Shifting Teachers

Sarah Weston, curriculum director at the Open High School of Utah, says that activities that assist in teaching need to be web-based and collaborative.

Sarah Weston is the curriculum director for the Open High School of Utah, a charter school.  “When we look at giving our students tools, I always look for two things: web-based and collaborative,” says Weston. “This is because our infrastructure is cloud-based and our curriculum encourages group work.”
Weston says that single sign-on access to SlideRocket through Google Apps saves time and cuts down on the number of accounts she creates and manages. Teachers embed presentations in their online courses, track statistics, and assess how the lesson was received.  Students can work in teams, collect shared data in Google Docs, and organize their data in a presentation – regardless of location. “When I describe it to my new teachers,” says Weston, “I call it PowerPoint on steroids.”