing club tomorrow, to bring in the right clothes.” Students were checking in with him via text about academic issues like credits, the semester change, and their discipline records. One student had texted him to ask how he was doing after a fraught interaction, and how his weekend went. A few students had texted him for help in class. In some cases he was strongly pushing young people to attend class or keep up their motivation via text. The other texts Ted had been sending in February were “more like routine -- no school, a snowstorm, ‘you haven’t been in school where are ya’ type stuff. Some kids don’t respond to those at all, some kids do,” he said.
Neither teacher was fielding detailed questions about schoolwork via text. Instead, they were texting more about logistics, reminders, updates, absence explanations, and more -- and in the process, building relationships. As we read all these texts, Ted and Mo expressed surprise and satisfaction with “the language that the kids are using to thank (them)…It’s refreshing to know that they have that capability.” Some students expressed gratitude and other emotions through their texts that Ted and Mo hadn’t experienced with them in the classroom.

==[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: Students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.==
If we judged texting by the immediate consequences of a given text, it could sometimes look unsuccessful. Ted said in February that the previous week, a doctor showed up at school for testing one of his students, but “the kid didn’t show up for school that day.” Ted texted the student at 10 (the appointment was scheduled for 9:00-11:00); “he texted me right back w/ what sounded like a confirmation that he was coming but then didn’t come. So that was almost a success story but not.”
Mo noted that some students she texted to wake up still came late. But, the same students were now using text to contact her with serious support needs, even during drug rehab placements. Mo was using her texting to support one young person with depression, so that the student eventually came in to school.
Mo had a major aha about texting in March: “Success for a depressed student in a sense is the engagement itself. Even having this exchange.” And as Ted said earlier in the year, “In some ways, it comes down to someone paying attention to them.” As Mo explained of one text she sent to a student in March, “I wanted to make her feel good before she went to bed.” And Mo reported in March that she had this talk with a student the previous day:
"I just wanna make sure you’re ok – when I text you I wanna know you’re ok, safe. We worry about you!” He had responded, “I know you guys do, I will definitely write you something.”
Over and over in the pilot, we talked about how texts showed not just connection but true caring. Students pointed out a bunch of examples on our April Research Day:
-Mo’s text to a student: “worried about you.” “It shows that she really cares,” Shelia explained.
-“You had a bad day yesterday”: a particularly caring teacher “check-in.”
-“you made 1 day last week.” “I like the encouragement,” said one student.
-“you’re a smart kid.” “That’s really nice because some kids might feel doubt and don’t get many compliments from people,” another student said.
-Mo pointed out that one student had asked Ted “how was your weekend.”
Shelia pointed out that overall, the texts could build relationship and simultaneously, the motivation to try. “You need to know [teachers] care in order to do stuff. Otherwise what’s the point in trying. If a person is ‘I’m here for you’ – you feel someone else cares, I should care too.”
So, texts built up consequences over time: in the texts below, the youth was still not in school, but a relationship was being built to get him in the next time. Note the three quick appreciative texts back after a compliment, which many students pointed out on Research Day:
Me: Hey is your mom coming in 8:20 AM
Student: Yah bro waiting for her that's y I ain't in school my G G=grandma lmao ur old 8:21 AM :Me: Not funny....lol 8:23 AM
Student: Ii hate the fact u don't apritiate my jokes 8:24 AM
Student: -_- 8:24 AM
Me: But I appreciate you:-) 8:26 AM
Student: Ahhh good made my morning 8:31 AM
Student: =) 8:32 AM
Student: Lol jk jk idc 8:32 AM
Me: Awwwww 8:33 AM
Similarly, in the texts below it was of course not the actual medical help Ted offered via text that could be supportive to the student, but the caring itself:
Hey I dont think im going to come to school tomorw im wicked sick 7:19 PM
Have a glass of o.j. and drink water often. Get some rest, and you'll feel great in the morning, ready for school 7:44 PM
Ive been doing that all day and it hasnt helped one bit 7:58 PM
Lets have a good full 1/2 day tomorrow 9:31 PM
Idont know if im goin to school tomorrow 9:46 PM
You haven't been putting consecutive full days together, push yourself to improve, you can do it! 9:49 PM

== COMMUNICATION AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.==
Just as in face to face conversation, there’s no either/or.
Here’s an exchange that went from a basic schedule update, to a communication about stickers (Somerville “Villen” gear), to fundamental questions about school deadlines:
Me: No school tomorrow 7:09 PM
Student: -_- aww .... Hey do you have any villen stickers by any chance :) jw 7:11 PM
Me: Haha, no 7:12 PM
Student: Aww :( .... I wish there was school tommorrow .... Hey do you think the school will extend the add drop day .... Like give us another week for add drop o 7:16 PM
Student: r no...??? Jw 7:16 PM
Me: Not sure 7:16 PM
Student: Okaii well I hope you have a nice day or two off :) 7:17 PM
Me: Thanks you too 7:19 PM
Student: Ill try -_- ..... :) 7:20 PM
Communications that started about serious school status questions could then turn into banter that was both joking and academically important. The exchanges below happened over several days:
Student: Ted do u kn how long I am suspened for 9:41 PM
Me: [Principal] wanted to have a meeting this week, I will call you tomorrow, sorry so late 10:48 PM
Student: No I kn that I just need to kn wen is the meeting 10:49 PM
Student: Thow 10:54 PM
Me: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM
Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM
Me: Use it! 3:27 PM
Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM
Another text exchange between Ted and a student mixed banter and serious stuff:
X: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM
Me: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM
Me: Hurry up! 7:49 AM
X: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM
Me: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM
X: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM
Me: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM
X: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 AM
X: Noo! almost closest ive been! 7:27 AM
Me: Good try though, we both have some studying to do over vacation 7:28 AM
X: thanks and i know my eyes will be glued to that rmv book 7:29 AM

==COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.==
Several students texted Ted about sports events: he said even one student (above with "silly goose") who had been asked to leave school a few months earlier “texted me after the Lakers beat the Celtics last week, at 10:30 pm”:
Student: Lol wat just happend to ur celtics 10:48 PM
Me: Ha 10:57 PM
When a HGSE student asked one of Ted’s students (who had not been responding to Ted’s texts) about whether texting with teachers was useful, the student suggested that he “finds (them) useful, but I just don’t want to text back.” But, he added, he’d like to hear from Ted over the weekend once in a while, even if just to see “how his weekend was going.” The student also wanted to know more about Ted outside of school: for example, “is he working anywhere else, or is he just a teacher?” Talking about this non school-related stuff, the student claimed, would “make their relationship grow even stronger.”
Many students made similar statements in private interviews and group discussions. Obens, another of Ted’s students, summed up the sentiment in our April Research Day: “When you’re texting you feel like you’re closer to the teacher.” Ted agreed with Obens: “(Texting) definitely strengthens our face to face, day to day relationships.”
“Have good conversations,” Yose advised other teachers considering texting with students as we ended our April Research Day. “Like don’t just talk about school. Also talk about how your day’s going, stuff like that. Don’t just keep it about school.”

==COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to a more informed face to face conversation.==

We often think about technology as supplanting face-to-face relationships. But can technology also enable more face to face encounters? For example, Ted texted a student this:
Me: I heard you had a bad afternoon at school. Check in first thing tomorrow 7:03 PM

Or this:
ìTeacher: You need to be in school way more my friend 10:12 AM
ìStudent: Ok ? 10:13 AM
ìTeacher: Everything ok? 10:14 AM
ìTeacher: You left early today, then I saw you down the street at dismissal. I'm quite concerned about your behaviors the past month, we should sit down and talk some time this week 9:22 PM

==COMMUNICATION AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!==

In our March conversation, we realized that it actually could be very useful to a teacher to have an entire “relationship” with a young person documented via texting.
For example, Ted’s first group text that winter prompted this response from a student who at first did not text at all with Ted:
Me: A reminder that tonight is Parent-Teacher night at NW/FC. Please notify your loved one at home that teachers are at school to meet them from 6:30-7:45pm.
9:05 AM Student: O please lol 9:10 AM
Through looking at Ted’s texts in March, Ted and Mo realized that the student had now built a texting and face to face relationship trusting enough that she could reveal serious personal struggles to Ted. In March, this student had texted Ted about a physical argument with someone; via text, Ted “said we could talk later [in person], and we did.” “She never told me that,” said Mo, adding that it showed real growth in the student-teacher relationship -- “That she could share something so big, with you, that she trusts you so much that she could tell you that.”
Teachers could share texts to catalyze student support in moments of crisis: In several other cases, Mo had shown texts with a depressed or self-destructive student to the principal, to say “look, I’m really worried.”
As Ted put it, documenting a relationship helped in less crucial cases as well:
“When I’m texting a kid I creep back up to the history to see what concerns have come up in the past – that’s helpful for me, just so I can keep it all together, keep track. To remind myself – that I would like to help them more, talk to them more frequently.” Shelia agreed on our April Research Day that texts kept a relationship around with you, for later viewing. “With a phone call, it’s out of your head,” Shelia explained. “With a text message it’s still there when you turn on your phone – it still reminds you. You have to delete it if you don’t want it – it’s there to remind you.”
Since texts were always “there to remind you,” reviewing a relationship could be distressing too, of course. Later in the pilot, Ted would also point out that it became a burden to look back at exchanges that were emotionally complicated. Sometimes, he said, you just wanted to start clean with a student the next day!

==COMMUNICATION AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.==
Mo and Ted agreed that the OneVille Project’s texting pilot made student-teacher texting seem normal and acceptable and so, allowed for student-teacher relationships to form faster. In the past, for example, Ted probably would not have asked a new student for his texting number so quickly. As Mo put it, “in the past I would wait until I developed a relationship w/ the kid and then get his texting number. I would have waited to overhear a conversation about texting, then say, ‘oh, you text? You don’t have my number!’ and then, start texting.”
Still, Ted finished our Research Day arguing that texting partners then had to “try” a little bit: “It’s up to both people to enhance the texting relationship. If the student is just responding “ok” or “yes” or “no,” that doesn’t allow the texting relationship to develop and to go towards communications that aren’t just ‘be on time.’”
==COMMUNICATION AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”==
Shelia and Mo had that aha on Research Day when looking again at Ted’s text “you need to be in school way more my friend.” Others noted on Research Day that students felt particularly comfortable with the medium of texting:
“Some people might feel more comfortable saying it via texting more than face to face --- because in person you might feel shy, awkward and not know what to say back,” a student said. “I’d rather text my parents than call them,” a student added.
We noted many times over the year that texting could also handle many “styles” of communication. Ted noted in March that, “Mo is more of a conversationalist with the way she is texting – mine are more announcement style, school 8 a.m. tomorrow, don’t forget boxing tomorrow, stuff they don’t have to respond to. I do that to protect myself a little bit – I don’t want to burden them or feel like I’m waiting for a response from them.” Mo added, “more an FYI type of thing.” Ted agreed: “if they have a follow up they text me back.” (Still, Ted later received and sent many joking and personalized texts as well.)
Ironically, even while some other Somerville teachers wary of texting’s writing style had suggested that the “poor grammar” of texting should make it off-limits to teachers, Ted noted in March that texting could immediately allow more “words” to be exchanged between student and teacher, rather than less. “One word answers [in person] with teenagers are more typical,” but via texting, “This is not one word answers. . .it’s better than “huh,” Ted said. As Uche put it, “it takes more effort to text than to talk.” Ted added: “even more than they know they are giving – it might seem mindless, just chatting, and next thing you’re their friend!”
By late spring, when Mica asked Ted what his response would be “to a teacher who might say ‘banter’ or misspellings that happen via text are a problem for education,” Ted had this to say, though not all teachers would agree:
“Lighten up. Anyone who does text is probably aware that the spellings and capitalization and punctuation are going to be all over the place. So we might need to say [against fear of this tech], ‘get used to this -- this is not going anywhere, this is what people are doing.’ It’s almost unhealthy to fear this at this point; this is where we are going. If you want the perfect sentences, do that in an English class, but that’s not what we’re trying to do.”
==COMMUNICATION AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.==
Pointing out uses of humor in the texts, Yose made another point about how texting could add to student-teacher relationships: people could communicate even if a student was in a bad mood. A face to face conversation might end with the student “shouting” out of anger, unable to help it; with texting, you could “be mad” and still “send a funny text.” With texting, you could show the recipient the “emotions” you wanted them to see, and not necessarily what you felt.
Another student elaborated from across the room: with texting, you could overcome the “intimidation” of possible “rejection” by the other person, by sending lighthearted texts across the private channel that did not have to be responded to immediately. Emotion was “easier to handle” via texts, another student said.
==COMMUNICATION AHA: Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.==
On our April Research Day at Harvard, students were immediately perceptive about another “pattern in the data”: students and teachers were noticeably polite to each other, texting “thanks and you’re welcome” after texts about permission slips, reminders, and personal check-ins on grades or life. “The kids haven’t been crossing boundaries in any way – no one has been inappropriate,” Mo said that day.
'''UCHE, PLEASE ADD VIDEO OF MO HERE FROM RESEARCH DAY?
Obens explained that for texting to be successful, students had to “keep it private, clean, respectful, stuff like that.” When pushed to define respect, he suggested that students should “give the teacher the same respect you’d give them in school. Don’t think that outside you should act different.”
Ted had commented in our March review of texts on the “language the students are using in thanking us...” – The students were more “receptive to positive talk” than they were in person. In person, he added, students didn’t necessarily “stop and appreciate you in moments” the way they were doing with texting. Students were “taking the time to write back, thanking you for letting them know about something – it strengthens the relationship with us and the school.”
In Research Day, several students pointed out the following texting exchange as interesting and important in its level of student-teacher respect. Starting from a text from student to teacher, the exchange turned into communications about “putting a grade up” in the class:
Student: Hope your alright man.sorry that happened too u 9:43 PM
Me: I'm cool, thanks tho, have a good weekend 9:47 PM
Student: Alright man have a good n 11:22 PM
Me: Everything ok? 9:30 AM
Student: Ted? 10:39 AM
Me: Yup 11:02 AM
Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class
11:05 AM Me: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM Student: Alright 11:09 AM

Other examples of “politeness while texting”:

Teacher: Like I said, you need to get it from him. Be on time for school today 7:00 AM
ìTeacher: You’re doing great 7:00 AM
ìStudent: I will and u woke me up .thanks 7:01 AM
ìTeacher: You’re welcome 7:03 AM
--------------------------------------
Students weren’t angelic with texting, of course: some tried to bend the rules against texting during school. In February, Ted reported that “kids are testing limits w/ texting me while they are standing next to me in school, to get a reaction, not get a reaction – b/c they know they can’t use their phone in school. but they’re not abusing it or anything, they are just testing it.“
In March, Mo noted that one student whose “mouth is a gutter” had “corrected himself” after using the “n word” in a text because “he knows I would say something.” In March, Ted also noted that “A good boundary has unintentionally or intentionally been set by the kids or us – a few texts over the weekend at night but they didn’t start coming in at one in the morning.” Ted and Mo both agreed that kids had done basically nothing inappropriate with the texts -- as our original ground rules had requested.

==COMMUNICATION AHA: To students, texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other.==

Texting somebody back “shows you appreciate the person and you’re thankful they helped you out,” Shelia said. Mo added: “They appreciate (Ted, our Full Circle teacher) taking time out of his own private life to send these texts.” Obens said that texts from Ted had gotten him to school on time.
When we analyzed this next example in Research Day, the students first noted the easy but respectful banter between student and teacher (“ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8”). Then, the student who had sent the texts pointed out that the fact that he “put in the effort” and the time to text back and forth about attendance rules showed he felt motivated to be there on time. He pointed out his responses, like “fine” and “I’ll make it [to school] by 8:10,” as evidence. “I sleep a lot – but I made it before 8:10. It did help. I was used to coming in around 8:30,” he said:
Me: School 8:00am manana 7:10 PM
Student: ok boss 9:33 PM
Me: 8am! 6:19 PM
Student: Ok lol 6:22 PM
Student: 8:10? 6:22 PM
Me: Try for 7:55, and get settled with something to read mi amigo 6:24 PM
Student: That's too early ted. I'm make it before 8:10 6:25 PM
Me: Nooooooo, 8! 6:26 PM
Student: Ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8 6:43 PM
Me: Arrive late, leave early, booo 3:26 PM
Student: I made it on time 3:34 PM
Me: School starts at 8, no later 3:36 PM
Me: You can do it! 3:37 PM
Student: But to be late its 8:10 4:00 PM
Wielding her highlighter in again pointing out Ted’s text to another student (“you need to be in school way more my friend”), Shelia explained that “I feel like it’s genuine concern.” “It shows connection,” Obens added. “It also shows courage.” He pointed out that Ted was “taking time to text people about stuff – taking time to get a person to school on time. That shows courage on the part of the teacher. Also on the student, by replying back.” Shelia agreed, adding, “It takes the courage to make that bond – from the teacher -- and also for the student to participate in the bond.”
The texting student above (who had texted “Ahhh jesus ted") added, “Who would want to text a teacher – there’s a lot you could be doing at that time. A lot of people won’t do it – that they do it means they really care about what they are doing.”
Ted highlighted this same point: students’ texts to teachers “show a level of investment. Even if (the text is) not school related, the student is checking in, making that contact, when they don’t have to. It’s really important to understand – the value of doing things not only when you have to do things.”

== COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!==
On Research Day, we left sure that texting had “helped” in these teachers’ classrooms but unsure how it might work in “a school of like 600,” as someone put it. Full Circle/Next Wave are particularly “personal” schools, some pointed out: “in other schools it’s less personal, you get five minutes with that teacher,” Shelia said.
We left with a question: does that sort of lack of “personal” time for face to face attention in other schools make something like texting more likely to get traction or not? More likely to help, or less?
As Ted put it in March, “if we had serious students who wanted help academically this could get out of control – multiple texts, multiple students, if students do their homework every night and want a question answered every night – so maybe structuring that with a [texting] office hours idea – [a group chat] a couple days a week.” While computers would be most useful for serious group homework help, “texting is better b/c they don’t need a computer” and many didn’t have them to use. Students also indicated that they always appreciated the (timeconsuming) strategy of being “nagged” with reminders, via texting or not: “I don’t like getting nagged but it’s what gets me to do stuff,” said a student.
But Ted pointed out that as with any channel, you could just choose how much support you did and didn’t offer as a texting teacher. As Ted put it re. wakeup texts, “I’m going to try not to go as far as the Next Wave (junior high) will go – I’m trying to put more responsibility on the high school student – I’m shying away from the pre-school conversation.”
In June, as paperwork and end-of-school activities took over, texting began to feel a bit “extra” to the teachers. Mo had stopped doing daily wakeup texts with a few students for now: “The last couple months I haven’t texted as much as I did in the first half of the year,” she said. “There’s so much crap you have to do – paperwork for SPED (Special Education); time gets consumed with life,” said Ted, whose wife had just had a baby. “Especially with the baby, I haven’t thought about texting kids that much – but I have texted them more on personal stuff b/c I haven’t been in the classroom so much.” Students had been texting him, though, asking “how’s your daughter . .They texted me when the Bruins won.”
While one-to-one relationship-building definitely took time, check-ins via text could of course also save time, by reaching absent students and by building relationships one could count on later. Some check-ins otherwise simply couldn’t happen in person during packed days. Looking at one of Mo’s texts on Research Day, Yose noted, “She’s making sure the kid doesn’t get in trouble – she asks him to call his mom and stuff. She couldn’t do this face to face b/c he wasn’t in school.” Similarly, Mo pointed out a quick student text requesting useful information: “hey do you think they’re gonna extend the add drop period?” In class, Oben explained, “I don’t feel like bothering (Ted) w/ those types of questions.“
In March, Mo had mentioned that to save time, she really needed a tweaked Google Voice that could help her text her entire class at once (Google Voice typically only allows a text to a group of 5 people). Seth had made that for her and she was planning on using it. Having “started out texting every Thursday for homework,” she had “got away from it b/c was a pain to do 5 and then 5 – to do all at once will make it a whole lot easier.” Ted agreed in June that a texting “blast” to all of his students would save him time. We’ll pilot GroupMe as a teacher-to-many “blast” texting tool this fall as well as a group texting tool for “teams.”
But time was still a core concern in one-to-one texting -- even as for now, the relationship-building made it worth it.
We had some final “ahas” about the use of texting in public schools:

==AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.==
Several times in the pilot, students lost phones, had their phones shut off b/c of not paying bills, or simply ran out of plan minutes. In March, Mo reported a range of student experiences: “Someone who lost their phone, someone who left it in a cousin’s car, someone who got it taken away – some got shut off – [xx] owes $500 on his phone, so he doesn’t have his phone any more. . .and they’re always changing numbers.”
In these cases, it was clear that economics matter in using texting for student support and that texting was hardly a foolproof method of reaching students. But this is the case regardless of whether people are using phones. And relying on phones may now be more equitable in some ways than relying on people to have the flexibility to meet you for face to face meetings whenever you’re free, or, expecting them to have computers, internet access, and home phone lines.
A student who had 78 texting minutes a month, period, put it this way to Mica:
“I think I have email on my phone but I have to pay for it. I could check email on my mom’s phone, she has a blackberry. If I’m near a computer. . I’ll check my facebook and then my email. [how often do you check your email?] not often. . I could try to check and let you know. . . I don’t have minutes and so I can’t text. Like when you get a cell phone, it runs off of minutes, [so] you have to pay for the cell phone, internet, and texts. When I have no minutes I have no text messages, no phone calls, nothing. [that’s the situation, til when?] till the 8th or 9th of April. [so If I text you you don’t even get it?] nope. . . . I don’t have a lot so it’s easy to run out – 78 minutes.”
This student later got a Droid that allowed her to do texting, internet, even “edit papers.”
And students also made their own solutions within economic limits. Another student showed us his ingenious phone arrangement: to save on texting and internet charges, he carried an unactivated iphone (purchased from a friend for $120) that he used at school to access the internet over the school’s wifi network. He used smartphone apps for different social networks and also did his texting over the internet, so he was able to approximate having a full-fledged smartphone while saving money. The student also carried a prepaid phone for calls and texts.

== AHA: Texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.==
A texting relationship also blossomed between some youth and those HGSE grad students who headed to the school multiple times for personal conversations (and, as one student put it, to crack a few jokes). In February, we had decided that the HGSE students needed a clearer “role” with the young people even just to check in with them via text on “how is texting going” or “how are you doing.” The FC/NW students also noted that a relationship was needed first before students could feel comfortable texting with new adults. Our decision: HGSE students would return with new roles as college/career readiness mentors on call as well as co-researchers.
One HGSE student then had this exchange with a student at FC/NW:
HGSE: Im happy to help you out. What way do you think I could help you best to be successful?
S: You tell me
HGSE: Well I think your teachers and counselor and fam and friends are a good support team. I could help w advice about graduation and college here and there
S: About geting me in 2 a gud collage for consoler for kids
S: I wonder how u get in 2 harvard
S: I need u 2 tell me where can I go and be a gud consoler wit a gud deagree
This exchange led to more exchanges about the student’s career path, with the HGSE student sharing links to colleges.
Another one of us had this extended conversation with one student, two months after we began: 9:17 p.m.
HGSE: Hey there – a mentor signed up with district but she wants to mentor in journalism carers. Not your thing, correct? Still seeking science and math person from them. And, any questions for me on college/academic stuff? I’m always here to be asked
Student: (immediately!): Do you have any info on culinary arts.
HGSE: I know someone starting a restaurant as a chef. And someone else who made it as a chef in NYC
S: Do you have anything on culinary colleges?
HGSE: I think the chef in NYC went to one. Want me to ask?
S: Yes thanks
HGSE: What’s your email address or how would I put him in touch with you? I have to go through his dad, etc.
S: (shares email address)
HGSE: Ps is it chef role you are interested in or something else?
S: chef. But I’m also interested in everything actually.
HGSE: everything in the world or everything about culinary school?
S: Culinary school. Lol
HGSE: How about the science of food btw? There’s a course at Harvard about that; maybe google it
S: I’ll google it.
HGSE: ((having googled it myself too)): How about this to get started too – Harvard lectures online from chefs on science and food! http://scientopia.org/blogs/everydaybiology/2011/03/03/harvard-lectures-the-science-of-cooking-and-molecular-gastronomy
S: (10:31): Awesome thanks. I’ll ttyl. Good night
HGSE: ((I have to google “ttyl” and learn it means “talk to you later” (!!!)))
As it turned out, she had no way to open these links without going to school to use the computers, because her phone had no access to the internet and she had no internet-linked computer at home. Still, a conversation began about her career interests that expanded in the months to come -- and she later got a smartphone.

==AHA: Face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.==
Having planned originally to test texting “teams” in 2010-11, we promised early on to bring new tutors and mentors on to students’ “teams” if they wanted them. But to match tutors and mentors to students, the district coordinator needed clearance from the principal and then, descriptions of students’ precise interests, which took time -- and it then was very hard to schedule the face to face afterschool meetings between the tutors and the students. One tutor, who also worked as a teacher, was only available after 5:00 and on weekends. And the student we were seeking this tutor for pointed out that her own work schedule at Kmart changed suddenly “every week”: she never knew how many hours she’d get and when, and she also sometimes had to work on the weekends. In the end, it took several weeks of coordinating texts, emails, and phone calls to try to get this tutor to meet 3 girls face to face in the school. After we finally set up a meeting between the tutor and the girls after school at a nearby Dunkin Donuts, just one student took the tutor up on the opportunity – after Mica sent multiple text messages urging the student to reschedule a conflict and advised the tutor via text through gridlock traffic. No better evidence that face-to-face mentoring just isn't possible all the time!

Next steps:

Our next step is to see how one-to-one texting works with new student and teacher users and also, to test texting “teams.” When we asked students who they’d want on their “teams,” young people suggested a range of people, from parents to best friends to inspiring older buddies who were “making it” in work and school (one student mentioned such a “get it done person” cousin who was a role model). Some wanted adults who had inspired them at summer jobs, or counselors or teachers also at the school. While we’d love to get local youth workers on students’ “teams” so they too can learn first hand the potential of texting for rapid youth support, we’ve learned by now that you can’t just add people in and start texting. Real relationship building gets texting started and texting takes the relationship further. (The principal also feels that interns there briefly, then gone after a while, would be less useful on a team. Additionally, for some students, a parent would be problematic to have on a “team”; for others, it could be helpful.) So, we will ask students to assemble their own texting “teams” in consultation with teachers and then see where they take the channel’s potential for rapid student support.

Expanded story: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-09-30T05:35:01Z

68.107.118.212:

We started working on a tech strategy for rapid youth support in a OneVille-organized afterschool club involving 4th-6th graders at the K-8 Healey School in 2009-10, and then in Somerville’s summer school 2010, with two high school classes of SHS teacher Sabrina Trinca. Our first goal: test a school-based online social network (Elgg software) for on-demand support communications between youth and a “team” of their supporters.

In both cases, we learned that media was inherently attractive to youth but it wasn’t attractive enough to use if it wasn’t social enough yet! Students in the afterschool club wanted to go on Wee World (http://www.weeworld.com/) to check in generally with all their local and online friends, instead of use our private “OneVille” social network to talk about school. So, we realized that students were used to rapid personal support communications, but that it would be difficult to form a new social network for these (what we came to call a “separate place to go”) without a critical mass of interested members.

(One successful exception to the “youth don’t automatically like media” rule: students were immediately interested in creating “vlogs,” where students spoke into a Flip camera or iPhone video to an intended audience of teachers and administrators about strategies that supported their learning in class. Students immediately grabbed the chance to speak to a camera, even though we didn’t have people lined up to watch! This thread took off later in the ePortfolio project, where SHS teachers and students realized that certain types of questions about students’ learning styles and interests could also get students “flowing” in typing about their learning online. But the rule holds: just because you put media in front of youth doesn’t mean they’re going to use it.)

In summer school 2010, we again tried supporting young people to communicate with each other via a new private social network. Where the previous network was created for a loosely connected group of mixed grade students in a new afterschool club, this network was created for two summer school classrooms with the explicit purpose of helping the teacher communicate with students daily for six weeks about class and homework. Still, the “separate place to go” didn’t work: even though the online homework was required, for most students there still wasn’t enough reason to “go there”! Because the network was computer based, some of the students--who didn’t have computers or internet access--were limited in their ability to connect outside of class time. But beyond this technical obstacle, many of the students also expressed limited interest in interacting with the teacher or peers on class topics via a computer, even when available. There simply weren’t enough compelling online school activities yet to draw them naturally to a separate online site.

(Again, the [[eportfolio project]] may solve this chicken and egg problem by prompting lots of online assignments, leading students to go online for work and conversations.)

We decided to spend time that summer talking to Trinca’s students about the overall support communications they had normally and how those communications could be improved. We found that:

'''AHA: Students focused on connecting with people that they felt close to, regardless of whether those people were “best” placed to provide them with resources and/or help.

One student looked for help from his teacher from the previous year on history assignments instead of seeking out his current history teacher, simply because he connected with the previous year’s teacher better.

'''AHA: Besides parents, guardians, peers, and key school personnel, students valued connecting (virtually or not) with “older buddies,” near peer mentor-like figures that would advise them on matters both personal and academic.

'''AHA: Students told us that they used different technologies to interact with different people.

For example, they might talk to their parents over the phone, hang out most with their best friend in real life (what some people today call “IRL”!) and text message with individual friends or classmates.

'''Uche: ADD SOME GRAPHICS HERE FROM THE SURVEYMONKEY WE DID.

Also, the students said they preferred texting, phone, and talking in person over other methods such as email, IM, and even Facebook--even though many of them had Facebook accounts. Students told us that even while they didn’t yet text with teachers, texting was generally the best way for anyone, including teachers, to reach them rapidly and a natural way for them to communicate back. The students initially expressed skepticism at interacting with teachers over text, because it was what they typically used with friends. But in the end, they agreed that it was the most reliable way to contact them. So we decided to try assembling texting “teams” around kids one member by one, by starting with student-teacher texting.

A big AHA came from a first fumble: at one administrator’s advice, we first asked a “cluster” of teachers at Somerville High if they wanted to work with us to test texting. (Some of these teachers would go on to be key leaders of the ePortfolio project!) The teachers worried that the use of texting between students and teachers might break a longstanding, and to them, necessary boundary between the formal/academic classroom sphere and each group’s private, informal social lives. The teachers also thought that using texting to remind students of events, help them with homework, and other transactional uses could result in “babying” the students. These were high school students, they argued, and as such should not need or be given such basic assistance. They also worried about supporting poor grammar and inappropriate language in texts.

We then called Mr. Willey, principal at FC/NW, who had already told us months earlier that he had major trouble reaching his youth’s parents and supporters and at times, youth themselves. He agreed immediately that young people seemed more likely to pick up texts than any other form of communication. He invited us to come in and talk to his teachers, and Mica and Uche gave a basic presentation in early fall 2010 where we discussed what students had said about texting as a key channel for youth support. One of the teachers around the table was Ted. “When can we start?” Ted asked. He and Mo, respectively high school and middle school teachers at Full Circle/Next Wave, were excited to try it out, and we began.

'''TURNING POINT: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Rather than assemble entire texting “teams” for each student, we decided to start with private student-teacher communication. Uche set Mo and Ted up with Google Voice. In January 2011, Mo and Ted and Uche/Mica held an open meeting with all of their students to see who would be interested. We brainstormed ground rules (e.g., don’t expect a text back before 7 a.m. and after 10 p.m.; no inappropriate language; no sharing of anyone else’s business), gave students the teachers’ new GoogleVoice numbers, invited students to share their numbers with teachers, and invited them all to text whenever they wanted. GoogleVoice recorded all of the texts for the teachers and allowed them to type from their computers (Mo and Ted still mostly used their phones). Young people received texts on their phones.

Some students already texted teachers at the school (“If I'm having problems at home I text Maureen, or Maryanne or Edith,” one student told us; she did this rather than have her own parents “"know her business."). Some had never texted teachers before and found the idea weird. Texting to them felt like something you did with friends or relatives. But as students would tell us later in June, there were two kinds of texting relationships with teachers that felt OK – businessy ones for school related things you had to get done, and more revealing personal texts sent to people you really trusted.

Over time, our overall AHA would be about the benefits of texting for student-teacher relationship. But we want to tell you how we got there! Below is a discussion of the “communication ahas” we had throughout the pilot, and example texts. We taped a lot of our conversations and so we talk about ourselves in the third person (Ted and Mo, Mica and Uche).

== COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.==

In February, Ted got last minute info in a staff meeting that a ski trip was available to a new student he’d recently met and had been helping with math. The “kid’s voicemail was full.” So, Ted texted the student using Google Voice, to tell him to bring needed info and a signed permission slip the next day. The student’s response? “Lots of exclamation points, ‘thank you,’” Ted said; there was now a “high level of communication” with the student. The exchange happened “in an 18 hour turnout” and “allowed us to make a strong connection right when he got to the school.”
Me: Bring in your insurance info tomorrow, the company and your policy number, with 10 bucks, yor going skiing thursday! 3:23 PM
Student: Thank you soo much ted! i will .. ill have it all tomarrow! 4:12 PM
Me: Are you going to school tomorrow? 6:59 PM
Student: Yea .. deffintly 9:36 PM

==COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.==
One student said that he lacked a home phone, so texting helped: “Sometimes they call your house when there’s no school, but I don’t have a house phone. They might call my mom but she never picks up. If he (Ted) hadn’t texted me (about the snow day), I wouldn’t have woken up for school.”
In another case, a student who had been kicked out of school texted Ted to find out what his situation was and whether he faced expulsion.
And here’s an e.g. of texting by Mo that helped reach a student who was literally absent from school:
Me: Worried about you!! 8:15 PM
Student: im feeling much better now I will deff see u tmr (: 8:16 PM
Me: Good we miss you!! Can mom right a note for the last 2 days 8:17 PM
Student: she called [School admininstrator] today telling him I was out sick not truent 8:18 PM :Me: Good..see you tomorrow..and glad your feeling better!! 8:19 PM
Student: thanks 8:24 PM

==[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.==

In early March, Uche and Mica got together with Mo and Ted and looked at the GoogleVoice record of all the texts. Our plan: to “pull out examples of texts that you find interesting,” to “label the “type” of communication that occurred,” and to “provide any evidence of any text’s effects on any student’s achievement/motivation/relationship with you.”
We noted first just how many different school-related subjects a teacher and student could text about. So far, Mo had been texting with students for wakeup calls, paperwork reminders, discussions of personal updates, updates on other students that students knew about, health check-ins, and discussions of absence. She bantered a lot with the students, too. We laughed often in the pilot about the number of exclamation points Mo tended to use in her texts!!!!!!!!
Ted had reviewed his own Google Voice record and “broke it up into categories – who talks to who about what.” “(There’s) a cluster about being on time. Another about dropout prevention, kids who haven’t been to school in a long time, what can we do to transition you out of here easier. And, checkins w/ students about miscellaneous—academics, work, home, if they’re heading toward that dropout prevention category . . . Also snow days, field trips, some kids need to bring attire for electives (gym attire, skates, something they may need for the next day). On being on time, staying a full day – if kids walk out I remind them about the day before. . . . And also, jobs. Kids that want jobs.”
Ted was texting with students about absences and lateness; afterschool activity (he coached a boxing club and led a lot of trips); and for personal checkins, which then often considered academic issues. “New electives, new teachers, new schedules – some confirmations on preparations for the next day – are we going skating, to boxing club tomorrow, to bring in the right clothes.” Students were checking in with him via text about academic issues like credits, the semester change, and their discipline records. One student had texted him to ask how he was doing after a fraught interaction, and how his weekend went. A few students had texted him for help in class. In some cases he was strongly pushing young people to attend class or keep up their motivation via text. The other texts Ted had been sending in February were “more like routine -- no school, a snowstorm, ‘you haven’t been in school where are ya’ type stuff. Some kids don’t respond to those at all, some kids do,” he said.
Neither teacher was fielding detailed questions about schoolwork via text. Instead, they were texting more about logistics, reminders, updates, absence explanations, and more -- and in the process, building relationships. As we read all these texts, Ted and Mo expressed surprise and satisfaction with “the language that the kids are using to thank (them)…It’s refreshing to know that they have that capability.” Some students expressed gratitude and other emotions through their texts that Ted and Mo hadn’t experienced with them in the classroom.

==[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: Students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.==
If we judged texting by the immediate consequences of a given text, it could sometimes look unsuccessful. Ted said in February that the previous week, a doctor showed up at school for testing one of his students, but “the kid didn’t show up for school that day.” Ted texted the student at 10 (the appointment was scheduled for 9:00-11:00); “he texted me right back w/ what sounded like a confirmation that he was coming but then didn’t come. So that was almost a success story but not.”
Mo noted that some students she texted to wake up still came late. But, the same students were now using text to contact her with serious support needs, even during drug rehab placements. Mo was using her texting to support one young person with depression, so that the student eventually came in to school.
Mo had a major aha about texting in March: “Success for a depressed student in a sense is the engagement itself. Even having this exchange.” And as Ted said earlier in the year, “In some ways, it comes down to someone paying attention to them.” As Mo explained of one text she sent to a student in March, “I wanted to make her feel good before she went to bed.” And Mo reported in March that she had this talk with a student the previous day:
"I just wanna make sure you’re ok – when I text you I wanna know you’re ok, safe. We worry about you!” He had responded, “I know you guys do, I will definitely write you something.”
Over and over in the pilot, we talked about how texts showed not just connection but true caring. Students pointed out a bunch of examples on our April Research Day:
-Mo’s text to a student: “worried about you.” “It shows that she really cares,” Shelia explained.
-“You had a bad day yesterday”: a particularly caring teacher “check-in.”
-“you made 1 day last week.” “I like the encouragement,” said one student.
-“you’re a smart kid.” “That’s really nice because some kids might feel doubt and don’t get many compliments from people,” another student said.
-Mo pointed out that one student had asked Ted “how was your weekend.”
Shelia pointed out that overall, the texts could build relationship and simultaneously, the motivation to try. “You need to know [teachers] care in order to do stuff. Otherwise what’s the point in trying. If a person is ‘I’m here for you’ – you feel someone else cares, I should care too.”
So, texts built up consequences over time: in the texts below, the youth was still not in school, but a relationship was being built to get him in the next time. Note the three quick appreciative texts back after a compliment, which many students pointed out on Research Day:
Me: Hey is your mom coming in 8:20 AM
Student: Yah bro waiting for her that's y I ain't in school my G G=grandma lmao ur old 8:21 AM :Me: Not funny....lol 8:23 AM
Student: Ii hate the fact u don't apritiate my jokes 8:24 AM
Student: -_- 8:24 AM
Me: But I appreciate you:-) 8:26 AM
Student: Ahhh good made my morning 8:31 AM
Student: =) 8:32 AM
Student: Lol jk jk idc 8:32 AM
Me: Awwwww 8:33 AM
Similarly, in the texts below it was of course not the actual medical help Ted offered via text that could be supportive to the student, but the caring itself:
Hey I dont think im going to come to school tomorw im wicked sick 7:19 PM
Have a glass of o.j. and drink water often. Get some rest, and you'll feel great in the morning, ready for school 7:44 PM
Ive been doing that all day and it hasnt helped one bit 7:58 PM
Lets have a good full 1/2 day tomorrow 9:31 PM
Idont know if im goin to school tomorrow 9:46 PM
You haven't been putting consecutive full days together, push yourself to improve, you can do it! 9:49 PM

== COMMUNICATION AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.==
Just as in face to face conversation, there’s no either/or.
Here’s an exchange that went from a basic schedule update, to a communication about stickers (Somerville “Villen” gear), to fundamental questions about school deadlines:
Me: No school tomorrow 7:09 PM
Student: -_- aww .... Hey do you have any villen stickers by any chance :) jw 7:11 PM
Me: Haha, no 7:12 PM
Student: Aww :( .... I wish there was school tommorrow .... Hey do you think the school will extend the add drop day .... Like give us another week for add drop o 7:16 PM
Student: r no...??? Jw 7:16 PM
Me: Not sure 7:16 PM
Student: Okaii well I hope you have a nice day or two off :) 7:17 PM
Me: Thanks you too 7:19 PM
Student: Ill try -_- ..... :) 7:20 PM
Communications that started about serious school status questions could then turn into banter that was both joking and academically important. The exchanges below happened over several days:
Student: Ted do u kn how long I am suspened for 9:41 PM
Me: [Principal] wanted to have a meeting this week, I will call you tomorrow, sorry so late 10:48 PM
Student: No I kn that I just need to kn wen is the meeting 10:49 PM
Student: Thow 10:54 PM
Me: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM
Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM
Me: Use it! 3:27 PM
Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM
Another text exchange between Ted and a student mixed banter and serious stuff:
X: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM
Me: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM
Me: Hurry up! 7:49 AM
X: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM
Me: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM
X: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM
Me: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM
X: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 AM
X: Noo! almost closest ive been! 7:27 AM
Me: Good try though, we both have some studying to do over vacation 7:28 AM
X: thanks and i know my eyes will be glued to that rmv book 7:29 AM

==COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.==
Several students texted Ted about sports events: he said even one student (above with "silly goose") who had been asked to leave school a few months earlier “texted me after the Lakers beat the Celtics last week, at 10:30 pm”:
Student: Lol wat just happend to ur celtics 10:48 PM
Me: Ha 10:57 PM
When a HGSE student asked one of Ted’s students (who had not been responding to Ted’s texts) about whether texting with teachers was useful, the student suggested that he “finds (them) useful, but I just don’t want to text back.” But, he added, he’d like to hear from Ted over the weekend once in a while, even if just to see “how his weekend was going.” The student also wanted to know more about Ted outside of school: for example, “is he working anywhere else, or is he just a teacher?” Talking about this non school-related stuff, the student claimed, would “make their relationship grow even stronger.”
Many students made similar statements in private interviews and group discussions. Obens, another of Ted’s students, summed up the sentiment in our April Research Day: “When you’re texting you feel like you’re closer to the teacher.” Ted agreed with Obens: “(Texting) definitely strengthens our face to face, day to day relationships.”
“Have good conversations,” Yose advised other teachers considering texting with students as we ended our April Research Day. “Like don’t just talk about school. Also talk about how your day’s going, stuff like that. Don’t just keep it about school.”

==COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to a more informed face to face conversation.==

We often think about technology as supplanting face-to-face relationships. But can technology also enable more face to face encounters? For example, Ted texted a student this:
Me: I heard you had a bad afternoon at school. Check in first thing tomorrow 7:03 PM

Or this:
ìTeacher: You need to be in school way more my friend 10:12 AM
ìStudent: Ok ? 10:13 AM
ìTeacher: Everything ok? 10:14 AM
ìTeacher: You left early today, then I saw you down the street at dismissal. I'm quite concerned about your behaviors the past month, we should sit down and talk some time this week 9:22 PM

==COMMUNICATION AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!==

In our March conversation, we realized that it actually could be very useful to a teacher to have an entire “relationship” with a young person documented via texting.
For example, Ted’s first group text that winter prompted this response from a student who at first did not text at all with Ted:
Me: A reminder that tonight is Parent-Teacher night at NW/FC. Please notify your loved one at home that teachers are at school to meet them from 6:30-7:45pm.
9:05 AM Student: O please lol 9:10 AM
Through looking at Ted’s texts in March, Ted and Mo realized that the student had now built a texting and face to face relationship trusting enough that she could reveal serious personal struggles to Ted. In March, this student had texted Ted about a physical argument with someone; via text, Ted “said we could talk later [in person], and we did.” “She never told me that,” said Mo, adding that it showed real growth in the student-teacher relationship -- “That she could share something so big, with you, that she trusts you so much that she could tell you that.”
Teachers could share texts to catalyze student support in moments of crisis: In several other cases, Mo had shown texts with a depressed or self-destructive student to the principal, to say “look, I’m really worried.”
As Ted put it, documenting a relationship helped in less crucial cases as well:
“When I’m texting a kid I creep back up to the history to see what concerns have come up in the past – that’s helpful for me, just so I can keep it all together, keep track. To remind myself – that I would like to help them more, talk to them more frequently.” Shelia agreed on our April Research Day that texts kept a relationship around with you, for later viewing. “With a phone call, it’s out of your head,” Shelia explained. “With a text message it’s still there when you turn on your phone – it still reminds you. You have to delete it if you don’t want it – it’s there to remind you.”
Since texts were always “there to remind you,” reviewing a relationship could be distressing too, of course. Later in the pilot, Ted would also point out that it became a burden to look back at exchanges that were emotionally complicated. Sometimes, he said, you just wanted to start clean with a student the next day!
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.
Mo and Ted agreed that the OneVille Project’s texting pilot made student-teacher texting seem normal and acceptable and so, allowed for student-teacher relationships to form faster. In the past, for example, Ted probably would not have asked a new student for his texting number so quickly. As Mo put it, “in the past I would wait until I developed a relationship w/ the kid and then get his texting number. I would have waited to overhear a conversation about texting, then say, ‘oh, you text? You don’t have my number!’ and then, start texting.”
Still, Ted finished our Research Day arguing that texting partners then had to “try” a little bit: “It’s up to both people to enhance the texting relationship. If the student is just responding “ok” or “yes” or “no,” that doesn’t allow the texting relationship to develop and to go towards communications that aren’t just ‘be on time.’”
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”
Shelia and Mo had that aha on Research Day when looking again at Ted’s text “you need to be in school way more my friend.” Others noted on Research Day that students felt particularly comfortable with the medium of texting:
“Some people might feel more comfortable saying it via texting more than face to face --- because in person you might feel shy, awkward and not know what to say back,” a student said. “I’d rather text my parents than call them,” a student added.
We noted many times over the year that texting could also handle many “styles” of communication. Ted noted in March that, “Mo is more of a conversationalist with the way she is texting – mine are more announcement style, school 8 a.m. tomorrow, don’t forget boxing tomorrow, stuff they don’t have to respond to. I do that to protect myself a little bit – I don’t want to burden them or feel like I’m waiting for a response from them.” Mo added, “more an FYI type of thing.” Ted agreed: “if they have a follow up they text me back.” (Still, Ted later received and sent many joking and personalized texts as well.)
Ironically, even while some other Somerville teachers wary of texting’s writing style had suggested that the “poor grammar” of texting should make it off-limits to teachers, Ted noted in March that texting could immediately allow more “words” to be exchanged between student and teacher, rather than less. “One word answers [in person] with teenagers are more typical,” but via texting, “This is not one word answers. . .it’s better than “huh,” Ted said. As Uche put it, “it takes more effort to text than to talk.” Ted added: “even more than they know they are giving – it might seem mindless, just chatting, and next thing you’re their friend!”
By late spring, when Mica asked Ted what his response would be “to a teacher who might say ‘banter’ or misspellings that happen via text are a problem for education,” Ted had this to say, though not all teachers would agree:
“Lighten up. Anyone who does text is probably aware that the spellings and capitalization and punctuation are going to be all over the place. So we might need to say [against fear of this tech], ‘get used to this -- this is not going anywhere, this is what people are doing.’ It’s almost unhealthy to fear this at this point; this is where we are going. If you want the perfect sentences, do that in an English class, but that’s not what we’re trying to do.”
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.
Pointing out uses of humor in the texts, Yose made another point about how texting could add to student-teacher relationships: people could communicate even if a student was in a bad mood. A face to face conversation might end with the student “shouting” out of anger, unable to help it; with texting, you could “be mad” and still “send a funny text.” With texting, you could show the recipient the “emotions” you wanted them to see, and not necessarily what you felt.
Another student elaborated from across the room: with texting, you could overcome the “intimidation” of possible “rejection” by the other person, by sending lighthearted texts across the private channel that did not have to be responded to immediately. Emotion was “easier to handle” via texts, another student said.
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.
On our April Research Day at Harvard, students were immediately perceptive about another “pattern in the data”: students and teachers were noticeably polite to each other, texting “thanks and you’re welcome” after texts about permission slips, reminders, and personal check-ins on grades or life. “The kids haven’t been crossing boundaries in any way – no one has been inappropriate,” Mo said that day.
UCHE, PLEASE ADD VIDEO OF MO HERE FROM RESEARCH DAY?
Obens explained that for texting to be successful, students had to “keep it private, clean, respectful, stuff like that.” When pushed to define respect, he suggested that students should “give the teacher the same respect you’d give them in school. Don’t think that outside you should act different.”
Ted had commented in our March review of texts on the “language the students are using in thanking us...” – The students were more “receptive to positive talk” than they were in person. In person, he added, students didn’t necessarily “stop and appreciate you in moments” the way they were doing with texting. Students were “taking the time to write back, thanking you for letting them know about something – it strengthens the relationship with us and the school.”
In Research Day, several students pointed out the following texting exchange as interesting and important in its level of student-teacher respect. Starting from a text from student to teacher, the exchange turned into communications about “putting a grade up” in the class:
Student: Hope your alright man.sorry that happened too u 9:43 PM
Me: I'm cool, thanks tho, have a good weekend 9:47 PM
Student: Alright man have a good n 11:22 PM
Me: Everything ok? 9:30 AM
Student: Ted? 10:39 AM
Me: Yup 11:02 AM
Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class
11:05 AM Me: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM Student: Alright 11:09 AM

Other examples of “politeness while texting”:

Teacher: Like I said, you need to get it from him. Be on time for school today 7:00 AM
ìTeacher: You’re doing great 7:00 AM
ìStudent: I will and u woke me up .thanks 7:01 AM
ìTeacher: You’re welcome 7:03 AM
--------------------------------------
Students weren’t angelic with texting, of course: some tried to bend the rules against texting during school. In February, Ted reported that “kids are testing limits w/ texting me while they are standing next to me in school, to get a reaction, not get a reaction – b/c they know they can’t use their phone in school. but they’re not abusing it or anything, they are just testing it.“
In March, Mo noted that one student whose “mouth is a gutter” had “corrected himself” after using the “n word” in a text because “he knows I would say something.” In March, Ted also noted that “A good boundary has unintentionally or intentionally been set by the kids or us – a few texts over the weekend at night but they didn’t start coming in at one in the morning.” Ted and Mo both agreed that kids had done basically nothing inappropriate with the texts -- as our original ground rules had requested.
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: To students, texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other.
Texting somebody back “shows you appreciate the person and you’re thankful they helped you out,” Shelia said. Mo added: “They appreciate (Ted, our Full Circle teacher) taking time out of his own private life to send these texts.” Obens said that texts from Ted had gotten him to school on time.
When we analyzed this next example in Research Day, the students first noted the easy but respectful banter between student and teacher (“ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8”). Then, the student who had sent the texts pointed out that the fact that he “put in the effort” and the time to text back and forth about attendance rules showed he felt motivated to be there on time. He pointed out his responses, like “fine” and “I’ll make it [to school] by 8:10,” as evidence. “I sleep a lot – but I made it before 8:10. It did help. I was used to coming in around 8:30,” he said:
Me: School 8:00am manana 7:10 PM
Student: ok boss 9:33 PM
Me: 8am! 6:19 PM
Student: Ok lol 6:22 PM
Student: 8:10? 6:22 PM
Me: Try for 7:55, and get settled with something to read mi amigo 6:24 PM
Student: That's too early ted. I'm make it before 8:10 6:25 PM
Me: Nooooooo, 8! 6:26 PM
Student: Ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8 6:43 PM
Me: Arrive late, leave early, booo 3:26 PM
Student: I made it on time 3:34 PM
Me: School starts at 8, no later 3:36 PM
Me: You can do it! 3:37 PM
Student: But to be late its 8:10 4:00 PM
Wielding her highlighter in again pointing out Ted’s text to another student (“you need to be in school way more my friend”), Shelia explained that “I feel like it’s genuine concern.” “It shows connection,” Obens added. “It also shows courage.” He pointed out that Ted was “taking time to text people about stuff – taking time to get a person to school on time. That shows courage on the part of the teacher. Also on the student, by replying back.” Shelia agreed, adding, “It takes the courage to make that bond – from the teacher -- and also for the student to participate in the bond.”
The texting student above (who had texted “Ahhh jesus ted") added, “Who would want to text a teacher – there’s a lot you could be doing at that time. A lot of people won’t do it – that they do it means they really care about what they are doing.”
Ted highlighted this same point: students’ texts to teachers “show a level of investment. Even if (the text is) not school related, the student is checking in, making that contact, when they don’t have to. It’s really important to understand – the value of doing things not only when you have to do things.”
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!
On Research Day, we left sure that texting had “helped” in these teachers’ classrooms but unsure how it might work in “a school of like 600,” as someone put it. Full Circle/Next Wave are particularly “personal” schools, some pointed out: “in other schools it’s less personal, you get five minutes with that teacher,” Shelia said.
We left with a question: does that sort of lack of “personal” time for face to face attention in other schools make something like texting more likely to get traction or not? More likely to help, or less?
As Ted put it in March, “if we had serious students who wanted help academically this could get out of control – multiple texts, multiple students, if students do their homework every night and want a question answered every night – so maybe structuring that with a [texting] office hours idea – [a group chat] a couple days a week.” While computers would be most useful for serious group homework help, “texting is better b/c they don’t need a computer” and many didn’t have them to use. Students also indicated that they always appreciated the (timeconsuming) strategy of being “nagged” with reminders, via texting or not: “I don’t like getting nagged but it’s what gets me to do stuff,” said a student.
But Ted pointed out that as with any channel, you could just choose how much support you did and didn’t offer as a texting teacher. As Ted put it re. wakeup texts, “I’m going to try not to go as far as the Next Wave (junior high) will go – I’m trying to put more responsibility on the high school student – I’m shying away from the pre-school conversation.”
In June, as paperwork and end-of-school activities took over, texting began to feel a bit “extra” to the teachers. Mo had stopped doing daily wakeup texts with a few students for now: “The last couple months I haven’t texted as much as I did in the first half of the year,” she said. “There’s so much crap you have to do – paperwork for SPED (Special Education); time gets consumed with life,” said Ted, whose wife had just had a baby. “Especially with the baby, I haven’t thought about texting kids that much – but I have texted them more on personal stuff b/c I haven’t been in the classroom so much.” Students had been texting him, though, asking “how’s your daughter . .They texted me when the Bruins won.”
While one-to-one relationship-building definitely took time, check-ins via text could of course also save time, by reaching absent students and by building relationships one could count on later. Some check-ins otherwise simply couldn’t happen in person during packed days. Looking at one of Mo’s texts on Research Day, Yose noted, “She’s making sure the kid doesn’t get in trouble – she asks him to call his mom and stuff. She couldn’t do this face to face b/c he wasn’t in school.” Similarly, Mo pointed out a quick student text requesting useful information: “hey do you think they’re gonna extend the add drop period?” In class, Oben explained, “I don’t feel like bothering (Ted) w/ those types of questions.“
In March, Mo had mentioned that to save time, she really needed a tweaked Google Voice that could help her text her entire class at once (Google Voice typically only allows a text to a group of 5 people). Seth had made that for her and she was planning on using it. Having “started out texting every Thursday for homework,” she had “got away from it b/c was a pain to do 5 and then 5 – to do all at once will make it a whole lot easier.” Ted agreed in June that a texting “blast” to all of his students would save him time. We’ll pilot GroupMe as a teacher-to-many “blast” texting tool this fall as well as a group texting tool for “teams.”
But time was still a core concern in one-to-one texting -- even as for now, the relationship-building made it worth it.
We had some final “ahas” about the use of texting in public schools:
[edit] AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.
Several times in the pilot, students lost phones, had their phones shut off b/c of not paying bills, or simply ran out of plan minutes. In March, Mo reported a range of student experiences: “Someone who lost their phone, someone who left it in a cousin’s car, someone who got it taken away – some got shut off – [xx] owes $500 on his phone, so he doesn’t have his phone any more. . .and they’re always changing numbers.”
In these cases, it was clear that economics matter in using texting for student support and that texting was hardly a foolproof method of reaching students. But this is the case regardless of whether people are using phones. And relying on phones may now be more equitable in some ways than relying on people to have the flexibility to meet you for face to face meetings whenever you’re free, or, expecting them to have computers, internet access, and home phone lines.
A student who had 78 texting minutes a month, period, put it this way to Mica:
“I think I have email on my phone but I have to pay for it. I could check email on my mom’s phone, she has a blackberry. If I’m near a computer. . I’ll check my facebook and then my email. [how often do you check your email?] not often. . I could try to check and let you know. . . I don’t have minutes and so I can’t text. Like when you get a cell phone, it runs off of minutes, [so] you have to pay for the cell phone, internet, and texts. When I have no minutes I have no text messages, no phone calls, nothing. [that’s the situation, til when?] till the 8th or 9th of April. [so If I text you you don’t even get it?] nope. . . . I don’t have a lot so it’s easy to run out – 78 minutes.”
This student later got a Droid that allowed her to do texting, internet, even “edit papers.”
And students also made their own solutions within economic limits. Another student showed us his ingenious phone arrangement: to save on texting and internet charges, he carried an unactivated iphone (purchased from a friend for $120) that he used at school to access the internet over the school’s wifi network. He used smartphone apps for different social networks and also did his texting over the internet, so he was able to approximate having a full-fledged smartphone while saving money. The student also carried a prepaid phone for calls and texts.
[edit] AHA: Texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.
A texting relationship also blossomed between some youth and those HGSE grad students who headed to the school multiple times for personal conversations (and, as one student put it, to crack a few jokes). In February, we had decided that the HGSE students needed a clearer “role” with the young people even just to check in with them via text on “how is texting going” or “how are you doing.” The FC/NW students also noted that a relationship was needed first before students could feel comfortable texting with new adults. Our decision: HGSE students would return with new roles as college/career readiness mentors on call as well as co-researchers.
One HGSE student then had this exchange with a student at FC/NW:
HGSE: Im happy to help you out. What way do you think I could help you best to be successful?
S: You tell me
HGSE: Well I think your teachers and counselor and fam and friends are a good support team. I could help w advice about graduation and college here and there
S: About geting me in 2 a gud collage for consoler for kids
S: I wonder how u get in 2 harvard
S: I need u 2 tell me where can I go and be a gud consoler wit a gud deagree
This exchange led to more exchanges about the student’s career path, with the HGSE student sharing links to colleges.
Another one of us had this extended conversation with one student, two months after we began: 9:17 p.m.
HGSE: Hey there – a mentor signed up with district but she wants to mentor in journalism carers. Not your thing, correct? Still seeking science and math person from them. And, any questions for me on college/academic stuff? I’m always here to be asked
Student: (immediately!): Do you have any info on culinary arts.
HGSE: I know someone starting a restaurant as a chef. And someone else who made it as a chef in NYC
S: Do you have anything on culinary colleges?
HGSE: I think the chef in NYC went to one. Want me to ask?
S: Yes thanks
HGSE: What’s your email address or how would I put him in touch with you? I have to go through his dad, etc.
S: (shares email address)
M: Ps is it chef role you are interested in or something else?
S: chef. But I’m also interested in everything actually.
HGSE: everything in the world or everything about culinary school?
S: Culinary school. Lol
HGSE: How about the science of food btw? There’s a course at Harvard about that; maybe google it
S: I’ll google it.
HGSE: ((having googled it myself too)): How about this to get started too – Harvard lectures online from chefs on science and food! http://scientopia.org/blogs/everydaybiology/2011/03/03/harvard-lectures-the-science-of-cooking-and-molecular-gastronomy
S: (10:31): Awesome thanks. I’ll ttyl. Good night
HGSE: ((I have to google “ttyl” and learn it means “talk to you later” (!!!)))
As it turned out, she had no way to open these links without going to school to use the computers, because her phone had no access to the internet and she had no internet-linked computer at home. Still, a conversation began about her career interests that expanded in the months to come -- and she later got a smartphone.
[edit] AHA: Face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.
Having planned originally to test texting “teams” in 2010-11, we promised early on to bring new tutors and mentors on to students’ “teams” if they wanted them. But to match tutors and mentors to students, the district coordinator needed clearance from the principal and then, descriptions of students’ precise interests, which took time -- and it then was very hard to schedule the face to face afterschool meetings between the tutors and the students. One tutor, who also worked as a teacher, was only available after 5:00 and on weekends. And the student we were seeking this tutor for pointed out that her own work schedule at Kmart changed suddenly “every week”: she never knew how many hours she’d get and when, and she also sometimes had to work on the weekends. In the end, it took several weeks of coordinating texts, emails, and phone calls to try to get this tutor to meet 3 girls face to face in the school. After we finally set up a meeting between the tutor and the girls after school at a nearby Dunkin Donuts, just one student took the tutor up on the opportunity – after Mica sent multiple text messages urging the student to reschedule a conflict and advised the tutor via text through gridlock traffic. No better evidence that face-to-face mentoring just isn't possible all the time!

Next steps:

Our next step is to see how one-to-one texting works with new student and teacher users and also, to test texting “teams.” When we asked students who they’d want on their “teams,” young people suggested a range of people, from parents to best friends to inspiring older buddies who were “making it” in work and school (one student mentioned such a “get it done person” cousin who was a role model). Some wanted adults who had inspired them at summer jobs, or counselors or teachers also at the school. While we’d love to get local youth workers on students’ “teams” so they too can learn first hand the potential of texting for rapid youth support, we’ve learned by now that you can’t just add people in and start texting. Real relationship building gets texting started and texting takes the relationship further. (The principal also feels that interns there briefly, then gone after a while, would be less useful on a team. Additionally, for some students, a parent would be problematic to have on a “team”; for others, it could be helpful.) So, we will ask students to assemble their own texting “teams” in consultation with teachers and then see where they take the channel’s potential for rapid student support.

Expanded story: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-09-30T05:33:18Z

68.107.118.212: Created page with 'We started working on a tech strategy for rapid youth support in a OneVille-organized afterschool club involving 4th-6th graders at the K-8 Healey School in 2009-10, and then in …'

We started working on a tech strategy for rapid youth support in a OneVille-organized afterschool club involving 4th-6th graders at the K-8 Healey School in 2009-10, and then in Somerville’s summer school 2010, with two high school classes of SHS teacher Sabrina Trinca. Our first goal: test a school-based online social network (Elgg software) for on-demand support communications between youth and a “team” of their supporters.

In both cases, we learned that media was inherently attractive to youth but it wasn’t attractive enough to use if it wasn’t social enough yet! Students in the afterschool club wanted to go on Wee World (http://www.weeworld.com/) to check in generally with all their local and online friends, instead of use our private “OneVille” social network to talk about school. So, we realized that students were used to rapid personal support communications, but that it would be difficult to form a new social network for these (what we came to call a “separate place to go”) without a critical mass of interested members.

(One successful exception to the “youth don’t automatically like media” rule: students were immediately interested in creating “vlogs,” where students spoke into a Flip camera or iPhone video to an intended audience of teachers and administrators about strategies that supported their learning in class. Students immediately grabbed the chance to speak to a camera, even though we didn’t have people lined up to watch! This thread took off later in the ePortfolio project, where SHS teachers and students realized that certain types of questions about students’ learning styles and interests could also get students “flowing” in typing about their learning online. But the rule holds: just because you put media in front of youth doesn’t mean they’re going to use it.)

In summer school 2010, we again tried supporting young people to communicate with each other via a new private social network. Where the previous network was created for a loosely connected group of mixed grade students in a new afterschool club, this network was created for two summer school classrooms with the explicit purpose of helping the teacher communicate with students daily for six weeks about class and homework. Still, the “separate place to go” didn’t work: even though the online homework was required, for most students there still wasn’t enough reason to “go there”! Because the network was computer based, some of the students--who didn’t have computers or internet access--were limited in their ability to connect outside of class time. But beyond this technical obstacle, many of the students also expressed limited interest in interacting with the teacher or peers on class topics via a computer, even when available. There simply weren’t enough compelling online school activities yet to draw them naturally to a separate online site.

(Again, the [[eportfolio project]] may solve this chicken and egg problem by prompting lots of online assignments, leading students to go online for work and conversations.)

We decided to spend time that summer talking to Trinca’s students about the overall support communications they had normally and how those communications could be improved. We found that:

'''AHA: Students focused on connecting with people that they felt close to, regardless of whether those people were “best” placed to provide them with resources and/or help.

One student looked for help from his teacher from the previous year on history assignments instead of seeking out his current history teacher, simply because he connected with the previous year’s teacher better.

'''AHA: Besides parents, guardians, peers, and key school personnel, students valued connecting (virtually or not) with “older buddies,” near peer mentor-like figures that would advise them on matters both personal and academic.

'''AHA: Students told us that they used different technologies to interact with different people.

For example, they might talk to their parents over the phone, hang out most with their best friend in real life (what some people today call “IRL”!) and text message with individual friends or classmates.

'''Uche: ADD SOME GRAPHICS HERE FROM THE SURVEYMONKEY WE DID.

Also, the students said they preferred texting, phone, and talking in person over other methods such as email, IM, and even Facebook--even though many of them had Facebook accounts. Students told us that even while they didn’t yet text with teachers, texting was generally the best way for anyone, including teachers, to reach them rapidly and a natural way for them to communicate back. The students initially expressed skepticism at interacting with teachers over text, because it was what they typically used with friends. But in the end, they agreed that it was the most reliable way to contact them. So we decided to try assembling texting “teams” around kids one member by one, by starting with student-teacher texting.

A big AHA came from a first fumble: at one administrator’s advice, we first asked a “cluster” of teachers at Somerville High if they wanted to work with us to test texting. (Some of these teachers would go on to be key leaders of the ePortfolio project!) The teachers worried that the use of texting between students and teachers might break a longstanding, and to them, necessary boundary between the formal/academic classroom sphere and each group’s private, informal social lives. The teachers also thought that using texting to remind students of events, help them with homework, and other transactional uses could result in “babying” the students. These were high school students, they argued, and as such should not need or be given such basic assistance. They also worried about supporting poor grammar and inappropriate language in texts.

We then called Mr. Willey, principal at FC/NW, who had already told us months earlier that he had major trouble reaching his youth’s parents and supporters and at times, youth themselves. He agreed immediately that young people seemed more likely to pick up texts than any other form of communication. He invited us to come in and talk to his teachers, and Mica and Uche gave a basic presentation in early fall 2010 where we discussed what students had said about texting as a key channel for youth support. One of the teachers around the table was Ted. “When can we start?” Ted asked. He and Mo, respectively high school and middle school teachers at Full Circle/Next Wave, were excited to try it out, and we began.

'''TURNING POINT: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Rather than assemble entire texting “teams” for each student, we decided to start with private student-teacher communication. Uche set Mo and Ted up with Google Voice. In January 2011, Mo and Ted and Uche/Mica held an open meeting with all of their students to see who would be interested. We brainstormed ground rules (e.g., don’t expect a text back before 7 a.m. and after 10 p.m.; no inappropriate language; no sharing of anyone else’s business), gave students the teachers’ new GoogleVoice numbers, invited students to share their numbers with teachers, and invited them all to text whenever they wanted. GoogleVoice recorded all of the texts for the teachers and allowed them to type from their computers (Mo and Ted still mostly used their phones). Young people received texts on their phones.

Some students already texted teachers at the school (“If I'm having problems at home I text Maureen, or Maryanne or Edith,” one student told us; she did this rather than have her own parents “"know her business."). Some had never texted teachers before and found the idea weird. Texting to them felt like something you did with friends or relatives. But as students would tell us later in June, there were two kinds of texting relationships with teachers that felt OK – businessy ones for school related things you had to get done, and more revealing personal texts sent to people you really trusted.

Over time, our overall AHA would be about the benefits of texting for student-teacher relationship. But we want to tell you how we got there! Below is a discussion of the “communication ahas” we had throughout the pilot, and example texts. We taped a lot of our conversations and so we talk about ourselves in the third person (Ted and Mo, Mica and Uche).

== COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.==

In February, Ted got last minute info in a staff meeting that a ski trip was available to a new student he’d recently met and had been helping with math. The “kid’s voicemail was full.” So, Ted texted the student using Google Voice, to tell him to bring needed info and a signed permission slip the next day. The student’s response? “Lots of exclamation points, ‘thank you,’” Ted said; there was now a “high level of communication” with the student. The exchange happened “in an 18 hour turnout” and “allowed us to make a strong connection right when he got to the school.”
Me: Bring in your insurance info tomorrow, the company and your policy number, with 10 bucks, yor going skiing thursday! 3:23 PM
Student: Thank you soo much ted! i will .. ill have it all tomarrow! 4:12 PM
Me: Are you going to school tomorrow? 6:59 PM
Student: Yea .. deffintly 9:36 PM

==COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.==
One student said that he lacked a home phone, so texting helped: “Sometimes they call your house when there’s no school, but I don’t have a house phone. They might call my mom but she never picks up. If he (Ted) hadn’t texted me (about the snow day), I wouldn’t have woken up for school.”
In another case, a student who had been kicked out of school texted Ted to find out what his situation was and whether he faced expulsion.
And here’s an e.g. of texting by Mo that helped reach a student who was literally absent from school:
Me: Worried about you!! 8:15 PM
Student: im feeling much better now I will deff see u tmr (: 8:16 PM
Me: Good we miss you!! Can mom right a note for the last 2 days 8:17 PM
Student: she called [School admininstrator] today telling him I was out sick not truent 8:18 PM :Me: Good..see you tomorrow..and glad your feeling better!! 8:19 PM
Student: thanks 8:24 PM
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.
In early March, Uche and Mica got together with Mo and Ted and looked at the GoogleVoice record of all the texts. Our plan: to “pull out examples of texts that you find interesting,” to “label the “type” of communication that occurred,” and to “provide any evidence of any text’s effects on any student’s achievement/motivation/relationship with you.”
We noted first just how many different school-related subjects a teacher and student could text about. So far, Mo had been texting with students for wakeup calls, paperwork reminders, discussions of personal updates, updates on other students that students knew about, health check-ins, and discussions of absence. She bantered a lot with the students, too. We laughed often in the pilot about the number of exclamation points Mo tended to use in her texts!!!!!!!!
Ted had reviewed his own Google Voice record and “broke it up into categories – who talks to who about what.” “(There’s) a cluster about being on time. Another about dropout prevention, kids who haven’t been to school in a long time, what can we do to transition you out of here easier. And, checkins w/ students about miscellaneous—academics, work, home, if they’re heading toward that dropout prevention category . . . Also snow days, field trips, some kids need to bring attire for electives (gym attire, skates, something they may need for the next day). On being on time, staying a full day – if kids walk out I remind them about the day before. . . . And also, jobs. Kids that want jobs.”
Ted was texting with students about absences and lateness; afterschool activity (he coached a boxing club and led a lot of trips); and for personal checkins, which then often considered academic issues. “New electives, new teachers, new schedules – some confirmations on preparations for the next day – are we going skating, to boxing club tomorrow, to bring in the right clothes.” Students were checking in with him via text about academic issues like credits, the semester change, and their discipline records. One student had texted him to ask how he was doing after a fraught interaction, and how his weekend went. A few students had texted him for help in class. In some cases he was strongly pushing young people to attend class or keep up their motivation via text. The other texts Ted had been sending in February were “more like routine -- no school, a snowstorm, ‘you haven’t been in school where are ya’ type stuff. Some kids don’t respond to those at all, some kids do,” he said.
Neither teacher was fielding detailed questions about schoolwork via text. Instead, they were texting more about logistics, reminders, updates, absence explanations, and more -- and in the process, building relationships. As we read all these texts, Ted and Mo expressed surprise and satisfaction with “the language that the kids are using to thank (them)…It’s refreshing to know that they have that capability.” Some students expressed gratitude and other emotions through their texts that Ted and Mo hadn’t experienced with them in the classroom.
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: Students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.
If we judged texting by the immediate consequences of a given text, it could sometimes look unsuccessful. Ted said in February that the previous week, a doctor showed up at school for testing one of his students, but “the kid didn’t show up for school that day.” Ted texted the student at 10 (the appointment was scheduled for 9:00-11:00); “he texted me right back w/ what sounded like a confirmation that he was coming but then didn’t come. So that was almost a success story but not.”
Mo noted that some students she texted to wake up still came late. But, the same students were now using text to contact her with serious support needs, even during drug rehab placements. Mo was using her texting to support one young person with depression, so that the student eventually came in to school.
Mo had a major aha about texting in March: “Success for a depressed student in a sense is the engagement itself. Even having this exchange.” And as Ted said earlier in the year, “In some ways, it comes down to someone paying attention to them.” As Mo explained of one text she sent to a student in March, “I wanted to make her feel good before she went to bed.” And Mo reported in March that she had this talk with a student the previous day:
"I just wanna make sure you’re ok – when I text you I wanna know you’re ok, safe. We worry about you!” He had responded, “I know you guys do, I will definitely write you something.”
Over and over in the pilot, we talked about how texts showed not just connection but true caring. Students pointed out a bunch of examples on our April Research Day:
-Mo’s text to a student: “worried about you.” “It shows that she really cares,” Shelia explained.
-“You had a bad day yesterday”: a particularly caring teacher “check-in.”
-“you made 1 day last week.” “I like the encouragement,” said one student.
-“you’re a smart kid.” “That’s really nice because some kids might feel doubt and don’t get many compliments from people,” another student said.
-Mo pointed out that one student had asked Ted “how was your weekend.”
Shelia pointed out that overall, the texts could build relationship and simultaneously, the motivation to try. “You need to know [teachers] care in order to do stuff. Otherwise what’s the point in trying. If a person is ‘I’m here for you’ – you feel someone else cares, I should care too.”
So, texts built up consequences over time: in the texts below, the youth was still not in school, but a relationship was being built to get him in the next time. Note the three quick appreciative texts back after a compliment, which many students pointed out on Research Day:
Me: Hey is your mom coming in 8:20 AM
Student: Yah bro waiting for her that's y I ain't in school my G G=grandma lmao ur old 8:21 AM :Me: Not funny....lol 8:23 AM
Student: Ii hate the fact u don't apritiate my jokes 8:24 AM
Student: -_- 8:24 AM
Me: But I appreciate you:-) 8:26 AM
Student: Ahhh good made my morning 8:31 AM
Student: =) 8:32 AM
Student: Lol jk jk idc 8:32 AM
Me: Awwwww 8:33 AM
Similarly, in the texts below it was of course not the actual medical help Ted offered via text that could be supportive to the student, but the caring itself:
Hey I dont think im going to come to school tomorw im wicked sick 7:19 PM
Have a glass of o.j. and drink water often. Get some rest, and you'll feel great in the morning, ready for school 7:44 PM
Ive been doing that all day and it hasnt helped one bit 7:58 PM
Lets have a good full 1/2 day tomorrow 9:31 PM
Idont know if im goin to school tomorrow 9:46 PM
You haven't been putting consecutive full days together, push yourself to improve, you can do it! 9:49 PM
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.
Just as in face to face conversation, there’s no either/or.
Here’s an exchange that went from a basic schedule update, to a communication about stickers (Somerville “Villen” gear), to fundamental questions about school deadlines:
Me: No school tomorrow 7:09 PM
Student: -_- aww .... Hey do you have any villen stickers by any chance :) jw 7:11 PM
Me: Haha, no 7:12 PM
Student: Aww :( .... I wish there was school tommorrow .... Hey do you think the school will extend the add drop day .... Like give us another week for add drop o 7:16 PM
Student: r no...??? Jw 7:16 PM
Me: Not sure 7:16 PM
Student: Okaii well I hope you have a nice day or two off :) 7:17 PM
Me: Thanks you too 7:19 PM
Student: Ill try -_- ..... :) 7:20 PM
Communications that started about serious school status questions could then turn into banter that was both joking and academically important. The exchanges below happened over several days:
Student: Ted do u kn how long I am suspened for 9:41 PM
Me: [Principal] wanted to have a meeting this week, I will call you tomorrow, sorry so late 10:48 PM
Student: No I kn that I just need to kn wen is the meeting 10:49 PM
Student: Thow 10:54 PM
Me: [Student,] do you still have the math book I gave you for homework? If you do let me know and [teacher] too 2:38 PM
Student: Ya I do 2:59 PM
Me: Use it! 3:27 PM
Student: Ok. I will 3:31 PM
Another text exchange between Ted and a student mixed banter and serious stuff:
X: I just left my house right now so I'm going to b late 7:47 AM
Me: And I need to know this? 7:48 AM
Me: Hurry up! 7:49 AM
X: Because I don't want you to worry 7:49 AM
Me: You miss school regularly silly goose 7:51 AM
X: I came in all this week and collected points 7:54 AM
Me: Get here, we can celebrate 7:55 AM
X: Hahaha okk I'm on cross street now 7:58 AM
X: Noo! almost closest ive been! 7:27 AM
Me: Good try though, we both have some studying to do over vacation 7:28 AM
X: thanks and i know my eyes will be glued to that rmv book 7:29 AM
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.
Several students texted Ted about sports events: he said even one student (above with "silly goose") who had been asked to leave school a few months earlier “texted me after the Lakers beat the Celtics last week, at 10:30 pm”:
Student: Lol wat just happend to ur celtics 10:48 PM
Me: Ha 10:57 PM
When a HGSE student asked one of Ted’s students (who had not been responding to Ted’s texts) about whether texting with teachers was useful, the student suggested that he “finds (them) useful, but I just don’t want to text back.” But, he added, he’d like to hear from Ted over the weekend once in a while, even if just to see “how his weekend was going.” The student also wanted to know more about Ted outside of school: for example, “is he working anywhere else, or is he just a teacher?” Talking about this non school-related stuff, the student claimed, would “make their relationship grow even stronger.”
Many students made similar statements in private interviews and group discussions. Obens, another of Ted’s students, summed up the sentiment in our April Research Day: “When you’re texting you feel like you’re closer to the teacher.” Ted agreed with Obens: “(Texting) definitely strengthens our face to face, day to day relationships.”
“Have good conversations,” Yose advised other teachers considering texting with students as we ended our April Research Day. “Like don’t just talk about school. Also talk about how your day’s going, stuff like that. Don’t just keep it about school.”
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to a more informed face to face conversation.
We often think about technology as supplanting face-to-face relationships. But can technology also enable more face to face encounters? For example, Ted texted a student this:
Me: I heard you had a bad afternoon at school. Check in first thing tomorrow 7:03 PM

Or this:
ìTeacher: You need to be in school way more my friend 10:12 AM
ìStudent: Ok ? 10:13 AM
ìTeacher: Everything ok? 10:14 AM
ìTeacher: You left early today, then I saw you down the street at dismissal. I'm quite concerned about your behaviors the past month, we should sit down and talk some time this week 9:22 PM

[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!
In our March conversation, we realized that it actually could be very useful to a teacher to have an entire “relationship” with a young person documented via texting.
For example, Ted’s first group text that winter prompted this response from a student who at first did not text at all with Ted:
Me: A reminder that tonight is Parent-Teacher night at NW/FC. Please notify your loved one at home that teachers are at school to meet them from 6:30-7:45pm.
9:05 AM Student: O please lol 9:10 AM
Through looking at Ted’s texts in March, Ted and Mo realized that the student had now built a texting and face to face relationship trusting enough that she could reveal serious personal struggles to Ted. In March, this student had texted Ted about a physical argument with someone; via text, Ted “said we could talk later [in person], and we did.” “She never told me that,” said Mo, adding that it showed real growth in the student-teacher relationship -- “That she could share something so big, with you, that she trusts you so much that she could tell you that.”
Teachers could share texts to catalyze student support in moments of crisis: In several other cases, Mo had shown texts with a depressed or self-destructive student to the principal, to say “look, I’m really worried.”
As Ted put it, documenting a relationship helped in less crucial cases as well:
“When I’m texting a kid I creep back up to the history to see what concerns have come up in the past – that’s helpful for me, just so I can keep it all together, keep track. To remind myself – that I would like to help them more, talk to them more frequently.” Shelia agreed on our April Research Day that texts kept a relationship around with you, for later viewing. “With a phone call, it’s out of your head,” Shelia explained. “With a text message it’s still there when you turn on your phone – it still reminds you. You have to delete it if you don’t want it – it’s there to remind you.”
Since texts were always “there to remind you,” reviewing a relationship could be distressing too, of course. Later in the pilot, Ted would also point out that it became a burden to look back at exchanges that were emotionally complicated. Sometimes, he said, you just wanted to start clean with a student the next day!
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.
Mo and Ted agreed that the OneVille Project’s texting pilot made student-teacher texting seem normal and acceptable and so, allowed for student-teacher relationships to form faster. In the past, for example, Ted probably would not have asked a new student for his texting number so quickly. As Mo put it, “in the past I would wait until I developed a relationship w/ the kid and then get his texting number. I would have waited to overhear a conversation about texting, then say, ‘oh, you text? You don’t have my number!’ and then, start texting.”
Still, Ted finished our Research Day arguing that texting partners then had to “try” a little bit: “It’s up to both people to enhance the texting relationship. If the student is just responding “ok” or “yes” or “no,” that doesn’t allow the texting relationship to develop and to go towards communications that aren’t just ‘be on time.’”
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”
Shelia and Mo had that aha on Research Day when looking again at Ted’s text “you need to be in school way more my friend.” Others noted on Research Day that students felt particularly comfortable with the medium of texting:
“Some people might feel more comfortable saying it via texting more than face to face --- because in person you might feel shy, awkward and not know what to say back,” a student said. “I’d rather text my parents than call them,” a student added.
We noted many times over the year that texting could also handle many “styles” of communication. Ted noted in March that, “Mo is more of a conversationalist with the way she is texting – mine are more announcement style, school 8 a.m. tomorrow, don’t forget boxing tomorrow, stuff they don’t have to respond to. I do that to protect myself a little bit – I don’t want to burden them or feel like I’m waiting for a response from them.” Mo added, “more an FYI type of thing.” Ted agreed: “if they have a follow up they text me back.” (Still, Ted later received and sent many joking and personalized texts as well.)
Ironically, even while some other Somerville teachers wary of texting’s writing style had suggested that the “poor grammar” of texting should make it off-limits to teachers, Ted noted in March that texting could immediately allow more “words” to be exchanged between student and teacher, rather than less. “One word answers [in person] with teenagers are more typical,” but via texting, “This is not one word answers. . .it’s better than “huh,” Ted said. As Uche put it, “it takes more effort to text than to talk.” Ted added: “even more than they know they are giving – it might seem mindless, just chatting, and next thing you’re their friend!”
By late spring, when Mica asked Ted what his response would be “to a teacher who might say ‘banter’ or misspellings that happen via text are a problem for education,” Ted had this to say, though not all teachers would agree:
“Lighten up. Anyone who does text is probably aware that the spellings and capitalization and punctuation are going to be all over the place. So we might need to say [against fear of this tech], ‘get used to this -- this is not going anywhere, this is what people are doing.’ It’s almost unhealthy to fear this at this point; this is where we are going. If you want the perfect sentences, do that in an English class, but that’s not what we’re trying to do.”
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.
Pointing out uses of humor in the texts, Yose made another point about how texting could add to student-teacher relationships: people could communicate even if a student was in a bad mood. A face to face conversation might end with the student “shouting” out of anger, unable to help it; with texting, you could “be mad” and still “send a funny text.” With texting, you could show the recipient the “emotions” you wanted them to see, and not necessarily what you felt.
Another student elaborated from across the room: with texting, you could overcome the “intimidation” of possible “rejection” by the other person, by sending lighthearted texts across the private channel that did not have to be responded to immediately. Emotion was “easier to handle” via texts, another student said.
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.
On our April Research Day at Harvard, students were immediately perceptive about another “pattern in the data”: students and teachers were noticeably polite to each other, texting “thanks and you’re welcome” after texts about permission slips, reminders, and personal check-ins on grades or life. “The kids haven’t been crossing boundaries in any way – no one has been inappropriate,” Mo said that day.
UCHE, PLEASE ADD VIDEO OF MO HERE FROM RESEARCH DAY?
Obens explained that for texting to be successful, students had to “keep it private, clean, respectful, stuff like that.” When pushed to define respect, he suggested that students should “give the teacher the same respect you’d give them in school. Don’t think that outside you should act different.”
Ted had commented in our March review of texts on the “language the students are using in thanking us...” – The students were more “receptive to positive talk” than they were in person. In person, he added, students didn’t necessarily “stop and appreciate you in moments” the way they were doing with texting. Students were “taking the time to write back, thanking you for letting them know about something – it strengthens the relationship with us and the school.”
In Research Day, several students pointed out the following texting exchange as interesting and important in its level of student-teacher respect. Starting from a text from student to teacher, the exchange turned into communications about “putting a grade up” in the class:
Student: Hope your alright man.sorry that happened too u 9:43 PM
Me: I'm cool, thanks tho, have a good weekend 9:47 PM
Student: Alright man have a good n 11:22 PM
Me: Everything ok? 9:30 AM
Student: Ted? 10:39 AM
Me: Yup 11:02 AM
Student: Everythings alright I guess im gonna b in tm .. Is there anything I can do to put my grade up for your class
11:05 AM Me: Be on time tomorrow, we'll talk then. 11:06 AM Student: Alright 11:09 AM

Other examples of “politeness while texting”:

Teacher: Like I said, you need to get it from him. Be on time for school today 7:00 AM
ìTeacher: You’re doing great 7:00 AM
ìStudent: I will and u woke me up .thanks 7:01 AM
ìTeacher: You’re welcome 7:03 AM
--------------------------------------
Students weren’t angelic with texting, of course: some tried to bend the rules against texting during school. In February, Ted reported that “kids are testing limits w/ texting me while they are standing next to me in school, to get a reaction, not get a reaction – b/c they know they can’t use their phone in school. but they’re not abusing it or anything, they are just testing it.“
In March, Mo noted that one student whose “mouth is a gutter” had “corrected himself” after using the “n word” in a text because “he knows I would say something.” In March, Ted also noted that “A good boundary has unintentionally or intentionally been set by the kids or us – a few texts over the weekend at night but they didn’t start coming in at one in the morning.” Ted and Mo both agreed that kids had done basically nothing inappropriate with the texts -- as our original ground rules had requested.
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: To students, texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other.
Texting somebody back “shows you appreciate the person and you’re thankful they helped you out,” Shelia said. Mo added: “They appreciate (Ted, our Full Circle teacher) taking time out of his own private life to send these texts.” Obens said that texts from Ted had gotten him to school on time.
When we analyzed this next example in Research Day, the students first noted the easy but respectful banter between student and teacher (“ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8”). Then, the student who had sent the texts pointed out that the fact that he “put in the effort” and the time to text back and forth about attendance rules showed he felt motivated to be there on time. He pointed out his responses, like “fine” and “I’ll make it [to school] by 8:10,” as evidence. “I sleep a lot – but I made it before 8:10. It did help. I was used to coming in around 8:30,” he said:
Me: School 8:00am manana 7:10 PM
Student: ok boss 9:33 PM
Me: 8am! 6:19 PM
Student: Ok lol 6:22 PM
Student: 8:10? 6:22 PM
Me: Try for 7:55, and get settled with something to read mi amigo 6:24 PM
Student: That's too early ted. I'm make it before 8:10 6:25 PM
Me: Nooooooo, 8! 6:26 PM
Student: Ahhh jesus ted. Fine 8 6:43 PM
Me: Arrive late, leave early, booo 3:26 PM
Student: I made it on time 3:34 PM
Me: School starts at 8, no later 3:36 PM
Me: You can do it! 3:37 PM
Student: But to be late its 8:10 4:00 PM
Wielding her highlighter in again pointing out Ted’s text to another student (“you need to be in school way more my friend”), Shelia explained that “I feel like it’s genuine concern.” “It shows connection,” Obens added. “It also shows courage.” He pointed out that Ted was “taking time to text people about stuff – taking time to get a person to school on time. That shows courage on the part of the teacher. Also on the student, by replying back.” Shelia agreed, adding, “It takes the courage to make that bond – from the teacher -- and also for the student to participate in the bond.”
The texting student above (who had texted “Ahhh jesus ted") added, “Who would want to text a teacher – there’s a lot you could be doing at that time. A lot of people won’t do it – that they do it means they really care about what they are doing.”
Ted highlighted this same point: students’ texts to teachers “show a level of investment. Even if (the text is) not school related, the student is checking in, making that contact, when they don’t have to. It’s really important to understand – the value of doing things not only when you have to do things.”
[edit] COMMUNICATION AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!
On Research Day, we left sure that texting had “helped” in these teachers’ classrooms but unsure how it might work in “a school of like 600,” as someone put it. Full Circle/Next Wave are particularly “personal” schools, some pointed out: “in other schools it’s less personal, you get five minutes with that teacher,” Shelia said.
We left with a question: does that sort of lack of “personal” time for face to face attention in other schools make something like texting more likely to get traction or not? More likely to help, or less?
As Ted put it in March, “if we had serious students who wanted help academically this could get out of control – multiple texts, multiple students, if students do their homework every night and want a question answered every night – so maybe structuring that with a [texting] office hours idea – [a group chat] a couple days a week.” While computers would be most useful for serious group homework help, “texting is better b/c they don’t need a computer” and many didn’t have them to use. Students also indicated that they always appreciated the (timeconsuming) strategy of being “nagged” with reminders, via texting or not: “I don’t like getting nagged but it’s what gets me to do stuff,” said a student.
But Ted pointed out that as with any channel, you could just choose how much support you did and didn’t offer as a texting teacher. As Ted put it re. wakeup texts, “I’m going to try not to go as far as the Next Wave (junior high) will go – I’m trying to put more responsibility on the high school student – I’m shying away from the pre-school conversation.”
In June, as paperwork and end-of-school activities took over, texting began to feel a bit “extra” to the teachers. Mo had stopped doing daily wakeup texts with a few students for now: “The last couple months I haven’t texted as much as I did in the first half of the year,” she said. “There’s so much crap you have to do – paperwork for SPED (Special Education); time gets consumed with life,” said Ted, whose wife had just had a baby. “Especially with the baby, I haven’t thought about texting kids that much – but I have texted them more on personal stuff b/c I haven’t been in the classroom so much.” Students had been texting him, though, asking “how’s your daughter . .They texted me when the Bruins won.”
While one-to-one relationship-building definitely took time, check-ins via text could of course also save time, by reaching absent students and by building relationships one could count on later. Some check-ins otherwise simply couldn’t happen in person during packed days. Looking at one of Mo’s texts on Research Day, Yose noted, “She’s making sure the kid doesn’t get in trouble – she asks him to call his mom and stuff. She couldn’t do this face to face b/c he wasn’t in school.” Similarly, Mo pointed out a quick student text requesting useful information: “hey do you think they’re gonna extend the add drop period?” In class, Oben explained, “I don’t feel like bothering (Ted) w/ those types of questions.“
In March, Mo had mentioned that to save time, she really needed a tweaked Google Voice that could help her text her entire class at once (Google Voice typically only allows a text to a group of 5 people). Seth had made that for her and she was planning on using it. Having “started out texting every Thursday for homework,” she had “got away from it b/c was a pain to do 5 and then 5 – to do all at once will make it a whole lot easier.” Ted agreed in June that a texting “blast” to all of his students would save him time. We’ll pilot GroupMe as a teacher-to-many “blast” texting tool this fall as well as a group texting tool for “teams.”
But time was still a core concern in one-to-one texting -- even as for now, the relationship-building made it worth it.
We had some final “ahas” about the use of texting in public schools:
[edit] AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.
Several times in the pilot, students lost phones, had their phones shut off b/c of not paying bills, or simply ran out of plan minutes. In March, Mo reported a range of student experiences: “Someone who lost their phone, someone who left it in a cousin’s car, someone who got it taken away – some got shut off – [xx] owes $500 on his phone, so he doesn’t have his phone any more. . .and they’re always changing numbers.”
In these cases, it was clear that economics matter in using texting for student support and that texting was hardly a foolproof method of reaching students. But this is the case regardless of whether people are using phones. And relying on phones may now be more equitable in some ways than relying on people to have the flexibility to meet you for face to face meetings whenever you’re free, or, expecting them to have computers, internet access, and home phone lines.
A student who had 78 texting minutes a month, period, put it this way to Mica:
“I think I have email on my phone but I have to pay for it. I could check email on my mom’s phone, she has a blackberry. If I’m near a computer. . I’ll check my facebook and then my email. [how often do you check your email?] not often. . I could try to check and let you know. . . I don’t have minutes and so I can’t text. Like when you get a cell phone, it runs off of minutes, [so] you have to pay for the cell phone, internet, and texts. When I have no minutes I have no text messages, no phone calls, nothing. [that’s the situation, til when?] till the 8th or 9th of April. [so If I text you you don’t even get it?] nope. . . . I don’t have a lot so it’s easy to run out – 78 minutes.”
This student later got a Droid that allowed her to do texting, internet, even “edit papers.”
And students also made their own solutions within economic limits. Another student showed us his ingenious phone arrangement: to save on texting and internet charges, he carried an unactivated iphone (purchased from a friend for $120) that he used at school to access the internet over the school’s wifi network. He used smartphone apps for different social networks and also did his texting over the internet, so he was able to approximate having a full-fledged smartphone while saving money. The student also carried a prepaid phone for calls and texts.
[edit] AHA: Texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.
A texting relationship also blossomed between some youth and those HGSE grad students who headed to the school multiple times for personal conversations (and, as one student put it, to crack a few jokes). In February, we had decided that the HGSE students needed a clearer “role” with the young people even just to check in with them via text on “how is texting going” or “how are you doing.” The FC/NW students also noted that a relationship was needed first before students could feel comfortable texting with new adults. Our decision: HGSE students would return with new roles as college/career readiness mentors on call as well as co-researchers.
One HGSE student then had this exchange with a student at FC/NW:
HGSE: Im happy to help you out. What way do you think I could help you best to be successful?
S: You tell me
HGSE: Well I think your teachers and counselor and fam and friends are a good support team. I could help w advice about graduation and college here and there
S: About geting me in 2 a gud collage for consoler for kids
S: I wonder how u get in 2 harvard
S: I need u 2 tell me where can I go and be a gud consoler wit a gud deagree
This exchange led to more exchanges about the student’s career path, with the HGSE student sharing links to colleges.
Another one of us had this extended conversation with one student, two months after we began: 9:17 p.m.
HGSE: Hey there – a mentor signed up with district but she wants to mentor in journalism carers. Not your thing, correct? Still seeking science and math person from them. And, any questions for me on college/academic stuff? I’m always here to be asked
Student: (immediately!): Do you have any info on culinary arts.
HGSE: I know someone starting a restaurant as a chef. And someone else who made it as a chef in NYC
S: Do you have anything on culinary colleges?
HGSE: I think the chef in NYC went to one. Want me to ask?
S: Yes thanks
HGSE: What’s your email address or how would I put him in touch with you? I have to go through his dad, etc.
S: (shares email address)
M: Ps is it chef role you are interested in or something else?
S: chef. But I’m also interested in everything actually.
HGSE: everything in the world or everything about culinary school?
S: Culinary school. Lol
HGSE: How about the science of food btw? There’s a course at Harvard about that; maybe google it
S: I’ll google it.
HGSE: ((having googled it myself too)): How about this to get started too – Harvard lectures online from chefs on science and food! http://scientopia.org/blogs/everydaybiology/2011/03/03/harvard-lectures-the-science-of-cooking-and-molecular-gastronomy
S: (10:31): Awesome thanks. I’ll ttyl. Good night
HGSE: ((I have to google “ttyl” and learn it means “talk to you later” (!!!)))
As it turned out, she had no way to open these links without going to school to use the computers, because her phone had no access to the internet and she had no internet-linked computer at home. Still, a conversation began about her career interests that expanded in the months to come -- and she later got a smartphone.
[edit] AHA: Face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.
Having planned originally to test texting “teams” in 2010-11, we promised early on to bring new tutors and mentors on to students’ “teams” if they wanted them. But to match tutors and mentors to students, the district coordinator needed clearance from the principal and then, descriptions of students’ precise interests, which took time -- and it then was very hard to schedule the face to face afterschool meetings between the tutors and the students. One tutor, who also worked as a teacher, was only available after 5:00 and on weekends. And the student we were seeking this tutor for pointed out that her own work schedule at Kmart changed suddenly “every week”: she never knew how many hours she’d get and when, and she also sometimes had to work on the weekends. In the end, it took several weeks of coordinating texts, emails, and phone calls to try to get this tutor to meet 3 girls face to face in the school. After we finally set up a meeting between the tutor and the girls after school at a nearby Dunkin Donuts, just one student took the tutor up on the opportunity – after Mica sent multiple text messages urging the student to reschedule a conflict and advised the tutor via text through gridlock traffic. No better evidence that face-to-face mentoring just isn't possible all the time!

Next steps:

Our next step is to see how one-to-one texting works with new student and teacher users and also, to test texting “teams.” When we asked students who they’d want on their “teams,” young people suggested a range of people, from parents to best friends to inspiring older buddies who were “making it” in work and school (one student mentioned such a “get it done person” cousin who was a role model). Some wanted adults who had inspired them at summer jobs, or counselors or teachers also at the school. While we’d love to get local youth workers on students’ “teams” so they too can learn first hand the potential of texting for rapid youth support, we’ve learned by now that you can’t just add people in and start texting. Real relationship building gets texting started and texting takes the relationship further. (The principal also feels that interns there briefly, then gone after a while, would be less useful on a team. Additionally, for some students, a parent would be problematic to have on a “team”; for others, it could be helpful.) So, we will ask students to assemble their own texting “teams” in consultation with teachers and then see where they take the channel’s potential for rapid student support.

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-30T04:50:39Z

68.107.118.212: /* Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto for the Parent Connector project, with input from parents across the Healey School and Jedd Cohen

[[Image:Gina.jpg|thumb|Gina, Connector to Haitian Creole speaking parents]]

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?''' (''For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?'')
-------
Ensuring that everyone in a school can partner in student success requires overcoming structural barriers to communication between the families who share a school, and the school! With parents, teachers, staff, and administrators at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, we've been working toward a toolkit of tools and strategies for schoolwide communication that reaches all families across lines of language, income, background, and tech access/training. Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In 2009-10, we worked on three main efforts: a series of Reading Nights linking parents across a Kindergarten hallway to share information about early reading strategies; Parent Issue Dialogues, supporting parents to debate a crucial school issue; and, Multilingual Coffee Hours supporting parents to talk to each other and the principal in their own languages.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in the loop of school information and input. We focused on creating the infrastructure of a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language. So, the Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of this overall Working Group exploring schoolwide communication at the Healey. Parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and mixed-income school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff.

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[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

Begun in Winter 2010, the Parent Connector Network is now a parent-led effort (in partnership with school administrators and staff) to support translation and parent-school relationships, by connecting bilingual parents (“Connectors”) to more recently immigrated parents via a phone tree. The Connectors have come to also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (One Connector also got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

[[Image:(2)Slide2.jpg|(2)Slide2.jpg]]

[[Image:(2)Slide3-.jpg|(2)Slide3-.jpg]]

We also innovated the role of volunteer “Translators of the Month” who can help translate school information for a hotline made by local technologists. That translated material can then be used for other school media (listserv, handouts, flyers, etc.).

We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role (five paid hours!) for one staff Connector so that she can respond appropriately to serious or ongoing parent needs -- beyond what a volunteer parent can or should do. She also will help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters. We’re piloting the full combination in 2011-12.

In sum, Healey parents have been key innovators of school-wide communication infrastructure. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of systemic supports for multilingual translation and interpretation in particular, which we’ve diagrammed completely [[here]]. These diagrams show that it takes real organization to ensure that schoolwide communication works to include all families.

[[Image:(2)Slide7.jpg|Slide7.jpg]]

Our main ahas:

'''AHA: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get distributed, translated, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

'''AHA: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers.

'''AHA: In a multilingual school and district in particular, improving communications -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections. Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

So, throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. Robocalls home go in four languages; handouts home often don't. For many, parent teacher conferences require interpreters, and scheduling those interpreters itself is a structural communication need. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher in person.

In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher. Many such families also are on committees that meet after school and so, take the opportunity then to contribute ideas to the school. Over the years, we saw that families who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

As we describe below, we worked on several strategies to support parents to share ideas and information (Reading Nights, Parent Issue Dialogues) and then focused particularly on the challenge of multilingual communication, because language barriers particularly have excluded many Healey parents from full participation. The Multilingual Coffee Hour, begun in 2009, was our first explicitly multilingual effort; then, in 2010-11, the Parent Connector Network has focused fully on reaching out to parents who speak the district's 3 main languages other than English: Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents, in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?
-------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;

2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections.

Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11 as part of the Parent Connector Network infrastructure. We learned a huge amount in that work and we built relationships that enabled the development of the Parent Connector Network. Click [[here]] for the full backstory!

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation! Together, we came to learn:

'''AHA: Because each innovation we started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for schoolwide communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation in particular) in a school.

We've also seen throughout that,

'''AHA: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ahas, click [[Schoolwide Communication Toolkit Efforts, 2009-11|here!]] Our ahas included the following.

''READING NIGHT AHAS:

[[Image:Running up the Healey stairs to a Reading Night.jpg|thumb|Running up the Healey stairs to a Reading Night]]

'''AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

[[Image:Consuelopizza.jpg|thumb|Consuelo, mastermind of the Multilingual Coffee Hour, and her OneVille pizza: our best Reading Night advertisement]]

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.

'''AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

''MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR AHAS:

'''AHA: The massive local resource of parent bilingualism!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

[[Image:Dave.jpg|thumb|Dave, multilingual coffee hour enthusiast and 2011 PTA president]]

''PARENT-PARENT ISSUE DIALOGUE AHAS:

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

'''TURNING POINT: With the Healey in the midst of brainstorming all sorts of changes to its everyday structures, we parents focused for 2010-11 on improving infrastructure for schoolwide communication -- and on including immigrant parents in particular.

''PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK AHAS:

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult.

'''AHA: To build trusting relationships, consider connecting parents to specific groups of other parents -- and when possible, build on the social relationships parents already have!

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need interpreters to do it.

'''AHA: better systems are needed to get parents’ contact numbers to other parents! Otherwise, parent partnerships can’t easily happen.

'''AHA: Privacy and trust are key issues to be navigated carefully in broadening school-home communications. But, issues of privacy do mean that at times, it takes much longer for people to partner than they would otherwise. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

'''AHA: volunteers need communication infrastructure themselves, in order to make their own work easier. But it can’t be too techy or some volunteers will get turned off!

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

'''AHA: Innovate forms of communication that will reach the highest number of parents most quickly with ongoing resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In our case, we’re trying a hotline that allows people not on the internet, to call in for information. Meanwhile, we’ll train people on email so they can join the school listserv!

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

'''AHA: A key need in public information-sharing is TRIAGING information so it’s not overwhelming. Another is ORGANIZING the information that goes out, so that others can quickly digest it. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

'''AHA: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===
We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. To read the full story of the efforts that gave us these ahas, click [[Schoolwide Communication Toolkit Efforts, 2009-11|Schoolwide Communication Toolkit Efforts, 2009-11]]

[[Image:(2)Slide4.jpg|(2)Slide4.jpg]]

[[Image:(2)Slide5.jpg|(2)Slide5.jpg]]

We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls this fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, Gina, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school five hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[here]].

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped the principal make her a fall parent communication form that will help parents sign up to get a Connector, make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers, and allow parents to record their preferences for contact (texting? listserv? classroom listserv?) and indicate whether they need email training. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

[[Image:(2)Slide7.jpg|(2)Slide7.jpg]]

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. The Connectors themselves have become seen as a key local resource, as people willing to be on call to answer other parents' questions in their language and to (monthly) share information that requires more explanation.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals?

We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff. So, in our case, we isolated an aspect of the infrastructure that volunteers couldn’t cover and argued that a bilingual staff member be employed part-time to cover it. We reasoned that volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their children or legal assistance for their families; paid staff in any district should be on top of such “case management.” But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.So, the task for the coming fall will be to figure out how and whether a very part-time liaison role serves the purpose.

Further, in a multilingual community where not everyone uses computers, some lack access to information because of translation gaps and some because of a gap in basic tech knowledge. We learned early on in our work in Somerville that the problem is not necessarily one of computer access (the nearby housing project has many computers) as much as one of training. Even English-speaking parents in the school’s magnet program didn't know how to get on its listserv. Now that the school’s programs have merged and the school is creating a schoolwide listerv, these issues will rise to the fore. And having people equally speak up on the common listserv, in whatever language, will be the next frontier of parent inclusion!

In Winter 2011, we attempted to hold a "get an Email" night at the Healey, but it wasn't well attended; this crucial puzzle piece needs further development and is one focus for fall. Ironically, if there isn't a good multilingual communication infrastructure, it's hard to get people out for any face to face email training event! This is what we mean when we say each infrastructure “component” is connected – and has to be fueled by an overall commitment to including all parents. Combining the Connector network with email training by the PTA may be a good solution, especially as the school goes from having a listserv only for the magnet program to a listserv for all. Especially in a community where there are many community-oriented technologists, there's really no reason why everyone eventually shouldn't have basic tech skills. And why not employ PTA parent-power for email training too? See Computer Infrastructure.

'''Our next step this fall is to to pilot the full infrastructure we’ve developed for multilingual communication, while adding in a next piece: PTA-run parent email/listserv training. We plan to:

:a) pilot use of our open source hotline, to support bilingual parent “Translators of the Month” to translate information about events, issues, and opportunities;
:b) finish testing our Parent Connector Network, in which bilingual parents make monthly calls to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families; Connectors will also invite parents to our Multilingual Coffee hour and to the hotline;
:c) test a model where a Parent Liaison follows up on specific parent needs, helps with scheduling interpreters, and coordinates Translators of the Month for the hotline;
:d) help create a sustainable model where the PTA trains parents to get Gmail accounts, use a school listserv, and use Google Translate to translate listserv information.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===
''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!
-------

Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:
:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it?
:-Where do you put school information so that everyone in the school can see it?
:-How do you share parent ideas around the school?
:-What system do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?
:-How can you tap local bilingualism, either paying people to translate material or organizing bilingual volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?
:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation?
:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?
:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 5 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-------

We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. See xxx THIS LINK for instructions on starting a Googledoc. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts.)

We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home. See xxx THIS LINK for instructions on starting and using Google spreadsheets.

We used Google Translate for some first-pass translations, but bilingual parents still had to correct the translations. See http://translate.google.com/support/ for tips on using Google Translate.

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed. xxxxxx POST Regina’s sheet here??.

Remember that in our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth, so he explains the programming [[here].

In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see photo of Maria and Seth above! Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, Seth finished the hotline so that people could call it and record to it.

xxxx SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T19:12:13Z

68.107.118.212: /* Our work, and our AHAs */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto for the Parent Connector project, with input from parents across the Healey School and Jedd Cohen

[[Image:Gina.jpg|thumb|Gina, Connector to Haitian Creole speaking parents]]

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?''' (''For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?'')
-------
Ensuring that everyone in a school can partner in student success requires overcoming structural barriers to communication between the families who share a school, and the school! With parents, teachers, staff, and administrators at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, we've been working toward a toolkit of tools and strategies for schoolwide communication that reaches all families across lines of language, income, background, and tech access/training.

The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of this overall Working Group exploring schoolwide communication at the Healey. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and mixed-income school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff. Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in the loop of school information and input. We focused on creating the infrastructure of a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

Begun in Winter 2010, the Parent Connector Network is now a parent-led effort (in partnership with school administrators and staff) to support translation and parent-school relationships, by connecting bilingual parents (“Connectors”) to more recently immigrated parents via a phone tree. The Connectors have come to also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (One Connector also got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

We also innovated the role of volunteer “Translators of the Month” who can help translate school information for a hotline made by local technologists. That translated material can then be used for other school media (listserv, handouts, flyers, etc.).

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role (five paid hours!) for one staff Connector so that she can respond appropriately to serious or ongoing parent needs -- beyond what a volunteer parent can or should do. She also will help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters. We’re piloting the full combination in 2011-12.

In sum, this past year the Connectors have become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed completely [[here]]. These diagrams show that it takes real organization to ensure that communication works with multilingual families.

Our main ahas:

'''AHA: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

'''AHA: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers.

'''AHA: In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

'''AHA: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. We've decided to describe our full set of schoolwide communication efforts on this Parent Connector Network page, since that was the main outcome of our 2009-11 efforts. In that Network, all the work we had been doing for two years came together! Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections. Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

So, throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. Robocalls home go in four languages; handouts home often don't. For many, parent teacher conferences require interpreters, and scheduling those interpreters itself is a structural communication need. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher in person.

In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher. Many such families also are on committees that meet after school and so, take the opportunity then to contribute ideas to the school. Over the years, we saw that families who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded many Healey parents from full participation, the Parent Connector Network has focused on reaching out to parents who speak the district's 3 main languages other than English: Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents, in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

'''AHA: Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?
-------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;
2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections.

Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11 as part of the Parent Connector Network infrastructure. We learned a huge amount in that work and we built relationships that enabled the development of the Parent Connector Network. Click [[here]] for that backstory!

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. These include the following. To read the full story that gave us these ahas, click [[here!]]

''First, READING NIGHT AHAS:

'''AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.

''AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

''Second, MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR AHAS:

'''AHA: The massive local resource of parent bilingualism!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

''Next, PARENT-PARENT ISSUE DIALOGUE AHAS:

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

'''TURNING POINT: With the Healey in the midst of brainstorming all sorts of changes to its everyday structures, we parents focused for 2010-11 on improving infrastructure for schoolwide communication -- and on including immigrant parents in particular.

''finally, PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK AHAS:

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

'''AHA: To build trusting relationships, consider connecting parents to specific groups of other parents -- and when possible, build on the social relationships parents already have!

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

'''AHA: better systems are needed to get parents’ contact numbers to other parents! Otherwise, parent partnerships can’t easily happen.

'''AHA: Privacy and trust are key issues to be navigated carefully in broadening school-home communications. But, issues of privacy do mean that at times, it takes much longer for people to partner than they would otherwise. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

'''AHA: volunteers need communication infrastructure themselves, in order to make their own work easier. But it can’t be too techy or some volunteers will get turned off!

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

'''AHA: Innovate forms of communication that will reach the highest number of parents most quickly with ongoing resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In our case, we’re trying a hotline that allows people not on the internet, to call in for information. Meanwhile, we’ll train people on email so they can join the school listserv!

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

'''AHA: A key need in public information-sharing is TRIAGING information so it’s not overwhelming. Another is ORGANIZING the information that goes out, so that others can quickly digest it. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

'''AHA: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls this fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, Gina, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school five hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[here]].

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped the principal make her a fall parent communication form that will help parents sign up to get a Connector, make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers, and allow parents to record their preferences for contact (texting? listserv? classroom listserv?) and indicate whether they need email training. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. The Connectors themselves have become seen as a key local resource, as people willing to be on call to answer other parents' questions in their language and to (monthly) share information that requires more explanation.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals?

We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff. So, in our case, we isolated an aspect of the infrastructure that volunteers couldn’t cover and argued that a bilingual staff member be employed part-time to cover it. We reasoned that volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their children or legal assistance for their families; paid staff in any district should be on top of such “case management.” But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.So, the task for the coming fall will be to figure out how and whether a very part-time liaison role serves the purpose.

Further, in a multilingual community where not everyone uses computers, some lack access to information because of translation gaps and some because of a gap in basic tech knowledge. We learned early on in our work in Somerville that the problem is not necessarily one of computer access (the nearby housing project has many computers) as much as one of training. Even English-speaking parents in the school’s magnet program didn't know how to get on its listserv. Now that the school’s programs have merged and the school is creating a schoolwide listerv, these issues will rise to the fore. And having people equally speak up on the common listserv, in whatever language, will be the next frontier of parent inclusion!

In Winter 2011, we attempted to hold a "get an Email" night at the Healey, but it wasn't well attended; this crucial puzzle piece needs further development and is one focus for fall. Ironically, if there isn't a good multilingual communication infrastructure, it's hard to get people out for any face to face email training event! This is what we mean when we say each infrastructure “component” is connected – and has to be fueled by an overall commitment to including all parents. Combining the Connector network with email training by the PTA may be a good solution, especially as the school goes from having a listserv only for the magnet program to a listserv for all. Especially in a community where there are many community-oriented technologists, there's really no reason why everyone eventually shouldn't have basic tech skills. And why not employ PTA parent-power for email training too? See Computer Infrastructure.

'''Our next step this fall is to to pilot the full infrastructure we’ve developed for multilingual communication, while adding in a next piece: PTA-run parent email/listserv training. We plan to:

:a) pilot use of our open source hotline, to support bilingual parent “Translators of the Month” to translate information about events, issues, and opportunities;
:b) finish testing our Parent Connector Network, in which bilingual parents make monthly calls to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families; Connectors will also invite parents to our Multilingual Coffee hour and to the hotline;
:c) test a model where a Parent Liaison follows up on specific parent needs, helps with scheduling interpreters, and coordinates Translators of the Month for the hotline;
:d) help create a sustainable model where the PTA trains parents to get Gmail accounts, use a school listserv, and use Google Translate to translate listserv information.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===
''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!
-------

Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:
:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?
:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?
:-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?
:-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?
:-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?
:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation? Would a Connector-like project work at your school?
:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?
:-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?
:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 5 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-------

We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts.
We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.
As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?
We used Google Translate for some first-pass translations, but bilingual parents still had to correct the translations: http://translate.google.com/support/ (Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: POST Regina’s sheet here??. Remember that in our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth, so he explains the programming [[here]. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see photo! Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, Seth finished the hotline so that people could call it and record to it. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T19:11:36Z

68.107.118.212: /* Our work, and our AHAs */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto for the Parent Connector project, with input from parents across the Healey School and Jedd Cohen

[[Image:Gina.jpg|thumb|Gina, Connector to Haitian Creole speaking parents]]

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?''' (''For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?'')
-------
Ensuring that everyone in a school can partner in student success requires overcoming structural barriers to communication between the families who share a school, and the school! With parents, teachers, staff, and administrators at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, we've been working toward a toolkit of tools and strategies for schoolwide communication that reaches all families across lines of language, income, background, and tech access/training.

The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of this overall Working Group exploring schoolwide communication at the Healey. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and mixed-income school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff. Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in the loop of school information and input. We focused on creating the infrastructure of a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

Begun in Winter 2010, the Parent Connector Network is now a parent-led effort (in partnership with school administrators and staff) to support translation and parent-school relationships, by connecting bilingual parents (“Connectors”) to more recently immigrated parents via a phone tree. The Connectors have come to also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (One Connector also got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

We also innovated the role of volunteer “Translators of the Month” who can help translate school information for a hotline made by local technologists. That translated material can then be used for other school media (listserv, handouts, flyers, etc.).

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role (five paid hours!) for one staff Connector so that she can respond appropriately to serious or ongoing parent needs -- beyond what a volunteer parent can or should do. She also will help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters. We’re piloting the full combination in 2011-12.

In sum, this past year the Connectors have become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed completely [[here]]. These diagrams show that it takes real organization to ensure that communication works with multilingual families.

Our main ahas:

'''AHA: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

'''AHA: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers.

'''AHA: In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

'''AHA: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. We've decided to describe our full set of schoolwide communication efforts on this Parent Connector Network page, since that was the main outcome of our 2009-11 efforts. In that Network, all the work we had been doing for two years came together! Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections. Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

So, throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. Robocalls home go in four languages; handouts home often don't. For many, parent teacher conferences require interpreters, and scheduling those interpreters itself is a structural communication need. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher in person.

In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher. Many such families also are on committees that meet after school and so, take the opportunity then to contribute ideas to the school. Over the years, we saw that families who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded many Healey parents from full participation, the Parent Connector Network has focused on reaching out to parents who speak the district's 3 main languages other than English: Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents, in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

'''AHA: Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?
-------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;
2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections.

Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11 as part of the Parent Connector Network infrastructure. We learned a huge amount in that work and we built relationships that enabled the development of the Parent Connector Network. Click [[here]] for that backstory!

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

'''Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!'''

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. These include the following. To read the full story that gave us these ahas, click [[here!]]

''First, READING NIGHT AHAS:

'''AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.

''AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

''Second, MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR AHAS:

'''AHA: The massive local resource of parent bilingualism!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

''Next, PARENT-PARENT ISSUE DIALOGUE AHAS:

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

'''TURNING POINT: With the Healey in the midst of brainstorming all sorts of changes to its everyday structures, we parents focused for 2010-11 on improving infrastructure for schoolwide communication -- and on including immigrant parents in particular.

''finally, PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK AHAS:

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

'''AHA: To build trusting relationships, consider connecting parents to specific groups of other parents -- and when possible, build on the social relationships parents already have!

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

'''AHA: better systems are needed to get parents’ contact numbers to other parents! Otherwise, parent partnerships can’t easily happen.

'''AHA: Privacy and trust are key issues to be navigated carefully in broadening school-home communications. But, issues of privacy do mean that at times, it takes much longer for people to partner than they would otherwise. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

'''AHA: volunteers need communication infrastructure themselves, in order to make their own work easier. But it can’t be too techy or some volunteers will get turned off!

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

'''AHA: Innovate forms of communication that will reach the highest number of parents most quickly with ongoing resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In our case, we’re trying a hotline that allows people not on the internet, to call in for information. Meanwhile, we’ll train people on email so they can join the school listserv!

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

'''AHA: A key need in public information-sharing is TRIAGING information so it’s not overwhelming. Another is ORGANIZING the information that goes out, so that others can quickly digest it. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

'''AHA: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls this fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, Gina, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school five hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[here]].

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped the principal make her a fall parent communication form that will help parents sign up to get a Connector, make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers, and allow parents to record their preferences for contact (texting? listserv? classroom listserv?) and indicate whether they need email training. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. The Connectors themselves have become seen as a key local resource, as people willing to be on call to answer other parents' questions in their language and to (monthly) share information that requires more explanation.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals?

We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff. So, in our case, we isolated an aspect of the infrastructure that volunteers couldn’t cover and argued that a bilingual staff member be employed part-time to cover it. We reasoned that volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their children or legal assistance for their families; paid staff in any district should be on top of such “case management.” But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.So, the task for the coming fall will be to figure out how and whether a very part-time liaison role serves the purpose.

Further, in a multilingual community where not everyone uses computers, some lack access to information because of translation gaps and some because of a gap in basic tech knowledge. We learned early on in our work in Somerville that the problem is not necessarily one of computer access (the nearby housing project has many computers) as much as one of training. Even English-speaking parents in the school’s magnet program didn't know how to get on its listserv. Now that the school’s programs have merged and the school is creating a schoolwide listerv, these issues will rise to the fore. And having people equally speak up on the common listserv, in whatever language, will be the next frontier of parent inclusion!

In Winter 2011, we attempted to hold a "get an Email" night at the Healey, but it wasn't well attended; this crucial puzzle piece needs further development and is one focus for fall. Ironically, if there isn't a good multilingual communication infrastructure, it's hard to get people out for any face to face email training event! This is what we mean when we say each infrastructure “component” is connected – and has to be fueled by an overall commitment to including all parents. Combining the Connector network with email training by the PTA may be a good solution, especially as the school goes from having a listserv only for the magnet program to a listserv for all. Especially in a community where there are many community-oriented technologists, there's really no reason why everyone eventually shouldn't have basic tech skills. And why not employ PTA parent-power for email training too? See Computer Infrastructure.

'''Our next step this fall is to to pilot the full infrastructure we’ve developed for multilingual communication, while adding in a next piece: PTA-run parent email/listserv training. We plan to:

:a) pilot use of our open source hotline, to support bilingual parent “Translators of the Month” to translate information about events, issues, and opportunities;
:b) finish testing our Parent Connector Network, in which bilingual parents make monthly calls to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families; Connectors will also invite parents to our Multilingual Coffee hour and to the hotline;
:c) test a model where a Parent Liaison follows up on specific parent needs, helps with scheduling interpreters, and coordinates Translators of the Month for the hotline;
:d) help create a sustainable model where the PTA trains parents to get Gmail accounts, use a school listserv, and use Google Translate to translate listserv information.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===
''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!
-------

Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:
:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?
:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?
:-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?
:-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?
:-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?
:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation? Would a Connector-like project work at your school?
:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?
:-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?
:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 5 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-------

We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts.
We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.
As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?
We used Google Translate for some first-pass translations, but bilingual parents still had to correct the translations: http://translate.google.com/support/ (Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: POST Regina’s sheet here??. Remember that in our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth, so he explains the programming [[here]. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see photo! Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, Seth finished the hotline so that people could call it and record to it. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

Citywide information-sharing

2011-09-17T04:47:47Z

68.107.118.212:

==Communication We Hoped to Improve==

Somerville is full of people who forward emails of local resources to each other, but there's no one "hub" you go to to find out what's going on for young people in Somerville. The most popular listserv's material is typically exclusively shared in English.

How can people better circulate information and opportunities so that everything available for young people, is known? We wanted to know.

==Our Work and Ahas==

In July 2010, we had a meeting of "mediamakers" from Somerville and brainstormed some citywide issues of communicating opportunities and information related to young people. [[General anonymized notes]] can be found here.

PHOTOS HERE. CURRENTLY ON A ONEVILLE FACEBOOK PAGE

After this brainstorm, group energy was for a community calendaring project of some kind, for event-sharing. So, from there, we attempted to assist community calendaring by supporting the district's communications director to develop the district's calendaring further, since the district was furthest along as a possible "hub" for community calendaring of child- and youth-related activities (she also had the District using Twitter actively!). In the end, she spiffed up her the district's calendar on her own.

To try a new way of circulating public information, we then supported a [[multilingual video]] made by Consuelo Perez at Somerville Community Access Television, sharing out services for young children available at several community organizations. Bilingual staff at the organizations recorded their information in both languages. The editor, Nina xx, experimented with ways to mix pictures with translation to bring the information alive. A next idea: to run the video in public places -- hit up against the idea that there weren't many public screens. Would a paper bulletin board in public places, like in front of Market Basket supermarket, be just as good?

With five other working groups going, we ran out of capacity and time to further pursue this aspect of "communication infrastructure" work in 2009-11, but we still believe firmly that innovative citywide info-sharing on opportunities related to youth and families is crucial important for young people in the city. Everywhere we go we hear about youth and families simply being unaware of what's available (even for free) for supporting young people; we're learning more about related civic media projects underway at the Center for Civic Media at MIT [[xxxxx]]]. (They've been trying to make electronic signs outside of businesses, sharing bus information!) We're going to partner with CCM on finishing our hotline.

So, we now know a lot of people in the community who are interested in pieces of citywide info-sharing. We just haven't engaged them in a robust project to date because in the months since our first "citywide info sharing" meeting, our time and capacity got tapped into our other Working Groups.

==Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live==

To ask in any community:

''In this community, do most people know about resources, opportunities, and services available for youth and families?

''If not, what channels would help them get this information?

See also the [[toolkit created by the Knight Foundation]], which is further along on this, and the [[Catraca Libre]] effort and other efforts at the [[Center for Civic Media.]]

Citywide information-sharing

2011-09-17T04:47:05Z

68.107.118.212: /* Questions To Ask if You want to Purue this Where You Live: */

==Communication We Hoped to Improve==

Somerville is full of people who forward emails of local resources to each other, but there's no one "hub" you go to to find out what's going on for young people in Somerville. The most popular listserv's material is typically exclusively shared in English.

How can people better circulate information and opportunities so that everything available for young people, is known? We wanted to know.

==Our Work and Ahas==

In July 2010, we had a meeting of "mediamakers" from Somerville and brainstormed some citywide issues of communicating opportunities and information related to young people. [[General anonymized notes]] can be found here.

PHOTOS HERE. CURRENTLY ON A ONEVILLE FACEBOOK PAGE

After this brainstorm, group energy was for a community calendaring project of some kind, for event-sharing. So, from there, we attempted to assist community calendaring by supporting the district's communications director to develop the district's calendaring further, since the district was furthest along as a possible "hub" for community calendaring of child- and youth-related activities (she also had the District using Twitter actively!). In the end, she spiffed up her the district's calendar on her own.

To try a new way of circulating public information, we then supported a [[multilingual video]] made by Consuelo Perez at Somerville Community Access Television, sharing out services for young children available at several community organizations. Bilingual staff at the organizations recorded their information in both languages. The editor, Nina xx, experimented with ways to mix pictures with translation to bring the information alive. A next idea: to run the video in public places -- hit up against the idea that there weren't many public screens. Would a paper bulletin board in public places, like in front of Market Basket supermarket, be just as good?

With five other working groups going, we ran out of capacity and time to further pursue this aspect of "communication infrastructure" work in 2009-11, but we still believe firmly that innovative citywide info-sharing on opportunities related to youth and families is crucial important for young people in the city. Everywhere we go we hear about youth and families simply being unaware of what's available (even for free) for supporting young people; we're learning more about related civic media projects underway at the Center for Civic Media at MIT [[xxxxx]]]. (They've been trying to make electronic signs outside of businesses, sharing bus information!) We're going to partner with CCM on finishing our hotline.

So, we now know a lot of people in the community who are interested in pieces of citywide info-sharing. We just haven't engaged them in a robust project to date because in the months since our first "citywide info sharing" meeting, our time and capacity got tapped into our other Working Groups.

==Questions To Ask if You want to Purue this Where You Live:==

To ask in any community:

''In this community, do most people know about resources, opportunities, and services available for youth and families?

''If not, what channels would help them get this information?

See also the [[toolkit created by the Knight Foundation]], which is further along on this, and the [[Catraca Libre]] effort and other efforts at the [[Center for Civic Media.]]

Citywide information-sharing

2011-09-17T04:46:47Z

68.107.118.212:

==Communication We Hoped to Improve==

Somerville is full of people who forward emails of local resources to each other, but there's no one "hub" you go to to find out what's going on for young people in Somerville. The most popular listserv's material is typically exclusively shared in English.

How can people better circulate information and opportunities so that everything available for young people, is known? We wanted to know.

==Our Work and Ahas==

In July 2010, we had a meeting of "mediamakers" from Somerville and brainstormed some citywide issues of communicating opportunities and information related to young people. [[General anonymized notes]] can be found here.

PHOTOS HERE. CURRENTLY ON A ONEVILLE FACEBOOK PAGE

After this brainstorm, group energy was for a community calendaring project of some kind, for event-sharing. So, from there, we attempted to assist community calendaring by supporting the district's communications director to develop the district's calendaring further, since the district was furthest along as a possible "hub" for community calendaring of child- and youth-related activities (she also had the District using Twitter actively!). In the end, she spiffed up her the district's calendar on her own.

To try a new way of circulating public information, we then supported a [[multilingual video]] made by Consuelo Perez at Somerville Community Access Television, sharing out services for young children available at several community organizations. Bilingual staff at the organizations recorded their information in both languages. The editor, Nina xx, experimented with ways to mix pictures with translation to bring the information alive. A next idea: to run the video in public places -- hit up against the idea that there weren't many public screens. Would a paper bulletin board in public places, like in front of Market Basket supermarket, be just as good?

With five other working groups going, we ran out of capacity and time to further pursue this aspect of "communication infrastructure" work in 2009-11, but we still believe firmly that innovative citywide info-sharing on opportunities related to youth and families is crucial important for young people in the city. Everywhere we go we hear about youth and families simply being unaware of what's available (even for free) for supporting young people; we're learning more about related civic media projects underway at the Center for Civic Media at MIT [[xxxxx]]]. (They've been trying to make electronic signs outside of businesses, sharing bus information!) We're going to partner with CCM on finishing our hotline.

So, we now know a lot of people in the community who are interested in pieces of citywide info-sharing. We just haven't engaged them in a robust project to date because in the months since our first "citywide info sharing" meeting, our time and capacity got tapped into our other Working Groups.

==Questions To Ask if You want to Purue this Where You Live:==

To ask in any community:

''In this community, do most people know about resources, opportunities, and services available for youth and families?

''If not, what channels would help them get this information?

See also the [[toolkit created by the Knight Foundation]], which is further along on this, and the [Catraca Libre]] effort and other efforts at the [[Cente for Civic Media.]

Schoolwide communication toolkit

2011-09-17T04:42:58Z

68.107.118.212:

CUT THIS WHOLE PAGE, I THINK. IT'S AN EXTRA PAGE THAT IS A BARRIER TO ENTRY TO THE MAIN PAGE, WHICH IS THE PARENT CONNECTOR PAGE.

'''Ensuring that everyone in a school can partner in student success requires overcoming structural barriers to communication between the families who share a school, and the school!

With parents, teachers, staff, and administrators at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, we've been working toward a toolkit of tools and strategies for schoolwide communication that reaches all families across lines of language, income, background, and tech access/training.

'''We've decided to describe our full set of schoolwide communication efforts on the [[Parent Connector Network]] page, since that was the main outcome of our 2009-11 efforts. In that Network, all the work we had been doing for two years came together!

In that, we've been working on improving the "infrastructure" for low-cost translation and interpretation in a multilingual school. As Connectors, bilingual parents use phones, Google forms, and a hotline we made, to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families. A multilingual coffee hour is part of the infrastructure too!

We began this work by holding Reading Nights and parent dialogues at the Healey in 2009-10.

Overview and key findings: Texting for Rapid Youth Support

2011-09-17T01:40:44Z

68.107.118.212: /* Summary */

[[Image:sheliaphone.jpg|thumb|Shelia: the joy of a cell phone for communicating whenever]]

''Written by Mica Pollock, Uche Amaechi, Maureen Robichaux, and Ted O'Brien for the texting project, with input from students at Full Circle/Next Wave

''Who needs to communicate what info to whom, in order to support young people?

''Which barriers are in the way of such communication, and how might these barriers be overcome? Which media might help?

''How might basic tech help increase community cooperation in young people’s success, by supporting diverse students, teachers, parents, administrators, service providers, and other community members to share ideas, resources, and information and to build relationships?

==Summary==

'''(A bird’s eye view for the quick reader. We're addressing these questions:)

''a. What communication did we hope to improve, change, or create? Why?

''b. Main efforts, and concrete communication improvement(s). (Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? How did communication improve? What new support for young people may have become more possible?)

''c. Main realizations. (At this point, what's our main realization about improving communications in public education? (We'll say a few overall words in response to OneVille's research questions, above!)

---------
Over the 2010-11 school year, we worked with two teachers and 40 young people at Somerville’s alternative middle and high school to test texting as a tool for rapid youth support. All 40 students have chosen or been forced to leave Somerville’s mainstream schools and are vulnerable to dropout. They’re also awesome young people, and great research partners!

So far, we have all been testing private texting between teachers and students and secondarily, between students and eight graduate student mentors from the Harvard Graduate School of Education who helped us connect to the students to check in. We’re using Google Voice, a free service that records all of the texts in teachers’ inboxes. This allowed two researchers in the group (Uche and Mica) to review the texts (with students’ advance, overall permission), to see if texting was helpful to students and teachers. GoogleVoice also gives teachers a separate phone number, so they’re not using their personal phone.

'''Here’s our MAIN AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

In discussions throughout the year and in several focused data analysis meetings, student and teacher participants argued that texting had two key benefits: individualized, timely student support and the ability to strengthen student-teacher relationships. Students argued that texts were supporting them to come to school on time, complete homework, remain aware of requirements, and participate in afterschool activities. Texting teachers and students are also having more frequent, and deepening, conversations about school commitments and life struggles, both via text and then in person. Teachers and students said they were experiencing greater trust and strengthened relationship. In reviewing texts between students and university mentors, we have seen that afterschool supporters can also use texting to build stronger relationships with students and to communicate regularly about careers, jobs, and school persistence.

Most school districts are out to regulate and restrict texting and fear student-teacher texting as somehow inappropriate. We’ve seen that texting can simply extend relationship-building and student support outside of school hours.
But this raises several overall questions for public schools. One: adults’ time. If gluing a relationship together outside of the school day helps young people do better in school, is it “worth” teachers’ time? Two: Where do the school walls end? If a teacher supports young people’s school success through wakeup texts or afterschool reminders, is this an appropriate reach into the home or out of the classroom? Three: appropriate student-teacher relationships. If good teaching requires real relationships between students and teachers – a form of friendship with role boundaries-- how can they communicate via today’s most “friendly” media but still within age- and role-appropriate bounds of partnership? It may be that we need to redefine “appropriate” student-teacher relationships in the digital age: as Shelia, age 17, put it in this pilot, texting definitely put students and teachers more “on the same level.” Texting was definitely a “youth medium” when we started, but it may not be for long!

In Phase 1, we’ve seen student-teacher texting after and before school take off successfully with middle and high school youth. In the fall, we plan to test ways to enable youth and a "team" of their chosen supporters (including afterschool providers, peers, and family members) to communicate about any topic via rapid group texting.

We’ve augmented Google Voice with group texting software made with the Twilio API, to afford teacher-whole class messaging. (With regular Google Voice, you can only text 5 people at a time). Before we work to create any other open source texting tools, we’re going to see if group texting even works for people: we’ll use xxx, a software that xxx. So, in fall 2011, we’ll continue teacher-student texting and start teacher-full class texting with GoogleVoice, and we’ll all test group texting between chosen “teams” of supporters around individual youth. We’ll see how and if multiple supporters take the opportunity for rapid communications about students’ personal needs.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

'''A bit more. What aspect of existing communication did we hope to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success?
------
In the texting pilot, we wanted to enable supporters in each young person’s life to communicate rapidly with the young person about how he/she was doing personally and academically, and what supports might enable his/her success (from both the students' and stakeholders' perspectives). Our vision was to support an entire “team” in rapid communication. When we decided to try texting as a rapid communication tool, we started with student-teacher texting and planned to add in new “team” members over the year. We ended up finding student-teacher texting so fruitful that we stayed with it for the entire year. We’ll add next “team” members in fall 2011!

There is often a gap in such rapid support communications in schools. People don’t always have time to meet face to face to discuss students’ needs and experiences. Increasingly, people don’t have (or answer!) home phones. Often, teachers don’t know how youth are doing outside of school and other supporters are unaware of how youth are doing in school. Many students at risk of dropping out are absent from school quite a lot. All this in an era when technology could make rapid communication with young people more normal than ever in schools!

It is cell phones that are with us all day, and keep us connected and available. Texting and other mobile text based communications give people even more control over when and where they communicate. In theory, people can review and respond to texts at their leisure--in the evening from home, or over the weekend after sports practice. They can fit communications to their schedules. At the same time, a text is particularly hard to ignore, and responses to texts often arrive in seconds -- which is why in summer 2010, Somerville students told us to try texting for rapid youth support.

==Process: How did the project change and grow over time?==

'''How we realized and redirected things. Two sections, one short and the second long:
------

[[Image:textingteachersteam.jpg|thumb|Mo and Ted, texting teacher pioneers, with Uche and Mica. . .and donuts]]

===Basic History===

''The groundwork needed to support the current work.
-------
Design based research is usually about proceeding in very clear “stages” to test something. Our work proceeded in stages but in a more rolling manner over two years, based on ongoing reactions to students’ and teachers’ ideas, interests and efforts.

Throughout, we kept our core questions constant. Who needs to share which information with whom, to support a young person? What are the barriers to that communication, and how might those be overcome? And we came to ask: how might texting support needed communications?

We started working on a tech strategy for ongoing youth support in a OneVille-organized afterschool club involving 4th-6th graders at the K-8 Healey School in 2009-10, and then in Somerville’s summer school 2010, with two high school classes of SHS teacher Sabrina Trinca.

In both cases, we learned that media was inherently attractive to youth but it wasn’t attractive enough to use if it wasn’t social enough yet! Students in the afterschool club wanted to go on Wee World (http://www.weeworld.com/) to check in generally with all their local and online friends, instead of use our private social network to talk about school. So, we realized that students were used to rapid personal support communications, but that it would be difficult to form a new social network for these (what we came to call a “separate place to go”) without a critical mass of interested members. (One successful exception: students were immediately interested in creating “vlogs,” where students spoke into a Flip camera or iPhone video to an intended audience of teachers and administrators about strategies that supported their learning in class. Students immediately grabbed the chance to speak, even though we didn’t have people lined up to watch! [LINK TO VIDEO HERE!]). This thread took off later in the ePortfolio project, where SHS teachers and students realized that certain types of questions about students’ learning styles and interests could get students “flowing” in typing about their learning online.)

In summer school 2010, we again tried supporting young people to communicate with each other via a new private social network. Where the previous network was created for a loosely connected group of mixed grade students in a new afterschool club, this network was created for two summer school classrooms with the explicit purpose of helping the teacher communicate with students daily for six weeks about class and homework. Still, the “separate place to go” didn’t work: there still wasn’t enough reason to “go there”! Because the network was computer based, some of the students--who didn’t have computers or internet access--were limited in their ability to connect outside of class time. But beyond this technical obstacle, many of the students also expressed limited interest in interacting with the teacher or peers on class topics via a computer, even when available. There simply weren’t enough compelling online school activities yet to draw them naturally to a separate online site. (Again, the eportfolio project may solve this chicken and egg problem by prompting lots of online assignments, leading students to go online for work and conversations.)

We decided to spend time talking to Trinca’s students about the overall support communications they had normally and how those communications could be improved. We found that:

1) Students focused on connecting with people that they felt close to, regardless of whether those people were “best” placed to provide them with resources and/or help. One student looked for help from his teacher from the previous year on history assignments instead of seeking out his current history teacher, simply because he connected with the previous year’s teacher better.

2) Besides parents, guardians, peers, and key school personnel, students valued connecting (virtually or not) with “older buddies,” near peer mentor-like figures that would advise them on matters both personal and academic.

3) Students told us that they used different technologies to interact with different people. For example, they might talk to their parents over the phone, hang out most with their best friend in real life (what some people today call “IRL”!) and text message with individual friends or classmates.

'''Uche: ADD GRAPHIC HERE FROM THE SURVEYMONKEY

Also, the students said they preferred texting, phone, and talking in person over other methods such as email, IM, and even Facebook--even though many of them had Facebook accounts. Students told us that texting was the best way for anyone, including teachers, to reach them rapidly and a natural way for them to communicate back. The students initially expressed skepticism at interacting with teachers over text, because it was what they typically used with friends. But in the end, they agreed that it was the most reliable way to contact them. So we decided to try assembling texting “teams” around kids one member by one, by starting with student-teacher texting.

A big aha came from a first fumble: at one administrator’s advice, we first asked a “cluster” of teachers at Somerville High if they wanted to work with us to test texting. (Some of these teachers would go on to be key leaders of the ePortfolio project!) The teachers worried that the use of texting between students and teachers might break a longstanding and to them, necessary boundary between the formal/academic classroom sphere and each group’s private, informal social lives. The teachers also thought that using texting to remind students of events, help them with homework, and other transactional uses could result in “babying” the students. These were high school students, they argued, and as such should not need or be given such basic assistance. They also worried about supporting poor grammar and inappropriate language in texts.

We then called Mr. Willey, principal at FC/NW, who had already told us months earlier that he had major trouble reaching his youth’s parents and supporters and at times, youth themselves. He agreed immediately that young people seemed more likely to pick up texts than any other form of communication. He invited us to come in and talk to his teachers, and Mica and Uche gave a basic presentation in early fall 2010 where we discussed what students had said about texting as a key channel for youth support. One of the teachers around the table was Ted. “When can we start?” Ted asked. He and Mo, respectively high school and middle school teachers at Full Circle/Next Wave, were excited to try it out, and we began.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA/TURNING POINT: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

Rather than assemble entire texting “teams” for each student, we decided to start with private student-teacher communication. Uche set Mo and Ted up with Google Voice (see “Technical How-To’s” below). In January 2011, Mo and Ted and Uche/Mica held an open meeting with all of their students to see who would be interested. We brainstormed ground rules (e.g., don’t expect a text back before 7 a.m. and after 10 p.m.; no inappropriate language; no sharing of anyone else’s business), gave students the teachers’ new GoogleVoice numbers, invited students to share their numbers with teachers, and invited them all to text whenever they wanted. GoogleVoice recorded all of the texts for the teachers and allowed them to type from their computers (Mo and Ted still mostly used their phones). Young people received texts on their phones.

Note: Unlike in our ePortfolio pilot, where the goal was to create ePortfolios that would succeed and stick, we decided in this case not to “make sure texting works, by doing whatever is necessary to make it work.” Instead, we wanted to explore how teachers and students would use (or NOT use) texting in youth support, if they were just explicitly invited to text for school-related communication. We also wanted to know if some series of communications made a young person more connected to school or more successful academically.

Some students already texted teachers at the school (“If I'm having problems at home I text Maureen, or Maryanne or Edith,” one student told us; she did this rather than have her own parents “"know her business."). Some had never texted teachers before and found the idea weird. Texting to them felt like something you did with friends or relatives. But as students would tell us later in June, there were two kinds of texting relationships with teachers that felt OK – businessy ones for school related things you had to get done, and more revealing personal texts sent to people you really trusted.

So, in a nutshell, we offered the channel and waited to see what everyone would do with it. We didn’t push any particular use of the texting, but instead kept talking about actual uses. Mo, Ted, and the students became a research team with Uche, Mica, and the HGSE students, together exploring the use of texting in rapid youth support. We put our Ford support resources into stipending teachers $25/hr (2 hrs/week max) for their time piloting the tool and analyzing data, paying kids back with food and $25/each for a formal ‘research day,’ and supporting Uche to coordinate the pilot. For course credit, HGSE students checked in on the students and acted as anytime mentors for young people who wanted to share questions or thoughts via texts. We also agreed to line up tutors or mentors for anyone who wanted one and did for several students—though as we mention later, logistics and low interests later fizzled that plan.

We held regular conversations with students and teachers to analyze how the texting was going for them. Eight HGSE students informally interviewed the FC/NW students a few times a month, over donuts at the school; Uche and Mica talked with Ted and Mo, Uche texted regularly with Ted and Mo himself, and Mica took a “team” of students on as a texting partner. Everyone was invited to analyze the texting conversations together in two research events, the first held at Harvard and the second held at the FC/NW building.

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

''Over the course of the project, we had the following communication and implementation ahas, and project turning points. Learn the story and see all the data at:[[Texting/ahas]]

Here were our main ahas:

:'''1 AHA: Texting works when you can’t reach young people any other way for time-sensitive information.
:'''2 AHA: Texting helps when students don’t have home phones or literally aren’t in school.
:'''3 AHA: Texting can support communication about a wide variety of school issues.
:'''4 AHA: We began to see that students and teachers can build personal relationships via text.
:'''5 AHA: Fundamental academic support, personal support, and light banter can occur in the same conversation.
:'''6 AHA: Texting can build a relationship for school even if you are not talking about school.
:'''7 AHA: Texting didn’t supplant face to face conversation. Often, the text was really just a portal to a more informed face to face conversation.
:'''8 AHA: As relationships grow, they are documented in texts!
:'''9 AHA: Normalizing texting as something students and teachers can do makes it easier to strike up a relationship with a young person.
:'''10 AHA: The style of texts can put students and teachers “on the same level.”
:'''11 AHA: The many emotions possible via text can give students and teachers a range of ways to share their feelings.
:'''12 AHA: Politeness and respect while texting! Concerns about students being “inappropriate” with the channel may be overblown.
:'''13 AHA: Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring because they demonstrated effort by both students and teachers to respond to the other.
:'''14 AHA: Texting’s time commitment shows caring and builds relationship. But it also -- takes time!
:'''15 AHA: Of course, if your support network uses your phone to reach you, you need a phone.
:'''16 AHA: In our brief test of texting between HGSE students and the FC/NW students, we began to see that texting can support ongoing career mentoring, too.
:'''17 AHA: Finally, face to face mentoring meetings can be really hard to schedule, making texting even more sensible.

[[Image:textingresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Students and teachers analyzing (anonymized) examples of student-teacher texts: Research Day at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, April 2011]]

[[Image:Textingjuneresearchday.jpeg|thumb|Teachers and students analyzing texting again in June 2011.]]

==Findings/Endpoints==

'''Here's where we describe final outcomes and share examples of final products, with discussion! Three sections below:

===Concrete communication improvements===

''What is the main communication improvement we made? What new support for young people may have resulted?
-------
We have successfully supported a pilot of student-teacher texting and have dozens of students and more teachers excited about continuing. The principal is interested in exploring texting with more of his teachers. And both students and teachers say that we’ve all demonstrated that texting is a possible tool for serious school support that mixes personal support, academic support, and everyday banter. We’re all set to test group texting among “teams” of students’ chosen supporters this fall.

===Main communication realizations and implementation realizations===

''At this point, what are our main realizations about improving communications in public education? (Here are our main thoughts on [[OneVille’s research questions]].)

''What big changes would we recommend re. improving the “communication infrastructure” of public education, so that more people can collaborate in student success?)

''What’s the main thing we’d recommend to other communities or schools implementing similar innovations? (What would we expand or do differently were we to do this again?)

-------
We want to repeat two core “ahas” we stated earlier:

'''Here’s our MAIN COMMUNICATION AHA: texting can provide anytime, anywhere, rapid youth support and also glue together student-teacher relationships re. academics and school. The practical benefits of being able to reach people for check-ins and questions go hand in hand with the ability to build relationships outside the school day.

'''MAJOR IMPLEMENTATION AHA: go with those who are excited. In terms of motivation, it’s crucial to work with people who really want to communicate in a particular way! They are most likely to innovate the new piece of communication infrastructure.

We have realized so far that texting is a very natural and important channel not only for check-ins and updates not possible during the school day, but for a key, perhaps ultimate support: building a relationship between student and teacher or adult mentor.

Texting of course can’t replace other needed youth supports. But it can definitely help. At our April Research Day at Harvard, students noted that texts could get a student to come in on time; to focus on his classes; even to care. Obens summed it up, arguing for “continuing” the texting the following year: “it shows connection. It’s really helpful --- it gets you like focused in school. It puts your mind on something and gets you focused. I’m passing (Ted’s) class – it gets you focused on this schoolwork. Like when Ted told me [via text] that I gotta come to school on time, get some reading credits – I started pushing myself, getting credits. That really helps.”

Later in the school year, Obens would point out that texting got him to school, but couldn’t keep him focused in class – that was his next frontier for self-improvement. One student made clear that student-teacher texting was a start, but linking in other people in her life was crucial too: “She has been building a better relationship w/ Ted via texting. Dad doesn't have a phone, she says, and she doesn't want Ted texting him. Dad doesn't text, but she does seem to lean on him for some support. Girlfriends not helpful to her for graduation she says. She doesn't know how to apply to college, either. No guidance counselor??” To support students fully, it often felt necessary to tell person A about an issue facing person B. As Mica wrote to herself in February after a group conversation that followed texts with several individual girls, “note: several times in this conversation I felt the need to tell others in the school, things that I was texting about w/ an individual kid, so that others could be pulled in for the collective support.”

So, our next step is still to test texting “teams.” (see below!)

===Next Steps===

''What do we plan to do next?
-------------------
The principal is interested in expanding teams to include other current and former teachers within the school. While many teachers still didn’t know how to use a cell phone, some were newly starting to text. We joked that maybe the principal himself would start using our texting “blast” to message his entire staff!

The principal felt that for some students, a parent would be problematic to have on a “team”; for others, it could be helpful. Interns there briefly, then gone after a while, would be less useful on a team, he thought.

When we asked students who they’d want on their “teams,” young people suggested a range of people, from parents to best friends to inspiring older buddies who were “making it” in work and school (one student mentioned such a “get it done person” cousin who was a role model). Some wanted adults who had inspired them at summer jobs, or counselors or teachers also at the school. While we’d love to get local youth workers on students’ “teams” so they too can learn first hand the potential of texting for rapid youth support, we’ve learned by now that you can’t just add people in and start texting. Real relationship building gets texting started and texting takes the relationship further. So, we’re going to go with youth-constructed teams as planned and we’ll see where they take it.

''Next COMMUNICATION QUESTION: Is the private and personal nature of communication via one-to-one text a key to its use for rapid student support? If so, can a group text together for youth support, or not?

Throughout the pilot, one-to-one texting continued to feel particularly private -- which was, perhaps, why so much relationship-building was possible over it. So can a “team” use texting to communicate rapidly about student support, or will the “group” communication make texting less desirable? Which communications should be private, which public to a “team”? And who should be in a texting “team”? As one student said, she was now up for texting teachers but not for having her mom aware of her school related “business.” As Ted put it, “which communications should go to parents? Which to kids? which to both? He wants to honor the kids’ sense of privacy.”

'''This will remain our core inquiry in Phase 2 as we move forward to test “team” texting. Who needs to share which information with whom on the “team,” and can a group texting tool support a complex “team” conversation?

Again, we’ll offer youth and “team” the channel and learn together what they do with it!

===Technological how-tos===

''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-----
SETH AND UCHE ADD HERE

Setting up Google Voice (screen shots, etc.!) IT'D BE COOLEST IF TED OR MO DESCRIBED THIS, FROM A TEACHER'S PERSPECTIVE. MAYBE THEY/UCHE COULD DO A POWERPOINT WITH A VOICEOVER?

Google Voice: Google Voice is a free web based phone and text messaging service provided by Google. With Google Voice, teachers can view and send texts from a computer without incurring texting charges. Teachers can also view texts arranged by student or time, and easily search through their history of texts. Teachers can also choose to have the service forward any texts received to their phones’ regular text messaging accounts. Or, they can check those messages directly on their phones via smartphone apps.

Google Voice also provides a separate phone number that teachers can give out to students. The use of a separate number helps preserve the privacy of teachers’ personal phone numbers. This separate number, coupled with some of the service’s advanced features, such as number blocking, provide the teacher with an added sense of privacy and security. Finally, we chose the Google Voice service because it allowed multiple people—teacher and researchers—access to the same account, providing a general transparency and accountability and allowing Uche and Mica as researchers to review the teachers’ text communications by agreement.

The simplest add on to Google Voice so far was to create a one to many “blast” that the teachers could use to message their entire class. (SETH EXPLAIN HERE?)

Using the Twilio API, Seth then created a many to many group “chat” tool that we came over time to call a “reply to all” tool. Technologically, it was hard for Seth to quickly create a tool where people could choose to text some in the “team” but not others. A student already noted that getting your own text back in group chat felt a bit weird. Kinks to be worked out! In the meantime, before we seriously tweak an open source version, we’ll test xxx software just to see if group texting even works in personal terms!

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===

''If you wanted to replicate any of this, what would you need to think about? Contact us to learn/talk more!
-------------
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you want to tackle similar things in your school:

:-In your school, when students have personal questions or needs, are there ways for them to rapidly reach their supporters?

:-Could texting help with rapid youth support? What are your reservations about texting, and how might these be addressed?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T01:39:56Z

68.107.118.212: /* Our work, and our AHAs */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto for the Parent Connector project, with input from parents across the Healey School and Jedd Cohen

[[Image:Gina.jpg|thumb|Gina, Connector to Haitian Creole speaking parents]]

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?''' (''For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?'')
-------
Ensuring that everyone in a school can partner in student success requires overcoming structural barriers to communication between the families who share a school, and the school! With parents, teachers, staff, and administrators at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, we've been working toward a toolkit of tools and strategies for schoolwide communication that reaches all families across lines of language, income, background, and tech access/training.

The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of this overall Working Group exploring schoolwide communication at the Healey. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and mixed-income school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff. Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in the loop of school information and input. We focused on creating the infrastructure of a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

Begun in Winter 2010, the Parent Connector Network is now a parent-led effort (in partnership with school administrators and staff) to support translation and parent-school relationships, by connecting bilingual parents (“Connectors”) to more recently immigrated parents via a phone tree. The Connectors have come to also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (One Connector also got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

We also innovated the role of volunteer “Translators of the Month” who can help translate school information for a hotline made by local technologists. That translated material can then be used for other school media (listserv, handouts, flyers, etc.).

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role (five paid hours!) for one staff Connector so that she can respond appropriately to serious or ongoing parent needs -- beyond what a volunteer parent can or should do. She also will help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters. We’re piloting the full combination in 2011-12.

In sum, this past year the Connectors have become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed completely [[here]]. These diagrams show that it takes real organization to ensure that communication works with multilingual families.

Our main ahas:

'''AHA: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

'''AHA: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers. )

'''AHA: In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

'''AHA: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. We've decided to describe our full set of schoolwide communication efforts on this Parent Connector Network page, since that was the main outcome of our 2009-11 efforts. In that Network, all the work we had been doing for two years came together! Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections. Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

So, throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. Robocalls home go in four languages; handouts home often don't. For many, parent teacher conferences require interpreters, and scheduling those interpreters itself is a structural communication need. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher in person.

In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher. Many such families also are on committees that meet after school and so, take the opportunity then to contribute ideas to the school. Over the years, we saw that families who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded many Healey parents from full participation, the Parent Connector Network has focused on reaching out to parents who speak the district's 3 main languages other than English: Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents, in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

'''AHA: Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?
-------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;
2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections.

Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11 as part of the Parent Connector Network infrastructure. We learned a huge amount in that work and we built relationships that enabled the development of the Parent Connector Network. Click [[here]] for that backstory!

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. These include the following. To read the full story that gave us these ahas, click [[here!]]

''First, READING NIGHT AHAS:

'''AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.

''AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

''Second, MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR AHAS:

'''AHA: The massive local resource of parent bilingualism!

'''AHA: making parent gatherings explicitly multilingual encourages speakers of languages other than English to ask questions and offer opinions.

''Next, PARENT-PARENT ISSUE DIALOGUE AHAS:

'''AHA: Many parents have few or no opportunities to talk to each other or to decisionmakers in organized settings, about major issues in their school. This means that their ideas and energy for improvement go untapped.

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

'''TURNING POINT: With the Healey in the midst of brainstorming all sorts of changes to its everyday structures, we parents focused for 2010-11 on improving infrastructure for schoolwide communication -- and on including immigrant parents in particular.

''finally, PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK AHAS:

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

'''AHA: To build trusting relationships, consider connecting parents to specific groups of other parents -- and when possible, build on the social relationships parents already have!

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

'''AHA: better systems are needed to get parents’ contact numbers to other parents! Otherwise, parent partnerships can’t easily happen.

'''AHA: Privacy and trust are key issues to be navigated carefully in broadening school-home communications. But, issues of privacy do mean that at times, it takes much longer for people to partner than they would otherwise. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

'''AHA: volunteers need communication infrastructure themselves, in order to make their own work easier. But it can’t be too techy or some volunteers will get turned off!

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

'''AHA: Innovate forms of communication that will reach the highest number of parents most quickly with ongoing resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In our case, we’re trying a hotline that allows people not on the internet, to call in for information. Meanwhile, we’ll train people on email so they can join the school listserv!

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

'''AHA: A key need in public information-sharing is TRIAGING information so it’s not overwhelming. Another is ORGANIZING the information that goes out, so that others can quickly digest it. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

'''AHA: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls this fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, Gina, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school five hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[here]].

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped the principal make her a fall parent communication form that will help parents sign up to get a Connector, make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers, and allow parents to record their preferences for contact (texting? listserv? classroom listserv?) and indicate whether they need email training. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. The Connectors themselves have become seen as a key local resource, as people willing to be on call to answer other parents' questions in their language and to (monthly) share information that requires more explanation.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals?

We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff. So, in our case, we isolated an aspect of the infrastructure that volunteers couldn’t cover and argued that a bilingual staff member be employed part-time to cover it. We reasoned that volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their children or legal assistance for their families; paid staff in any district should be on top of such “case management.” But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.So, the task for the coming fall will be to figure out how and whether a very part-time liaison role serves the purpose.

Further, in a multilingual community where not everyone uses computers, some lack access to information because of translation gaps and some because of a gap in basic tech knowledge. We learned early on in our work in Somerville that the problem is not necessarily one of computer access (the nearby housing project has many computers) as much as one of training. Even English-speaking parents in the school’s magnet program didn't know how to get on its listserv. Now that the school’s programs have merged and the school is creating a schoolwide listerv, these issues will rise to the fore. And having people equally speak up on the common listserv, in whatever language, will be the next frontier of parent inclusion!

In Winter 2011, we attempted to hold a "get an Email" night at the Healey, but it wasn't well attended; this crucial puzzle piece needs further development and is one focus for fall. Ironically, if there isn't a good multilingual communication infrastructure, it's hard to get people out for any face to face email training event! This is what we mean when we say each infrastructure “component” is connected – and has to be fueled by an overall commitment to including all parents. Combining the Connector network with email training by the PTA may be a good solution, especially as the school goes from having a listserv only for the magnet program to a listserv for all. Especially in a community where there are many community-oriented technologists, there's really no reason why everyone eventually shouldn't have basic tech skills. And why not employ PTA parent-power for email training too? See Computer Infrastructure.

'''Our next step this fall is to to pilot the full infrastructure we’ve developed for multilingual communication, while adding in a next piece: PTA-run parent email/listserv training. We plan to:

:a) pilot use of our open source hotline, to support bilingual parent “Translators of the Month” to translate information about events, issues, and opportunities;
:b) finish testing our Parent Connector Network, in which bilingual parents make monthly calls to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families; Connectors will also invite parents to our Multilingual Coffee hour and to the hotline;
:c) test a model where a Parent Liaison follows up on specific parent needs, helps with scheduling interpreters, and coordinates Translators of the Month for the hotline;
:d) help create a sustainable model where the PTA trains parents to get Gmail accounts, use a school listserv, and use Google Translate to translate listserv information.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===
''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!
-------

Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:
:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?
:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?
:-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?
:-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?
:-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?
:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation? Would a Connector-like project work at your school?
:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?
:-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?
:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 5 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-------

We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts.
We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.
As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?
We used Google Translate for some first-pass translations, but bilingual parents still had to correct the translations: http://translate.google.com/support/ (Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: POST Regina’s sheet here??. Remember that in our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth, so he explains the programming [[here]. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see photo! Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, Seth finished the hotline so that people could call it and record to it. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T01:38:19Z

68.107.118.212: /* Summary */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto for the Parent Connector project, with input from parents across the Healey School and Jedd Cohen

[[Image:Gina.jpg|thumb|Gina, Connector to Haitian Creole speaking parents]]

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?''' (''For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?'')
-------
Ensuring that everyone in a school can partner in student success requires overcoming structural barriers to communication between the families who share a school, and the school! With parents, teachers, staff, and administrators at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, we've been working toward a toolkit of tools and strategies for schoolwide communication that reaches all families across lines of language, income, background, and tech access/training.

The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of this overall Working Group exploring schoolwide communication at the Healey. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and mixed-income school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff. Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in the loop of school information and input. We focused on creating the infrastructure of a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

Begun in Winter 2010, the Parent Connector Network is now a parent-led effort (in partnership with school administrators and staff) to support translation and parent-school relationships, by connecting bilingual parents (“Connectors”) to more recently immigrated parents via a phone tree. The Connectors have come to also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (One Connector also got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

We also innovated the role of volunteer “Translators of the Month” who can help translate school information for a hotline made by local technologists. That translated material can then be used for other school media (listserv, handouts, flyers, etc.).

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role (five paid hours!) for one staff Connector so that she can respond appropriately to serious or ongoing parent needs -- beyond what a volunteer parent can or should do. She also will help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters. We’re piloting the full combination in 2011-12.

In sum, this past year the Connectors have become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed completely [[here]]. These diagrams show that it takes real organization to ensure that communication works with multilingual families.

Our main ahas:

'''AHA: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

'''AHA: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers. )

'''AHA: In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

'''AHA: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. We've decided to describe our full set of schoolwide communication efforts on this Parent Connector Network page, since that was the main outcome of our 2009-11 efforts. In that Network, all the work we had been doing for two years came together! Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections. Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

So, throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. Robocalls home go in four languages; handouts home often don't. For many, parent teacher conferences require interpreters, and scheduling those interpreters itself is a structural communication need. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher in person.

In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher. Many such families also are on committees that meet after school and so, take the opportunity then to contribute ideas to the school. Over the years, we saw that families who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded many Healey parents from full participation, the Parent Connector Network has focused on reaching out to parents who speak the district's 3 main languages other than English: Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents, in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

'''AHA: Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?
-------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;
2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections.

Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11 as part of the Parent Connector Network infrastructure. We learned a huge amount in that work and we built relationships that enabled the development of the Parent Connector Network. Click [[here]] for that backstory!

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. These include the following. To read the full story that gave us these ahas, click [[here!]]

''READING NIGHT AHAS:

'''AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.

''AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

''MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR AHAS:

'''AHA: The massive local resource of parent bilingualism!

''PARENT-PARENT ISSUE DIALOGUE AHAS:

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

'''TURNING POINT: With the Healey in the midst of brainstorming all sorts of changes to its everyday structures, we parents focused for 2010-11 on improving infrastructure for schoolwide communication -- and on including immigrant parents in particular.

''PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK AHAS:

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

'''AHA: To build trusting relationships, consider connecting parents to specific groups of other parents -- and when possible, build on the social relationships parents already have!

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

'''AHA: better systems are needed to get parents’ contact numbers to other parents! Otherwise, parent partnerships can’t easily happen.

'''AHA: Privacy and trust are key issues to be navigated carefully in broadening school-home communications. But, issues of privacy do mean that at times, it takes much longer for people to partner than they would otherwise. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

'''AHA: volunteers need communication infrastructure themselves, in order to make their own work easier. But it can’t be too techy or some volunteers will get turned off!

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

'''AHA: Innovate forms of communication that will reach the highest number of parents most quickly with ongoing resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In our case, we’re trying a hotline that allows people not on the internet, to call in for information. Meanwhile, we’ll train people on email so they can join the school listserv!

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

'''AHA: A key need in public information-sharing is TRIAGING information so it’s not overwhelming. Another is ORGANIZING the information that goes out, so that others can quickly digest it. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

'''AHA: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls this fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, Gina, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school five hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[here]].

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped the principal make her a fall parent communication form that will help parents sign up to get a Connector, make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers, and allow parents to record their preferences for contact (texting? listserv? classroom listserv?) and indicate whether they need email training. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. The Connectors themselves have become seen as a key local resource, as people willing to be on call to answer other parents' questions in their language and to (monthly) share information that requires more explanation.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals?

We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff. So, in our case, we isolated an aspect of the infrastructure that volunteers couldn’t cover and argued that a bilingual staff member be employed part-time to cover it. We reasoned that volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their children or legal assistance for their families; paid staff in any district should be on top of such “case management.” But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.So, the task for the coming fall will be to figure out how and whether a very part-time liaison role serves the purpose.

Further, in a multilingual community where not everyone uses computers, some lack access to information because of translation gaps and some because of a gap in basic tech knowledge. We learned early on in our work in Somerville that the problem is not necessarily one of computer access (the nearby housing project has many computers) as much as one of training. Even English-speaking parents in the school’s magnet program didn't know how to get on its listserv. Now that the school’s programs have merged and the school is creating a schoolwide listerv, these issues will rise to the fore. And having people equally speak up on the common listserv, in whatever language, will be the next frontier of parent inclusion!

In Winter 2011, we attempted to hold a "get an Email" night at the Healey, but it wasn't well attended; this crucial puzzle piece needs further development and is one focus for fall. Ironically, if there isn't a good multilingual communication infrastructure, it's hard to get people out for any face to face email training event! This is what we mean when we say each infrastructure “component” is connected – and has to be fueled by an overall commitment to including all parents. Combining the Connector network with email training by the PTA may be a good solution, especially as the school goes from having a listserv only for the magnet program to a listserv for all. Especially in a community where there are many community-oriented technologists, there's really no reason why everyone eventually shouldn't have basic tech skills. And why not employ PTA parent-power for email training too? See Computer Infrastructure.

'''Our next step this fall is to to pilot the full infrastructure we’ve developed for multilingual communication, while adding in a next piece: PTA-run parent email/listserv training. We plan to:

:a) pilot use of our open source hotline, to support bilingual parent “Translators of the Month” to translate information about events, issues, and opportunities;
:b) finish testing our Parent Connector Network, in which bilingual parents make monthly calls to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families; Connectors will also invite parents to our Multilingual Coffee hour and to the hotline;
:c) test a model where a Parent Liaison follows up on specific parent needs, helps with scheduling interpreters, and coordinates Translators of the Month for the hotline;
:d) help create a sustainable model where the PTA trains parents to get Gmail accounts, use a school listserv, and use Google Translate to translate listserv information.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===
''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!
-------

Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:
:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?
:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?
:-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?
:-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?
:-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?
:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation? Would a Connector-like project work at your school?
:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?
:-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?
:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 5 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-------

We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts.
We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.
As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?
We used Google Translate for some first-pass translations, but bilingual parents still had to correct the translations: http://translate.google.com/support/ (Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: POST Regina’s sheet here??. Remember that in our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth, so he explains the programming [[here]. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see photo! Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, Seth finished the hotline so that people could call it and record to it. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T01:37:57Z

68.107.118.212: /* Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points! */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto for the Parent Connector project, with input from parents across the Healey School and Jedd Cohen

[[Image:Gina.jpg|thumb|Gina, Connector to Haitian Creole speaking parents]]

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?''' (''For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?'')
-------
Ensuring that everyone in a school can partner in student success requires overcoming structural barriers to communication between the families who share a school, and the school! With parents, teachers, staff, and administrators at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, we've been working toward a toolkit of tools and strategies for schoolwide communication that reaches all families across lines of language, income, background, and tech access/training.

The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of this overall Working Group exploring schoolwide communication at the Healey. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and mixed-income school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff. Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in the loop of school information and input. We focused on creating the infrastructure of a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

Begun in Winter 2010, the Parent Connector Network is now a parent-led effort (in partnership with school administrators and staff) to support translation and parent-school relationships, by connecting bilingual parents (“Connectors”) to more recently immigrated parents via a phone tree. The Connectors have come to also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (One Connector also got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

We also innovated the role of volunteer “Translators of the Month” who can help translate school information for a hotline made by local technologists. That translated material can then be used for other school media (listserv, handouts, flyers, etc.).

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role (five paid hours!) for one staff Connector so that she can respond appropriately to serious or ongoing parent needs -- beyond what a volunteer parent can or should do. She also will help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters. We’re piloting the full combination in 2011-12.

In sum, this past year the Connectors have become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed completely [[here]]. These diagrams show that it takes real organization to ensure that communication works with multilingual families.

Our main ahas:

'''AHA: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

'''AHA: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers. )

'''AHA: In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. We've decided to describe our full set of schoolwide communication efforts on this Parent Connector Network page, since that was the main outcome of our 2009-11 efforts. In that Network, all the work we had been doing for two years came together! Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections. Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

So, throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. Robocalls home go in four languages; handouts home often don't. For many, parent teacher conferences require interpreters, and scheduling those interpreters itself is a structural communication need. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher in person.

In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher. Many such families also are on committees that meet after school and so, take the opportunity then to contribute ideas to the school. Over the years, we saw that families who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded many Healey parents from full participation, the Parent Connector Network has focused on reaching out to parents who speak the district's 3 main languages other than English: Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents, in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

'''AHA: Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?
-------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;
2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections.

Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11 as part of the Parent Connector Network infrastructure. We learned a huge amount in that work and we built relationships that enabled the development of the Parent Connector Network. Click [[here]] for that backstory!

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. These include the following. To read the full story that gave us these ahas, click [[here!]]

''READING NIGHT AHAS:

'''AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.

''AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

''MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR AHAS:

'''AHA: The massive local resource of parent bilingualism!

''PARENT-PARENT ISSUE DIALOGUE AHAS:

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

'''TURNING POINT: With the Healey in the midst of brainstorming all sorts of changes to its everyday structures, we parents focused for 2010-11 on improving infrastructure for schoolwide communication -- and on including immigrant parents in particular.

''PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK AHAS:

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

'''AHA: To build trusting relationships, consider connecting parents to specific groups of other parents -- and when possible, build on the social relationships parents already have!

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

'''AHA: better systems are needed to get parents’ contact numbers to other parents! Otherwise, parent partnerships can’t easily happen.

'''AHA: Privacy and trust are key issues to be navigated carefully in broadening school-home communications. But, issues of privacy do mean that at times, it takes much longer for people to partner than they would otherwise. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

'''AHA: volunteers need communication infrastructure themselves, in order to make their own work easier. But it can’t be too techy or some volunteers will get turned off!

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

'''AHA: Innovate forms of communication that will reach the highest number of parents most quickly with ongoing resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In our case, we’re trying a hotline that allows people not on the internet, to call in for information. Meanwhile, we’ll train people on email so they can join the school listserv!

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

'''AHA: A key need in public information-sharing is TRIAGING information so it’s not overwhelming. Another is ORGANIZING the information that goes out, so that others can quickly digest it. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

'''AHA: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls this fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, Gina, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school five hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[here]].

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped the principal make her a fall parent communication form that will help parents sign up to get a Connector, make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers, and allow parents to record their preferences for contact (texting? listserv? classroom listserv?) and indicate whether they need email training. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. The Connectors themselves have become seen as a key local resource, as people willing to be on call to answer other parents' questions in their language and to (monthly) share information that requires more explanation.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals?

We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff. So, in our case, we isolated an aspect of the infrastructure that volunteers couldn’t cover and argued that a bilingual staff member be employed part-time to cover it. We reasoned that volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their children or legal assistance for their families; paid staff in any district should be on top of such “case management.” But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.So, the task for the coming fall will be to figure out how and whether a very part-time liaison role serves the purpose.

Further, in a multilingual community where not everyone uses computers, some lack access to information because of translation gaps and some because of a gap in basic tech knowledge. We learned early on in our work in Somerville that the problem is not necessarily one of computer access (the nearby housing project has many computers) as much as one of training. Even English-speaking parents in the school’s magnet program didn't know how to get on its listserv. Now that the school’s programs have merged and the school is creating a schoolwide listerv, these issues will rise to the fore. And having people equally speak up on the common listserv, in whatever language, will be the next frontier of parent inclusion!

In Winter 2011, we attempted to hold a "get an Email" night at the Healey, but it wasn't well attended; this crucial puzzle piece needs further development and is one focus for fall. Ironically, if there isn't a good multilingual communication infrastructure, it's hard to get people out for any face to face email training event! This is what we mean when we say each infrastructure “component” is connected – and has to be fueled by an overall commitment to including all parents. Combining the Connector network with email training by the PTA may be a good solution, especially as the school goes from having a listserv only for the magnet program to a listserv for all. Especially in a community where there are many community-oriented technologists, there's really no reason why everyone eventually shouldn't have basic tech skills. And why not employ PTA parent-power for email training too? See Computer Infrastructure.

'''Our next step this fall is to to pilot the full infrastructure we’ve developed for multilingual communication, while adding in a next piece: PTA-run parent email/listserv training. We plan to:

:a) pilot use of our open source hotline, to support bilingual parent “Translators of the Month” to translate information about events, issues, and opportunities;
:b) finish testing our Parent Connector Network, in which bilingual parents make monthly calls to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families; Connectors will also invite parents to our Multilingual Coffee hour and to the hotline;
:c) test a model where a Parent Liaison follows up on specific parent needs, helps with scheduling interpreters, and coordinates Translators of the Month for the hotline;
:d) help create a sustainable model where the PTA trains parents to get Gmail accounts, use a school listserv, and use Google Translate to translate listserv information.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===
''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!
-------

Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:
:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?
:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?
:-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?
:-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?
:-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?
:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation? Would a Connector-like project work at your school?
:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?
:-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?
:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 5 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-------

We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts.
We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.
As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?
We used Google Translate for some first-pass translations, but bilingual parents still had to correct the translations: http://translate.google.com/support/ (Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: POST Regina’s sheet here??. Remember that in our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth, so he explains the programming [[here]. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see photo! Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, Seth finished the hotline so that people could call it and record to it. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T01:33:09Z

68.107.118.212: /* Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points! */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto for the Parent Connector project, with input from parents across the Healey School and Jedd Cohen

[[Image:Gina.jpg|thumb|Gina, Connector to Haitian Creole speaking parents]]

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?''' (''For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?'')
-------
Ensuring that everyone in a school can partner in student success requires overcoming structural barriers to communication between the families who share a school, and the school! With parents, teachers, staff, and administrators at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, we've been working toward a toolkit of tools and strategies for schoolwide communication that reaches all families across lines of language, income, background, and tech access/training.

The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of this overall Working Group exploring schoolwide communication at the Healey. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and mixed-income school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff. Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in the loop of school information and input. We focused on creating the infrastructure of a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

Begun in Winter 2010, the Parent Connector Network is now a parent-led effort (in partnership with school administrators and staff) to support translation and parent-school relationships, by connecting bilingual parents (“Connectors”) to more recently immigrated parents via a phone tree. The Connectors have come to also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (One Connector also got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

We also innovated the role of volunteer “Translators of the Month” who can help translate school information for a hotline made by local technologists. That translated material can then be used for other school media (listserv, handouts, flyers, etc.).

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role (five paid hours!) for one staff Connector so that she can respond appropriately to serious or ongoing parent needs -- beyond what a volunteer parent can or should do. She also will help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters. We’re piloting the full combination in 2011-12.

In sum, this past year the Connectors have become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed completely [[here]]. These diagrams show that it takes real organization to ensure that communication works with multilingual families.

Our main ahas:

'''AHA: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

'''AHA: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers. )

'''AHA: In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. We've decided to describe our full set of schoolwide communication efforts on this Parent Connector Network page, since that was the main outcome of our 2009-11 efforts. In that Network, all the work we had been doing for two years came together! Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections. Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

So, throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. Robocalls home go in four languages; handouts home often don't. For many, parent teacher conferences require interpreters, and scheduling those interpreters itself is a structural communication need. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher in person.

In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher. Many such families also are on committees that meet after school and so, take the opportunity then to contribute ideas to the school. Over the years, we saw that families who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded many Healey parents from full participation, the Parent Connector Network has focused on reaching out to parents who speak the district's 3 main languages other than English: Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents, in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

'''AHA: Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?
-------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;
2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections.

Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11 as part of the Parent Connector Network infrastructure. We learned a huge amount in that work and we built relationships that enabled the development of the Parent Connector Network. Click [[here]] for that backstory!

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. These include the following. To read the full story that gave us these ahas, click [[here!]]

''READING NIGHT AHAS:

'''AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

'''AHA: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.

''AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

''MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR AHAS:

'''AHA: The massive local resource of parent bilingualism!

''PARENT-PARENT ISSUE DIALOGUE AHAS:

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

'''TURNING POINT: With the Healey in the midst of brainstorming all sorts of changes to its everyday structures, we parents focused for 2010-11 on improving infrastructure for schoolwide communication -- and on including immigrant parents in particular.

''PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK AHAS:

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

'''AHA: To build trusting relationships, consider connecting parents to specific groups of other parents -- and when possible, build on the social relationships parents already have!

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

'''AHA: better systems are needed to get parents’ contact numbers to other parents! Otherwise, parent partnerships can’t easily happen.

'''AHA: Privacy and trust are key issues to be navigated carefully in broadening school-home communications. But, issues of privacy do mean that at times, it takes much longer for people to partner than they would otherwise. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

'''AHA: volunteers need communication infrastructure themselves, in order to make their own work easier. But it can’t be too techy or some volunteers will get turned off!

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

'''AHA: Innovate forms of communication that will reach the highest number of parents most quickly with ongoing resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In our case, we’re trying a hotline that allows people not on the internet, to call in for information. Meanwhile, we’ll train people on email so they can join the school listserv!

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

'''AHA: A key need in public information-sharing is TRIAGING information so it’s not overwhelming. Another is ORGANIZING the information that goes out, so that others can quickly digest it. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls this fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, Gina, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school five hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[here]].

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped the principal make her a fall parent communication form that will help parents sign up to get a Connector, make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers, and allow parents to record their preferences for contact (texting? listserv? classroom listserv?) and indicate whether they need email training. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. The Connectors themselves have become seen as a key local resource, as people willing to be on call to answer other parents' questions in their language and to (monthly) share information that requires more explanation.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals?

We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff. So, in our case, we isolated an aspect of the infrastructure that volunteers couldn’t cover and argued that a bilingual staff member be employed part-time to cover it. We reasoned that volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their children or legal assistance for their families; paid staff in any district should be on top of such “case management.” But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.So, the task for the coming fall will be to figure out how and whether a very part-time liaison role serves the purpose.

Further, in a multilingual community where not everyone uses computers, some lack access to information because of translation gaps and some because of a gap in basic tech knowledge. We learned early on in our work in Somerville that the problem is not necessarily one of computer access (the nearby housing project has many computers) as much as one of training. Even English-speaking parents in the school’s magnet program didn't know how to get on its listserv. Now that the school’s programs have merged and the school is creating a schoolwide listerv, these issues will rise to the fore. And having people equally speak up on the common listserv, in whatever language, will be the next frontier of parent inclusion!

In Winter 2011, we attempted to hold a "get an Email" night at the Healey, but it wasn't well attended; this crucial puzzle piece needs further development and is one focus for fall. Ironically, if there isn't a good multilingual communication infrastructure, it's hard to get people out for any face to face email training event! This is what we mean when we say each infrastructure “component” is connected – and has to be fueled by an overall commitment to including all parents. Combining the Connector network with email training by the PTA may be a good solution, especially as the school goes from having a listserv only for the magnet program to a listserv for all. Especially in a community where there are many community-oriented technologists, there's really no reason why everyone eventually shouldn't have basic tech skills. And why not employ PTA parent-power for email training too? See Computer Infrastructure.

'''Our next step this fall is to to pilot the full infrastructure we’ve developed for multilingual communication, while adding in a next piece: PTA-run parent email/listserv training. We plan to:

:a) pilot use of our open source hotline, to support bilingual parent “Translators of the Month” to translate information about events, issues, and opportunities;
:b) finish testing our Parent Connector Network, in which bilingual parents make monthly calls to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families; Connectors will also invite parents to our Multilingual Coffee hour and to the hotline;
:c) test a model where a Parent Liaison follows up on specific parent needs, helps with scheduling interpreters, and coordinates Translators of the Month for the hotline;
:d) help create a sustainable model where the PTA trains parents to get Gmail accounts, use a school listserv, and use Google Translate to translate listserv information.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===
''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!
-------

Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:
:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?
:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?
:-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?
:-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?
:-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?
:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation? Would a Connector-like project work at your school?
:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?
:-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?
:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 5 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-------

We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts.
We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.
As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?
We used Google Translate for some first-pass translations, but bilingual parents still had to correct the translations: http://translate.google.com/support/ (Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: POST Regina’s sheet here??. Remember that in our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth, so he explains the programming [[here]. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see photo! Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, Seth finished the hotline so that people could call it and record to it. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T01:32:52Z

68.107.118.212: /* Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points! */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto for the Parent Connector project, with input from parents across the Healey School and Jedd Cohen

[[Image:Gina.jpg|thumb|Gina, Connector to Haitian Creole speaking parents]]

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?''' (''For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?'')
-------
Ensuring that everyone in a school can partner in student success requires overcoming structural barriers to communication between the families who share a school, and the school! With parents, teachers, staff, and administrators at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, we've been working toward a toolkit of tools and strategies for schoolwide communication that reaches all families across lines of language, income, background, and tech access/training.

The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of this overall Working Group exploring schoolwide communication at the Healey. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and mixed-income school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff. Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in the loop of school information and input. We focused on creating the infrastructure of a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

Begun in Winter 2010, the Parent Connector Network is now a parent-led effort (in partnership with school administrators and staff) to support translation and parent-school relationships, by connecting bilingual parents (“Connectors”) to more recently immigrated parents via a phone tree. The Connectors have come to also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (One Connector also got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

We also innovated the role of volunteer “Translators of the Month” who can help translate school information for a hotline made by local technologists. That translated material can then be used for other school media (listserv, handouts, flyers, etc.).

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role (five paid hours!) for one staff Connector so that she can respond appropriately to serious or ongoing parent needs -- beyond what a volunteer parent can or should do. She also will help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters. We’re piloting the full combination in 2011-12.

In sum, this past year the Connectors have become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed completely [[here]]. These diagrams show that it takes real organization to ensure that communication works with multilingual families.

Our main ahas:

'''AHA: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

'''AHA: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers. )

'''AHA: In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. We've decided to describe our full set of schoolwide communication efforts on this Parent Connector Network page, since that was the main outcome of our 2009-11 efforts. In that Network, all the work we had been doing for two years came together! Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections. Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

So, throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. Robocalls home go in four languages; handouts home often don't. For many, parent teacher conferences require interpreters, and scheduling those interpreters itself is a structural communication need. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher in person.

In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher. Many such families also are on committees that meet after school and so, take the opportunity then to contribute ideas to the school. Over the years, we saw that families who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded many Healey parents from full participation, the Parent Connector Network has focused on reaching out to parents who speak the district's 3 main languages other than English: Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents, in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

'''AHA: Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?
-------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;
2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections.

Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11 as part of the Parent Connector Network infrastructure. We learned a huge amount in that work and we built relationships that enabled the development of the Parent Connector Network. Click [[here]] for that backstory!

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. These include the following. To read the full story that gave us these ahas, click [[here!]]

''READING NIGHT AHAS:

'''AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

'''ADD IN THE FULL SET OF AHAS HERE FROM THE OLD AHA PAGE. THEN LINK HERE TO THE FULL STORY.

For the full story behind these ahas, click [[here!]]

'''AHA: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.

''AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

''MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR AHAS:

'''AHA: The massive local resource of parent bilingualism!

''PARENT-PARENT ISSUE DIALOGUE AHAS:

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

'''TURNING POINT: With the Healey in the midst of brainstorming all sorts of changes to its everyday structures, we parents focused for 2010-11 on improving infrastructure for schoolwide communication -- and on including immigrant parents in particular.

''PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK AHAS:

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

'''AHA: To build trusting relationships, consider connecting parents to specific groups of other parents -- and when possible, build on the social relationships parents already have!

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

'''AHA: better systems are needed to get parents’ contact numbers to other parents! Otherwise, parent partnerships can’t easily happen.

'''AHA: Privacy and trust are key issues to be navigated carefully in broadening school-home communications. But, issues of privacy do mean that at times, it takes much longer for people to partner than they would otherwise. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

'''AHA: volunteers need communication infrastructure themselves, in order to make their own work easier. But it can’t be too techy or some volunteers will get turned off!

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

'''AHA: Innovate forms of communication that will reach the highest number of parents most quickly with ongoing resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In our case, we’re trying a hotline that allows people not on the internet, to call in for information. Meanwhile, we’ll train people on email so they can join the school listserv!

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

'''AHA: A key need in public information-sharing is TRIAGING information so it’s not overwhelming. Another is ORGANIZING the information that goes out, so that others can quickly digest it. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls this fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, Gina, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school five hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[here]].

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped the principal make her a fall parent communication form that will help parents sign up to get a Connector, make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers, and allow parents to record their preferences for contact (texting? listserv? classroom listserv?) and indicate whether they need email training. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. The Connectors themselves have become seen as a key local resource, as people willing to be on call to answer other parents' questions in their language and to (monthly) share information that requires more explanation.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals?

We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff. So, in our case, we isolated an aspect of the infrastructure that volunteers couldn’t cover and argued that a bilingual staff member be employed part-time to cover it. We reasoned that volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their children or legal assistance for their families; paid staff in any district should be on top of such “case management.” But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.So, the task for the coming fall will be to figure out how and whether a very part-time liaison role serves the purpose.

Further, in a multilingual community where not everyone uses computers, some lack access to information because of translation gaps and some because of a gap in basic tech knowledge. We learned early on in our work in Somerville that the problem is not necessarily one of computer access (the nearby housing project has many computers) as much as one of training. Even English-speaking parents in the school’s magnet program didn't know how to get on its listserv. Now that the school’s programs have merged and the school is creating a schoolwide listerv, these issues will rise to the fore. And having people equally speak up on the common listserv, in whatever language, will be the next frontier of parent inclusion!

In Winter 2011, we attempted to hold a "get an Email" night at the Healey, but it wasn't well attended; this crucial puzzle piece needs further development and is one focus for fall. Ironically, if there isn't a good multilingual communication infrastructure, it's hard to get people out for any face to face email training event! This is what we mean when we say each infrastructure “component” is connected – and has to be fueled by an overall commitment to including all parents. Combining the Connector network with email training by the PTA may be a good solution, especially as the school goes from having a listserv only for the magnet program to a listserv for all. Especially in a community where there are many community-oriented technologists, there's really no reason why everyone eventually shouldn't have basic tech skills. And why not employ PTA parent-power for email training too? See Computer Infrastructure.

'''Our next step this fall is to to pilot the full infrastructure we’ve developed for multilingual communication, while adding in a next piece: PTA-run parent email/listserv training. We plan to:

:a) pilot use of our open source hotline, to support bilingual parent “Translators of the Month” to translate information about events, issues, and opportunities;
:b) finish testing our Parent Connector Network, in which bilingual parents make monthly calls to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families; Connectors will also invite parents to our Multilingual Coffee hour and to the hotline;
:c) test a model where a Parent Liaison follows up on specific parent needs, helps with scheduling interpreters, and coordinates Translators of the Month for the hotline;
:d) help create a sustainable model where the PTA trains parents to get Gmail accounts, use a school listserv, and use Google Translate to translate listserv information.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===
''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!
-------

Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:
:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?
:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?
:-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?
:-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?
:-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?
:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation? Would a Connector-like project work at your school?
:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?
:-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?
:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 5 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
-------

We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts.
We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.
As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?
We used Google Translate for some first-pass translations, but bilingual parents still had to correct the translations: http://translate.google.com/support/ (Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: POST Regina’s sheet here??. Remember that in our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth, so he explains the programming [[here]. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see photo! Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, Seth finished the hotline so that people could call it and record to it. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?

Overview and key findings: Schoolwide toolkit/parent connector network

2011-09-17T01:31:51Z

68.107.118.212: /* Our work, and our AHAs */

''Written by Mica Pollock, Tona Delmonico, Gina d'Haiti, and Ana Maria Nieto for the Parent Connector project, with input from parents across the Healey School and Jedd Cohen

[[Image:Gina.jpg|thumb|Gina, Connector to Haitian Creole speaking parents]]

==Summary==

'''What aspect of existing communication did we try to improve, so that more people in Somerville could collaborate in young people's success? How’d it go?''' (''For example: Who was involved in the project and how was time together spent? What did the project accomplish? At this point, what are our main AHAs about improving communications in public education?'')
-------
Ensuring that everyone in a school can partner in student success requires overcoming structural barriers to communication between the families who share a school, and the school! With parents, teachers, staff, and administrators at the K-8 Healey School in Somerville, we've been working toward a toolkit of tools and strategies for schoolwide communication that reaches all families across lines of language, income, background, and tech access/training.

The Parent Connector Network was the 2010-11 focus of this overall Working Group exploring schoolwide communication at the Healey. In this Working Group, parents and staff have been figuring out how to ensure that all parents in a multilingual and mixed-income school can access important school information and share ideas with other parents and school staff. Over the course of two years, we met parents particularly committed to improving schoolwide communication and linked them in to the effort.

In the past year, we particularly paid attention to including immigrant parents in the loop of school information and input. We focused on creating the infrastructure of a "Parent Connector Network," in which bilingual volunteer parents ("Connectors") help get information to and from immigrant parents who speak their language.

Begun in Winter 2010, the Parent Connector Network is now a parent-led effort (in partnership with school administrators and staff) to support translation and parent-school relationships, by connecting bilingual parents (“Connectors”) to more recently immigrated parents via a phone tree. The Connectors have come to also use Google forms to gather school information, Google spreadsheets to track calls with parents, and a multilingual hotline we made using free software, to help ensure that information reaches immigrant and low-income families who share the school.

We are currently working with 3 Spanish-speaking, 3 Portuguese-speaking, and 2 Haitian Creole-speaking Parent Connectors. Each Connector is asked to call approximately 10 other families once a month to share key information from the principal/school and to ask questions about any issues parents are facing. The Connectors are also on-call to these parents during the school year to help them find answers to both general and specific questions or concerns they may have about their child’s school. (One Connector also got calls this summer -- about summer school enrollment and about how to reach the district’s Parent Information Center to enroll a new cousin in a school.)

We also innovated the role of volunteer “Translators of the Month” who can help translate school information for a hotline made by local technologists. That translated material can then be used for other school media (listserv, handouts, flyers, etc.).

[[Image:Maria and Seth.jpg|thumb|Maria, Connector to Portuguese-speaking parents, and Seth, local technologist, working together on a hotline recording]]

We also argued for creating a part-time liaison role (five paid hours!) for one staff Connector so that she can respond appropriately to serious or ongoing parent needs -- beyond what a volunteer parent can or should do. She also will help with a key structural issue: scheduling interpreters. We’re piloting the full combination in 2011-12.

In sum, this past year the Connectors have become key innovators of school-wide translation and interpretation infrastructure. Over the 2010-11 school year, we've been fleshing out a list of such systemic supports, which we’ve diagrammed completely [[here]]. These diagrams show that it takes real organization to ensure that communication works with multilingual families.

Our main ahas:

'''AHA: Along with strong intentions to include all families, diverse schools need systems -- infrastructure -- for getting information to everyone and input from everyone. If structures don’t exist to get info out and input in, information just doesn’t get translated, distributed, or shared despite good intentions. And parent-school partnerships that could happen, don’t.

'''AHA: Overall, we’ve learned that committed and diverse parents can be expert innovators of communication infrastructure for including all parents because they have a full understanding of communication barriers. )

'''AHA: In a multilingual school and district, improving translation and interpretation -- and strengthening relationships between families and educators -- requires creating a standing infrastructure for effectively tapping a key local resource: bilingualism.

Now, let's expand on each aspect of the project. We've decided to describe our full set of schoolwide communication efforts on this Parent Connector Network page, since that was the main outcome of our 2009-11 efforts. In that Network, all the work we had been doing for two years came together! Here we go!

==Communication we hoped to improve==

At Somerville’s Healey School (K-8), as in many U.S. schools, parents hail from across the globe and speak many languages. Language barriers keep parents from being equally informed about school issues, events, and even educational opportunities. So do disparities in tech access, tech training, and time -- as well as gaps in personal relationship and connections. Everyone at the Healey talked about needing better school-home and parent-parent communication, particularly to fully include immigrant families, families without computer access/knowledge, and families who couldn’t or didn’t show up often in person at the school.

So, throughout the schoolwide communication working group, we operated from a central principle already core to the Healey School: a child can’t be educated as effectively if parents aren’t included as key partners in the project. So, schools should ensure access to school information and pull all parents into dialogue about improving their children’s school experience. Info out, input in!

The Healey School enrolls a full U.S. range of families with different communication habits and needs. Some email the principal and Superintendent regularly. Some parents have no computers and no internet. A listserv has long enrolled only some. Robocalls home go in four languages; handouts home often don't. For many, parent teacher conferences require interpreters, and scheduling those interpreters itself is a structural communication need. One Portuguese-speaking dad worked such long hours he didn't even have time to come to school to post a sign saying he wanted to find and pay another parent to help him drive his daughter to school. (His "Connector" made the sign for him.) One Spanish-speaking parent told her Connector she’d been trying for a year to meet with her child’s teacher in person.

In contrast, some families, particularly English-speaking families, volunteer many hours in classrooms during the school day and so get regular access to their child’s teacher. Many such families also are on committees that meet after school and so, take the opportunity then to contribute ideas to the school. Over the years, we saw that families who saw each other regularly at face to face school events also made friends, joined listservs, signed up in directories, and showed up at next events.

Because language barriers particularly have excluded many Healey parents from full participation, the Parent Connector Network has focused on reaching out to parents who speak the district's 3 main languages other than English: Spanish, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. We've also been working to build personal relationships between bilingual parents and recent immigrant parents, in order to bring more voices into school debates and more people into school events and leadership as well as help the school respond more quickly to parent needs.

'''AHA: Because each innovation the Connectors started needed other components to work effectively, we have come to think in terms of creating an "infrastructure" for multilingual communication (and low-cost translation and interpretation) in a school.

==Our work, and our AHAs==

''What was the basic groundwork needed to support the current work? How did the project change and grow over time? What were the main communication ahas and implementation ahas, and turning points?
-------
As a multilingual group of parents and staff (a few of whom speak only English), it has taken us two years to fully understand:

1) the barriers in the way of English learners' participation in English-dominant schools;
2) the sort of systemic communication "infrastructure" necessary to include more immigrant parents as partners in the project of supporting young people.

Before we started working on the Parent Connector Network in Winter 2011, we worked with families and teachers in other efforts to improve parent-school and parent-parent connections.

Work informing the Parent Connector Network began in a 2009-10 series of Reading Nights and Parent Dialogues, and a Multilingual Coffee Hour that continued in 2010-11 as part of the Parent Connector Network infrastructure. We learned a huge amount in that work and we built relationships that enabled the development of the Parent Connector Network. Click [[here]] for that backstory!

Most of all, we had to make friends with other parents and staff who cared deeply about including everyone. These friends became key partners in innovation!

===Communication ahas, implementation ahas, and turning points!===

We had many ahas in sequence on this project over two years. These include the following. To read the full story that gave us these ahas, click [[here!]]

READING NIGHT AHAS:

'''AHA: the success of any school event relies on school-home communication.

'''ADD IN THE FULL SET OF AHAS HERE FROM THE OLD AHA PAGE. THEN LINK HERE TO THE FULL STORY.

For the full story behind these ahas, click [[here!]]

'''AHA: The people who share a school can, will, and should volunteer their time to help the school and other families communicate. But only up to a certain point.

'''AHA: Sharing info and building relationships with busy parents often requires face to face contact, despite the fact that it’s time-consuming.

'''AHA: Bringing kids along to parent events helps glue together parents in a common experience -- even as it also distracts them from sharing information with other parents!

'''AHA: There’s no way that all parents will or can show up to face-to-face events. So, any event needs a plan for getting information to parents who didn’t show up.

''AHA: If prepping face to face events from scratch takes too much volunteer time from people, they lose momentum. At the same time, the slog of preparing for face to face events can build friendships that can seed real change.

MULTILINGUAL COFFEE HOUR AHAS:

'''AHA: The massive local resource of parent bilingualism!

PARENT-PARENT ISSUE DIALOGUE AHAS:

'''AHA: If tech channels for dialogue are available only to some in a school, those not on the channel don’t get equal access to the dialogue. (Example: a listserv that only some parents are on.)

'''TURNING POINT: With the Healey in the midst of brainstorming all sorts of changes to its everyday structures, we parents focused for 2010-11 on improving infrastructure for schoolwide communication -- and on including immigrant parents in particular.

PARENT CONNECTOR NETWORK AHAS:

'''AHA: parents can be organized as communication links --”connectors” -- to other parents.

'''AHA: While asking how schools get info out, we also have to ask how they get input in! How do schools hear about and then respond to parents’ ongoing problems and concerns?

'''TURNING POINT: Focus on the most-blocked communication first. In this case, language barriers making communication particularly difficult. That meant Connectors had to be bilingual.

'''AHA: To build trusting relationships, consider connecting parents to specific groups of other parents -- and when possible, build on the social relationships parents already have!

'''AHA: innovation requires experimenting with communication solutions -- in our case, for getting school info “out” and parent input “in,” across boundaries of language.

'''AHA: it matters whose voice is heard over a public channel! Consider letting parents invite other parents to school events by recording the robocall in their language, so that listeners who speak that language feel more socially welcome.

'''AHA: Schools need systems for responding efficiently and publicly to common parent questions as they come up. Parents approaching staff one by one to ask basic questions isn’t efficient -- especially if parents need intepreters to do it.

'''AHA: better systems are needed to get parents’ contact numbers to other parents! Otherwise, parent partnerships can’t easily happen.

'''AHA: Privacy and trust are key issues to be navigated carefully in broadening school-home communications. But, issues of privacy do mean that at times, it takes much longer for people to partner than they would otherwise. Consider an info form easily allowing parents to permit the use of their phone numbers for approved parent-parent contact.

'''AHA: volunteers need communication infrastructure themselves, in order to make their own work easier. But it can’t be too techy or some volunteers will get turned off!

'''AHA: only use tech tools if they truly enable participation. If they raise the barrier to participation, either don’t use them just yet or, train everyone to use them.

'''AHA: Innovate forms of communication that will reach the highest number of parents most quickly with ongoing resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In our case, we’re trying a hotline that allows people not on the internet, to call in for information. Meanwhile, we’ll train people on email so they can join the school listserv!

'''AHA: Go with the common denominator of parents’ tech skills to reach the highest number of parents most quickly with resources and information. Blockages to quick information flow really do mean that children don’t get opportunities. In the meantime, train parents on tech!

'''AHA: A key need in public information-sharing is TRIAGING information so it’s not overwhelming. Another is ORGANIZING the information that goes out, so that others can quickly digest it. Our solution: a Googledoc and Translators of the Month!

'''AHA: Creating “infrastructure” for interpretation and translation requires figuring out who to pay for what. Communication on individual parents’ serious personal needs may have to be covered by paid staff, freeing volunteers to be friends, info-sharers and links TO paid staff.

'''AHA: a key aspect of effectively using the local resource of bilingualism is creating infrastructure for scheduling interpreters. It’s really about getting the resource of bilingualism in the right place at the right time.

'''AHA: Today, systems for getting information to multilingual families and input from all families can absolutely be improved using some very basic technology – if people are shown how to use it.

'''AHA: Tech -- even a phone -- just helps extend the ultimate resource: relationships. One of our Connectors had an AHA that others echoed across the OneVille Project: “My main conclusion is that relationships matter and they are what makes everything work.”

===Our products: Concrete communication improvements and next steps===

We are proud to say that the Parent Connector vision and project is now part of the Healey School's school site plan. We have a core of volunteer Connectors making calls this fall, lead Connectors in each language, and two current/former HGSE graduate students working to support the effort while it solidifies. The new principal has agreed that one of our Connectors, Gina, already a young Creole-speaking staff member, will be supported by the school five hrs/week as a part-time parent liaison to handle parent needs forwarded by the Connectors and to oversee the multilingual communication process we’ve come up with [[here]].

We are finishing our hotline so that Translators of the Month can easily upload updates this fall. We’re honing a Googledoc where school leaders put schoolwide information for Translators to translate on to the hotline. We’re also creating a Googledoc of basic contact info/citywide parent services info all Connectors need to know. We’ve helped the principal make her a fall parent communication form that will help parents sign up to get a Connector, make it easier to get parents’ phone numbers, and allow parents to record their preferences for contact (texting? listserv? classroom listserv?) and indicate whether they need email training. We’re also teaming up with PTA leaders, who will begin to offer email/listserv training to parents this fall to address this key barrier to schoolwide communication.

Together, the Connectors (with advice from many other parents and staff consulted over the two years) fleshed out a list of components of the necessary “infrastructure” for multilingual communication. The Connectors themselves have become seen as a key local resource, as people willing to be on call to answer other parents' questions in their language and to (monthly) share information that requires more explanation.

In the Schoolwide Communication project in general, we repeatedly hit up against a core issue: how much time will parents volunteer to support connections between families, and between families and school? Schools can’t rely upon volunteers too much. A key issue we addressed in the Parent Connector Project was the line between translation/interpretation that bilingual parents can and will do as volunteers to serve their community, and when the district has to pay professionals. A parent in a federally funded district has a civil right to translation and interpretation if she needs it to access important parent information (including at parent-teacher conferences). But all districts are strapped for money and bilingual skills are true community resources. How to tap those resources without overtaxing volunteers, and without asking volunteers to do the sort of work that really should be done by paid professionals?

We’ve been exploring a cost-effective hybrid of volunteer efforts to connect parents to other parents and “infrastructure” that includes paid school staff. So, in our case, we isolated an aspect of the infrastructure that volunteers couldn’t cover and argued that a bilingual staff member be employed part-time to cover it. We reasoned that volunteers shouldn't be asked to ensure that parents get Special Education services for their children or legal assistance for their families; paid staff in any district should be on top of such “case management.” But volunteers may be able to do something no staff member can do so easily: build friendships that glue people together as partners in student success.So, the task for the coming fall will be to figure out how and whether a very part-time liaison role serves the purpose.

Further, in a multilingual community where not everyone uses computers, some lack access to information because of translation gaps and some because of a gap in basic tech knowledge. We learned early on in our work in Somerville that the problem is not necessarily one of computer access (the nearby housing project has many computers) as much as one of training. Even English-speaking parents in the school’s magnet program didn't know how to get on its listserv. Now that the school’s programs have merged and the school is creating a schoolwide listerv, these issues will rise to the fore. And having people equally speak up on the common listserv, in whatever language, will be the next frontier of parent inclusion!

In Winter 2011, we attempted to hold a "get an Email" night at the Healey, but it wasn't well attended; this crucial puzzle piece needs further development and is one focus for fall. Ironically, if there isn't a good multilingual communication infrastructure, it's hard to get people out for any face to face email training event! This is what we mean when we say each infrastructure “component” is connected – and has to be fueled by an overall commitment to including all parents. Combining the Connector network with email training by the PTA may be a good solution, especially as the school goes from having a listserv only for the magnet program to a listserv for all. Especially in a community where there are many community-oriented technologists, there's really no reason why everyone eventually shouldn't have basic tech skills. And why not employ PTA parent-power for email training too? See Computer Infrastructure.

'''Our next step this fall is to to pilot the full infrastructure we’ve developed for multilingual communication, while adding in a next piece: PTA-run parent email/listserv training. We plan to:

:a) pilot use of our open source hotline, to support bilingual parent “Translators of the Month” to translate information about events, issues, and opportunities;
:b) finish testing our Parent Connector Network, in which bilingual parents make monthly calls to help get information to and input from immigrant and low-income families; Connectors will also invite parents to our Multilingual Coffee hour and to the hotline;
:c) test a model where a Parent Liaison follows up on specific parent needs, helps with scheduling interpreters, and coordinates Translators of the Month for the hotline;
:d) help create a sustainable model where the PTA trains parents to get Gmail accounts, use a school listserv, and use Google Translate to translate listserv information.

===Questions to Ask Yourself if You’re Tackling Similar Things Where You Live===
''What big issues would we recommend others think about in their own attempts to improve communications in public schools? Contact us to talk more!
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Consider the current and needed schoolwide communication infrastructure at your school:
:-Can everyone who needs to get and share important school information, get and share it? If not, what barriers are in the way and how can those be overcome?
:-Where do you put school information and parent ideas so that everyone in the school can see them?
:-What infrastructure do you have for translation and interpretation, in particular?
:-How can local bilingualism be treated as a key resource in connecting people to each other and to information?
:-How can you organize volunteers to pitch in on translation and interpretation in a way that doesn't take too much of their time?
:-How can you build on parent-parent relationships to pull all parents into school events and conversation? Would a Connector-like project work at your school?
:-What tech training do parents need in order to get information? How could you help all parents get this training?
:-What tech training do volunteers need? What relationships do they need to form with each other so the work is personally rewarding?
:-Which efforts at parent information should be a task for school staff rather than volunteers? (In our case, we mapped out a system for multilingual communication in the school and then argued for one of our Connectors to be made a staff liaison/Lead Connector for 5 hrs/week to run the parts of it volunteers couldn’t run.)

===Technological how-tos===
''Here's where we describe "how to" use every tool we used, so that others could do the same. We also describe "how to" make every tool we made!
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We’re using a Googledoc as one organized place where the principal and school leaders put info that most needs translation each month. (Note: to use googledocs, users sometimes have to get gmail accounts.
We use Google spreadsheets for lists of approved parent numbers. And, to keep things simple, we now use the same spreadsheets for Connectors to record parents’ needs after they make calls home.
As a group of non-technologists, we had to learn how to set up Googlespreadsheets. See our short VIDEO TALKING THROUGH THESE? Or, link to Google instructions? COULD ANA AND GINA MAKE THIS?
We used Google Translate for some first-pass translations, but bilingual parents still had to correct the translations: http://translate.google.com/support/ (Or, for immigrant parents, should we make a video and narrate?

We’ve experimented with robocalls home, using Connect-Ed, the district’s existing system for school-home calls. Here’s an instruction sheet from Somerville’s Parent Information Center explaining to administrators how to use Connect-Ed: POST Regina’s sheet here??. Remember that in our case, we targeted robocalls to one language group at a time instead of recording all four at once, because robocalls often cut off after the first two languages (and because Portuguese and Haitian Creole were always last!). We also asked Connectors to record some robocalls in their friendly parent voices, which drew some parents to PTA night!

Hotline setup was a task for Seth, so he explains the programming [[here]. In April, we were still sitting at Seth’s computer talking into it -- see photo! Or, those of us with Audacity on our computers could record from home and send Seth the files. Over the summer, Seth finished the hotline so that people could call it and record to it. SETH ADD HERE AND MAKE A VIDEO EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THE HOTLINE?