We recently talked with faculty at Lake Washington School District a 50 school district in Washington state and asked them what they thought about Tandem. Watch the full video.

Kathryn Reith, Communications Director Lake Washington School District
We had a specific situation one spring where there was an end of the school year concert at Redmond Junior High that conflicted with one of the graduation activities at Redmond High School at the same time. That was just sort of my aha, oh my gosh, we really need to find some way of getting a hold of what’s going on at the schools.

Laurie Pelham, Technology Program Manager Lake Washington School District
When we started interviewing schools about their needs for having a good communication from their website, one of their biggest needs was that they needed to have a place to have calendaring available online for their parents.

Kathryn Reith
I’m Communications Director for Lake Washington School District, I have been with the district for about five years now. Last year, we were faced with some very difficult budget cuts and one of the items we looked at was the printed wall calendar that we have sent to parents every year for I don’t know how long. It’s a very traditional thing to do. People put it up in their kitchens and write on it, etc. But what we discovered was, this is something that we could do without now that we have an electronic online calendar and many more parents are relying on electronic calendaring. So they can either go directly to the Tandem calendar or if they have imported it into another electronic calendaring system that they use, they have access to all those dates without having to get a paper printed calendar that was costing us a lot of money. Once we decided that we wanted to look for a calendaring tool, we just went out and looked at what other districts, other schools were using, really just went out and did a search and discovered that there was this wonderful company right in our backyard that was doing a great calendaring program.

Laurie Pelham
My name is Laurie Pelham, I have been a Technical Project Manager for the district for the past 15 years. The project we were working at the time was to build out 15 school websites for each one of our schools. A secondary problem that we were trying to solve was to consolidate them so they communicate to the public or to their community about the events that are happening in their school. In the project that we were doing, it was definitely secondary but it turned out to be something that we could train in Tandem, no pun intended. Because the two worked together so well, it’s that school to home communication that we needed to really improve and I think we did with both. We were implementing on the SharePoint platform and so SharePoint comes with a calendaring program built in out of the box. Our question was should we use that or should we buy something else? And upon looking at what it would cost us to customize the SharePoint calendar and when I say cost us, I mean because we are hiring outside developers to write dot net programming to alter the look and feel of this SharePoint calendar. In order to make this SharePoint calendar do what Tandem already did out of the box, we figured it would cost us more in development than it would be for us to implement a product that was already in place. So, it was a no-brainer for us to go with Tandem.

Shannon Parthemer, Community Relations & Communications Coordinator Lake Washington School District
Before Lake Washington School District used the Tandem calendar, each school was responsible for their own calendar so some may have kept paper and pencil, some may have done newsletters, others just didn’t keep any consistent calendar. That didn’t lead to a whole lot of understanding about what’s happening at feeder schools or nearby elementary schools, junior highs high schools. The complication that I would have if I didn’t have the Tandem calendar is I wouldn’t know what’s happening at all of our schools and we wouldn’t have a good way of displaying the information to parents and community members. The majority of parents that are using the Tandem calendar and using the My Tandem section of the calendar really do appreciate the features and getting notifications when events are added, canceled, changed in any way. We have started training opportunities that we offer about once a month to different staff members or parents depending on who from the school is going to add events. People understand and say, wow, this is easier than I thought it was. So, I would describe the Tandem calendar as intuitive and very easy to use.

Kathryn Reith
How I would describe Tandem is it allows many schools within the same school district or a single school alone to really keep track of what’s going on, have it available in a way that’s accessible to parents and teachers. If you are talking from a district administration standpoint, it makes it much easier for us to be able to schedule district wide events that don’t conflict with some really important event to the school that’s been on the calendar for a year. We don’t always hear about those things, we have 50 schools so keeping track of what’s going on 50 schools from a central standpoint is pretty difficult. Now it’s very easy to just open up a Tandem calendar and see all the things that are going on at those schools on a particular day at a particular time. One of the the things that happened after the Tandem calendar was put in that we didn’t even realize it was going to be a benefit. It was our front desk receptionist at our Resource Center is often the place for parents to go to when they have forgotten what time an event is. They try and call the school, the school was already closed or front desk to staff have left so if they are making that last minute phone call, when they call, Shelley at our front desk has a place to find out where all the school events are and what time they are. She has a reference for all 50 schools, that sometimes means she can get the information to a parent who has forgotten so they can get access on the computer or if they don’t have a computer nearby at the time. Feedback from administrators has been very positive. They are very happy to see all of their items in one place to make it very simple. The office managers and secretaries are the ones that usually would be getting all those phone calls when is this meeting or that event and are not getting so many phone calls anymore and not having to answer the phone over and over again about the time the PTSA meeting and those kinds of things. Parents love it. It’s very simple for them to keep track of what’s going on.

Jenna Robertson, Parent
My name is Jenna Robertson, I have been a parent in the district since 2000 for ten years. Our PTSA brings together the bulletin and I’m pasting a calendar into our bulletin and then our school has a way of sending it out to their database. Having an online calendar that can be up-to-date to the minute, it’s live as soon as you input it and that’s even better. I thought it was really easy to learn and I like the look of it. It looks clean, professional and a PTSA mom can make the calendar look pretty cool. I like how I can choose the different views because when I’m doing our electronic bulletin, I can just choose the list, I can copy and paste that and Tandem looks much more polished than some of the others and to me that’s important because from a standpoint that this is important information, it looks important, I know as a parent I’m really feeling the benefit of having this great tool.

Laurie Pelham
Tandem is a comprehensive event calendar that many different groups or departments across a large organization can use and share and it was tested with a small group of people that gave lots of feedback. So, you are already equipped with the tool that you need to answer the need for schools. The features are for what exactly what we need, a place for parents to be able to subscribe, staff members also, a place for them to interact with their own personal calendars. Those were two of the requirements that were really high for us. We didn’t want to just have an online calendar and not have people be able to interact with it. We needed people to interact with it because that’s the expectation in today’s world. Now on our school sites, we have a space reserved on our homepage for an RSS feed that comes from the Tandem calendar. The district events were on this calendar and so whether the school participated in the use of the Tandem calendar or not, they still had some events that were populating that space on their homepage and those were the district events. Upon seeing that and knowing how easy it was for people to refer people to that space and/or to keep up on what’s actually happening in their building, we started to see more and more schools coming on board. We built a relationship with the company upon implementation partially because they are in our hometown but also because we feel we have a lot of needs in our school district that are universal and might improve the product. So we felt very comfortable giving suggestions to the development team at Tandem, on improvements that we thought might be good for all of their customers. The response was overwhelming. The company is responsive, they are interested in knowing the needs of their customers, they are willing to make changes that everyone can benefit from and we really appreciate that.

As your child gets older and closer to going away to college, it’s important that they learn how to manage and organize their time and resources wisely. Here are a few tips to empower your child toward lifelong habits of good time management and organization:

Start early
Just like each child has to learn how to brush their teeth or put away the dishes, there is no time like the present to start your child on the path to good time management and organization skills.

Establish a family calendar and planning center
Start with a family calendar that everyone can see. This could be a wall calendar or even better – an online calendar. Cozi.com has an excellent online family calendar. Have your children add important family events or activities (including details on start and end times and where). Involve them in planning the logistics for transportation, writing out lists for what to bring, etc. You can also subscribe to events from your school’s Tandem calendar into the Cozi calendar so new events are automatically updated.

Use Tandem to help your child plan their own calendar
Have your child create their own custom personal calendar with the MyTandem feature on Tandem where they can subscribe to the groups that they are involved in and receive email or SMS notifications when there is a change to an event. They could also use a personal calendar like iCal, Google Calendar, Cozi, etc. and subscribe to a feed of events for the entire school or just certain groups.

To Do Lists
Let them create “To Do” and “To Bring” lists for their calendars so that its clear what each scheduled activity requires and what other chores, studying, etc. need to be completed each week. Encourage them to use, check and modify their calendar daily according to their needs and goals.

Use a timer or alarm clock
Children (and even teenagers) often don’t have a good sense of time. Kitchen timers, alarm clocks and cell phone or PDA alarms can be useful tools to teach your children how to effectively manage their free time and other activities, such as getting ready to leave the house for school, a family outing or other events.

Lead by example
Parents can teach their children a lot about time management by simply practicing the same time management skills. There are times when even Mom or Dad will be late or miss an appointment – but these can serve as valuable learning lessons for the entire family. Engage everyone – Mom, Dad, and the children – in discussing what happened and how the situation could have been avoided.

Despite tough economic times, Congress has moved forward in recent times to implement programs that will expand the use of technology in education – from federal stimulus funds that can be applied toward upgrading technology resources in schools to the establishment of a new, federally funded national center focused on developing learning technologies.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

Also known as ARRA, the $787 billion federal stimulus package allocated $650 million for Educational Technology State Grants. The goals of the program are to:

(1) Improve student academic achievement through the use of technology in schools

(2) Assist all students in becoming technologically literate by the end of eighth grade

(3) Encourage the effective integration of technology with teacher training and curriculum development in order to identify successful research-based instructional methods.

Funds can be used for acquiring and maintaining hardware, software and connectivity equipment, professional development to enhance technology instruction, developing and implementing information technology education, application of technology resources to improve communication with parents, distance learning, and developing and using technology tools to enhance education.

The program was launched in the fall of 2009 and is expected to run through the 2012 fiscal year.

National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies

“It’s time that education had the equivalent of what the National Science Foundation does for science, Darpa does for the national defense and NIH [National Institute of Health] does for health,” – Lawrence K. Grossman

This new center within the U.S. Department of Education, was originally the 2001 brainchild of Lawrence K. Grossman, former president of NBC News and PBS and Newton N. Minow, the former chairman of the FCC. Nearly a decade later, Congress has finally allocated federal funds for the center, which will focus on awarding grants to organizations to research and develop learning technology. The current budget is $500,000 and the center will also solicit additional funds through private donations. The center is expected to begin awarding grants as early as fall 2010.

Links to article sources:
After 10 Years, Federal Money for Technology in Educatio The New York Times

Enhancing Education Through Technology Recovery Plan Recovery.gov

Image source:

While the digital era was founded on the ideal of universal access, the playing field isn’t always level. Even as access expands, technological skills can lag behind. As schools are discovering, today’s students often have an edge on their teachers, and gaps in technological expertise still remain.

The San Francisco-based website building service Weebly recently debuted a new teaching tool to help fill that gap. Established in 2006 and named to Time’s best website list in 2007, Weebly currently serves over 2 million users. Weebly for Education is the company’s version designed especially with students and teachers in mind.

The genius and beauty of Weebly is its simplicity. By providing a user-friendly website builder that utilizes a basic drag and drop interface, Weebly’s creators are helping to remove the barriers to all that technology offers. Cost is not an obstacle for Weebly users either since the basic service is free.

The school version enables entire classrooms to operate under a teacher account, with individual student passwords and user names and the option of limited or open access for privacy protection. A single basic teacher account can accommodate up to 4 classes of 40 students each at no charge. Premium subscriptions are available for a nominal additional charge (approximately $30 annually). This Weebly Pro upgrade includes customizable features, greater file upload capacity, and the ability to embed documents.

Beyond affordability and ease of use, Weebly offers a multitude of professional looking free layouts and integrated tools for adding text, photos, and files. The education version includes an assignment feature that facilitates online homework submission. Students benefit from a platform for sharing content and a tool for creating unique portfolios. Besides posting lessons, teachers can add event calendars and newsletters, keeping busy parents informed of day-to-day school activities with the convenience of an online format.

Since Weebly’s school tool requires a minimal investment of time and money, there is no real risk in giving it a try. Ostensibly anyone with the most basic computer skills could have their own site up and running within an hour. Weebly tutorials available online provide step-by-step instructions if needed. An added incentive for adopting a web tool like Weebly is that it is in line with Green school initiatives to eliminate paper waste. At the same time it serves as a safe means to establish an online classroom presence at all grade and skill levels.

WikiSpaces is a Wiki creation site offering a free service that schools can utilize as well as a subscription service for educational systems that wish to have no advertising, unlimited users, and other features. The WikiSpaces site has an effortless sign up process followed by an easy initiation into creating a wiki in the form of several different video tutorials available on the site.

The editing features on WikiSpaces will be immediately familiar to any school student or school teacher who has used Microsoft Word to type a document as all of the basic commands used to format a wiki page are exceedingly similar in both presentation and design. Linking one wiki page on WikiSpaces to another is extremely simple and allows for quick and easy grouping of content which would be handy in a classroom setting when multiple pieces of content may be interconnected within a lesson plan or learning unit.

PBWorks is a similar platform that can have a school or classroom set up with a “secure online workspace”. Students can immediately begin creating and editing content while the site creator can set customized security settings and create an overall theme for the specific wiki.

PBWorks keeps a complete list of all edits and creations on a particular wiki which allows teachers or administrators to ensure all relevant material remains on site. The audit trail also ensures that anyone who does remove necessary content or adds unnecessary data to the wiki page can be identified and have their actions corrected.

Both WikiSpaces.com and PBWorks.com could be utilized in the classroom as a “class hub” where important assignments can be presented. When a special assignment is handed out, the wiki can become a virtual meeting place for related information and a catalog of handy sources that students can easily reference and access online. Since Wikis are editable by anyone with access to the Wiki, students and teachers can continue to add relevant material as it is gathered and catalog it with new wiki entries and pages.

As education continues to progress and cross into new frontiers, the ability to collaborate virtually is going to become more and more important. Wikis offer a easy and effective way to collaborate and share knowledge in an educational environment.

2009 was a solid year for educational releases, and the first year where many of the bestselling educational resources on Amazon.com were books for the Kindle. Here is a closer look at ten of the bestsellers on Amazon.com:

1. Empowering Online Learning: 100+Activities for Reading, Reflecting, Displaying, and Doing by Ke Zhang.

While this volume is catered towards exclusive online learning, the basic concepts it relays concerning content delivery online for different learning types can be utilized by educators who wish to supplement the classroom with digital content.

2. You Can Do It: How to Boost Your Child’s Achievement in School by Michael E. Bernard

You Can Do It is a parent’s resource first and foremost, but teachers can also benefit from a read. The book is particularly adept at offering advice on curtailing small problems before they become serious school performance issues.

3. Content Matters: A Disciplinary Literacy Approach to Improving Student Learning by Anthony M. Petrosky

This book outlines an instruction framework developed by the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh. It will prove a particularly good resource for teachers concerned with preparing junior high and high school students for a college education.

4. Wikiworld by Juha Suoranta and Tere Vaden

Wikiworld focuses on the course learning has taken in recent years with a particular emphasis on new types of critical learning and open collaboration (as in a wiki).

5. The Writing Teacher’s Lesson a Day: 180 Reproducible Prompts and Quick-Writes for the Secondary Classroom by Mary Ellen Ledbetter

Even the best teacher needs a little help sometimes, and this book provides the writing teacher with all of the prompts needed to keep high school students busy!

6. Building Online Learning Communities: Effective Strategies for the Virtual Classroom by Rena M. Palloff and Keith Pratt

The larger problems facing both educating and learning, especially within the context of modern education, are addressed in this book. It offers pointed advice for the crafting and utilization of engaging and educational online communities.

7. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers by Kate L. Turabian

Books to help students structure research papers and other school assignments are a must. This Kindle Edition of a classic resource was an educational bestseller.

8. See It. Say It. Do It! The Parent’s & Teacher’s Action Guide to Creating Successful Students & Confident Kids by Dr. Lynn F. Hellerstein

This book’s main focus is on encouraging the use of visualization and imagery skills children already possess to help them, as students, grasp numerous types of learning challenges.

9. Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments by Derek Bruff

This book emphasizes creative ways to use the “clicker” technology that is popular in colleges and universities. Beyond this basic premise though, the book is an effective idea board for interactive teaching.

The Classroom Teacher’s Survival Guide: Practical Strategies, Management Techniques and Reproducibles for New and Experienced Teachers by Ronald L. Partin

This new edition of “Teacher’s Survival Guide contains new information on inquiry-based learning and much more. It also features special web-access to additional supplemental materials for the teacher.

The ten best sellers featured here come from several different Educational subheadings. Many of the more popular books this year were Kindle editions, but a Kindle does not have to be owned to enjoy the books. Several feature hard copy versions and a PC version of the Kindle reader is available for free download for Kindle only books.

Despite the nation’s commitment to the ideal of universal access to education, our public schools frequently fall short of meeting the changing needs of students across the spectrum. The “no child left behind” mandate has still let some students slip through the cracks, revealing the structural deficiencies in our public school system. Schools struggle under budget constraints, and even the most dedicated teachers are only human. As it turns out, the one-size-fits-all approach is not the best fit when it comes to instruction since there isn’t just a single learning style that suits every student.

New entrepreneurial efforts are answering this need and seizing an opportunity to fill this educational gap with the latest in technology. They aim to provide educational solutions via technological avenues, offering software to supplement brick and mortar school instruction and even operating schools online. Technology offers the hope of bridging skill gaps by customizing instruction to target specific academic needs. And it helps fill the gap in science and math at the teaching level since instructors often lack experiential background in these subjects.

A major force in this new wave of online instruction is Ron Packard, CEO of K12. Inspired by his own futile search for a complete online course to help a daughter struggling with math, Packard devised a business model for a full-fledged web-based school. K12 now provides over 20,000 hours of instructional content covering the full K-12 progression (see story in Forbes). Operating its own web-based school as well as furnishing support to other online schools, K12 serves 70,000 pupils and generates $400 million in revenue.

While K12’s students aren’t a representative sample of the public school population, they all have needs which public schools failed to satisfy. They are students with exceptional talents as well as exceptional needs. Online schools cater to scholar athletes and others who find conventional school schedules conflict with extracurricular passions. In some cases, parents turn to online instruction because they see their own values in conflict with those represented by public school instruction.

Apex Learning is another entrant in this growing field. In operation since 1997, Apex Learning targets poor academic performers who are at risk of becoming part of a growing statistic, the million annual high school drop-outs. In addition to distance instruction courses, Apex Learning markets its programs to public schools, enabling more individualized, computer-focused learning in a regular classroom setting.

Making inroads into the achievement gap, Revolution Prep offers software that helps pinpoint and address concept/skill deficiencies. Its program has been adopted by Los Angeles schools to help struggling high school students pass mandated exit tests.

Confronting the challenges and limitations in our present public school system, technology is helping transform the role of teacher from lecturer to facilitator, and easing the workload on instructors at the same time. Technology provides a workable means of identifying and serving the unique academic needs of diverse students, while freeing teachers from some of the burden of devising and implementing lesson plans, and even filling the gap in subject expertise.

The idea of standardized online curriculum in public schools may strike some as revolutionary. But as weaknesses in the well-intentioned educational policies of the past grow more apparent, the concept seems tailor-made for the future of digital technologies in schools.

With most of the US currently experiencing the coldest temperatures in recent years, Intand’s Tandem event management software can be an effective tool for schools to stay ahead of the curve and “winterize” when the weather turns bad.

To close or not to close? School administrators have to consider many factors – from the weather report to building conditions and transportation resources when making the decision to close or delay school openings due to weather conditions. Tandem can assist in the decision making process by providing an overview of what programs and events will be affected.

Communicate closings and school delays quickly. No more waiting for the local radio or television station to announce your school’s name. By using Tandem administrators can instantly alert parents, students and teachers when school opening is delayed or canceled.

Keep students from being stranded in the cold. After school activity canceled due to weather? Early school closing? Buses delayed? Using Tandem, administrators, teachers and coaches can alert parents quickly, helping to ensure that students stay warm and safe.

Avoid burst pipes and other weather calamities. Using Tandem to identify building and room usage, facilities manager can efficiently plan and direct resources to avoid burst pipes and other potential weather calamities that can be costly and time consuming. In addition, faculty and facilities staff can quickly alert involved stakeholders when there is a problem – so that room changes and adjustments can be made with minimal disruption.

Transportation management. Bad weather often translates to last minute transportation changes and juggling. Tandem allows all stakeholders to communicate rapidly and coordinate transportation resources more effectively so that bad weather doesn’t have to translate into a costly, transportation nightmare.

Avoid influenza and H1N1 outbreaks. Winter usually brings flu season. By utilizing Tandem administrators can keep families informed of community or school resources for vaccination and work together to avoid outbreaks.

Image source http://www.flickr.com/photos/laserstars/

Want to learn more? Sign up for a free demo or a 30 day free trial of Tandem for Schools.

At a recent conference on Breakthrough Learning in the Digital Age, Google co-founder Sergey Brin addressed the increasingly prominent role of technology in schools. Paradoxically a high-school drop-out himself, Brin is part of the search engine monolith’s mission to advance the ideal of universal computer access. Stepping up its involvement in the educational arena, Google has lately supplied schools with its top apps at no charge. But the technology giant’s agenda isn’t all altruism. Google’s growing interest and generosity serve a dual purpose, arming the next generation with the latest tools for success while weaning them on Google’s own brand, thus ensuring a pipeline of future consumers already conversant in the language of the company’s product line.

Brin expressed his conviction that today’s curriculum needs to reflect technology’s expanded role, suggesting that the subject of computer science be given a slot alongside math and English in schools. He promoted the idea of textbook downloads and proposed that students be utilized as tech tutors for younger kids as well as seniors. Students, he suggested, could polish their writing skills as Wikipedia contributors. And Brin was adamant that we could not afford to neglect teachers, insisting that our educators need to be better rewarded.

The proliferation of broadband and the increasing affordability of computer equipment are putting technology within reach of greater numbers with each passing day. Yet even as he foresees a future approaching that ideal of universal access, Brin perceives a downside for students in this digital age, recognizing that expanding horizons can be a humbling, ego-deflating experience. Gaining a global perspective can make one’s own talents seem puny by comparison.

Critics might argue that technology and its availability alone are not the answer to what ails the educational system. Putting laptops in the hands of every student is not enough without the input of dedicated teachers, involved parents, and supportive communities. Children are already wired by nature to learn. Sometimes we just need to get out of the way and remove the barriers to learning.

Providing students with the right tools only makes sense. If Google and its counterparts in the tech sector are eager to help underwrite that effort, our financially strapped schools are sure to welcome the support. However, there needs to be a caveat. Not that long ago, schools across the nation were reconsidering having jumped at the chance to earn a few perks by allowing the big soda companies to stock their products in cafeteria vending machines. Whether by coincidence or consequence, a wave of childhood obesity followed. As we usher in the digital age with the support of giants like Google, schools should take care not to sell out the malleable minds in their charge.

Image source http://www.flickr.com/photos/dannysullivan/ / CC BY 2.0

BioInteractive, is a free online interactive website created by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), one of the leading non-profit medical research organizations in the US. The free award-winning website provides students and teachers with access to fully interactive laboratory modules that allow students to virtually conduct biomedical experiments. HHMI’s web-based collection of online teaching tools and materials encourage students to learn about biology with with free access to podcasts of HHMI researchers’ lectures, animations of biology topics, and other free learning materials. Through the site’s “Ask a Scientist” portal, students can also submit questions on everything from anatomy to DNA.

Laboratory modules include a bacterial identification lab, a cardiology lab, a neurophysiology lab and a virtual ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay) using human antibodies to diagnose disease. Each module starts with a laboratory intro that provides a detailed overview of the experiment topic.

Using the laboratory notebook and following instructions, students are lead step-by-step through the process of conducting an experiment by clicking on online laboratory equipment. Detailed links and explanations throughout the lab, allow students to understand both the how and why of each step. A glossary section allows students to learn and understand important terms.

Teachers and schools can also order free DVD copies of the site’s videos, animation and lecture podcasts on a wide range of biology topics, including the science of fat, stem cell development and regeneration, and genes and gender.