We have come to an end of sorts. We have arrived at our destination and are to set upon other journeys…but we’ll never be the same. Our course is over, our journey is not.

Most University classes create opportunities for working with others…sometimes, some peers may actually become friends. I personally find learning from others’ experiences very enriching, more than reading a textbook. I value the wisdom, perspectives and stories of others. I connect with their words and feelings.

This course exceeded my expectations on this level. As we struggled to wrap our minds around big concepts and new theories, we bonded. Initially, I thought we would have our eyes on our screens for most of class but, as it turns out our use of technology just facilitated the learning we were doing. It enhanced it rather than take away that valuable human experience of learning together. The structure of the course made it possible to hear from everyone both online and in person. I feel fortunate to have had this experience and I am grateful to my peers for their contribution to the new-improved-me.

Before this class, I was not particularly “connected”. I tried to keep my online presence to a minimum. I hesitated to join groups, follow sites, etc. as I put a higher value on face-to-face interactions….but…then I saw the amazing ways my peers were using the internet to connect, band together and share. I also saw how online resources helped them organize their ideas, enhance their teaching and communicate with others on a larger scale. The idea of technology as a gadget or fad had passed–I realized using technology was now an expected way of life. Not just for the keen, but for everyone.

Now, having arrived at a terminus, it’s time to consider our next steps. Where to now? I know my way of thinking about so many things has changed. I know my confidence to take on new technology has improved. I know I have gained some insight into the future of education. I know that I have been in contact with some excellent educators and learned so much from them…and have ways to continue working with them.

My Future Vision Project was to make an e-mail newsletter template and to create a blog for my students’ parents. My goal was to develop a stronger partnership with them through better communication. My hope was that parents would feel more connected to our school experiences and would then be able to understand/appreciate what we were doing all day.

I have made a blog with consideration of aesthetics, ease of use, the kind of information my parents would want to see, security and overall, a site that would actually get used. Photos, reminders, helpful sites, a place to comment among the elements included on my blog site. It’s not done, but I have made a good start…fiddling with widgets and blogging a departure from my old self!

Have a look before I make it totally private:

http://gogriffins.wordpress.com/

We are better together than we are on our own.

Personal Learning Networks

I see two main functions here: learning through collaboration and supporting each other. At the moment I do not belong to an online PLN. My school and colleagues are where and with who I find support, ideas, etc. But, I’m not at school all the time and I’m not really in contact with my staff over the summer. Even during the year there are many occasions when I wish I could I share with colleagues at other schools. For example, since my French Resources (graphic organizers+) are largely made by me, would others want to use them too? I know I would love to “share” their ideas too! Beyond making our teaching materials available to each other we could share articles, useful website, our successes (maybe failures too) which could all create some rich learning opportunities.

After listening to my peers present their various technological resources, I wondered if and which I would actually use. As of now I am not a consistent tweeter and I don’t see myself becoming one soon. I do, however, use Facebook and could see myself using Edmodo as a meeting place for my PLN–at, and beyond my school. So, that is one of my new goals. I can start by inviting teachers I know to join and see how is goes. (Not for my students at this point though.)

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I think I can…I think I can…

Kendra Cherry explains in, “What is Self-Efficacy?” that according to Albert Bandura, self-efficacy is “the belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations.” In other words, self-efficacy is a person’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in a particular situation. Bandura described these beliefs as determinants of how people think, behave, and feel (1994).

http://psychology.about.com/od/theoriesofpersonality/a/self_efficacy.htm

Bandura’s “Self-Efficacy”, as part of his Social Cognitive Theory, makes other words come to mind like: empowerment, confidence, self-esteem…

At school, as teachers, we create opportunities for success and growth for our students. We support them but ultimately, I believe the child should recognize their own efforts, the product of their learning being their own.This process empowers, builds confidence and self-esteem. Ideally, students will also enjoy another benefit: greater perseverance and trust in their abilities when taking on challenging situations.

So, to simplify, by doing, gaining experience and hopefully, finding success, we can be more self-effacacious learners. We can learn we CAN.

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How does Bandura’s notion of Self-Efficacy relate to the blog I’m trying to make? To this class? To me as a efficacious learner?

Here’s one way of looking at it: before this course I was not particularly comfortable with new technology. I was slowly experimenting with new devices and applications, but was overall not feeling too confident. By the middle of this course, I found myself using more technology I could have imagined and…I wasn’t struggling to use it! I was having some success! Why? I had examples of how to use it, peer and teacher support, opportunities to practice and I was able to notice my own growth. (Bandura’s four main sources of Self-Efficacy: Social Modeling, Social Persuasion, Mastery, Psychological Responses.) Now, as we are nearing the end of the course, I can say I am more resilient when facing ‘new technology’. I have more of a “can do” attitude and my experiences in this class have made me more a more efficacious learner.

Before this class I was reluctant to use a lot of new technological resources. I dreaded the process of trial and error and error and…??? I had been gradually learning new things until…this class started and bammo! Here I am, fears of technology being stress-invoking and confidence-stripping are realized. Why? Because I am trying to create a blog today after fiddling for some time on a newsletter template yesterday. Eventually, I made it work. Hopefully, the blog will come too.

I won’t give up! I value the possibilities the blog will offer me to communicate and connect with parents when it’s done. I am still motivated to make it work…IF I CAN MAKE IT WORK.

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MY PROJECT: A SECURE BLOG ON WORDPRESS FOR COMMUNICATING AND SHARING WITH PARENTS + AN EMAIL NEWSLETTER TO BOOST SUBSCRIBERSHIP

My blog: visual and textual, static pages and connected links, ongoing posts with photos/text about our school day, reminders, Q&A, etc. TBD.

Format: simple font, short texts, easy to navigate, cheery appearance and will ‘look’ the same over time.

For who: primarily for the parents of my students.

Special considerations: security (I want it to be completely password protected) and setup is challenging and there will be some ongoing maintenance for me in the future.

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I see another possible benefit to starting up this blog: if parent involvement increases, will student achievement also improve? We know that the parent-school connection can have a significant impact on a child’s success at school and I think more effective home-school communication can definitely nurture this relationship. Here is some evidence gathered by two Harvard students from their study on: The Effect of Teacher-Family Communication on Student Engagement. They determined that there were decisive improvements in terms of student achievement when parents were contacted regularly.  They state, “we find that frequent teacher-family communication immediately increased student engagement as measured by homework completion rates, on-task behavior, and class participation.” 

http:www.scholar.harvard.edu/…/kraft__dougherty_teacher_communication_jree.pdf

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Does all this communicating with parents through ICT create/improve Structural Coupling? I think so. If my simplistic understanding of SC implicates that the more we talk, the more we are one, then I’m sure a dual-directional blog can produce this result. For example, if I hear feedback from parents and I consider it, apply it and make changes and likewise, they do the same, on a continual basis, are we not becoming more aligned? Are we not more connected, influencing each other, and better working towards our common goal of their child’s success? In this case, we don’t use ICT for the sake of it. We use ICT for what it can allow us to do, together.

Jenny would ask: “are we broadening perspectives and deepening connections?”

Yes, we are.

As per our discussion in class, I decided that I could use an e-mail newsletter to connect with parents. In addition to giving them some information about what’s happening at school, I hope they would then want to connect with the class blog I am creating.

So, today I went looking for Newsletter templates online. I found lots and decided on this one and I modified it to my needs:

I took the standard template and made it my own template, more or less ready for my use. I  have made some adjustments to the text, size and number of text boxes, image sizes, etc.

My Search for the Right Template:

First, when I was searching for templates, I took into consideration my audience: my students’ parents. Since I’m offering them a service I want them to actually use (read my newsletter/blog), I ended up thinking of it in terms of a business: “Treat [my] customers right and they’ll always come back”.

So what do they want? (I think) My parents want a quick snapshot of what’s happening at school. In particular, they want to see photos of their child. They might also like some related text but they will have to go to my blog for more information. I think this newsletter should be more visual than textual. I chose this newsletter because it has cheery colours, lots of white space, an appealing font and overall balance of writing and pictures. And, I clearly advertised my class blog on top!! In terms of using technology, parents can access the newsletter by opening an attachment on their email (which I suspect most of them can do.) If I know a student doesn’t have internet access I can give them a hard copy.

Second, I wanted the template to be manageable for me. As this newsletter is intended to remind parents to visit the blog, I wanted it to be short…a hint of what else they may see. Also, If it’s simple enough, I will send out newsletters more often.

Even though the newsletter is one-directional communication, I hope, it will create a greater sense of connectedness with parents. I think that in addition to improving communication with updates/info, it could also improve our rapport. In particular, parents who are unable to visit the school and see what we’re doing or have questions regarding our learning may be able to get some of what they’re missing this way. Hopefully the newsletter and blog will be informative, entertaining and help create an appreciation for the work we are doing at school.

Why reach out to parents? Why now?

It seems to me that parents are becoming more and more removed from our school community. There are the few that make it in to chat, volunteer and participate in our events but most of them are not able/willing to do so. Since I started teaching I have seen relationships with parents become more and more limited. We are not connecting the way we used to…and it’s not because I’m becoming a worse teacher!! Last year’s strike didn’t help either. Unfortunately, the respect and gratitude I used to feel are dwindling. The parent-teacher relationship seems to be shifting and it’s happening in other schools too.

I’ve asked myself how to improve this distance parents are feeling/creating. I know having more information about what happens at school is important to them. So seeing (even through newsletter or blog) what we are doing at school is a step in the right direction.

We know student success is connected to parent involvement. We know parents are important partners so why not provide communication “services” that make them feel more connected? (Like keeping a customer happy…)

Big question: If the public image of teachers and community support are deteriorating, what can we do about it?

Our challenge: designing a simple, accessible format for communicating with parents. Seems simple, but, we have concerns about security, different “platforms”, user/manager-friendliness and above all, will anyone even look at what we create??

In this design process we are to consider the linguistic cognitive domain and ask ourselves: what we are putting out there? How can we create a form of communication that is inviting for parents based on their social/economic demographics? If our goal is fluency and readership, how do we best reach and engage our audience?

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“Cognitive Load” is discussed in Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning by Richard E. Mayer and Roxana Moreno. The authors contend that “the cognitive load is a central consideration in the design of multimedia instruction.” Not that our website/blog is not meant to “instruct” exactly but there is an important message here…

Here are the Three Assumptions About How the Mind Works in Multimedia Learning as discussed in the article:

Dual Channel: Humans possess separate information processing channels for verbal and visual material.

Limited Capacity: There is only a limited amount of processing capacity available in the verbal and visual channels.

Active Processing Learning: requires substantial cognitive processing in the verbal and visual channels.

www.uky.edu/~gmswan3/544/9_ways_to_reduce_CL.pdf

How do I relate this to my design for my blog/website to communicate with my parents? How does “Cognitive Load” figure in to the Cognitive Linguistic Domain?

1) There needs to be a mix of visual and written data on my site. 2) There needs to be a suitable amount of each visual and textual information on my site.

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Today we talked about creating a newsletter that is emailed regularly as a good place to start in getting parents engaged. The benefits of a digital newsletter are: parents can access it at their convenience, it won’t go missing like paper ones do, it can be linked to a blog or other sites, students can contribute/create the newsletter. Sounds good, now…

…back to the Linguistic Cognitive Domain and considering the design of a newsletter, I got from reading, Communicating with Parents: Strategies for Teachers that newsletters should consistently have the same font, style, layout, and use everyday language and be well-proofread. www.adi.org/journal/ss05/Graham-Clay.pdf

My interpretation: keeping some things consistent from newsletter to newsletter makes the reader (parent) feel at ease, and more likely to engage with the information given.

Communication via a digital newsletter encourages better relationships with parents, even if it’s only one-directional. Parents will see photos with captions, updates on learning progress and goals we’re trying to meet, thus making them feel more connected. Seeing their child in context of their school day will additionally (I hope), foster a greater sense of community and appreciation for the work educators are doing.