Parents — Page 2

Twitter me this…why use Twitter for school communication?

July 6, 2014 by Amber 50 Comments

Twitter me this…

Why would an administrator want to take on the headache of using social media with their parents and community? What if I asked if you, as an administrator, would like to have more communication with your parents, keep them updated and alerted to any and all important school news, while only taking up a fraction of your time?

Twitter provides just such an opportunity. Our parents today are busy. It’s not always like it used to be with a mom waiting at home with a snack to go through a weekly folder and help with homework. Today’s mom and dad’s may be working more than one job. They may be working late into the evening. They may have more than one student to come home and help. Even the most traditional of families can become buried underneath the responsibilities of soccer, dance, and Girl Scouts. Recognizing the different dynamics of what our students are going home to can help guide how we communicate with them all. Providing the same information in as many mediums as possible can only help ensure that we are reaching as many parents as we can.

How do I envision Twitter as an asset? It allows your tech savvy parents who are involved with social media a way to get current and timely information. Sending reminders about picture day, school closures, make-up days…things that parents are concerned about can be short and sweet.

In a world where anything can happen, and information travels SO fast, Twitter allows for timely communication. Emergencies happen and while not life pressing, to a parent, having a concern immediately taken care of can be gratifying. We had a situation one year where there was a fire in the kitchen. No students were ever in danger, but to the neighborhood surrounding us, seeing the campus swarmed with fire trucks and district personnel can be unnerving. An “all call” went out to parents that afternoon, but we had several concerned calls in the interim. Twitter would have calmed & clarified the situation immediately.

Every week a stack of reminders are sent home. Tests, pictures, events, policies, etc…we send them home in bulk at certain times of the year. A tweet is only 140 characters. Short and sweet. “ Free dress tomorrow.” “Don’t forget to return your library books.” “ 2^nd grade field trip, bring your lunch!” All the things a teacher wishes she could call and remind each parent of the day before. May not be worth another sheet a paper, but a tweet? Absolutely.

Not all of our parents are on Twitter. Recognizing that there would be a learning curve is ok. SOME of our parents are in that space. SOME might be inclined to look into it knowing that it was offered. SOME might take advantage of the “Fast Follow” option that Twitter provides, which sends texts of tweets. In fact, sending a text was originally the only way users could tweet. This is why tweets are 140 characters — they need to fit into a text message. Anyone in the US can receive Tweets as texts on their phone even if they haven’t signed up for Twitter. This is a simple way for people to get information they care about in real-time.

If you don’t have a Twitter account (and don’t want one!) you can still find out what is happening through these text messages. (Standard messaging rates apply.)

To get started text: “Follow @username” to 40404 and you will start receiving tweets from that user on your device. You can turn off receiving updates by sending “STOP @username” to 40404.

They won’t need a Twitter account or to sign up for anything. This will require some training, but it’s difficult to find someone who doesn’t text these days. Providing training would be worth the results each year. We started every meeting with a simple “Hey everyone! Pull out your cellphone! Let’s make sure you are getting hot off the press info from us!”

Twitter is not the silver bullet that will allow seamless communication between school and home. What it will do is provide another opportunity for educators to reach out to the parents and attempt to bridge the disconnect between school life and home life. If it also opens a door to discussing social media, cyber behavior, or having an online presence? Even better.

Tweetingly,

Amber

Free and easy ways to connect with your staff & parents!

May 19, 2014 by Amber Leave a Comment

There are a variety of ways that teachers and administrators can communicate with their class, staff, and parents. Effective communication is vital to a schools success. Not just the typical teacher to parents way, but also in the campus to the families way. Good communication can prevent misperceptions and mismatched expectations, encourage parent involvement and foster a team approach to caring for your students. Families should feel welcomed, informed and as involved as possible.

Tim Lauer in Portland uses Instagram to share the good things happening at his school. Want to know what matters to that lead learner? Check out his feed.

Classroom activities, fun projects, assemblies…there are visuals to accompany all of the good things going on at Lewis Elementary.

Melinda Miller creates videos that communicate important calendar events happening. Her campus still sends home a paper calendar but also provides this link to her staff/families. She uses an app called Touchcast, to make this happen. TouchCast creates an interactive presentation that mixes video with web content. The app lets you record a video and overlay elements such as web pages, maps, photos, Twitter streams, polls, quizzes and more. Users watching the video can click on these multimedia elements and interact with them while the video continues to play. You start by recording a video using your iPad’s camera. You can pick from several themes like newscast or review that’ll insert titles and other elements to get you started. TouchCast uses a timeline to lay out the elements of your video and allows you to drag& drop extra content.

Tony Sinanis, known for his Bammy award winning and New York Principal of the Year ways, creates amazing videos with his students each grading period. Want to know what Cantiague students are learning about? Let them tell you. I think my favorite part of this idea is the relationships that are so evident between Mr. Sinanis and his students. As an administraor, it is impressive, but as a parent? I’m all in.

We use Remind101 not just with our students in individual classrooms, but also with our staff. This has been a HUGE tool for me this year, as I don’t have the personal relationships with our staff that I am used to, just being a year in on this campus. It’s always awkward when you get to the phone number/texting/connections aspect of being the lead learner…but no fear! I still have the capabilities to connect with my staff through Remind 101. We created an account and then utilize it to announce a couple of jeans days (ensuring campus wide participation;)) and have taken advantage of its one way mode of getting info to our teachers. From uplifting texts to snow day announcements, this has become our go to way to getting a message out to teachers. I can even choose individual users as well for grade level specific messages, if necessary.

Jay Posick creates a weekly Smore that he shares with his Merton families. I love that I can back to week one of his school year and see what they doing then. He adds pictures and short blurbs to let everyone know where and what is going on. As a parent, I think this would be incredible way to have the “what did you do at school today” conversation. It is free and easy to use. Promote school events, let students design flyers for upcoming curriculum, and you can even monitor the number of views and web analytics. Smores can easily be linked and shared to classroom blogs, school websites, Twitter and Facebook. Plus? a 2014 bonus…Smore ‘pages’ work flawlessly on smartphones and tablets!

Establish THE hashtag, THE phrase, THE saying that defines your campus. From the AHMO of Wylie high school that made it to Letterman, to the #GOCRICKETS that Joe Sanfelippo has permeating all of Fall Creek, Wisconsin, to the biggest and student led hashtag of #leydenpride from Jason Markey’s unifying campus culture, this is an opportunity for you to create an environment that extends past your physical location. Brand your vision for your community. Everyone wants to be a part of a team…this is why the collegiate traditions of A&M and Texas Tech are so popular, people want to feel connected and a part of something bigger than they are. Why should your campus not take advantage of that?

Twitter and Facebook are two popular ways to share information but in this day and age there is no reason not to find a “high tech” way to match your “low tech” efforts and meet the needs of your families. Worried about them getting on board? Showcase your students! Spot light the great things happening on your campus every day. That’s what parents really want after all! Then? You just sneak in the extra that you want to know as well.

BE INTENTIONAL in your attempts to involve the “village” that we all know it takes to have a successful school/home partnership. It’ll be worth that extra step or two to use any of these methods. Need help? Email me and I would be more than happy to walk you through getting started. Or? I can connect you to any of the excellent folks I get to call friends listed above to help ya too!

Communicatingly,

Amber

Not how…but WILL you be remembered?

May 14, 2014 by Amber 3 Comments

I had gathered up all of my things one day last week and was walking out the door when my phone rang. To further avoid my dentist appointment, I answered it abruptly, “Teamann”. A sweet little voice said, “Hi Mrs. Teamann, I’m sure you don’t remember me but….”

It was a former Beaver student that I had taught calling to invite me to an academic banquet that he was being recognized at, and he wanted me to be his guest. That little voice turned out to be a practically grown student whom I did in fact remember. In fact, I tore apart my picture closet that night trying to find the picture I had of he and I had a baseball game of his that I went too. I can even remember what I was wearing, and that we were both squinting at the sun in the picture. (Random, I know.)

The fact that this student, whose full name I so enjoyed calling him by, took the time to hunt me down and invite me just warmed my heart. Now a senior, about to go off to college, practically done with his Garland ISD experience, took the time to make contact with me…it made me happier than any award or prize that I could have gotten this year.

An additional funny…sweet Mason brought me his invitation the day that we were under a tornado threat. He walked in, smiled at me, and I promptly ushered him into the clinic bathroom with the rest of the office staff to duck and cover.

When you are beaten down by testing stress, buried underneath initiatives & changes, or exhausted by paperwork and deadlines…please remember that you don’t do this job for hours or the paychecks. You do this job because you have the opportunity to be the one of the BEST parts of these children’s lives. To be remembered and respected for the impact that you made on their impressionable lives. Never take that lightly. Mason probably doesn’t remember a single assignment or test I gave him that year…but he remembered me.

I will be honored to join Mason and his family next week.

honored,

Amber

Tacos & Technology: a parent tech night!

December 17, 2013 by Amber Leave a Comment

Tonight is our tacos and technology night! We’re inviting parents in to hear where we are going as a campus using Twitter and to help them understand/get involved in our conversation!

My initial invite for Technology & Tacos spelled out the “who” should come, modeled after Sam LeDeaux, up in Chicago, who was so helpful while I was planning this event.

We also mentioned it EVERY day until the event. A local mexican restaurant gave us a great deal on tacos (!!!) and we will be providing devices for those who don’t have one to bring. I have staff and an amazing number of parents helping facilitate as well as watching lil’wildcats that come with their parents.

I’ll be distributing this click sheet for them to take home Signing Up for Twitter (spanish: Cómo empezar en Twitter) and talking through this presentation, Final T&T tech night.

This site will also be able to be accessed through this QR code. 🙂 I plan on streaming this event and will link that broadcast back to this site as well, for those parents who are unable to make it.

taco twitterN,

Amber

Campus level…gamification!

November 14, 2013 by Amber 1 Comment

Gamification is all the rage within edu circles. It has tremendous potential in the education space. How can we use it to deliver truly meaningful experiences to students? The inforgraphic at the bottom can provide background, some how’s and some why’s educators might want to think about gameifying.

At it’s core, gamification is simply adding the element of applying game design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging. It doesn’t mean to play games on the computer, which believe it or not, may be how it’s interpreted.

So how could an administrator turn this into an opportunity for the staff? Take the greatness of Luna Elementary and their can food drive. They’ve turned it into a CAN-dy Land competition between all the classes. Every ten cans the class brings, the players get to move a “space”. The markers? Those lovely classroom picture negatives that you get after school pictures. Along the candy path there are “prizes” that can be earned, maybe even some pitfalls!

Another idea?

What if you turned your staff development into a GAME? Bucket lists and punch lists are found on Pinterest for every holiday and season. Create one for your staff (or class!) expectations! Incorporate what is relevant to your course and vision and make it more interesting than a bullet pointed list! Here’s an example I came up with. Was thinking that once it was completed they could be treated to a cup of hot chocolate with a peppermint stir stick. Something small but something that shows I appreciate their effort…

These resources and couple of more will also be shared in my upcoming Leadership 3.0 webinar. This program is a professional learning community that will help school principals use Web 2.0 tools to be an innovative leader, help teachers grow professionally, improve student learning, and improve communications with all stakeholders. My session is called “Become a PD pro! Best Practices for Administrators”.What

What can you do in your building or classroom to increase engagement through gamification?

Game on,

Amber