The school's digitalization - New tools to do the same things we've done analogously

A few weeks ago I asked you an open question that I hoped you would answer: If you work in a school, describe a task or process that you think or wish could be automated or removed. In this post I’ve compiled the responses into a number of categories that I think they belong to — and I thank everyone who took the time to reply.

The idea is to try to create small, simple concept solutions or proposals for the problems many of us share, or point to solutions that already exist (and they do). The hope is that someone (developer / commissioner) will pick up the issues and do something useful for those of us who work in schools. This also means that this post will be updated when I find a new solution, or you suggest one.

Digitalisation — New tools to do the same things we used to do analog — without extra pay for the effort

For anyone who has worked with digitalisation in schools for a while this is nothing new. The question we should ask is — why is it that every time a new system is introduced, the system is still only developed, at best, cosmetically? It’s still based on us users having to perform something. The system does nothing for us and it rarely simplifies or removes previous tasks. Unfortunately, more problems are often introduced in the times we “gain” something by using systems. Let’s take an example.

Frånvarohantering (Absence handling)

When I started working in schools (1999) teachers recorded absence on an analog class list. Daily use was fast, the technology worked 100%, it cost nothing and the only person who found it burdensome was the one who once a week spent a couple of hours compiling the week’s attendance for the whole school. But for 98% of the system’s users it was simple.

Since 2006 we’ve had various iterations of digital absence handling. It requires a fair amount of administration, it usually works (but not 100% and worse depending on municipality and school) and it costs a lot of money. Daily use is therefore more expensive and a little worse for 98% of users — so what do we get for that? Guardians/parents can be informed directly when their child has been absent. We can generate different forms of absence reports (which unfortunately are often many clicks away, meaning they aren’t used). The problem is that we still don’t know anything about the quality of the reporting and reports shouldn’t have to be produced manually. Systems should automatically alert mentor/student/guardian/student health services when certain thresholds are reached, so we can act. The system should, without button presses, show teachers/mentors the daily current information that matters. It must be at least as quick to report digital absence as it was when done on paper. For the large sums of money, time and energy we invest — do we get anything of value back?

Data collection

As digitalisation increases we collect more and more data, because it’s convenient. But generally we’re bad at using what we collect and it surprises me that analysis tools aren’t built into the systems where we, for example, assess students or collect test results. “In most school platforms today we collect enormous amounts of data about students and their results. This can be, for example, subject assessments in grades 1–5, national tests in years 3, 6 and 9, UIM in years 2, 5 and 8, grades in years 6–9, user surveys, screenings, extra adaptations, absence and probably a few more things. If we also bring in external things like SALSA and information about staff, such as absence — that is, whether students have had many substitutes, qualified teachers, number of students per teacher and other factors — we should have more than enough data for analysis.” — from a previous post you can read here about AI and robotisation Here we should obviously be able to see a lot of trends about how students are likely to manage their schooling and where we need to intervene. Instead we don’t use the data.

Communication Teacher < > Student

A fantastic opportunity with digital tools is the ability to share. Teachers and students can create material that is easily shared with each other. But the same problems exist here: it only takes one student in a class not being able to log in for us to lose time compared with analog.

In the end my summary is that where we should be helped by digitalisation, we have only moved from pen and paper to keyboards and digital storage. And because we can do it a little faster and more efficiently, we increase our data collection. But what do we get back? How much do we use the data? And is it worth it? And how does it ultimately affect student learning? In my view, efficiency is about “removing” or “outsourcing” tasks that someone else or something else is better at, so I can spend more time on what I’m good at and employed to do.

Summary — open question

You who work in schools: Describe a task or process that you think or wish could be automated or removed.

Here below I’ve copied/pasted the responses you sent in. I’ve tried to categorise them to get a better overview. Read the answers in light of the question above. Most are things that are already digital, but that don’t work well or live in silos where duplicate work must be done or, above all, where we don’t take advantage of the possibilities of digitalisation.

If you want to add problems or solutions, leave a comment on the post or on social media and I’ll update the post.

Absence / Attendance

Suggested solutions: Concept — Substitute management (2019-12-03)

“Student attendance reporting. Should be doable by the students themselves via, for example, a mobile app with QR-code or similar.”
“Absence handling must be made more efficient. But also so we can easily see absent students without a hundred clicks.”
“Recording attendance would be nice to remove or at least not have to spend a lot of time on.”
“Automatic attendance feedback to guardians/parents about absence in weekly format.”
“Attendance/absence handling”
“Absence handling for staff as well as substitute acquisition if you have your own hourly substitutes at the school.”
“Absence handling”
“Presence and absence reporting”
“Attendance, absence and notifying guardians/parents about this.”
“Poor IT eats into teaching and student time when absence reporting is mandatory at the start of each lesson.”
“Attendance”
“Automatic connection between LMS (Google Classroom, Teams) and attendance control. I.e. student activity compared with attendance check.”
“Automatic substitute management when a teacher reports sick.”
“Recording of absence.”
“Automatic attendance. Or fast systems with extremely few clicks.”
“Finding substitutes”

Booking of resources, people and other things

“Bus passes, rooms, meeting rooms etc. should be bookable easily online”
“Be able to offer times for parent-teacher conferences that parents can book or cancel.”
“Be able to book meetings more easily internally, e.g. with student health, principals, etc.”
“Book meetings”
“Bookings for parent-teacher conferences”
“Book parent-teacher conferences”
“Compilation of holiday notifications”

Standardisation and transfer of data and systems that talk to each other

“Student data should be handled centrally, like Försäkringskassan for workers or Skatteverket for taxpayers. Skolverket for students; manages licenses tied between parties. Grades, attendance, plans and everything related to the student would be there!”
“Automatic creation of permission groups based on the student’s course type and year (SA + SA17 for example). An incredible amount could be automated just with these groups (app installations, access to areas and teams, etc. etc.).”
“That rubrics and similar feedback in Unikum (PoB) are automatically transferred to IUP under student documentation.”
“Automated: all results from databases are merged and I can get any result through a simple button press.”
“There’s a need for national SIS standards for student and school data so systems can talk to each other.”
“Systematic quality work linked to resource/budget -> outcome/consequence”
“All result data is linked so you can get any result with one button press.”
“Being able to extract data from the schedule viewer for the whole school, for each individual room/classroom, teacher and subject, to transfer to another system.”
“All government reporting should be automatic, e.g. to SCB, for school inspections, NP results etc.”
“When students change school parents mustn’t have to provide previous assessments/documents to the receiving school so the teacher has previous material they don’t have to chase parents for”
“Reporting to CSB regarding national test results in years 3, 6, 9”
“Systems must be able to talk to each other. If information has been entered into one system it should never have to be entered into another.”

Communication

“Standardised ‘weekly newsletters’ with a common idea of what should be included and why. Dates from calendars pulled in and ready fields to fill.”
“The paperless school start with the help of an e-service. All info back from guardians should be directed to the right function at the school that should have the data.”
“A chatbot that students can use to ask questions to the study and vocational counsellor, admissions secretary, school admin assistant, etc.”
“Distribution of information to the right people preferably with prioritisation support and possible response/feedback follow-up/reminder.”
“Contact with changes” (literal; original: “Kontakt med förändrar”)
“Clear ‘office hours’ for teachers towards parents regarding contact and smoother systems to handle these.”
“Shorten parent-teacher conferences and place more responsibility on parents to read assessments on the school’s platform”
“Don’t give students who have long holidays due to travel material to take with them and work on, and serve families via email contact while they’re away”

Documentation

“Writing IUP, development opportunities for students already exist in written assessments”
“Wish to remove student choices, that mentorship is abolished/reworked or replaced with full-time mentors or similar and that knowledge requirements in middle school are structured by grade level to ease the assessment burden.”
“Grading based on the pedagogical documentation from teachers in a digital system”
“Remove: all SCB surveys. Skolverket’s various codes for assessment support.”
“Compile assessments”
“Get automatic compilations of results for analysis, such as NP, grades, etc.”
“Skip writing lesson plans that are mostly written to show parents. Instead trust teachers have a purpose/goal with their teaching”
“All mapping of students with difficulties should be carried out by special educators who should also be responsible for creating action plans”
“Excessive documentation”

Meetings

“EHT meetings (what do teachers get from attending them, seriously).”
“Information meetings with all staff or large parts of staff.”
“Remove parent meetings or alternatively have one for lower/middle/upper school. It feels outdated to have one every year and I don’t understand the purpose”

Tests

“All planning for NP that takes hours for us. Has both English and Swedish, in addition.”
“Grading national tests”
“Correcting assignments and tests.”
“Tips and simpler ways to create auto-graded quizzes and tests”

IT hygiene

“Send information to guardians about usernames for the school’s learning platform and send links to students and guardians so they can change their passwords for this platform.”
“Regular check of all projectors and cables in classrooms so you can quickly start teaching.”
“Connecting a computer/device to a projector/screen/interactive whiteboard.”
“Access to a dashboard where ALL network devices, printers, etc. within the city’s/school’s remit can be monitored to detect problems in advance, possibly with automatic alarms to suppliers.”
“Automated consumption reports for cost-driving usage, such as prints and storage, broken down by device, group and individual level.”
“Phase out all IT systems that take more time than they save. There must be a clear purpose for what they are for and they must add something to the operation.”
“Problematic IT systems should go”
“IT: create accounts and email addresses for students”

Personnel administration

“Salary reporting. Have to enter every month. Takes about 10 minutes each time.”
“Upgrade the role of school administrator. Really should be efficient ’executive assistants’ who can coordinate all peripheral services for both the principal and teacher colleagues.”

Student and guardian administration

“Fee management for after-school care (fritidsplats)”

Teacher tasks

“Recess supervision”
“Recess supervision” (duplicate)
“Reviewing new subject matter.”
“Conflict management”
“Parent-teacher conferences”
“Ordering lesson materials should be removed from teachers.”
“Ordering teaching materials removed from teachers.”
“Agreeing on what is included in a teacher’s role. What is the core mission. Difference between what you don’t like doing versus what is actually part of the job.”
“Recess supervision should be assigned to staff other than teaching teachers”
“Chasing internship placements.”
“Producing all teaching materials, standing by the photocopier.”
“Substituting”
“Deep cleaning all school spaces before holidays, arranging activity days such as discos for the parents