Technology coaches create and support effective digital age learning environments to maximize the learning of all students.
3e – Troubleshoot basic software, hardware, and connectivity problems common in digital learning environments
3g – Use digital communication and collaboration tools to communicate locally and globally with students, parents, peers, and the larger community
Inquiry Question:
What digital tools can support teachers to communicate with parents effectively?
What digital tools can support teachers to collaborate and communicate with peers?
Parent-Teacher Communication–Keep Parents In the Loop with School Learning Activities
Effective communication is essential between parents and educators for helping student learning. In the digital world, It is a challenging task for teachers to choose the right communication tool to fit different groups of parent preference. It also overwhelmed teachers to get immersed in emails and phone calls from parents to ask about their children’s information while dealing with the full-scheduled work every day. The informative and in-time home-school communication will create a positive loop in which teachers can take more time and energy to focus on classroom learning, and parents can help their kids at home purposely. The more supportive information teachers provide, the fewer questions and concern parents will have. The positive loop will promote student learning and help them to succeed.
In this survey, we can see that the most effective tools for parent communication and engagement are email and text messages. Moreover, there are no differences in parents’ interest in using text messages for communications by demographics or grade of a child in school. This result shows that parents prefer safe, immediate, and informative communications with teachers.
Remind-Provide Safe Mode Communication Between Parents and Teachers
Group set/ Private set Message
After setting up a specific class, Remind will provide default groups (teachers, parents, and students). Teachers can send messages to all parents/ all students /all teachers or the group created by different needs. Also, teachers can have private communication with one parent.
Set Time for Receiving and Sending Messages
Teachers can set work time for receiving messages within which teachers will not get interrupted from messages in personal time. Also, teachers can set a schedule to send a specific message out during the class time.
Productive Learning Evidence
Remind supports various file formats to be learning evidence for sharing with parents. Pictures, videos, or document will be productive and informative for parents to know almost everything they concern in school.
Available from Web and App
Remind is available from the website: remind.comand also can be used as the app on the mobile devices, which is handy and flexible.
Translation feature
Remind provides translation for messages which is a crucial feature for teachers to communicate with parents whose prefer language is not English.
Create A Thriving Digital Community From Peer-peer Communication
Teachers always get significant influence on the profession from peers more than any other ways. “one-size-fits-all” approach of PD cannot satisfy teachers growth and different needs. Digital communities can help teachers to share experiences with peers and break the isolation to seek collaboration to enhance student engagement in learning. Edmodo is a powerful platform which can be used as a digital community for teachers locally and globally. Teachers can have a discussion and sharing resources through groups and small groups and also can communicate in time from the message. More details are provided in this blog:
Edmodo for Collaboration
References:
School-to-Home Communications: Most effective tools for parent communications & engagement[Infographic]. Speak Up Research Project for Digital Learning. Retrieved from http://tomorrow.org/speakup/speakup-2016-school-to-home-communications-september-2017.html
Knutson, J. (2016). 6 Tech Tools That Boost Teacher-Parent Communication. Retrieved from
https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/6-tech-tools-that-boost-teacher-parent-communication
Journal of Humanities, Language, Culture and Business (HLCB) Vol. 2: No. 10 (December 2018) page 26-36 | www.icohlcb.com | eISSN: 01268147
Miller, A. (2015). Avoiding Learned Helplessness. Retrieved from
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/avoiding-learned-helplessness-andrew-miller
