Collaborative Online Planning

Collaborative Online planning

28th July, 2016

Alex shares some of his recent experiences in online shared planning

At my current placement each year level works together to collaboratively plan what they are going to teach for the term, from that they decide what to do each week. This is the usual method of schools in regards to planning and has a number of benefits; cohesion across the year level classrooms, discussion of ideas, and support for beginning teachers. However, many schools are also adopting the use of online methods to share their planning with each other. My placement school currently uses Google Drive, Google Docs and Dropbox to allow its teachers to share resources and collaborate on their planning. It works wonderfully; here are a few reasons why.

Everyone can contribute during planning. Gone are the days of one teacher hunched over a computer acting as the scribe, typing into a closed document while several other people squabble about ideas. With Google Docs everyone can be writing in the same document at the same time. It seems like a small thing but it balances out the power of group dynamics and allows people to quickly brainstorm ideas.

Resources are always shared. One of the main problems with sharing resources is finding the time to actually give them to other people; you need to scan them, send them and sometimes teachers feel they just don’t have time to do that. With Dropbox, you store your resources in one communal online location, which means that people can share resources quickly and ultimately it lightens the burden for everyone.

There’s cohesion as everyone can see what’s coming. My placement creates term planners which are available to be viewed and edited in Google Drive. This has been fantastic for me, and the other teachers, as we can all see what is coming up in the next few weeks and anyone can add in more information as we progress. It means that everyone is clear about what is happening and people have the freedom to plan ahead.

Although many schools have already taken to using some form of online planning tool, it is clear that not all of the teaching community has made the transition. I would recommend getting familiarised with the available online sharing platforms, as they provide numerous benefits when planning and will be of great help when you start teaching!

- Alex