[Courtney451]

My 4th grade team has a very difficult time sharing ideas at our team meetings. We always seem to run out of time during meetings between talking about data, the everyday things that come up, more important things, and hopefully planning if time. I was wondering how everyone else organizes this concept.

I was thinking it would be neat to have an online database where my team can write blogs to each other and we can list our learning concepts and any interesting ways that we plan to teach them. I feel like there should be something out there that does this (for free) and hope that someone on here knows. If not, how do you manage this concept?

[Overlightnes]

Google Docs

You can share a document. Then everyone can edit it or modify it to add their ideas. It then keeps track of who wrote what.

[Courtney451]

Do you use it on your team? If so, how does it work for you? Are you able to make notes on there for everyone to read? I have some team members that get frustrated easily, so I really am looking for a simple answer.

[Overlightnes]

It doesn't get any simpler than Google Docs. You write something it keeps track of who writes it. If you share it everyone, they can see everything someone else does.

[Courtney451]

Thank you for your input.

[Mr. Mark]

I agree with Overlightnes - Google Docs is fantastic for collaboration. Our 7th and 8th graders use it when working on projects together. If they can, your team definitely can!

[froggy4]

The Google Docs sounds great and maybe we'll try that this year. What my team has done in the past is send out an agenda through a calendar appointment in our Outlook email. This way before the meeting we know exactly what we need to go over and bring any materials we have or ideas we have found. We write up what we need to discuss and then type in red (team leader's job) underneath the topics what was discussed and decided. Then the update is sent to all members of the team. This works great when dealing with support teachers and if someone has to be late or absent. We have norms on the agenda and actually stick to them. We also set a time limit for meetings.

[:-)tchr]

Our 2nd grade team works very well together. We had a new reading series this year so a lot of research and preparation was needed. We divided up the tasks and each teacher placed needed powerpoints, lesson plans, newsletters, flipcharts, etc. on a "lessonplan drive- Ndrive" on our school computers. It was easy to share needed information and ideas. We also utilized our school email to share info to prep for upcoming meetings.

[Courtney451]

It used to be a lot easier for me when I only had 3 teachers on my team. Through the last years, that has changed. I now am a teacher on a team of 7 classroom teachers, one LD teacher, one autism teacher, and one ESL teacher. Meetings are very difficult because we are always missing someone, someone is always taking us off the topic because something really important comes up, and we have clashing views bc there are so many of us. We also have a wide range of learners so sometimes people feel like their time is being wasted. I am trying to find a way to make it easier without giving us (me) more work outside of the meetings. My team is very resistant towards change and getting more work, but if googledocs is easy and quick they may do it. We do have a server in which we store files, but it is always difficult to get the team to look there or to share bc they are so busy all the time. We also send emails, but with such a big team we get bombarded by emails.

Does anyone else have experience with googledocs or any other ideas to help?

[Mariely]

I didn't know you could share documents and have others add to it through GoogleDocs. I'm definitely going to check this out and use it with my 4th grade team next year. Thanks for sharing!