Mini-Course: Communication
Link to Lucas Webb's Portfolio Page
Overview and Purpose
Welcome to my mini-course! Here we are learning how to use the many resources that technology gives us to effectively communicate with the families within our classroom. Every year, teachers throughout the country often have new students in their classrooms, and many districts find it important to make sure there is streamline communication between school and home. Many families would like to know what exactly is going on in the classroom, as well as how to best support their child at home. The problem for many educators is that they may not have the time, knowledge, or resources to effectively communicate with all families at home, or at least on a consistent basis. That is where this mini-course comes in to help. This course is broken down into three main units: What is family communication? What are some technology resources that can be used for communication? How can technology support the understanding of each child's academics for families? This course intends to help learners not only effectively communicate what is happening in the classroom, but also how those students are performing.
Needs Assessment
After reviewing the survey, as well as interviewing and questioning some of my colleagues, I found many different attitudes towards family communication. The most common response I received was that educators did not know what to do to keep on-going communication with families possible, such as the resources or websites that are available. Furthermore, when creating and using these resources, educators did not know exactly what to include in these posts, emails, etc...
In addition to this, many educators need education themselves on how to navigate these different kinds of technologies, mainly because they have never seen some of them before! One of the most common forms of communication between teachers and families comes from newsletters, often sent monthly or bi-weekly through email. This course hopes to expand on that, and create posts and activities that include family connection on the daily, or at the very least weekly.
Performance Objectives
After completing this course, learners will be ale to:
- Select and use resource online that can be used to communicate with families
- Use a portfolio-type resource to collect and present student work with efficiency
- Effectively keep on-going communication with families throughout the school year
Course Units
This mini-course includes the following units. Click the title of a unit to go to its page.
Unit 1: What does family communication look like? Why should we use it?
This unit intends to inform the learner of exactly why we use family communication, as well as its importance. Learners will establish a main technological platform to use as a base form of communication to families.
Unit 2: Examples of on-going communication throughout the school year
In this unit, learners will watch a video that includes key components to include in their early communication with families. They will then compose a welcome email that includes some of these key components.
Unit 3: Using technology for family conferencing
In this unit, learners will be taking a look at another tech resource: Seesaw. Learners will navigate the website, create their own classroom, and learn how to use Seesaw for a parent-teacher conference portfolio.
