Transcript - eCom4s2p @ mixxt

Gerard Gielen
Katholieke Hogeschool Limburg
Limburg University College Hasselt Belgium
e-CommunIC@Tion 4 Schools
2 Parents
Communication to parents is critical to
success of children
Communication between schools and families is
essential for building trusting relationships that
foster parental involvement.
Parental involvement in schools and social institutes
is necessary for youngsters to develop successfully
and to make decisions that will have positive
outcomes for their futures.
Building home-school partnerships is a powerful
avenue for increasing the satisfaction of parents and
the community with schooling and for improving
schools.
Parents' involvement in their child's education is a
key factor in the child's scholastic success
Actual situation
The communication between teachers and parents isn’t
always very clear and intensive.
Parents and teachers communicate mainly by means of
the class diary/ written notes from school and by life
contacts at the end of the schoolyear (report –results of
the children) or open school days or fundraising
activities.
Teachers don’t have a good view on the participation of
parents and vice versa. They see each other only when
things are going wrong.
Communication most often breaks down between home
and school when the student tells their parents only part
of the story and the parents do not probe for the rest of
it. Misunderstandings can arise.
Parents are complaining that they get too little
information of the school
Traditional methods of communication such as faceto-face meetings have been found to be effective,
however, these methods require time that both
working parents and teachers lack.
Educators are often very good at mass
communications via newsletters, letters, and
handbooks for their students, but don’t use it for
connecting to parents.
Educators must become effective at interpersonal
communication with the target audience
Complaint : only contact once a year during
the parent contact evening.
Society = large social community
E-Technology is everywhere…
If your kids are awake, they are online….
…
OLE
Even the Pope is online…
eCommunication in the classroom
Little research…teachers don’t use it often for
communication with parents !!!!
Research (Rogers & Wright, 2007)
report usage of traditional modes
of communication such as
newsletters and telephone calls to
be 75% opposed to newer
technologies such as websites and
e-mail which are both less than
15%.
More research has to be done to
evaluate the role of emerging etechnologies in enhancing
communication practices between
schools and parents.
E-communication works but it isn’t used often.
New ICT communications technologies
can improve parental involvement in
schools and social institutes.
Innovative technologies such as social
networks, e-mail, websites, blog,
skype, sms, e-learning environments
,…could provide schools with new tools
for reaching parents and keeping
them informed about their children.
Jacobs & Kritsonis (Texas A&M University,2007)
e-Communication 2 HOW ?
Website : if the parent has a copy of the classroom
expectations and evaluations, he can look all the
time at the documents while discussing the issues.
Sharing information by internet or learning
environments can help parents and teachers to be
more convenient.
Parents want to know who the teacher is, what’s
he/she looks like and what his/her background is.
Online information can help parents knowing better
the competences of the teacher.
Teachers can report progress of the children to the
parents on a more suitable way by a safe learning
environment, email, closed social networks, etc.
Traditional reports can be replaced with regular and
up-to-date online reports which parents can access
whenever and wherever they happen to be.
For busy working parents and those whose work
necessitates travel, online reporting could hold the
key to ensuring that they are kept informed and up
to date regarding their child’s progress.
Websites, blogs, email-messages, online
newsbulletin can help for sensibilisation and
activation of parents : f.i. healthy feeding, social
projects around diversity and Third World, actions
about cyberbullying, Internet guard, etc.
UK Online communication obliged !
2010 is the deadline for all secondary schools
in the UK to have a learning platform in place
and be in position to offer parental access to
online reporting
In the online-report the teacher tells the parent if
the child was considerable on school, if it behaved
himself tidy and how it solved exercises and tasks
carried out.
An each day report is the idea of the British
education minister Jim Knight, who started up the
project. But, he warns, this replaces no school
reports or parent evenings. (Het Laatste Nieuws,
10/02/2008).
Example of school website
Example of online report for parents
23
www.netmums.com
24
30
Threat 1
Not all teachers are common with ICT technology
and don’t know how to use e-mail, learning
environments, can make websites, blog pages, have
knowledge of internet security, ad-free blogging,etc.
So when a school wants to start e-communication
with parents they must first invest in training of the
staff and invest in a good computer equipment.
Teachers must also be trained in the correct and
safe use of modern social communication networks
like Facebook, Twitter, etc. and avoid ‘stupid’ or
‘illegal’ situations.
Good examples…
32
Did the parents give permission to use
pictures of their children on the internet ?
33
Bad example : improper google ads on a free
weblog.
34
Threat 2
Not all teachers will be convinced of the
profits of online communication with
parents. Teachers must have an open
mind. There will be some teachers who
really prefer not to share to many
things with the outside world.
….open communication with parents
includes opening the doors of the
classroom.
So this supposes the willingness of the
teacher to share his information and
methods with parents. It will be a long
road to bring the educators in line with
today's 'web 2.0' communications
environment
Threat 3
Spreading online information by e-mail,
websites, blogs, etc. demands a lot of
time from the teacher. This work comes
extra.
Without digital communication the
teacher only has to contact parents when
there are problems or during schoolparent meetings.
Now he must spend lots of evenings
behind his computer sharing information
with parents, answering e-mails, making
websites and blogs.
This has to be included in his working
schedule and may not become extra
work or must be rewarded extra !
Threat 4
Parents must have a possession of a
fast computer and access to the (fast)
internet.
They must have necessary programs
(software) and the necessary
knowledge to work with computer.
Schools must avoid to create a new
poverty gap in the school society :
people who have fast computer and
knowledge and people who don’t have
computer or computer knowledge.
Schools can help to bridge the digital
gap.
It would l be important to find ways to
reach families without email access or
find ways to provide them with cheap
equipment.
Threat 5
Not all parents will be comfortable with
technology and suitably ‘tech-savy’ to
deal with online reporting.
One way of educating and training
parents could be via holding after-school
lessons for parents where a teacher will
explain use of the learning platform and
demonstrate how parents can utilize
online reporting to its full potential.
For parents unable to attend afterschool or evening training sessions there
is scope for them to be trained online.
Children can help the parents learning
computer technology at home.
Cyberparents : parents help parents
Online guidance
Threat 6
Many educators are hesitant to use social networking tools
in the classroom, owing to safety concerns, for privacy,
for misunderstandings, hacking of passwords, stealing
exams….
They are afraid that privacy is damaged when they put
notes or grades from students online. This means that
most of them are still not confident with Web 2.0 utilities.
But of course there is always the possibility that
something is going wrong in your parental contacts….
Nowadays the new technology provides schools and
teacher very safe internet applications where privacy
and safety is provided.
Nevertheless, teachers and parents must be aware of
potential dangers in using internet tools when they
are nonchalant with passwords of sending e-mails
Real example : a teacher sent a full behavior report of
one child to all parents of the class instead of the
parents of the child only….very embarrassed for the
teacher : e-communication makes errors more easy !
Challenges
It is essential to examine the
possibilities and perspectives, but
also the risks of using the modern
communication technologies in
communicating with parents.
Research about the necessary
elementary conditions in ecommunicating with parents.
Examine how schools, teachers
and parents can made
enthusiastic for using new ecommunication technologies….
maybe the toughest part of all !
Important task for teacher training centres : they
have to use modern e-technology in communications
with their students and show them how to use it on
the future communications with the parents of their
pupils.
Strategy for schools : think big, act small…
Lesson for all : think before you click.
Future plan :
e-communiC@Tlas
www.myschoolonline.eu
http://Ecom4s2p.mixxt.com