Parental Involvement starting to tip? September 22, 2007
Posted by Gilmour David in : Parents as Partners, eduBuzz , add a commentA couple of events over the past few days, each a new milestone in parental involvement, which together are giving me a sense that a corner is being turned:
- a parent joined school staff at Dunbar Primary for an in-service session on web publishing
- another parent got in touch to ask if parents were welcome to attend the eduBuzz open meetings
The one who attended the in-service session was particularly interested in helping the Parent Council get on the web, and has since done a wonderful job over the weekend of developing a new Dunbar Primary School Parents blog, including a beautiful bespoke graphic header.
Welcome to the new website dedicated to the parents and carers of pupils at Dunbar Primary School! This site is currently under development, but feel free to browse what we have here so far and leave a few comments.
It’s in development, but the site is active and he’d welcome feedback. Why not have a look?
And of course the Open Meetings are open to parents, so an invite has been sent.
New parent blogger Mumble: a must-subscribe September 7, 2007
Posted by Gilmour David in : Exc-el, Parents as Partners , add a comment
I’ve just read the first post from our new parent blogger Mumble. Put it this way, guineapigmum hasn’t just got company, she’s got competition.
Highly recommended: I’m looking forward to the next instalment already. Here’s a sample:
Yikes. Broadcasting is scary! I was aiming for the beginning of term for this but being a bit of techno-woose I had to go for a lie down after seeing the instructions and it’s taken a couple of weeks to get a calm clear space to try to work out how it works. I think this is that space, though the baby might wake up at any moment and snooker it. Link
School web sites can engage hard-to-reach parents August 30, 2007
Posted by David Gilmour in : Exc-el, Humbie Primary, Parents as Partners, blogging , add a commentGood school web sites can engage parents who want to help, but just aren’t comfortable setting foot in school, or talking to teachers.
In talking to Mhairi Stratton today about developing the Humbie Primary site, and class blogs there, she told me the story of how she discovered from her pupils at a previous city primary that parents were going to great lengths to get access to the internet so that they could get involved via the school’s web site. Yet these same parents, the children explained, would not come into school, or talk to teachers.
This suggests that there may be an unexpected benefit here from East Lothian’s plans to develop class blogs as a key part of the new Parental Involvement arrangements.
Class Blogs to Support Parental Involvement August 16, 2007
Posted by David Gilmour in : Exc-el, Parents as Partners, blogging , add a comment
During today’s In-Service, Longniddry Primary staff got some hands-on practice with the eduBuzz blog system so more people can update the school site, and so that they’re ready to make a start with class blogs.
The school’s Development Plan for the year includes work on parental involvement, and the blog-based school web site is one of the tools they’ll be using. They’re also keen to develop class-specific web pages which will provide a more to-the-point channel of communication with busy parents.
East Lothian’s Parental Involvement consultation found that primary parents liked the idea of a class-specific web page. A survey finding was that today’s busy parents might want to be involved with the school, but only had time to be involved with their own children’s classes. For that purpose, a whole-school site can be a turn-off, as these people don’t have time to dig around in search of class-specific informatiion.
After the CPD session, Melanie Bertram and I explored some other new ways to use the school blog:
- Subscribe by email: we used Feedblitz to set up an email subscription service for the school site (subscribe here)
- This is set to provide a nightly email with the latest posts.
- Feedblitz is a powerful RSS-to-email service which offers a free basic service.
- Linking class blog posts to the school site: using Chris Hatcher’s firstRSS plugin, we explored how up-to-date headlines from a class blog can be syndicated to that class’s Page on the main school site (example here).
- This enables interested readers to click-through to see the full post on the class site.
I’m looking forward to seeing what new ideas this group come up with over the next few weeks.
Next parent blogger? August 7, 2007
Posted by Gilmour David in : Parents as Partners, eduBuzz , 1 comment so farI’m hoping I might have found some company for guineapigmum in the form of a new parent blogger.
It was just one of those ad-hoc conversations which led to the sudden realisation that I’d met someone keen to contribute towards improvement, but not sure how best to do so. The offer of a blog was enthusiastically accepted.
Interestingly, the parent forums weren’t seen as any more attractive than the legacy school board arrangements. I wonder if we’re doing enough to differentiate them in people’s minds?
Anyway, watch this space…
How can the web enable improved parental involvement? May 3, 2007
Posted by David Gilmour in : Exc-el, Parents as Partners , add a comment
Social software looks set to play an important part in enabling a step-change in parental involvement within East Lothian schools. The 2006 Parental Involvement Act places important new duties on education authorities, which are explained on the Parentzone site. These duties include:
Education authorities have a duty to ‘promote involvement of parents in school education’.
Education authorities are required to develop a ‘strategy for parental involvement strategy’ and in doing this they will have to consult with parents, pupils and any other interested parties.
Susan Guy is now completing that consultation in East Lothian. From her work, it’s clear that social software, such as eduBuzz blogs, has the potential to play a major role in supporting new parent involvement arrangements. We’ve been looking at what such a blog site might look like, and how it might work. A useful source document has been the Partnership With Parents document (30 pages, pdf file) issued by HMI as part of the How Good Is Our School series.
The idea is, in Primary Schools, to use a class web site (blog) as a focus for parental involvement at class level. Such a site turns out to be ideal for providing the kind of information, and level of interaction, that parents want. There’s a skeleton “framework” site at http://edubuzz.org/blogs/dunbarprimaryp4a showing a possible model. Over the next couple of weeks we’re planning to develop the idea with the Pupil Council at Dunbar Primary. We attended their meeting today and showed them examples of what was possible, and their reaction was very positive. They also enjoyed leaving a few comments on the Law Primary site, such as this one and this one!
Law Primary’s blog: 670 comments in under 5 weeks March 28, 2007
Posted by Gilmour David in : Exc-el, Parents as Partners, Primary, blogging , add a commentIf you’d like an example of how powerful an easy-to-use, interactive blog can be as a school web site, have a look at the Law Primary blog. This site was created on 23rd February 2007, so it’s not yet 5 weeks old - but has attracted 670 comments already. As always, there are surprises. Who’d have thought aspiring stars in the school show would use the blog to share their thoughts on the auditions?
P3 “Personal Learning Plan” bloggers migrating to Exc-el January 11, 2007
Posted by David Gilmour in : Exc-el, Haddington Infant School, Parents as Partners, Peer assessment, Personal Learning Plans, WordPress, blogging , 4commentsRobert Whiteside at Haddington Infant School has around 80 P3 bloggers about to migrate to the Exc-el blog system. This work is investigating at exploring the potential of blogs in formative assessment. Aims include:
- exploring whether a student blog is a better vehicle for Personal Learning Plans, and can help reduce the potential bureaucracy involved with paper plans
- using blogs to help involve parents as partners in their children’s learning
- facilitating peer assessment by encouraging pupils to comment on one another’s work (including providing Blogroll links to make it easy to find peer blogs)
While we were still cranking the starting handle of the Exc-el blog system in August these blogs were set up on learnerblogs.org. I met with Robert today to discuss migrating the blogs over. (more…)
