BY REBECCAH HAINES
This article is also posted on LEARN NC.
As educators, most of us are familiar with the dreaded School Improvement Plan (SIP). Every few years each school is required to create an extensive, detailed document that outlines its plan for constant improvement until the next document is due. In the interim, success on reaching goals is evaluated, documented, and sent off to the central office. As any teacher who’s been involved in this process can attest, creating this document can be extremely labor intensive.
My personal experience participating in our school’s last SIP committee was no different: Reams of data had to be collected and analyzed. Goals had to be pinpointed, voted upon, and revised. Success indicators had to be determined and recorded. It took our committee of eight or so teachers nearly the entire school year to prepare this document. Not only was the process labor intensive, it used a tremendous amount of paper. Drafts, revisions, and submissions to the staff required new copies each time.
Several years ago, there weren’t a lot of options for streamlining the SIP process. But the recent explosion of Web 2.0 tools, thankfully, offers schools many time-saving options. No longer does the process need to be so time consuming. By using the following collaborative tools, schools can go through the SIP process much more efficiently and collaboratively, and with much less paper. (more…)