Embedded Files
Getting Started is Simple! Connect with us to learn more . . .
Below are resources for you to use with your teams and examples of how TeamMark leverages not just the power of your teams and PLCs but the power of technology to help us work smarter, not harder!
Collaboration Log Report
Teams are busy! It's good to take a moment to celebrate.
Completing a focused collaboration session in TeamMark becomes a moment to celebrate, not only because using TeamMark elevates the synergy of a team during collaboration, but because the simple act of clicking "Complete" starts a powerful chain reaction that carries this synergy forward.
Upon clicking "Complete", team members confidently return to tasks at-hand knowing that all of their collaboration notes and other detailed information has automatically been emailed to all team members, including administration, and is saved automatically within the TeamMark toolkit.
The Collaboration Log Report will always include:
Who attended (auto-populated based on Team Details)
Agenda Items and their status (addressed or not)
All collaboration notes ("Comments") attached to each Agenda Item
Notes regarding Successes and Challenges
Student Alerts
Current Essential Learning Topics/Objectives
Details of their Action Plans
Team members, including administration, relax knowing they will always receive the detailed Collaboration Log Report whenever a team completes their collaboration sessions.
Administrators easily keep the pulse of multiple teams, even across multiple campuses, by simply opening an email to review a team's notes, and engaging with the team in a number of responsive ways. No more chasing down notes or team members to stay updated.
No files or folders to manage, copies to make. Just a wonderfully detailed report automatically sent to your inbox.
Collaboration_Log_Report.pdf
Teams create norms in the TeamMark toolkit.
Creating meaningful norms requires both group planning and a personal commitment to each norm. Once norms are created, each team member is expected to either Accept or Deny every norm. If she/he Denies a norm, they are required to provide a justification. This process encourages reflection and internalization of every norm.
Along with the Norm Popup that automatically appears when the team logs into TeamMark, teams can return to the Norms tool anytime to review, edit, delete, or add new norms.
Group Norms
Group Norms . . . they can either be a distracting hoop to jump through or a foundational tool to help elevate a team's focus, productivity, and synergy.
TeamMark supports group norms within power-teams using intelligent tools to:
Engage in participatory discourse around norm development
Focus on norms prior to every collaboration meeting automatically
Easily edit, revise, and elevate norms in dynamic Norms tool.
How are TeamMark's Norms an example of an "intelligent tool"?
The norms tool is first accessed through a dashboard. Once created from this dashboard, teams interact with norms at key collaborative points. TeamMark's Norms tools leverage the integrative potential of technology with the natural cadence of collaboration. It provides both a framework for crafting and reflecting on norms and a programable Norms Popup to visually support teams as they consider, review, and focus on norms as a routine aspect of collaboration.
TeamMark schools recognize that norms are a tool that elevates team engagement. When norms are present and used with the dynamic power of intelligent tools, teams can interact with their norms and use these commitment statements to refine and reflect on their practice.
Suggestions for encouraging team norms reflection:
Have the teams in your school considered these simple questions -
How did your team establish consensus around each team norm?
How will or do your norms elevate the conversations of your team? How do you know?
How does your team respond when a norm is not respected?
Where does your team post their norms and how frequently do you believe it would be valuable to review your team's norms? Why?
Interactive Agenda
At TeamMark, we believe meaningful engagement with agendas should influence and elevate thinking at every touchpoint with the agenda topics - when an agenda topic is created, when teams document notes related to agenda topics, and as teams accumulate a record of agenda topics. How?
Creating Agenda Topics
Documenting Notes
Keeping Detailed Records of Agenda Topics (of course, TeamMark takes care of this for you! See the image below)
To create a new agenda topic, team members open the "New Topic" tool (below, left). Designed to encourage focused, intentional creation of agenda topics, this tool is easy to use yet powerfully integrated into TeamMark's Collaboration log in "This Week's Agenda" (below, right).
When creating a new agenda topic, any team member or administrator can distribute topics to teams, schedule topics to be delivered on specific dates, is required to assign a "Category" to the topic (thus encouraging intentionally and helping to facilitate agenda topic analysis and reflection) and can attach documents to specific agenda items. When Saved, all team members automatically receive an email notification that their team has a new Agenda Topic to discuss in an upcoming collaboration.
The Agenda Topic will appear in the assigned Collaboration Log under "This Week's Agenda" (see left). Teams address each agenda topic by documenting notes, comments, and more. A topic can remain in the agenda for as long as the team chooses or a topic can be marked as addressed and will not appear again in the Collaboration Log's agenda.
Lastly, when a team "Completes" a collaboration session, their Collaboration Log Report will display each agenda item, its corresponding notes, and if the agenda item has been marked as addressed or remains not addressed.
Facilitating Reflection with Support from TeamMark
Agenda Topics Dashboard: Part I - Categories (REFLECTION PROMPTS)
Below are three questions that add value for your teams as they bring the school year to a close.
What categories of agenda topics did we spend the most time collaborating around this year?
What impact did these have on our teaching and student learning and progress?
Are there any focus/themes our team wants to prioritize for the coming year?
Reflecting on questions like these adds value and continuity for teams as the school year ends. The discussion brings teams closer together, creates points of celebration, and sets the course for next year while instruction and success are fresh in mind.
The TeamMark toolkit facilitates team reflection by having any team member select the “Category” when they create an Agenda Topic for their team’s collaboration. This drives intentional creation of value-added agenda topics and supports analysis of trends, themes, team focus throughout a team’s yearly collaborative cycle.
TeamMark Agenda Topics can be categorized using the following Categories -
Assessment, Data, Inquiry, Instruction, Smart Goal, Professional Learning, and Other
Agenda Topics Dashboard: Part II - Collaboration Patterns and Trends at a glance! (REFLECTION PROMPTS)
Educational leaders who use TeamMark to facilitate continuous improvement and easily manage robust PLC activity can pull rich data from a single dashboard to:
Justify and validate investments in PLCs
Guide PLC coaching conversations
Support teams as they elevate their collaborative process using the Plan, Act, Reflect cycle.
Exploring the Agenda Topics Dashboard for every team in your school takes just minutes and doing so provides you rich data with concrete answers to the following questions:
How are teams functioning? On each team, who is submitting agenda topics?
Why does this matter - because it reflects shared leadership within the team.
What does the frequency of new Agenda Topics say about the focus, engagement, motivation, energy, and needs of each team?
How many agenda topics are completed versus incomplete? Is this a concern?
How many completed agenda topics have notes versus no notes?
What does the lack of notes suggest about a team? Why are functional notes foundational to a high functioning team?
With this (and more) data clearly in hand, educational leaders can celebrate the growth and impact of their PLCs, facilitate data-based crucial conversations, and much more!
PLC-Friendly SMART Goals Tools (REFLECTION PROMPTS)
Let’s say it like it is, SMART goals really are our navigation system. In the same way we don’t get in our car and just randomly turn corners until we’re extremely frustrated, PLCs do not just jump into teaching every day, randomly crossing their fingers that students will learn.
Instead, we activate our nav system and listen to that guiding voice before we push down the gas pedal. Our Learning Community is the same, teams activate their “nav system” by creating and frequently monitoring SMART goals.
Here are three questions that add value as your teams look back over their SMART goal progress at the end of the school year.
Were our SMART goals our guiding “voice”? Where’s our evidence?
How did our SMART goals impact our teaching and student learning and progress?
What changes will we institute for next year? How can we better use this dynamic guiding tool to ensure that next year is even better than this year?
Reflecting on questions about how their SMART goals guided their year adds value and continuity for teams as they end the year. It sets next year on a stronger footing while their success of this year is fresh in mind.
Consistently engaging with SMART goals (links to video) is so important that tools are integrated directly into the TeamMark online Collaboration Log.
Every collaborative meeting includes a reflection on SMART goals progress.
Teams keep a running record of SMART goal reflections.
At the end of the year, all progress notes are easily pulled into one report.
Report abuse