Getting school families into the 2.0 loop

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on April 21, 2007 at 5:18pm

Hi Sue,
VoiceThread could be another "cool" tool to get parents to join in. While I haven't tried it with parents yet, my elementary students found it very easy to use and a lot of fun. You can see an example on my page here on classroom20 http://www.classroom20.com/profile/tsairi
Susan

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Permalink Reply by Sue R. on April 21, 2007 at 8:14pm

Susan, thanks for the link. This looks like it might be fun--I am going to take a closer look tomorrow. I wonder if we could do a geneology project using this...
Thanks for pointing it out!
Sue

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Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on April 21, 2007 at 10:36pm

What a great idea! A family tree/album where members of the family can add to their own stories vocally.
There are a couple of fairly new web 20 sites for geneology http://www.geni.com/tree/start which is in open beta and http://www.famillions.com which is in private beta.
Another site is http://scrapblog.com - which enables users to create an online scrapbook (upload photos add, text, stamps, choose a template). The scrapblogs can be embedded in other websites and shared privately or publicly. Visitors can leave comments.

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Permalink Reply by Rhonda Crim-Tumelson on April 21, 2007 at 5:26pm

(From the flip side) How I WISH! My daughter's teacher sends me home at least 2 pages of paper every day. If she had a blog for parents who used 2.0, she could save so much money in copies. I understand that not everyone has access to computers, but man, would I love to not be a paper wrangler anymore. So, please ASK parents any chance you get if they would like to have paperless communication.

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Permalink Reply by Sue R. on April 21, 2007 at 7:04pm

What I hear from my school administration is that not all students and families will check online, so they haven't tried to go that way. I think being paperless would be something we could ask parents to sign up for, though, like you suggest, and will bring that forward. Asking that they would subscribe to an rss feed or check daily--a green thing for our environmentally conscious families--if they sign on! I anticipate that the office staff will complain that they don't want to spend the time differentiating paper flyers for all the students in each classroom (it is faster for the office to copy all students in a classroom rather than try and label for each student). Perhaps this is where a committed classroom teacher can organize things...color coding mailboxes for paper copies or not? Thanks for pointing to this avenue, I will pursue it!

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Permalink Reply by tcoffey on April 21, 2007 at 5:59pm

I've been thinking how cool it would be to get the teachers in my school to use a blog instead of a service like SchoolNotes (which they are required by the principal to use at the moment) to post homework. Then parents could use aggregator to subscribe to each of their children's homework feeds...and they be aggregated into one place. Does anyone know of a service other than a blog that would do this?

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Permalink Reply by Sue R. on April 21, 2007 at 8:00pm

I'm checking out schoolnotes since you referred to it, but we are using a moodle site with a calendar for homework (actually, the intermediates are using it, since they are most willing to spend time administering it).

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Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on April 21, 2007 at 9:59pm

It's worth checking out MyHaikuClass.com learning management system. Take a look at their feature page, they are planning a big update with new features (discussions, homework drop box with RSS, messaging, and gradebook by late summer, quizzes in the fall) http://www.haikuls.com/php/features.php
At the moment you can build webpages, add messages, announcements, embed videos and photos and audio from flickr, odeo and google/youtube. The webpage builder is an easy to use drag and drop and their are some very attractive templates. Free for one class. You can see examples of classes linked from their wiki http://www.haikuls.com/wiki/pmwiki.php/ExamplesOfHaikuClasses/Class...

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Permalink Reply by tcoffey on April 27, 2007 at 8:18pm

Oh wow! I hadn't seen haiku ls before. I'll spend some time playing with it this weekend! Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Skip Zilla on April 21, 2007 at 7:41pm

Sue,

Think refrigerator. What do most parents of school children have attached to every available space on refrigerator doors and sides? Their kids' prized work. Let the kids invite their parents to take a look at their work on an online refrigerator door. It's easy for a parent to turn the teacher's invitation down. But their kids'? Hell, they'll be linking the site in emails they send to family and friends. "Hey Jill, look at what Joey did in school yesterday." Once you've gotten this response and the supply of new work posted by the kids for their parents is flowing reliably to them, then you place the hook. Have the kids request that their parents find and send something interesting back to their blogs so that they can show their friends how "cool" their parents are. I can't imagine that I'm mistaken about the psychology of the process of communication at work here. The kids are the ultimate motivators of their parents' responses and agents for change in the parents' engagement with the school. Lay on thick the everybody's-doing-it "coolness" factor. Once the engagement gets started don't stop the two-way flow of basic, show-and-tell materials. In fact, introduce creative, learning projects the student and parent can accomplish online together. Once process gets going, feed it with publicity about it in local media and online. My experience tells me that new technology users love affirmation of their newly acquired proficiencies. Who doesn't like having others admire your talents (or good looks or whatever)?

I hope this may be a useful suggestion on starting up a Web 2.0 initiative that engages parents of students.

Also, never, never, never think that you have to accomplish all the essential tasks of the start up yourself. Ask for all the volunteer help you need for your project to succeed. Don't rely only on the formal resource persons available to you. Lots of people in the community will be happy to know how much you believe in helping their children learn and will volunteer to do something you ask them to do. If asking others for help, make your first volunteer a "good asker for others help." The synegy developed within your volunteer team will fuel you all. Always keep in mind that your own students are your best resources for spreading information and enthusiasm. They are a number of tasks that they can volunteer for, take responsiblity for.

Your can-do attitude will make all the difference. Maintaining it when the project runs into difficulties of one kind or another (and it surely will) is a matter of staying in collaboration with all those who have a stake in the project's success. Don't go it alone. You don't have to.

Again, I hope this additional section on volunteer help will be of use to you.

Skip

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Permalink Reply by Sue R. on April 21, 2007 at 7:58pm

Wow. This blows me away. What a great way to approach this!

Were you picturing the showcase for student work, the "refrigerator door," in any particular venue?

I also appreciate the emphasis on getting volunteer help, it is a reminder I need to keep plastered to my bathroom mirror! But you would be surprised how little access, and thus experience, many of my countryside families have. For many, phone access is the best they can get, and the lines are not even good enough for 56K--thus they have no functional access or experience. I will try for volunteer help, and hope to find some wanting to come into the school to use our satellite access to experience the web. But, even if the site gets put up for friends and family who are in more urban areas, I am sure the feedback will be huge! I'm thinking slide shows of current events, pictures of student work, and sound recordings of young readers would all be wondrous. I'm also thinking I will start with one class, and then try and get the teachers from other classes to want to join in. That way, they might help out...

Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Skip Zilla on April 21, 2007 at 8:28pm

Sue,

I picture each student responsible for developing and posting her/his blog as independently as is possible. Some non-risk-takers or perfectionists may need a little handholding to begin with, but once they see their classmates purring away at producing their posts, they'll get with it.

If parents and students suspect that these are not student efforts, but yours in disguise, the project won't work. The teacher must have a blog which is similar, but a grown-up version of what the kids have, almost without special distinction with theirs. (Think about it. The kids don't want to have to compete with your skills; they want to demonstrate how good their own blog can be.) General news for parents about the project and help with online participation will be key on the teacher's blog, although I wouldn't rule out personalizing a little, just as you would at your own private blog.

I'm sorry to hear about the access problems some of your parents will have. Here's a chance for you to do your civic duty! Push school officials and other community leaders to seek improvements. There is more foundation and government funding money available for improving access in situations like yours. You don't need to lead the effort. Find a concerned citizen or group and a political official who wants some good publicity and let them carry the ball. Just instigate their activity.

When you have other minds and eyes and ears working with you, you'll find the ways to work around obstacles. Again, don't shoulder all the responsibility yourself. Share it with as many good people as your can and especially with your students. What everybody wants and will get is their part of the credit.

Skip

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