FreshGrade: A monstrous, powerful beast

Day 2: Write about one piece of technology that you would like to try this year, and why. You might also write about what you’re hoping to see out of this edtech integration.

One of my beliefs in FreshGrade's potential was connecting parents to the classroom using technology. This was a huge undertaking this year and by fourth quarter, I had found a ton of gaps in the way I had rolled out this tool.

I wanted everything to be perfect. I wanted FreshGrade to be the one-stop-shop for my students, their families and myself. I wanted it all, and FreshGrade was the app that was going to deliver.

It didn't happen. I kept tweaking and adjusting. Trying to perfect every little hiccup, bump and bug proved to be quite taxing and slowed me down to a grinding halt.

In third quarter, I was handing out forms to parents and sending emails, inviting them to FreshGrade and to pair their email addresses with their student accounts. It was during this time that I was also trying to push FreshGrade to be my digital portfolio where students could upload and tag artifacts with standards. This new layer of FG brought a whole new spectrum of teach-tos and how-tos and purpose.

My purpose became derailed, and although it had great potential to be many things that I had been looking for, the execution was unfocused. Misaligned. And it was hard to move through the process because there were so many parts to it.

Next year, I want to start the first two weeks with connecting parents to FreshGrade. It will be year two-point-five with this program and I am sticking with it. I believe it can do great things. This time around, I am only going to focus on one.