An educational need or opportunity. This element is fundamental in this project. Since we have limited time, energy, and resources, cool technology without a clear sense of why it matters or what we gain by it is of little value in the educational setting.
The educational need or opportunity that I have selected for my Wicked Project is to increase communication between me as a teacher and parents (and incidentally between me and students, the district and the community). I have identified this as a need over many years where I have attempted to contact parents about what we are doing in class. The old way of playing phone tag, sending home postcards, letters, progress reports is time consuming and seldom shows results. The new way of using technology is as an opportunity to make the class work accessible online by having syllabi, course outlines, posting assignments, and providing resource links for further research and practice. This way parents, students, the district and the community know what is going on in my classroom. It will be there on days that students are absent or for ones who are working on homework at home to have the documents available so there is no “I left it at school”.
How you plan to address this educational issue with technology. You need to make a clear and convincing case that your proposed solution will make a real impact on the issue you identify, and that your proposed approach is a reasonable approach given its costs and possible alternatives.
I plan to address this educational issue with technology by creating an easy to access and use classroom website. I will be using a free website (Weebly) where I will include information about me, my classes, assignments, forms to contact me and a way to electronically submit student work. I will include links to the Family Access gradebook and other resources for research and practice. This approach will take less time to maintain once set up than I previously spent playing phone tag with parents or addressing mail. I also believe that parents will find accessing the website less intimidating than trying to talk to secretaries, leaving voicemail or talking to a teacher that they may not know. Students will find the ability to look up assignments (and being able to turn them in) not only valuable for my class but a valuable skill for future employment.
Logistics of solution (what is the scope; when and where will tool be used and for how long?)
The website I create will be used by me for the duration of this year with the intention of continued and expanded use next year. As I work with the website I will be able to modify and enhance it for the remainder of my teaching years. I am hoping that it will prove to be a model for other teachers who I can encourage to create a website so that it will become routine for parents and students to access them anytime they have a question or just want to know what is happening in the classroom.
Relevant research and resources (from the Internet and elsewhere) including reports on the closest effort you can find to what you are planning to do as well as ideas and materials you may be able to build upon in your own effort.
There is a lot of research (both old and new) that indicates that parent involvement and communication between parent and teacher is key for student success. As I will be working with 5th/6th grade as well as High School next year I included research for middle school as well. I found that due to the difference between middle school and elementary school structure, parent involvement tends to decline across the grade levels. But if teachers in the middle school use appropriate tools to help increase communication with parents that those patterns will continue through the upper grade levels. A website was shown to keep parents informed of homework and important school dates while fostering independence in adolescent students by not having parents visibly checking up on the students (ie. Being embarrassed in front of their friends by parents showing up in class!)
I have been bookmarking articles using my Delicious account: http://www.delicious.com/ppilant and Google Bookmarks
A plan for the portion you will implement during this course and the portion you will implement after this course completes.
I will create the website that I will be using after completing my research on what an effective teacher website should include and interviewing potential “clients” (parents, students, teachers…). After I have the website up and running I will have some test subjects look it over and use the various features that I include. For the fall I will update the website with my current course information and add website maintenance to my weekly schedule of “things to do”. I will have the website included on my course syllabus, business card, the bottom of my email (signature) and have a link added to the school website so people will know that it is there and available.
Indicators of a successful project
I will know if my project is successful by the number of visits I get to the site, the number of subscriptions I get to the website and the feedback I receive from parents, students and other users. Since I will have a different job next year than this year I won’t have a before/after percentage to look at but I will be able to complete a survey during parent-teacher conferences to see if parents and students feel better informed. Since I will be including a communication form and a homework submit form I will be able to see if that is being used.
Well chosen topic=8-) This is a very real problem that every teacher has to deal with every day of their professional lives. Research indicates that an effective, responsive, well-planned home-school communication system results in: improved test scores and grades; increased parent support for school initiatives; and lower dropout rates.
ReplyDeleteSomething to consider: Setting up some type of implementation timeline for this project. It will help guide you through the web site develop process; and having parents take quick satisfaction survey at the beginning of the school year. The same survey could then be used at the end of the year to determine how successful your web site was. You could also include questions about what types of information they would like to have access to, on the initial survey, as well. That would in turn help you generate web site content. I'm looking forward to learning more about your web site in the next post ~ Sue
I have always wanted to set up a class website to help parents and teachers stay informed about what is going on in class. We currently use Moodle to manage our classroom materials, but parents can not access this without using their students' log in. So I would like to put together a site that can be accessed by anyone... teachers, students, parents, or community. I think a website, like what you are looking to put together, helps everyone get on the same page and allows for open communication between the classroom and home.
ReplyDeleteI have mentioned to some of my colleagues about this goal, and I have been shocked at the feedback. First, does your school district or school have any policies regarding teacher-maintained web-sties, mailings, or any type of communication to parents and the community? Reason I am asking, at our school, we are not allowed to use any site that requires students to create a personal log-in or account because no one can monitor what the program is used for. Also, teachers are held liable for anything placed on their website. It might sound very petty, but if you put something on the Internet to be read by students and parents, you might be held responsible for whatever is put out there. The second response, I have heard from colleagues is “If you put together a website, parents will start expecting a site from each of us.” I was floored by this response. Basically, it was a comment I took as, “Don’t do that. You will make more work for me.” So I am wondering what your school district and colleagues philosophy or opinion is about independent teacher websites.
I am excited to see your end product and also very interested in what program you end up using for your site. Please include in your reflection why you decided to go with a certain program and the pros and cons of that particular program.
Pam,
ReplyDeleteI love this idea. It sounds perfect, and it seems that you understand your students and their parents very well. There's so many things you could do. Posting student work or having your students create a podcast would be a great way for parents to "see" what you are doing in class.
I do something similar in my class and one thing I would strongly suggest if you're making a calendar is doing it week-by-week rather than day-by-day. This gives you a lot more flexibility, and saves you having to move materials around if your class slows down or speeds up unexpectedly. However, just having your worksheets online makes a huge difference in student responsibility.
It sounds like you have your work cut out, but I'd suggest just diving right in. People are rarely aware of what they would use until they actually use them. My students all said they'd love to listen to vocabulary words. I built an entire listening section, and they never used it. Instead, they used flashcards all the time which no one said they would use.
Good luck!!!!
Pam, that sounds like it will be a huge benefit to you, your parents and your students. I have also wanted to do something like that, but at times have been overwhelmed with all of the different options of how to host the website. How is it that you are going to be able to have students turn assignments in online? Will the website be intended more for informational purposes, or will you require students to use/access it? If the latter, do you know what percentage of your students have internet access?
ReplyDelete