J’aime Holderbaum
Project Description
CEP 812
An Educational Need or
Opportunity
One problem of practice in education is ensuring that parents are informed about classroom and school happenings. Many times parents are unaware of the specific content that is being taught in their child’s classroom. Sometimes they are unaware of due dates for projects and tests even though the classroom teacher prepared a note explaining it. It is critical for parents to be aware of special dates such as parent teacher conferences, field trips, PTA meetings etc.
There are a number of reasons why this miscommunication takes place. Part of the problem occurs when students have divorced parents. One parent gets the information and often does not share it with the other. Another aspect of this problem occurs because of disorganized students. Communication papers are lost on the bus, or crammed into the students desk and never make it home.
Many times students are not involved in reporting to parents about what they are learning in the classroom. Teachers spend time preparing reports on what content is being taught in the classroom. If students become more involved in reporting information to parents, then it is possible to help them take more responsibility for communicating with parents in an effective manner. As students become involved, they will also develop better writing skills, reading skills, and peer collaboration skills. If technology is used in solving this problem, it will surely motivate students as well.
Internet Research for TechQuest Project
Because of the importance of effective parent communication in the elementary classroom, technology can be used as a new method of transmitting information from the teacher to parents. At the same time students can become involved in writing parent communications, to help them improve their writing skills.
In the article, “Connecting Teachers and Parents Through the Internet,” Darby Tobolka states, “Teachers play an important role in the lives of their students, but not nearly as important as parents. Parents are a child’s first teacher. As the school year progressed, I noticed students “forgetting” to turn in their folders, both homework and daily conduct folders. Notes I sent did not reach home. There was a gap in communication (Tobolka 2006).” This is the exact problem that I face in my classroom, as students lose communication newsletters and parents of divorced students do not receive communications.
Tobolka goes on to discuss the effects of using a teacher created web site as a means of communication, saying, “Researchers have found that parents like the convenience of electronic communication. Nelms (2002) was interested in the effects of her teacher-created web site on parent communication. She states that parents used the web site as a way of staying informed about students’ educational experiences and as a source of one-to-one correspondence (2006).” Better communication with parents will help parents to feel more involved and connected with their child’s school experiences.
The use of a web page to communicate with parents can assist teachers in managing their classrooms. In “Managing the Classroom with Technology,” Tim Kasprowicz says, that the use of a web page “has taken the ambiguity out of assignment due dates…Technology has increased my expectations of each student. They are more accountable for managing their work (Kasprowicz 2002).” With access to a computer parents can be informed about various classroom events and keep up to date on the information their child is learning.
In addition to improving parent communication, students can become involved in this process in order to improve their writing skills. Bruce Whitehead, author of, “How Does Technology Measure Up?” writes about how the integration of technology in schools has many benefits. One such benefit is increasing the quantity and quality of student writing. He says, “Many teachers are finding that their students write up to three times more with word processing that they did previously by hand…Analysis of student writing has shown that word processing helps students become more effective writers by making it easy for them to check spelling and grammar, and to rewrite their work (Whitehead 2000).” The use of technology is a huge motivational tool to use in the elementary classroom and can be utilized to both help increase writing skills as well as promote positive parent communication.
How This Problem Will Be Addressed With the Use of Technology There are two areas of technology that will be used in solving the problem of teacher and parent communication. The first technology employed will be the creation of a webpage by the teacher. This webpage will contain classroom newsletters, field trip permission slips, and project due dates. Parents will then have the ability to access information and be more informed. It will also help solve the problem of making sure all separated parents receive communications. I will create a webpage for parent communication using NVU. The page will contain monthly categories. I will ftp classroom new letters and permission slips to this site for parents to access and print from home. I will also create a page titled, “My Classroom,” which I plan to update once a month. It will notify parents of important events and special dates, such as project due dates.
The second technology will involve the students in the process of informing parents. Students will use Google Page Creator to create an informative webpage reporting on classroom happenings. Students will be divided up into teams, and each team will be responsible for reporting on a specific classroom subject. At the end of each month students will write a description reporting on their subject and publish it using Google Page Creator. Because they will have a real audience for their published work, I believe that their writing abilities will improve. At the same time students will become familiar with using a new technology!
Not only will this help with better communication, but it will also motivate students to become better planners, writers, and team players. I plan to focus on students writing a good paragraph to describe what is happening in their assigned subject. Their paragraph should contain an interesting lead sentence, three to five supporting detail sentences, and a conclusion sentence.Works Cited
Kasprowicz, Tim. “Managing the classroom with technology: on progress reports and online communications, and how to manage the two different communication techniques.” Tech Directions. 61.10 (2002): 26-8.
Tobolka, Darby. “Connecting Teachers and Parents Through the Internet. Tech Directions (Tech Dir) v. 66 no5 (December 2006) p 24-6.
Whitehead, Bruce M. “How does technology measure up?” Principal (Reston, Va.). 80.2 (2000): 45-6.
