3.7 Communication & Collboration
Candidates utilize digital communication and collaboration tools to communicate locally and globally with students, parents, peers, and the larger community.
Artifact: Class Blog
Reflection:
At the school where I work, we are expected to keep an updated class blog that keeps the parents informed of what is happening at school and in our class. The purpose of the blog is to provide communication to the parents and cut down on the amount of paper notices sent home. This artifact demonstrates mastery of standard 3.7 because I utilize digital communication and collaboration tools to communicate locally and globally with students, parents, peers, and the larger community.
I absolutely love my class blog and the feedback I have received because of it! I feel that since parents have to work and are not able to come to the school very often; and since their children don’t always communicate to them what we are doing in class, our blog is a way to give them a glimpse into our classroom. I take a lot of pictures and post them using Smilebox. The parents love the video slideshows set to music and tell me that they specifically look for their child in each show. I have focused time and attention on the overall look of the site so that it is visually appealing while providing pertinent class, school, and community information. The tabs on the side provide links to content related websites that students and parents can access from home for extra practice. I make sure that students are familiar with how to get to our blog so they can show their parents or use it for themselves.
Parents are able to subscribe to our blog (mentioned in more detail in Standard 3.5). Those subscriptions allow parents to have emails sent to them when something new has been posted. I have formatted the deliveries to only being one time a day, near the end of the school day, so that parents are not inundated with posts and emails. I think it is pretty amazing to have access to our blog posts through our smart phones. I subscribe to the blog, as well, and pull up daily posts from my phone to make sure what the parents are seeing is correct. Doing this allows me to make changes as quickly as possible, if needed.
The assessment of the blog’s effectiveness is seen in a number of ways. I know that it is being viewed by the parents when I get feedback about pictures, activities, and information. I also see who is reading by the donations that come in when we request them through the blog. Another form of assessment and validation is when the principal pulls up the blog to show at New Parent meetings and I get reports back to me about it. I know that it is reaching out to the community when I receive an email from a parent that says, “I am new to the area and have located your blog, what do I need to do to get my student in to your school and what kinds of activities do you have available over the summer that he could participate in that will help prepare him for the new school year”. That was an awesome email!
At the school where I work, we are expected to keep an updated class blog that keeps the parents informed of what is happening at school and in our class. The purpose of the blog is to provide communication to the parents and cut down on the amount of paper notices sent home. This artifact demonstrates mastery of standard 3.7 because I utilize digital communication and collaboration tools to communicate locally and globally with students, parents, peers, and the larger community.
I absolutely love my class blog and the feedback I have received because of it! I feel that since parents have to work and are not able to come to the school very often; and since their children don’t always communicate to them what we are doing in class, our blog is a way to give them a glimpse into our classroom. I take a lot of pictures and post them using Smilebox. The parents love the video slideshows set to music and tell me that they specifically look for their child in each show. I have focused time and attention on the overall look of the site so that it is visually appealing while providing pertinent class, school, and community information. The tabs on the side provide links to content related websites that students and parents can access from home for extra practice. I make sure that students are familiar with how to get to our blog so they can show their parents or use it for themselves.
Parents are able to subscribe to our blog (mentioned in more detail in Standard 3.5). Those subscriptions allow parents to have emails sent to them when something new has been posted. I have formatted the deliveries to only being one time a day, near the end of the school day, so that parents are not inundated with posts and emails. I think it is pretty amazing to have access to our blog posts through our smart phones. I subscribe to the blog, as well, and pull up daily posts from my phone to make sure what the parents are seeing is correct. Doing this allows me to make changes as quickly as possible, if needed.
The assessment of the blog’s effectiveness is seen in a number of ways. I know that it is being viewed by the parents when I get feedback about pictures, activities, and information. I also see who is reading by the donations that come in when we request them through the blog. Another form of assessment and validation is when the principal pulls up the blog to show at New Parent meetings and I get reports back to me about it. I know that it is reaching out to the community when I receive an email from a parent that says, “I am new to the area and have located your blog, what do I need to do to get my student in to your school and what kinds of activities do you have available over the summer that he could participate in that will help prepare him for the new school year”. That was an awesome email!