“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, you cannot get more time.” – Jim Rohn
As an educator, this quote really hits home. In fact, in a survey of 20,000 teachers, 76% said that if they had to identify one thing that they wanted more of it would be time.1 Time to plan. Time to assess. Time to instruct.
Lost instruction time is one of the obstacles teachers diligently try to avoid, but inevitably encounter. The lesson plan was succinct. The materials were copied and organized. The lesson should have gone off without a hitch. But, then the notorious timesuckers reared their ugly heads. The copies were missing a page. Johnny and Susie could not remember their passwords. Mikey did not seem to have the faintest idea of how to access the online textbook. That leads us to wonder just how much instructional time is lost due to transitions in the classroom? The answer is (on average) 10 minutes a day. Played out over a school year 10 minutes a day equals a whopping 1800 hours or 6 full school days.2
One tool that has been useful in our school district is Otus. The Otus Bookshelf gives teachers the gift of time. Gone are the days of taking instructional minutes to direct students to the right webpage or delaying part of a lesson because more copies are needed. Otus streamlines the process of sharing materials and eliminates wasted instructional time due to website navigation and password issues. Students can access third party content (Khan Academy, Actively Learn, Newsela, Raz-Kids, etc.) as well as access shared articles, videos, and any other shared content.
Let me paint a picture for you. On Sunday afternoon, with your last few hours of the weekend ticking away you sit down to lesson plan. You start to surf some of your favorite websites for materials. You find several resources that you want to share with different groups of students. In the past, you would save/email the resource link to yourself to print and copy the next morning (average 7 minutes) or share the link via email or other method with the appropriate students (average 4 minutes). But, now you have the option share resources using on The Otus Bookshelf (average 30 seconds). If you replace printing and sharing via email with the Otus just once a week for an entire school year you gain approximately 3 hours of time. If you do this once a day for the entire school year you gain approximately 5 full school days!
This blog originally appeared on the Otus Student Performance System features blog. http://otus.com/sharing-bookshelf-resources/
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