Chapter 9 Reflection
Here are my thoughts...
"As a teacher, your scope of responsibility broadens dramatically from yourself and your immediate family to your students and their families, your school and district, and the communities in which you live and teach" (Cennamo 217).
How can teachers use digital technologies to communicate and collaborate with the many people who will have an interest in what will happen in the Classroom?
This chapter focuses primarily on the NETS-T Standard 3 which concerns the issues of communication and collaboration not only between educators, but also between the educator and their students, parents, and the community members as well.
Chapter 9 of our text explores different ways that students, faculty, staff, parents, and the greater community can collaborate to support student success and learning.
This can be done through: communicating, volunteering, and providing extended learning opportunities.
1) Communicating
As educators, we need to maintain open lines of communication with students, parents, colleagues, and administrators. To do this, it is encouraged that communication be regular and two-way, which means that parents and administrators aren't only called on when there is an academic or disciplinary problem to report, rather, teachers must be proactive and actively seek to get to know parents and community members. Consistent, periodic communication helps everyone to better understand the process of schooling.
Teachers must also seek to stay informed. Doing this will allow parents and community members to become resources for teachers when dealing with particular problems or educational issues.
One of the most important guidelines when communicating with parents and the community is to treat people the way that you want to be treated. Whether that means keeping student's best interests at heart, or respecting cultural and ethnic differences, teachers can increase communication between these groups through mutual respect.
Examples of teacher enhancement of communication.
Class Websites
Class websites can be a very effective method of enhancing communication between home, school, and the wider community. A class website can provide links for homework assignments, presentation slides, lecture notes, class calendar and due dates, as well as supplemental and enrichment activities that students can do at home for extra practice.
These links can also be separated by their intended targets. For example, a class website might feature a section that is solely for the students, another section for other educators (to see what links were included), and another designed for parents to be able to communicate with teachers.
Social Media
In today's society the use of social media has become commonplace. Therefore, teachers should aim to incorporate it as a means of communicating with the community. These platforms are typically very user friendly and easy to set up. They can be used to disseminate school news, announcements, upcoming events, and get feedback from parents and members of the community on a particular topic.
*Although they are easy to use and are effective, teachers must be aware of what they are posting and rules regarding "friending" students.
E-Mailing/Texting
Things such as general progress reports, reporting student success stories, or making announcements can be done through e-mail and can be a great way for teachers to connect with parents and students.
Due to the growing number of cellphone users, texting may also be a viable means of communication that teachers can use. Text-blasting services can be used to send reminders to parents about upcoming conferences or school events.
2) Volunteering
Volunteers have a big role in school activities such as the booster club, parent teacher associations (PTAs), and work sponsored programs that contribute not only financially but morally as well to schools. With the growing digitization of these physical meetings, parents with technical expertise can volunteer their technology services to teachers and schools. This can be done in numerous ways, some of which include;
2) helping to advertise events by e-mail
3) providing virtual field trips
4) serving as telementors
All of these can help to enhance collaborative school, home, and community relationships.
3) Extended Learning
This occurs when teachers assign or create opportunities outside the classroom and beyond the typical school day.
This can be done by:
(i) supplying books and other materials for students to use to perform research, develop skills, and create projects.
(ii) opening computer labs, libraries, or media centers for students, parents, and members of the community to access.
(iii) assigning homework
Selecting digital resources in support of student learning.
Digital tools may be in the form of online tutors, a mindtool, or as a support for conversation; however, before selecting digital resources, you, as the educator, need to know what role you want the technology to play in the student process of learning. This will be defined by the learning needs of your students and curriculum. It is important to examine the goals that you want students to accomplish and how the technology-based resources can contribute to them.
Locating Digital Resources
Once you have made the decision on how you will use the technology in the classroom, teachers should seek to find the resources that are available to them locally. That could mean through your school of employment, the computers located in your classrooms, and through textbook included CD-ROMs.
These only represent a small portion of the resources available, however, as the internet is a massive storehouse for resources. Interactive educational programming can be found on the websites of museums, historical foundations, government programs, and educational non-profit organizations.
Resources are also available through open-source (free software that allows users to access and modify programs) software. Shareware and Freeware are also good sources to find resources but they may contain spyware (malicious software that collects information from the user's computer).
Evaluating Resources
Of the many resources available, it is important for teachers to evaluate the ones that they find interesting. To evaluate these resources, teachers must begin by determining what criteria they will use for evaluation. The use of software evaluation rubrics is commonly used to evaluate teacher resources and can evaluate items such as content, biases and stereotypes, goals and standards, teacher support, costs.
Another method of evaluation that teachers can use is to read product reviews about the products that they are interested in using. Although it is good to read reviews and learn about products, teachers must be aware of the fact that those reviews represent the subjective thoughts and judgements of that user.
After you have evaluated the possible resources and narrowed down the list, teachers may use trial software issued by the publisher to test run their programs to see if they meet their instructional requirements.