We would appreciate your opinion about how a "Modern Safe" focus could help you in the real-world of your classroom.
You don't have any idea what we're talking about? Read more…
Sidebar
An article, "Closed-Safe, Closed-Loop Cash Management," caught our attention.
This article was about how a modern safe solves the security needs that are created by handling large amounts of cash.
Source: McGunn, Ed. "Closed-Safe, Closed-Loop Cash Management" in Integrated Solutions for Retailers, 11,7,2007 (July) http://www.ismretail.com
The issue is that security issues soar whenever a safe is open. The old solution, lots of armed guards, controlled-access, heavy doors, intrusion detection systems, etc.
The Modern, Strategic Solution
The new strategic solution is the modern safe.
A strategic solution means "strategic thinking."
Money in the safe is most vulnerable when the safe is opened, or when the safe remains open. To find strategic solutions, first ask questions...
For example…
"When do we open the safe?"
Answer: We open the safe to count the money to prepare for the armored truck pickup, to provide working cash drawers for our sales clerks, etc.
"What if" questions..."What if you could keep the safe locked as much as possible?"
What if we could build a safe that we didn't have to open, ever?
What if we could build a safe that we could look inside, anytime, without having to open it?
A Real-world Solution
What if the safe...
- Counted the money as the money was put in to it?
- Checked to see if the money was genuine or counterfeit as the money went in?
- Printed receipts?
- Placed the money in a sealed cassette with electronic records for the armored truck pickup?
- Provided remote administration and visibility on the inside from control room somewhere else on the network?
- Increased ability to monitor the following of business policies related to the handling of cash?
- Increased staff effectiveness, (they can spend time with customers instead of counting and reconciling cash)?
Guess what? This solution exists...
Sidebar
"This seamless process closes the loop from one secure environment to the next. These features not only reduce the threat of theft, shrinkage, and counterfeit currency, but also provide businesses the ability to securely execute cash transactions in a 'closed-safe' closed-loop' environment."
Source: McGunn, Ed. "Closed-Safe, Closed-Loop Cash Management" in Integrated Solutions for Retailers, 11,7,2007. p. - 44.
"A closed-safe, closed-loop environment not only reduces risk, but also enables productivity gains. Retail staff can spend more time with customers, since they spend less time conducting cash transactions, transferring cash from the POS to the safe, counting cash in preparation for a bank deposit, and reconciling the discrepancies when counts do not match receipts.
Last, cash management solutions need to be backed by outstanding delivery, installation, training, and customer service programs in order to deliver a total solution. Together, these capacities will reduce risk, increase productivity, and enhance your customers experience..."
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Source: McGunn, Ed. "Closed-Safe, Closed-Loop Cash Management" in Integrated Solutions for Retailers, 11,7,2007. p. - 44.
What does the "Closed-Loop" Model Mean for your Classroom?
Answer: Close the vulnerabilities and the time wasters as much as possible. Automate where possible and set up classroom routines to model the "Closed-Loop";
Think in new, strategic, streamlined ways about your ordinary tasks, especially the tasks that keep draining your time and your energy.
For example...
Increase your productivity and by decreasing the risk of data entry errors. Figure out how to create administrative and teaching processes that use the same data. If you do, you can spend more time with students.
Find ways to eliminate the drudge of grading. If you spend less time grading, you can spend more time with your students during school hours, and with your family on your own time. And, you will have more of your own time.
Spend less time slogging through paperwork, less time handling sticky-red-tape by automating your forms, reports and lesson plans.
Automate your discipline plan and discipline record keeping.
Try to build Closed-loop Solutions to automate much (most, all?) of the busywork that saps your productivity, and, try to develop a system that provides a real-time vision into the progress of each student...while eliminating the drudgery of collecting, inputting and managing that student outcome data.
The key is to plan, to create "at-a-glance" forms and formats, and to delegate as much as possible to your student assistants.
Strategic Closed-Loop Solutions also allow for formative-assessment-based changes of direction for instruction and management, i.e., you catch procedures and methods that are not working and make changes before the entire effort is a waste of time, requiring re-teaching.
Current, Inefficient Methods become Obsolete
Closed-Loop Solutions could make current, inefficient methods obsolete...(For example...)
- A computer lab where every student's work has to be printed out and hand-graded by the teacher…why not develop a rubric system that can assess students work on screen
- Where students have to figure out how to place their assignments online for access by their teacher, host a free, online system, use software such as Moodle!, and let students post their work online
- Where the teacher has to search multiple folders, disks, CD or Flash drive to collect each student's work for grading…have student project groups use rubrics and score these items, all at once
- Where the teacher has to enter each grade into a separate grade sheet
- Where the teacher has to average the grades with a calculator…use a spreadsheet that totals and summarizes the grades
- Where the grades have to be numerical form in order for the grades to be recorded…use a spreadsheet program to translate rubric scores into numerical equivalents
Really Integrate Technology
What about the Integration of Technology?
Closed-Loop Solutions represent a change in focus from the integration of technology, carried on the backs of unwilling teachers, to an integration of technology eagerly used by teachers because the technology transforms itself into a real resource, (an automated, time saving, productivity-enhancing, education-related) for teaching and learning, resource. from a "too-hard-to-use" tool
How could the original proponents of integrating technology for teaching and learning have been so focused upon the technology that they could not see the teachers' or students' needs, or see the teachers or students' frame of reference? Aren't we glad that the Closed-Loop model can lead us out of the morass of those dark ages?
Closed-Loop Solutions could make the early failed attempts to integrate technology seem like the remote, distant past because we tend to remember only the good things…and for most teachers, the integration of technology past was unpleasant.
You could breathe a sigh of relief as the busy work clears itself from the tedium of your school day (and nights) if real technology integration proves to benefit you. And if real technology integration lets students enjoy more quality time with you, it will be time that is more "quality" because you are less stressed.
Teacher Productivity: Updraft or Down Current?
School district executive decision-makers talk up the idea of increasing teacher productivity, but they have done little to make that a reality for teachers because they have failed to provide the funding that was needed.
School leaders talk about increasing student outcome measures (test scores) but fail to match these aspirations with funding initiatives.
And, the rhetoric about increasing teacher productivity was not matched by an initiative to eliminate "bureaucratic busywork" from teachers' schedules, not matched by initiatives to analyze trends in teacher burnout, and not used to analyze or predict "classroom trouble spots" so that remedies could be instituted before these trouble spots have time to fester and rot.
Teachers have to do these thing on their own, and automation, using the technology that should be integrated is the ticket.
Ways that the technology might be integrated, and the Closed-Loop system integrated can be used to save teacher time.
Closed-Loop systems that automate technology solutions mean increased quality of instructional delivery, automated (or semi-automated) classroom training of students, and a focus upon care and "customer service" for students. Closed-Loop solutions are ones that produce results, as measured in student learning outcomes.
A Closed-Loop Focus
A Closed-Loop focus on simple to do automation that meets teaching and learning needs, a focus upon time-saving solutions and focus upon educational goals is what will pay off for teachers. Find ways to measure student performance, use educational intelligence, use instructional goals; but, make sure that doing these things is easier and less time-intensive than what you are doing now.
When Closed-Loop strategies mean intelligent assessment (instead of the grading drudge), then teachers have more time to teach.
When the boundless abilities of our students are prized instead of bureaucratic-focused paperwork, then Closed-Loop time-savings can let teachers soar.
Like the Closed-Safe, Closed-Loop system, teachers can free up time (quality time) that can be spent with students.
Let your Imagination Soar
Imagine breaking free from the tethers that now hold you and your students back…tethers of under funding and stingy management, teathers of administrative ineptitude…by freeing you from the trivial and making quality time available for your students.
Our current, obsolete school district, bureaucratic procedures could be seen as training our teachers and students in the same way that baby elephants are trained, i.e., trained so that a small rope holds them (when in fact, they could easily break free as adults).
Closed-Loop Solutions can help teachers and students break free, free from the shackles of meaningless busy work, and free from the shackles of "no-can-do" thinking. But first, teachers need to know that such freedom is possible.
All you need is a clear and detailed vision and a simple plan. Then, you can work out the details (use the technology, find someone to help you with the technology) for making this a Closed-Loop solution do something useful.
Closed-Loop solutions mean finding real-world targets for real-world-needs of teachers.
Let us know what Closed-Loop systems would solve your most urgent needs.
