Online Parent-Teacher Conference |
Gretchen Halasi-Kun
ghalasikun@mac.com
Online Parent-Teacher Conference = |
Student ePortfolio + Teacher's Perspective + Parent's Perspective |
Project Goals |
The goal of this project is to create an online avenue for parent-teacher communication. I developed this project after the State of Texas eliminated Parent-Teacher Conference days from the school calendar. Parents and teachers are expected to meet during the teacher's conference period. With the decrease of families with non-working parents, attending such meetings is becoming more difficult. The Online Parent-Teacher Conference is an alternative to a face-to-face conference. Parents can "attend" the conference at their own convenience, see how their child is doing in school, contribute their perspective on their child's progress, and participate in a dialogue with the teacher through email. |
Project Issues |
One
of the issues that arose during the creation of the Online Parent-Teacher
Conference was privacy. In order to put students' work and grades on the
internet, a password protected site was required.
The parents who participated in this project ranged in computer experience, so one of the challenges for me was to make the Online Conference user-friendly for beginners, without being condescending to the parents who know more about computers than I do. |
Target Learners |
There
were 3 learners in this project:
1. 4th grade studentsThe students learned to use Kid Pix, Power Point, and Word to create the technology work samples for their ePortfolio. The parents were the audience for whom the ePortfolio was created. They were also the participants in the Online Parent-Teacher Conference. As the teacher, I was also one of the learners in this project as I had never done anything like this before. |
Survey Results |
See the results of the parent survey. |
Project Implications |
I learned
that parents are excited about the technological opportunities their children
will have in their education and that parents are anxious to share in those
opportunities.
This project is the beginning of online parent-teacher communication for me. I believe it is a valuable resource to reach busy parents and keep them informed of their child's progress. In the future I predict parents will be able to log on to the school web site to view grades, school work, attendance records, lunch money account, and overdue library books. Eventually, perhaps, nightly homework assignment sheets will be online and parents will log on and "sign" the sheet so the teacher knows parents saw the assignments. |
Online Parent-Teacher Conference Example |
Here
is an example of an Online Parent-Teacher Conference. It has 3 parts:
1. Student ePortfolio and Teacher's Perspective |