In my previous job I wanted to change how we recorded
data. My previous employment, I was a
teacher for autistic adolescents for a private school within Rutgers University. This program is viewed as a prestigious
evidence based ABA program. My class and
another dealt with severely behavioral students. Staff needed to be alert every second when
interacting with these students, and was difficult to keep up with recording
data has accurate as possible and telling with the behaviors at the same
time. All data was recorded with pencil and
paper, at times different clickers with labels to keep up with the high
frequency behaviors. Since I am into
computers and enjoy seeing the new technology tools to use, I have come up with
a plan, to have an easier way to collect data and have the data automatically
in graph form into a database for the supervisors to look at whenever possible
so not to wait to latter part of the week for the assistant to finish graphing
manually.
Now we are talking about 7 years ago, when this happen, palm
pilots were popular at this time, there was even a mini computer called OQO
that was very popular but very expensive.
I have thought about purchasing palm pilots with the program called
Documents to Go that gave a compatible version of Microsoft office excel. I had made a data sheets that automatically
lead into calculation into graphs. The
staff member would have the palm pilot attached to their belt of in their
pocket and have a headphone and microphone wired to the palm pilot using Dragon
Speaking voice program. Staff would get
a list of codes to memorize that would label specific behaviors and frequencies
to the excel sheet. At the end of the
day they would sync the palm pilot to the computer and those excel sheets will
have the data of the day already in graph form ready to be viewed. This process
would lead to allowing staff to have free hands to deal with the behaviors and
allow staff to observe the behaviors without having to look down on a sheet to
record data. My plan was well thought
out in the sense of technology aspect, but was not by cost and adaptability (Stolovitch,
n.d.).
When I presented my plan to the directors of the program,
they have asked, does these palm pilots work with Mac computers? How much will
it cost to purchase the palm pilots for all of the staff, how about the licenses
for the Dragon Speaking program (Portny, 2008)?
We have a database made already with Filemaker pro on the Mac server for
our IEP’s, will the excel graphs be able to be used on our database? All of
these questions I did not consider on my plan(Stolovitch, n.d.), because
I am more of a PC person and I wasn’t using the Mac that was given to me, I
used my en PC to take on the data, but still able to log on to the Mac
server. I had thought we can have two
different systems and possibly the directors can see the plus side to the PC
world and give up the Mac. I was wrong
because the director in my school is a big fan of Mac and is the one who
services the Mac to make sure everything is working correctly (Portny, 2008).
The idea I want to do was a good one but it was not feasible
with the resources that I needed to work with (Portny, 2008). Not all was lost; my directors did agree that
there needed to be a better system to record data so they had asked me to find out
about video cameras, they thought about putting video cameras in all of the classrooms
and hallways linked a specific room for anyone to go into to look at the
behaviors of the day to take data. For
data collection outside of the building they would consider some type of
portable device to use. They would also
update their Filemaker database to see if they can link some portable devices. If I had a chance to do this all over I would
have taken time to see what technology devices I have already to see what will
be compatible with it for my plan to succeed.
I would also have to see what will be cost effect.
I recently when back to visit still have some friends there,
and I heard they have a whole new data system, similar to my old plan but they did
not think about the issues with the wireless system. They had purchased iPod’s/itouch with a data
app that automatically sync wirelessly with the server. The issue I hear is when anybody uses the
microwave in the building it cuts off the wireless signal in the area for the
time the microwave is in use, having staff frustrated that the data was not
sent to the server. Causing issues because the app does not store the data it
takes from the person’s input and then sends it to the server when the person
presses finish then clearing the sheet for the next collection. Actually one of the directors had walk by and
overheard our conversation and asked me what I would do to fix the
solution? I had asked when the app is
sending the data to the server what type of program is it sending it to? And do
you have choice of different places to send it to (Portny, 2008)? The director showed me the app and I noticed
that it would send the data to any device that has Numbers in it. Numbers is Mac’s version of excel. So I tried if the app would send the data to
Numbers located within the same ipod/itouch.
The app allowed this to happen, so I told them just have them send the
data to the itouch that they are using, and then at their lunch time or the end
of the day have the itouch sync to the teachers
computer wired or wirelessly the numbers file.
Then the teacher computer will automatically sync to the server later in
the day. This way if anything happens
you have data backed up in three locations.
I was happy to know that the plan I made in the beginning was functional
it just wasn’t planned right, but I did learn from my mistakes (Stolovitch, n.d.).
References
Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M.,
& Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and
controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
