Let's start in an English country garden - a family are harvesting apples in their small orchard. Climbing ladders, the young men pick the apples carefully and pass them down to their wives and sisters, who place them in 'waiting-baskets'. Every so often, either grandma or grandpa will pass by carrying one of their 'collecting-baskets', select some apples from the waiting-baskets and leave the rest behind for a later visit. Each collecting basket is labelled either 'eating', 'cooking' or 'cider' and each time the old couple visit the waiting-baskets, they will choose only the apples which match the quality that they are looking for, and place them into the labelled collecting-basket that they are carrying.
In a second country garden nearby, a different family are also harvesting apples. Climbing ladders, the young men man pick the apples carefully and pass them down to their wives and sisters, who place them in 'waiting baskets'. Every so often, either grandma or grandpa will pass by and carry off one of the waiting baskets to the three collecting baskets which are placed nearby. They will then sort the apples in the waiting basket, placing each apple into one of the collecting baskets depending on its quality.
In a third English country garden, grandma and grandpa have got tough. They sit next to their three collecting baskets and wait. Every so often, one of their offspring fetches a basket of apples - they used to be called 'waiting-baskets' - to be sorted.
All of these systems work, but from the perspective of grandma and grandpa the second system is much more efficient than the first. They do not have to visit several trees to select the apples they want; they sort entire baskets of apples at a time. The third system is best from the perspective of the old folk, but nobody else in the orchard likes it.
This kind of decision - which-work-is-done-where - is made routinely in business, and the workflow within organisations is typically analysed carefully to achieve an optimum way of working. In teaching, similar issues exist, but there is rarely much analysis of how work flows through a school.
Now read the following example, which will be familiar to many teachers...
Terry's Morning - Part 1
Terry wakes up grumbling and switches off the alarm. He wanders to the kitchen and while the kettle boils he checks the calendar hanging on the kitchen door. Today's date says 'remember – performance review next week'. Terry makes a cup of tea and goes into his study. He has left a post-it note for himself on the PC 'gate duty for Jenny'. He checks both his home e-mail and his work e-mail. He also has a quick look at Facebook and notices a post on the School account about a Y7 trip next month – this reminds him that he needs to get that Risk Assessment form.
Terry drives to school and pops into the staff room. There is a memo on the noticeboard summarising the Governor's meeting. One of the items is about lab equipment and Terry needs to talk to his faculty head about this. His pigeonhole has a memo in it, and Terry reads it as he heads for the faculty office. It is from the IT technicians telling him his laptop is ready. In the office, he notices the Answerphone is flashing and he plays a message from an anxious parent. As he does this, he sees there is note from the Deputy Head for him left on the desk. Nothing urgent, but another thing to do. Terry heads to his main teaching room and turns on the PC. A colleague has left a note on the keyboard: 'Hi - can I have a copy of the test paper you did for Y12?'. As he pulls his chair out he sees a folder of student coursework with 'Mark Me, Please!!' written at the top. As the PC is warming up, Terry notices a message from his faculty head scrawled on the whiteboard: 'urgent meeting 08:00 in old gymnasium - OFSTED'.
OK, a bit extreme, I know; but most of us will recognise what is happening here. Before he even starts teaching, Terry is getting bombarded with information - with notifications of work – from all sides – in fact from eleven locations. We call these locations 'sources' and I'm sure you can guess that we want to minimise these sources as much as possible. Terry's way of working is similar to the first orchard described earlier. He is, in effect, wandering through his world collecting work, just as a farmer collects apples - what would make his life easier is to have all his work in one basket, in one place.
This is what the TM4T Location Awareness techniques involve: ensuring that you collect your work in an efficient way, and do your work in the best location available.