Wicked Project: Parent Communication
Each Part is linked to the blog post with group feedback
Part A - Description of Need or Opportunity
After completing 50+ parent teacher conferences recently, the need has never been clearer for more effective parent communication. This has been an ongoing process with trial and error, but I hope that the inclusion of more technology availability will help to allow parents to be more involved and more informed about their child's classes as well as their performance within that course. I have tried several methods to communicate, but not through technology. This is so important because so often parents are not involved because their student does not convey the message of homework or the material we are covering in class. As we get closer to the End of Grade test in NC, I need to have flawless communication to provide parents resources and additional information to aid their students' learning at home.
This will be an ongoing process for the duration of the school year on a weekly basis. I will utilize free technologies to provide this communication and will access parents as more of a resource than I have in the past. The costs will be nothing but time, and the only situation in which this will not benefit a parent is if they are unable to access the internet at any time. These resources will primarily be used by parents, but students will be shown how to access and use this information as well to help them take responsibility for their learning.
Parents will be able to access these resources and information at all times through my class website and contact me via email. Going further than that, I will have information on my website or sent via email that utilizes more technology to improve the parent - teacher relationship. Countless resources have been reviewed on the importance of communication with parents and the results it can have for students. Although, I must keep in consideration the demographics and time constraints of some parents who are not able to be with their students after school, but as a whole, I hope that student achievement and homework participation is able to increase. This will also build a greater sense of collaboration and community within my classroom.
Resources supporting the importance of parent - teacher communication:
Scholastic "Building Strong Relationships with Parents"
Reading RocketsEdwards, P.A. "Tapping the Potential of Parents." Scholastic: New York, 2009.
From the parent's perspective Parent-ing Ed.org
Using technology in communication
Resources to be considered for communication using technology:
(I am currently using Weebly and email)
Skype
Voicethread
Instant messaging system
Blog
Survey Monkey or Google Forms
PollCode
Scribd
Dropbox
Jing
Wikispace
Google Calendar
During this course: I plan to survey parents about technology and the best ways to communicate with them. My website will also offer resources and documents, such as homework, reading contracts, newletters, poll questions, question board, videos, etc. My website will be the main host for the technology that I will use to communicate with them. I will also be using e-mail to send notifications or information that will also be available online. This will require me to use new technologies, while utilizing email and website creation/editing.
First steps: survey parents and begin primary email contact to send digital copies of work and again inform them of our class website and the materials available there. Then provide tutorials for parents, information about the course, and poll questions to get to know them more. Make myself more accessible and available for communication using technology.
Continuing the project: After the end of the course, I will continue to adapt my resources and parent communication tools to best serve their needs. When talking to parents at conferences, they need more materials and resources to work on with their students besides homework. I hope to grow this communication into a successful way to digitalize their work creating portfolios and report their grades using technology. This will increase parents knowledge of our classroom.
This will be an ongoing process for the duration of the school year on a weekly basis. I will utilize free technologies to provide this communication and will access parents as more of a resource than I have in the past. The costs will be nothing but time, and the only situation in which this will not benefit a parent is if they are unable to access the internet at any time. These resources will primarily be used by parents, but students will be shown how to access and use this information as well to help them take responsibility for their learning.
Parents will be able to access these resources and information at all times through my class website and contact me via email. Going further than that, I will have information on my website or sent via email that utilizes more technology to improve the parent - teacher relationship. Countless resources have been reviewed on the importance of communication with parents and the results it can have for students. Although, I must keep in consideration the demographics and time constraints of some parents who are not able to be with their students after school, but as a whole, I hope that student achievement and homework participation is able to increase. This will also build a greater sense of collaboration and community within my classroom.
Resources supporting the importance of parent - teacher communication:
Scholastic "Building Strong Relationships with Parents"
Reading RocketsEdwards, P.A. "Tapping the Potential of Parents." Scholastic: New York, 2009.
From the parent's perspective Parent-ing Ed.org
Using technology in communication
Resources to be considered for communication using technology:
(I am currently using Weebly and email)
Skype
Voicethread
Instant messaging system
Blog
Survey Monkey or Google Forms
PollCode
Scribd
Dropbox
Jing
Wikispace
Google Calendar
During this course: I plan to survey parents about technology and the best ways to communicate with them. My website will also offer resources and documents, such as homework, reading contracts, newletters, poll questions, question board, videos, etc. My website will be the main host for the technology that I will use to communicate with them. I will also be using e-mail to send notifications or information that will also be available online. This will require me to use new technologies, while utilizing email and website creation/editing.
First steps: survey parents and begin primary email contact to send digital copies of work and again inform them of our class website and the materials available there. Then provide tutorials for parents, information about the course, and poll questions to get to know them more. Make myself more accessible and available for communication using technology.
Continuing the project: After the end of the course, I will continue to adapt my resources and parent communication tools to best serve their needs. When talking to parents at conferences, they need more materials and resources to work on with their students besides homework. I hope to grow this communication into a successful way to digitalize their work creating portfolios and report their grades using technology. This will increase parents knowledge of our classroom.
Part B - Application of TPACK
Using the TPACK model, I am integrating technology as an additional way to try and have effective communication with my students' parents or guardians. I have been using my class website for a long time, but not nearly as purposefully for communication. In the previous months, my website has simply provided a resource for parents and students, but did not allow for active communication between the three of us. Through this project, I will be using increased technology to make materials, information, and feedback more accessible on a daily basis. I will keep it more up-to-date on class information and more informative from both parties. This technology will continue to use the development of my webpage on weebly missczerney.weebly.com. Through that website, I will post a Google Forms survey for them to complete, use Google Calendar to convey important dates in my classroom and the school, use the comment forum to allow parents to give additional feedback or ask questions, scribd to upload homework and worksheets, and I will also give additional links for parents that may be helpful to aid their students in learning and homework. Using these technologies, it will make my website their first step in gaining information, this may also cut down on the miscommunication and continual emailing from parents.
As I mentioned, this will keep parents on track with my only my classroom, but our grade level as a whole. For those that are more involved in their student's life, they will be able to follow with our lessons in class and gain an understanding of the skills and strategies I am asking their children to practice and demonstrate. In the past, this resource has been primarily for introductory information and a resource for student research, but not I am using the technology to portray that content to make it accessible for parents. The website will be well organized and easy to navigate. I will try to keep it simplistic, and may need to include more information on the initial page to help parents navigate.
After hosting parent-teacher conferences, a lack of communication became a common complaint from parents. It was not necessarily geared toward me, but rather our new teacher. I took it upon myself to make any changes I could to improve our overall communication as a grade level. I will also be making assignments available for parents when their child loses something. We have struggle a lot with staying organized and getting our work completed outside of school, so I hope this will help. Some parents will have constant access to these resources via their telephone. My only problem is that the parents without internet will still need the paper copies of notes and information. Student will continue to use this site for informational resources, but that information will be extended to our parents as well so that they can learn the material as well.
So far, I have given the survey to parents, included a Google Calendar, and given a feedback post on the site. Since these changes, I have seen an increase in viewing on my website statistics. I hope to upload worksheets and additional practice for students soon. I would like to get to the place where I have tutorials available for parents on the strategies we are using in class, which would use some kind of vidcasting resources. Also, in the survey I had parents create a code name for their student so that grades can be communicated through the website as well.
As I mentioned, this will keep parents on track with my only my classroom, but our grade level as a whole. For those that are more involved in their student's life, they will be able to follow with our lessons in class and gain an understanding of the skills and strategies I am asking their children to practice and demonstrate. In the past, this resource has been primarily for introductory information and a resource for student research, but not I am using the technology to portray that content to make it accessible for parents. The website will be well organized and easy to navigate. I will try to keep it simplistic, and may need to include more information on the initial page to help parents navigate.
After hosting parent-teacher conferences, a lack of communication became a common complaint from parents. It was not necessarily geared toward me, but rather our new teacher. I took it upon myself to make any changes I could to improve our overall communication as a grade level. I will also be making assignments available for parents when their child loses something. We have struggle a lot with staying organized and getting our work completed outside of school, so I hope this will help. Some parents will have constant access to these resources via their telephone. My only problem is that the parents without internet will still need the paper copies of notes and information. Student will continue to use this site for informational resources, but that information will be extended to our parents as well so that they can learn the material as well.
So far, I have given the survey to parents, included a Google Calendar, and given a feedback post on the site. Since these changes, I have seen an increase in viewing on my website statistics. I hope to upload worksheets and additional practice for students soon. I would like to get to the place where I have tutorials available for parents on the strategies we are using in class, which would use some kind of vidcasting resources. Also, in the survey I had parents create a code name for their student so that grades can be communicated through the website as well.
Part C - Wicked Plan Implementation
As I strive to increase and improve the parent teacher communication in my classroom, I have utilized a variety of aspects to have a bigger presence of technology as an outlet for parent communication. In this, I have made better utilization of my class website and have seen the statistics of usage for this grow and grow as the weeks have passed. I also implemented a google forms survey to have parents give feedback on their student's homework and efforts in their classes.
I have been surprised at the immense support and resounding excitement I have gotten from parents about using my webpage to convey more information to them. Many have reassured me that having access to this information themselves, and not solely relying on their student has really helped. Also, I have been surprised at the few parents who have been resistant. I anticipated some parents not being able to access this information due to a lack of internet access, but some even with internet access have made mention that they would still prefer a note in the agenda to email communication. However, these parents also have tended to be those that are not as concerned about their parents performance either from a lack of interest or a lack of concern for their academics.
An unexpected bump has been the pushback from parents wanting more information and not being satisfied with what is given. They want access to all worksheets, additional materials, and their students' grades. This has caused me to look into more resources like scribd and engrade to be able to incorporate these for them. Other revisions include using a poll for parents to answer, just a one question survey to find out if features of the website are helpful to them at all. For example, I had posted a google calendar to my site and have not had any feedback about that at all.
Overall, this communication has been good, and can only improve as I am able to incorporate more resources and materials for my students parents. I have put websites up on there for students to practice skills, but have not found a way to track what links are clicked on most frequently. Also, more parents seem not to mention the use of these resources, but rather want direct worksheets for them to go through with their students.
Due to a lack of resources, I have not had the chance to tape any lessons or include tutorials on my website, but I do think that is one revision that I should definitely make. Many parents are often confused on material, or how to do something and would benefit from that resource.
I have been surprised at the immense support and resounding excitement I have gotten from parents about using my webpage to convey more information to them. Many have reassured me that having access to this information themselves, and not solely relying on their student has really helped. Also, I have been surprised at the few parents who have been resistant. I anticipated some parents not being able to access this information due to a lack of internet access, but some even with internet access have made mention that they would still prefer a note in the agenda to email communication. However, these parents also have tended to be those that are not as concerned about their parents performance either from a lack of interest or a lack of concern for their academics.
An unexpected bump has been the pushback from parents wanting more information and not being satisfied with what is given. They want access to all worksheets, additional materials, and their students' grades. This has caused me to look into more resources like scribd and engrade to be able to incorporate these for them. Other revisions include using a poll for parents to answer, just a one question survey to find out if features of the website are helpful to them at all. For example, I had posted a google calendar to my site and have not had any feedback about that at all.
Overall, this communication has been good, and can only improve as I am able to incorporate more resources and materials for my students parents. I have put websites up on there for students to practice skills, but have not found a way to track what links are clicked on most frequently. Also, more parents seem not to mention the use of these resources, but rather want direct worksheets for them to go through with their students.
Due to a lack of resources, I have not had the chance to tape any lessons or include tutorials on my website, but I do think that is one revision that I should definitely make. Many parents are often confused on material, or how to do something and would benefit from that resource.
Part D - Findings and Implications
For my Wicked Project, I really strived to make information more available to parents and increase communication between the teacher and parent. I took on this project for not only my reading class, but also for our fourth grade team. I began by creating a survey for parents to give me feedback of what they want to change and how I can best communicate information to them. This far this year, we have been relying on their student to give them information and it has not worked. I had to take into account that technology is not a cure all for communication, this perspective was taken into consideration when giving the survey. I sent it home as a paper copy, but asked parents to submit it online. Some were unable to do it online because they do not have internet access. This also made me realize that no matter my efforts, all of my students' parents did not want increased communication because they were not as involved in their students' academics. Along with this, I needed to ask parents if they wanted to receive information/notes home via the agenda or email. Many chose email which supported my desire to increase the use of technology and provide resources this way, but still realizing that this was not the best way for ALL parents.
Due to a lack of some parents support and additional set backs, this was not implemented as flawlessly as I had hoped. However, this is an ongoing project and effort that will not end with this class. I had hoped that technology would greatly increase the convenience to parents, but many of the parents who responded were the ones that are involved in their students' lives. I do feel that this was a better change for a lot of parents. As I mentioned, after parent teacher conferences, many expressed concern that they weren't getting enough information about school and class material. Since then, I have been able to refer parents to my website where all the resources and additional tools have been used for communication. They have been able to use the google calendar, the additional sites for students, the announcements, and more information about homework/course work. Had my plan been implemented fully, I would have up to date grades on the webpage using an online tool. Parents emphasized their urge to be kept more up to date on grades. However, as advised, I considered the advice I was given from my feedback, not to do more than I could handle. It is not helpful to parents for me to include a plethora of technology without implementing it fully. I should not start the grades, if I cannot guarantee to keep up with them. I have committed to offering polls and surveys, google calendar, feedback post, and updating my website much more frequently.
As I continue with this effort beyond the class, I still would like to use jings or screencasts to help parents through material, or create references for them to use in helping their child with homework. I would also like to see grades posted using an online tool or google spreadsheet.
I know that this has been successful so far and this has been proven through statistics and conversations with parents. I have had several conversations with parents about utilizing our class webpage for information and to keep in touch. Email has also increased greatly as a communication tool with parents because of the survey and use of my webpage. Parents feel that they have access to homework and materials that they did not before I began this project. They can print reading contracts and homework if their student does not show it to them or if they lose it. I have also been able to refer parents who come with questions or concerns about sites and assignments to the webpage. It has provided further information about what the students are writing in their agenda and the materials we are researching. I have also seen evidence of success in the stats feature of weebly. I am able to track how many people are visiting my website on a daily basis. However, that data is skewed when I have students use the site in class, but it has even improved student research activity; which was a result that I did not anticipate. The students have made reference that they have gone on the website from home to use the resources, that has been a big positive :)
I think that many problems could be solved through this process. It would be helpful to introduce this as a professional development to encourage other teachers to consider the problems in their classroom and take action using technology and the TPACK model. This process has opened my eyes to other problems in my classroom, such as using technology to improve reading strategies; to take literature from books to technology and encourage students to use technology to spark their interest in books. It is important not to just throw technologies at a problem and hope that they solve the problem, it is necessary to really work through the problem and think about what is working, how the technology is aiding the content, and if the technology is truly solving the problem. That is the major lesson I have learned. Taking the feedback given, I have understood that technology is worthless if you do not implement with fidelity and fully understand the technology and its purposes before using it. I have been able to practice and play with a lot of technology and it is less important to utilize all of it, than it is to use just a few and use them well. That would be my greatest advice. Really focus on something that needs improvement in your classroom and that technology could help, then choose 1 technology at a time to explore and implement well. Just knowing about technologies is not as useful and really understanding how they are best used and what purposes they can serve. Technologies purpose is to make life easier; not more complicated.
I don't know that I would change a lot in doing the project again. I think the reflective part is very important, but I would use a podcast to solve my problem in some way, rather than as a reflection. It might be helpful to introduce different technologies, and have us think about how that technology might be used to help solve the problem we are having. For example, in looking at data visualization, I was thinking about my need to display goals, or how they could contribute to solving this problem. For the project of this class, the wicked project would be a good constant to apply the technologies that we learn about throughout the course. I think it would also be helpful to give sample topics for the project; there may be a problem that I have not considered in my classroom that could be assisted by technology. I did not think about content at all when brainstorming topics, but my group members all had different topics: teaching math, working on the writing process, and improving collaboration and accountability within groups. I would like to challenge myself to continue finding problems in my classroom to solve using technology. This is a process I could see my self doing annually to improve my classroom overall.
Due to a lack of some parents support and additional set backs, this was not implemented as flawlessly as I had hoped. However, this is an ongoing project and effort that will not end with this class. I had hoped that technology would greatly increase the convenience to parents, but many of the parents who responded were the ones that are involved in their students' lives. I do feel that this was a better change for a lot of parents. As I mentioned, after parent teacher conferences, many expressed concern that they weren't getting enough information about school and class material. Since then, I have been able to refer parents to my website where all the resources and additional tools have been used for communication. They have been able to use the google calendar, the additional sites for students, the announcements, and more information about homework/course work. Had my plan been implemented fully, I would have up to date grades on the webpage using an online tool. Parents emphasized their urge to be kept more up to date on grades. However, as advised, I considered the advice I was given from my feedback, not to do more than I could handle. It is not helpful to parents for me to include a plethora of technology without implementing it fully. I should not start the grades, if I cannot guarantee to keep up with them. I have committed to offering polls and surveys, google calendar, feedback post, and updating my website much more frequently.
As I continue with this effort beyond the class, I still would like to use jings or screencasts to help parents through material, or create references for them to use in helping their child with homework. I would also like to see grades posted using an online tool or google spreadsheet.
I know that this has been successful so far and this has been proven through statistics and conversations with parents. I have had several conversations with parents about utilizing our class webpage for information and to keep in touch. Email has also increased greatly as a communication tool with parents because of the survey and use of my webpage. Parents feel that they have access to homework and materials that they did not before I began this project. They can print reading contracts and homework if their student does not show it to them or if they lose it. I have also been able to refer parents who come with questions or concerns about sites and assignments to the webpage. It has provided further information about what the students are writing in their agenda and the materials we are researching. I have also seen evidence of success in the stats feature of weebly. I am able to track how many people are visiting my website on a daily basis. However, that data is skewed when I have students use the site in class, but it has even improved student research activity; which was a result that I did not anticipate. The students have made reference that they have gone on the website from home to use the resources, that has been a big positive :)
I think that many problems could be solved through this process. It would be helpful to introduce this as a professional development to encourage other teachers to consider the problems in their classroom and take action using technology and the TPACK model. This process has opened my eyes to other problems in my classroom, such as using technology to improve reading strategies; to take literature from books to technology and encourage students to use technology to spark their interest in books. It is important not to just throw technologies at a problem and hope that they solve the problem, it is necessary to really work through the problem and think about what is working, how the technology is aiding the content, and if the technology is truly solving the problem. That is the major lesson I have learned. Taking the feedback given, I have understood that technology is worthless if you do not implement with fidelity and fully understand the technology and its purposes before using it. I have been able to practice and play with a lot of technology and it is less important to utilize all of it, than it is to use just a few and use them well. That would be my greatest advice. Really focus on something that needs improvement in your classroom and that technology could help, then choose 1 technology at a time to explore and implement well. Just knowing about technologies is not as useful and really understanding how they are best used and what purposes they can serve. Technologies purpose is to make life easier; not more complicated.
I don't know that I would change a lot in doing the project again. I think the reflective part is very important, but I would use a podcast to solve my problem in some way, rather than as a reflection. It might be helpful to introduce different technologies, and have us think about how that technology might be used to help solve the problem we are having. For example, in looking at data visualization, I was thinking about my need to display goals, or how they could contribute to solving this problem. For the project of this class, the wicked project would be a good constant to apply the technologies that we learn about throughout the course. I think it would also be helpful to give sample topics for the project; there may be a problem that I have not considered in my classroom that could be assisted by technology. I did not think about content at all when brainstorming topics, but my group members all had different topics: teaching math, working on the writing process, and improving collaboration and accountability within groups. I would like to challenge myself to continue finding problems in my classroom to solve using technology. This is a process I could see my self doing annually to improve my classroom overall.