Parents as Partners

How do we increase parent engagement in schools?

Lorna — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:32:13 +0000

Are you a teacher, principal, school board interested in engaging more parents in education? Are you interested in improving student grades? Are you thinking that technology and the Internet would be helpful?

On Monday March 1, 2010, Mike Herrity, Assistant Headmaster at Twynham School, Christ Church UK generously shared the Skype air space with Matt Montagne, Cindy Seibel and Lorna Costantini. (2:00 am is more than generous) The recorded Parents as Partners webcast is full of some very powerful messages that will help schools, parents and teachers connect with each other and their students. Twynham School has 1600 students, 2000 parents and 200 teachers and has been named Outstanding – 3 times in the past 15 years for high performance.

For several years now under Mike’s guidance, Twynham School has been using Sharepoint as a learning platform. They started using the system with students and then when on to use this system to report to parents online. When you listen to the recording you will hear how they have also gone beyond the narrow definition of reporting – meaning sharing the data with parents – to a broader definition that focuses on how parents can be rich participants in the school community. The great thing is that more parents are engaging in their children’s school work, hard to serve families are engaging – students are engaged. How about having 83% of your students engaged online on a snow day!!

Quotes you will remember after you listen.

Listen first – design second
Focus on pedagogy over technology
Go beyond the data
End users are the focus

Three things you will want to emulate from the Twynham Model. Online reporting, Online options and Online mentoring. Subscribe to our feed and Download the recording to your ipod and listen to the entire show on the way to work. You’ll like the automatic red and green light reporting to students.

The referenced research paper from Warwick University.

recording

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Mike Herrity from Twynham School using Sharepoint to connect parents and schools

Lorna — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:18:37 +0000

Please join Parents as Partners show hosts Matt Montagne, Lorna Costantini and Cindy Seibel as they welcome Mike Herrity, Assistant Headteacher of Twynham School, Christ Church UK on Monday March 1, 2010 at 9:00 PM EST (GMT-5) at http://edtechtalk.com/live

Mike is the author of SharePoint in Education and responsible for leading online learning at Tywnham School, a BECTA Award winning school

BECTA British Educational Communications and Technology Agency is a body of the Department for Children, Schools and Families in the UK.

Twynham school was the winner of the Becta ICT Excellence Awards 2008
From BECTA comes this description:

The school’s approach to reporting suggested “a good understanding of what parents and pupils want”. The school listens to students and their families and modifies procedures in the light of that insight.

The school’s learning gateway provides easy and appropriate access to individual student data, protected by suitable log-ons for families. The pathways element supports parents and children when making career choices. The use of video is particularly strong. Students on courses are encouraged to talk about their experiences and the resulting film made available to other students considering their subject options. The approach has worked well to inform the dialogue between students and their parents about those options.

There has also been a successful drive to ensure that the parental reporting system reduces the overall administrative burden on staff. The integration of the learning platform with the school’s management information system ensures that performance data is automatically presented to parents in a meaningful way. The approach is already attracting serious interest from other schools and system providers.

Take a look some of the great things happening:

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Teacher websites – connecting students and parents

Sheila Stewart — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 18:19:10 +0000

I have been an involved parent in education and in the community of Thunder Bay (Ontario) for many years, yet every school year brings new experiences—for my two daughters, and for me as a parent! One new surprise this year for me has been enjoying the additional connection that technology can provide between school and home. My daughter’s Gr. 8 history and geography teacher has set up a website for the students in her class and for her rotary students—Mrs. Spackman’s Crib. It quickly became very natural for my daughter to access assignment outlines and research links provided by the teacher on the site. The students in her class each have a Gmail account as well to connect beyond the school day. Also on the site are lots of good reminders and notices about various class and school activities. I recognize the extra time and work for a teacher to provide this for students and I commend Mrs. Spackman’s efforts to do so this year! What great support for both students and their parents to stay connected outside of the school day, when needed! I have always been reluctant in my embrace of the tools of technology in my own life and for my children, but the practicality and the opportunities to connect and communicate continue to win me over!

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Creating a Free e-newsletter for parents – free online workshop

Lorna — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 17:30:51 +0000

People for Education offer FREE Tech Communications help.
Gay Stephenson online communications Manager from People for Education will be offering a free online workshop for parents. There are still a few places available and we invite you to attend.
Sign up now!

Date: Feb. 16th
Time: 6:30pm EST
Topic: Creating free e-newsletter

This step by step 1 hr workshop will show you how to use a free e-newsletter tool (including creating a user-account, adding newsletter articles, adding pictures, adding a list of email contacts, and emailing the e-newsletter to your email lists). This session is geared to parents on school councils who want a free and simple way to communicate regularly with parents.

These workshops are designed for “non-techies”! If you can send email, you have all the skills you need to learn to use these new tools. We will show you “how to” step by step.

Once you sign up Gay will give you full instructions on how to participate.

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Parent Teacher Twitter Chat @parentella – bringing parents and teachers together

Lorna — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:38:29 +0000

I recently blogged about a new initiative of the group called Parentella. They started a Twitter conversation using the Twitter hastag #PTLA to get parents and teachers to share their experiences in education. Every Wed at 9:00 PM EST (GMT_5) parents and teachers are invited to gather together on twitter and share their thoughts and ideas about parents/teachers/students/schools.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Aparna Vashist after the first twitter meetup. We had a really good discussion about communicating with parents and why she started the Twitter conversation. Aparna has some great ideas about communicating with parents. Please listen the the recording 31:24 min recording

Let me convince you to join in the weekly conversation. Here is a snapshot of some of the tweets that went out during the first conversation started on January 27, 2010. The topic of discussion centred around parent teacher communications. Too much – too little – when and how the communications should be delivered.

cybraryman1 RT @andreacoventry: Email allows for a clear record of what was actually shared – but leaves a record of what was said – can bite you #PTLA

autismfamily @HighImpactMom we get a monthly calendar sent home & also recorded msg reminders from the Principal #LAUSD #PTLA

ancientcivteach @cybraryman1 I agree f2f is optimal, but schools & wrkn parents oftn run on difft schedules. The internet is the gr8 equalizer. #ptla

techsavvymama @Parentella- We get a weekly bulletin that comes home w/ K homework. Helpful since it has week’s object., upcoming topics & reminders. #PTLA

PaulWHankins In this age of high-speed connection, the best connection we have is not USB or Skype. Face to face: it has served us well in the past #PTLA

andreacoventry @DrSelz I have watched the written word get people into some serious trouble #ptla

Crw_5071_normal DrSelz @andreacoventry so true about the written word being misinterpreted. #PTLA

dtspdmka A well designed school website, and teacher site helps to build an undrstnding of what stdts are learning. Issues are dealt best f2f. #PTLA

The Hashtag #PTLA has been changed to #PTCHAT. Its an easier hashtag to remember. The conversations are scheduled weekly on Wednesday at 9:00 PM EST.

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It’s the thought that counts – The Globe and Mail

Lorna — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:17:57 +0000

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/toronto/its-the-thought-that-counts/article1449943/

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Field Guide for Change Agents

Lorna — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:34:35 +0000

Today, I have been attending remotely/virtually, Educon2.2 a conference held annually in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania through the support of the Science Leadership Academy led by the Principal Chris Lehmann.

What is Educon you ask? From the conference website comes this explanation.

EduCon 2.2 is both a conversation and a conference. And it is not a technology conference. It is an education conference. It is, hopefully, an innovation conference where we can come together, both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools. Every session will be an opportunity to discuss and debate ideas — from the very practical to the big dreams.

Education conference – that means for everyone? If you are not a teacher, you are not likely to attend this conference, nevertheless, there are some important themes running through the conference which apply to everyone.

Let me explain. The Guiding Principles of EduCon 2.2 include the following five tenets. ( again from the conference site)

1. Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members
2. Our schools must be about co-creating — together with our students — the 21st Century Citizen
3. Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around
4. Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate
5. Learning can — and must — be networked

Doesn’t matter, if it is your child or your own learning experiences, the ideas that form the basis of the conference will have an impact on how our schools and places of business survive.

One session that I attended made some of the ideas a lot less text bookie. Rodd Lucier and Ben Hazzard ran a workshop called Field Guide for Change agents. The underlying discussion in the room and in the chat room was focused on how to get teachers and school boards to buy into using new technologies in the classroom. But the message was about Changes Agents and that applies to everyone.

Rodd and Ben had the F2F and virtual participants collaborate on an online document which used images to describe how to make change. Two things happened in this session.There are many more but I want to focus on these two ideas.

One: There are some phenomenal tools ( in this case Elluminate web conferencing, a wiki and Google apps) that can be used to connect people globally. I felt like I was in the room even though I was hundreds of miles away. The session was streamed with Elluminate with live audio and video. Here is a snap shot of Rodd responding to questions in the chat room,

Two: The collective wisdom gathered through online collaboration is a very powerful thing.
Rodd made use of a wiki to centre the conversation; then we moved over to a Google Presentation (Slide Show) where we were tasked with adding images and quotable sayings to a Google presentation. We were answering the questions about being a change agent, the challenges and solutions. To review, face to face participants participated in a workshop linked to people working in a virtual chat room – the back channel added another dimension. We became our own break out group sharing our ideas in a virtual way. Here is the chat log.
We were all discussing the same online document, uploading pictures, adding text to that same document, then having a conversation together about the end results. Smart these two men.

Here is the wiki that we used for the workshop. The slide share that follows is the result.

There is still time to attend the conference.

Field Guide For Change Agents

View more presentations from Rodd Lucier.