Connecting with Families (Digitally)

Most of my posts focus on how to connect students with worthwhile learning opportunities, whether it's "flying" them over the Pyramids of Giza or turning spelling into a game. However, we've known for  a long time parent involvement is one of the most important factors in determining students' academic success, and the evidence continues to mount. Thankfully, there are many different technological tools available to help teachers, parents and their students connect, even if their lives are busy and hectic. By making connections (digitally or otherwise), parents can share how those subjects are relevant in their lives, provide enriching activities, and support the teacher from home by ensuring projects are completed. The ways in which parent involvement matter could crash this blog's server! In every case it's probably better to check the technology out for yourself. Here we go:

Remind 101: Cell phones and email are ubiquitous; almost everybody has one (or both). Remind 101 allows teachers to send mass text messages or emails to parents, study hall teachers and anybody else who signs up. The beautiful thing about Remind 101 is that it is easy to set up, easy to send out, and teachers and parents don't directly swap phone numbers or emails. Instead, Remind 101 is the intermediary. Teachers set up an account and are given a code. That code can the be shared publicly and parents can sign up by texting or emailing the code to a six digit number. When the teacher sends out a message via e-mail or text, it is routed through Remind 101 and then delivered to all of the subscribers. It's free and there are no advertisements of any kind. On my seventh-grade team, we send our daily agenda to the math teacher, who enters it all into an e-mail, and hits send. All of the seventh-grade teachers are signed up for Remind 101 and it's great because we know what's going on in the other classes. We can help our Connections/advisory students stay on track, make cross-curricular connections and avoid having three projects or tests on the same day. Parents like it too because it's delivered directly to them and doesn't involve logging on or wondering if the electronic grade book is up-to-date. If parents are "too busy" to sign-up, ask them for their information and sign them up. It will only take you ten seconds, but could make a lifetime of difference for your student. One final advantage of Remind 101 is that it spans the Digital Divide. Not all families have internet access at home, but while almost all adults (especially between 18 and 65) have cell-phones.

Twitter: Twitter is concise and abuzz. You can share short blurbs of text and pictures. Want to let parents know how the mini-ecosystem project went? Send out a picture. Want to share today's or tomorrow's essential question? Tweet it. Maybe direct that essential question towards a respected expert in that field. You never know they just might respond! If your latest project has a rubric, you can upload it on to Google Drive, share it publicly on the web, shorten the share URL, and send it out. I don't promote my Twitter feed enough, but I have some really great followers, including the local chamber of commerce. From that, several other local leaders have started following me and now they know what's going on in their school. Maybe they have a sibling visiting from Monterey who happens to be an expert in marine eco-systems. Now you've got yourself an expert to speak to the class. The possibilities are endless! Here are some tips for getting started with Twitter, including how to use hashtags to organize the noise. The only tip I would urge you to disregard is the one about maintaining a ratio of followers to following. There's nothing wrong with following more than you're followed. In education, a diverse collection of interests (as evidenced by who you follow) only reinforces that you're a lifelong learner and that your class or subject extends far beyond the walls of the classroom.

TodaysMeet: Almost every presentation or posting on educational technology talks about TodaysMeet. It's very simple; combining the brevity of Twitter with the structure of a comment forum or chat-room. Setting one up takes about fifteen seconds. Then, using the URL or a QR code, students can visit the chatroom, enter their name, and post on the page 140 characters at a time. This is a great tool for exit slips! I also like to share these pages with parents via Twitter or my blog. This allows parents to see what their student is doing in class and allows them the opportunity to partake in the process of informal assessment. My exit slip questions are often something like, "what was the most surprising thing you learned today?" When a parent can look up their student's answer, it gives them a place to start a conversation. "Hey son, I noticed that you were surprised by the ending of the third Hunger Games book. It surprised me too!" Bam! Now the family is talking about what happened at school and forming a positive bond. 

Google Drive: Sharing is an important part of being a family, right? So, why not share digitally? When students are working on an essay or presentation in Google Drive, ask them to share it with you and their families. This allows the student, teacher, parents, grandparents, etc. to communicate and collaborate! It's very simple, just have the student click the blue "share" button and enter an e-mail address. My grading is done via Google Drive, and this allows parents to see specifically how their students paper was graded and gives them a far clearer picture of the student's abilities than a simple letter grade or comment. Remember that this "sharing" can be done with anything on Google Drive (Spreadsheet, Draw, etc.), including notes or PDFs saved into Google!

Blogger: There are lots of different options when it comes to blogging and that link will explain the pros and cons of the different options. My preference for Blogger/Blogspot is based solely on their integration with Google. It's part of Google and if you use Google Drive or Gmail, you're already signed up! There are also some slick first- and third-party add-ons that interact well with other Google products and will help tailor the blog to your needs. So, how does a blog help you connect with parents? Twitter and Remind 101 are designed to share sentences and phrases worth of information. If you want to share pages or paragraphs of information then a blog is a free way to do that. One common misconception is that blogs must be a lengthy, one-page beast that requires a frustrating amount of scrolling. Blogger, and most other blogging platforms, allow the user to add tabs. This is my classroom blog and you can see that there are two tabs: one with general information about what is going on and another for resources. The first tab is primarily used to communicate with parents and they can sign-up to receive updates in their e-mail. The second tab is aimed at students, with a number of websites or slideshows aimed at supporting or furthering learning at home. Sometimes parents don't understand what is being taught at school or don't remember exactly how to use commas in a list of adjectives. This blog gives them a resource to support their children's learning. Using a blog in conjunction with Twitter is a great way to share information. This allows you to send out a concise message about what is new on your blog and provide a link back to it. 

QR Codes: This sort of mixes no-tech with high-tech, but in the print industry QR codes have a proven record for success. link QR codes to your blog, your email, a rubric on Google Drive, a TodaysMeet.com page or a third-party website of relevance and attach the QR to student's take-home folders, report cards, or newsletters. If it works for advertising agencies, it will work for you!

The Educational Websites You're Already Using: Edmodo, Classroom Dojo and most other purpose-built educational websites have features designed to connect parents and families with the digital-ether of the modern classroom. Check these out and use them. 

Remember, families want their children to succeed, even if the tangible evidence is sometimes frustratingly absent. Often times parents don't understand how important their role is, or are simply modeling what their parents did. Whether it is high-tech or no-tech, make sure you connect with families!

One final note: the reliance on educational technology has removed the tangible evidence of learning from many households. Students no longer bring home a textbook and worksheet, leaving parents a little confused about what exactly is happening in the classroom. For involved parents this is frustrating and even disconcerting. Thus, it is more important than ever to find ways to share the teaching and learning with families. If there's something you're doing or using with great success, please share it in the comments. As Red (from Red Green) used to say, "Remember, I'm pulling for you. We're all in this together."