communication reflection

In the video and article, many online tools can be used to better teachers’ communication with parents. There are both advantages and disadvantages to them all. Blackboard is an online account for students’ daily activities. On Blackboard, parents can see those activities, see upcoming assignments, and see all of their child’s grades on the parent portal of the website. Blackboard and other secure social network learning sites are useful for this one-stop access to past activities, future activities, and grades. Online calendars are similarly helpful to parents because they can see their child’s upcoming assignments and find links to the assignments all on one website that they can check whenever the please instead of having to keep up with a newsletter for a month or two months. A class blog or a class website would also be useful to find links to upcoming assignments on, and a class blog would additionally have an open discussion board that would be easier than having to deal with chain emails. A class Facebook page would be another option to have an open discussion board on, but there are still parents out there that don’t desire to use social media, so the Facebook page would be at a disadvantage in that case. It also would encourage the students to have Facebook as well, and many parents have rules for their child about when he or she can or can’t have a Facebook. So Facebook would only be an option if 100% of the parents see it as an option. Similarly, all of these online options could only be used if 100% of the families involved have Internet access.

If 100% of the families in my classroom have Internet access, I would use Blackboard or another secure social network learning site so that my students could use it, inside and outside the classroom, to work on assignments, and so parents could keep tabs of those assignments and their grades. I would also use a class website because I could combine a few of these online options into one website. I would use it as an online newsletter, informing families of all the upcoming activities in the classroom. But I could also have a link to Google calendars on my classroom website, as well as a link to a discussion board so that if I happen to ask for a parents’ input on an announcement, parents could easily click a link to answer and to see other parents’ answers. I could also post pictures and videos, instead of having to also use Shutterfly, and provide links to assignments and materials that would help students complete their assignments. 

- Megan Singleton