Schuylkill Valley teachers concerned over district’s planned transition to new file storage platform
Teachers worried that Schuylkill Valley School District’s planned switch to a new file storage service could dramatically impact online classroom activities took their concerns before the school board Monday, March 28.
Creg Drake said the district’s plans to transfer assignments stored on Google Drive to Microsoft’s OneDrive wouldn’t work, since no program can send interactive assignments made using Google’s software to OneDrive.
“It’s a huge amount of stored information, all of our Google forms, a lot of our tests. Our labs are there,” Drake said. “If we transition away from Google, I believe that all of those forms will be lost.”
Drake, a ninth- and 10th-grade honors science teacher, was one of several district teachers who spoke, among the roughly two dozen attending the meeting Monday.
The switch is part of larger plans to transfer the district onto Schoology, an online learning management system that would streamline teachers’ ability to post grades and track student outcomes, said Michael Billman, director of instructional and information technology.
The district currently uses Google Classroom as its learning platform. Assignments and other educational materials posted to the platform are used by all students, regardless of whether they attend virtually or in person.
Drake and other teachers clarified that they supported the district’s transfer onto Schoology but asked the board and Billman to reconsider any abrupt change away from Google Drive.
Several teachers said district administrators only told them of the change to OneDrive on Friday. They said they were concerned with the seemingly rapid nature of the switch and the lack of correspondence with teachers.
District residents and parents took issue with the change as well.
“We have 2,000 kids and all of our staff members that are affected by this,” said Kelly Steinke, a district resident, “I just don’t know that now at the end of the pandemic is the best time.”
Emily Calaman, a district resident and an adjunct professor with the Library and Learning Technology Department at Kutztown University, said that moving away from Google would be a technological backslide for the district.
“It would almost be like asking a lot of teachers to completely redesign their curriculum,” Calaman said.
She noted that Kutztown University teaches Google suite integration in technology and education classes.
“If we get rid of Google Drive, there may be many future educators who will be very unprepared for what our district is requiring of them,” Calaman said.
Drake asked the board to postpone an official vote on Schoology integration to give teachers a chance to fully express their concerns and learn how the changes will affect them.
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