Learning Lore

So I’m at the VSS preconference and thought I’d try may hand at live blogging as a way tokeep my notes and keep everyone who couldn’t make it with me aware of what I’m listening to

So this is the first session of the preconference, and something I think we need to do a much better job of:-)

Andrew Henry uses a flash calendar to help track kids and contact parents.  He’s a Surrey COnnect teacher.

After a feelling of being unsuccessful he contacted students and parents.  Students felt unsure abotu what to do and where to go. PArents “I don’t know much about computers”

WHat the Literature said:  when parents are involved success rate sincreased by twice as much.

• Parents need specific information on how to help and what to do
• parents may not effectively help a student unless they know how to help them.

Who should intiate the communiction? And what form shoudl it take?

• Teacher should establish contact.
• Many parents prefer informal contact.
• Andrew found that parents would prefer not to come into a formal parent teacher interview.

Students have access to a customized calendar, and submitted one.  those that didn’t submit one were given one by the teacher. ( Forced a 2 month calendar on the student)

The only intervention, or change in the test group were given an email.

If parent responded to the email asking for help:

• study skills
• goal setting
• Come into the building for help.
• If students need daily help you can recommend a tutor

students had 11% more complettion rate and 30% higher success rate.  Multiteacher emails more successful than lone teacher email.

Conclusion:

• Parent involvement can be increased through direct teacher contact.  Contact should be teacher-intitated, non-formal and regular.  It should also provide parents to timely access to accurate information.
• direct parent contact increases student completion and success rates

Recommendations:

• shuodl be parent centered as much as student centered
• schools should institue some sore of program where teachers can intiate parent contact.
• Especially good with multicourse approaches.(Looking at full DL students).
• Remember the learnnowbc study guide.

Some of my thoughts…

• should this be more personal

• how would this work with singleton courses?  Chased out teh grade 9’s
• how would we effectively implement this?

Education elearning, parent contact, practical, vss conference