How to use mobile tech to create and manage awesome pastoral notes within your school
Who’s cat has just died?
As a housemaster in charge of the academic and pastoral welfare of over 50 pupils, I rely heavily on my tutor team to feedback information to me about those in my charge.
At my school, pastoral care is centred around the tutor and tutee system, whereby a tutor is assigned a group of tutees who he or she will meet up with on a 1:1 basis at least once a week to discuss how their week has gone and to keep track of any academic, pastoral or other matters. It’s a vital part of the care that we provide.
It is however, essential that records of these conversations are recorded by the tutor so that I can keep an overview of the pastoral situation and act on any issues that may present themselves. I need to know, for example who’s cat has just died or who has an important family event coming up. It is often only through the tutors that this information comes through and acting decisively on this is key.
The Problem
However, problems arise when it comes to actually capturing this essential pastoral data and leveraging it for use within my role as a housemaster.
Currently, we use a clunky school management system which requires a series of laborious steps for the tutor to enter their note. Once entered, the note is often read once and then lost in the system until report writing season. Even then, it’s a hassle to recover the notes and use them in any meaningful way. This has lead to degradation in the quantity and quality of tutor notes and the need for some serious improvements!
A problem shared is a problem halved
It was during a conversation with a friend and fellow housemaster on Boxing day that I was inspired to do something about this.
In order to solve the problem I had to fix the following issues:
1: Simplify the data entry process
Currently, entering each note on a computer requires clunky log-ins and multiple clicks before actually typing in the note.
What if the tutor could simply dictate their note into their phone using speech to text software and the text would magically appear?
2: Define categories for the notes
Tutors’ notes focus on different aspects ranging from academic to pastoral to sporting etc.
What if each note was categorised at the time of writing to make it easy to sort at a later date?
3: Develop a traffic light watchlist
Keeping a watchlist of pupils who are struggling in any way is a vital part of knowing where to focus my efforts as a housemaster. Currently, my tutor team uses a weekly traffic light system on a Google sheet with cells that have been formatted to change colour to green, amber or red. This way I can quickly spot the reds or ambers and act accordingly.
What if this system could be integrated into the tutor note?
4: Make it a live working document
At the moment, each note is essentially ‘filed and forgotten’ within the management system.
What if each note could appear on a live spreadsheet along with previous notes that all users, including the tutor, the housemaster and senior management had access to and could use as a daily working document?
The Aha Moment! …Enter Task.
Task is a new technology platform that turns your phone into a mobile data capture device. Any kind of project can be set up in minutes to collect information and send it to a destination of your choice. It’s a flexible solution that puts power into the hands of the user.
Having been an early adopter of Task and already aware of its awesome possibilities, it was clear to me that building a project on Task would provide the solution to my problem.
Using Task meant that I could very easily create the perfect tutor note solution that met all four points of my brief with some key benefits:
- Low cost of entry and avoidance of any lengthy mobile app development process
- A robust and reliable platform
- The full backing of the Task support team
Great news indeed!
Sure enough…once set up, the system worked perfectly and the ability to use my phone’s inbuilt speech to text functionality made entering the notes a total breeze… check out how it works in the short video below.
We are now using Task within my school to create and manage our tutor notes. As you’ll see in the video above, it takes seconds to open the app, find your tutee, select a category and dictate your note.
The system uses a third party platform called Zapier to link the data sent from the Task app to my google sheets — The flexible API’s and web hooks means Task will also update a multitude of other systems such as CRMs or alumni management software, opening up opportunities for scale later.
On my shared and secure google sheet, each tutee’s tutor note arrives moments after being sent from their tutor’s phone and is instantly categorised, dated and assigned a traffic light colour. The google sheet also automatically sorts the notes from different users (tutors) onto different worksheets, again keeping our records highly organised and efficient.
The live aspect of this working document is a real game changer for us all, as now we can spot patterns before they become a problem and can easily sort the categories of note for specific pupils. The traffic light watchlist is also extremely useful to have incorporated into the same system — another way to pre-empt any upcoming situations.
This is how pastoral records should be kept!
Another unexpected bonus is that more notes are coming in. As tutors carry their phones on them at all times, a note can be added ‘on the go’. If something noteworthy is spotted (good or bad), a quick note can be entered ‘in the field’ and the housemaster alerted. This leads to quick and decisive action, whether giving praise or administering a sanction.
Educational Technology in Action
The possibilities of using Task within the education sector are huge. The bespoke nature of each Task project being the key. Too many apps are ‘one trick ponies’ that only deliver on certain levels. With Task, the number and scope of projects is endless and as such it is of great value in any educational environment.
Task projects can be set up in minutes in an infinite number of ways within a school setting. For example, in addition to pastoral notes, my school is also using Task to encourage and reward positive pupil behaviour, in this case as an achievement tracker. Much like the Duke of Edinburgh award, pupils are encouraged to learn life skills. Once they have mastered each skill such as sewing on a button or changing a car tyre, they can take a photo of the completed task and send it in for verification. Once verified by the admin, rewards can be released in the form of redeemable tokens. School competitions have also been revolutionised as pupils can now send in their entries via the task app (either photos or written work) and are then rewarded again with these redeemable tokens.
Each school setting is different and will have any number of ways to use Task.
To find out more about how your school could use Task, get in touch with the team for a consultation and a review of the special pricing structure for schools.
For a full instructional tutorial on how to set up this project in your school CLICK HERE. The whole process can be completed in as little as 30 minutes.
(this is the first of three tutorials — 2 and 3 are still in production but will be released very soon)
To find out more.. book a consultation with the team at Task.
