The genesis of this idea came from this past week, which I spent at the Hewlett Foundation’s Open Educational Resources Grantees meeting. In addition to some great individuals at the cutting edge of open education, there were also a number of teachers there to report on their needs. Here is some of what I learned.
The Problem
According to many of the teachers in attendance, there are significant needs that the community of non-teachers has the capacity to support. The most commonly cited need was for IT support in schools. Others requested help curating or creating multimedia content to share in class - anything from a photo of a cumulonimbus cloud to the perfect video clip.
Although most citizens care about the academic wellbeing of children, few join PTOs, lobby school boards, or actually volunteer their time. Though there is a desire to “do something,” most people don’t really know how they can help.
The Solution
To me, it seems clear that teachers and potential volunteers need a single portal to share their specific needs and desire to help in very clear and deliverable terms. What we need is a Mechanical Turk-like site for teachers to post small tasks for the crowd of enthusiastic volunteers in their community to complete. This would operate online - much liked Sparked.com - but have a local geographic component - much like Craigslist.
This will take some work on the part of teachers to divide their tasks into manageable pieces. Rather than a dedicated IT person, a teacher will need to identify small tasks that a volunteer could easily complete in five to sixty minutes: setting up a wireless router, donating an old IPod touch, sharing photos, giving a career talk, etc. Likewise, the community will have to prove its willingness to support education by completing these tasks in a speedy fashion.
One of the first and most frequent tasks that I’d like to see on a site like that would be to simply find and thank a teacher for doing such an important job. If teachers have the community support they rightly deserve, every student will benefit.
The Implementation
I get the feeling this needs to launch as a simple site in a single school district. Here’s looking at you, Cambridge, MA. Hopefully a proof of concept would encourage additional adoption and support in other communities across the country. The imperative remains: will someone please steal this idea from me.
Attribution: Andrew Magliozzi
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