We are creating a list of the questions you have for the Vanke Meisha Academy leaders, and their answers of course. If you don’t see your question here please send it to info@leadlearner.org and we’ll pass the question along and then add the question and answer to this list.
How do you manage groups and store information?
As we mentioned in the video, Dingtalk & Powerschool was our chosen method of communication & storage. We hit a few hiccups along the way as to where files could be stored for class work and video recordings, eventually we decided to use the Ding Drive (similar to G Drive) as the upload speed was the fastest due to the local servers). I think this was the simplest decision as teachers who are generally overwhelmed can input their files directly into the Group Chat and it saves the files for up to 6 months in the chat (which we can then get teachers to move to our long-term cloud drive after they finish their class). Another thing that we introduced around a month in was the status protocol as we know that some teachers were abroad and had different rest hours, we told our teachers to set an automatic response setting on their off-hours to let students know they were offline during their rest hours (all this was set on Dingtalk – it’s like an instant messaging feature).
How did you build internal tech capacity?
We decided somewhere along week two-three to establish what we call a tech rep group. These are representatives from each subject area who were selected by their department heads to receive all trainings and support from our Edtech office to support their teams when it comes to any software or hardware related questions. We had trainings and sharings involving how to use iPads to connect onto Dingtalk/Zoom, how to set up online white boarding, how to use Socrative for assessments, etc. This took place once a week and generally I’d send the occasional message on some new uses of technology that comes my way and answer questions in that group.
We’ve heard that students hate DingTalk and tried to get it removed from the App Store. Why are you using it so widely?
It’s true that students tried to give it a bad rating. But that was to get out of doing homework. If you look at the application on the App Store and read the reviews, you will find they gave 1 star but many actually have written a good review.
The DingTalk review of 1 star is a particularly funny one, because there was a sudden transition onto this system on a national level (as the government decided that this was one of the official platforms that should be used by schools for communication). This meant that we have over 150 million primary – secondary students using it all of a sudden, and of course there were lots of connectivity issues which resulted in poor live sessions. I have to empathize and say hats down to the DingTalk team as they had less than a week from Chinese New Year to handle such a sharp increase in traffic (it was reported that over 200 million new users started using it on the first week of school, this also includes the corporate sector – which it was mostly designed for as an office automation and communication tool, similar to Slack in the US). It was mostly after the second week that we found that the connectivity was slightly more stable, but more importantly that norms were established by the teachers.
What’s the key to picking technology platforms?
There is no one size fits all, and I generally won’t say there’s one technology that is the best, no matter DingTalk, Power School or whatever. It’s how we use it and make sure everyone knows how to use it alongside our team that demonstrates the best of the technology. So make sure whoever is introducing the tech is following up with individuals to see where the flaws are and that this is addressed to the team (it’s through the flaws that we know what the limitations are and we can find alternative solutions).
Aren’t there some teachers that just can’t be expected to use technology in this way?
Teachers will surprise you. The ones who were super anti-tech initially were the ones who really appreciated using tech during this period…while the ones who generally use tech in their classrooms were the ones who were actually critical of the tech and constantly look towards more alternative solutions. Go figure!
