Aug 24 2008
Staying Connected with Teachers
As a mom I crave information from my daughter’s teacher and I consciously sit down with my daughter after school to talk about the day with her. At her age she joyfully provides me every detail, but I know that this stage will not last forever. The fact of the matter is every parent wants to know what is going on in their child’s life when they are not in their presence, and the teachers at SAS are working hard to give you that information.
One way we are increasing our communication is through the blogging platform. Shanghai American School owns it’s own domain name and teachers across all divisions are rapidly creating blogs as a means to communicate with their students and the parent community. Blogs are offering teachers a way to celebrate the learning in their classroom, provide information about upcoming events, reflect on lessons taught in class, and to provide an extension to the standard classroom-learning environment. Teachers are modeling what we are asking our students to do by acting as globally minded professionals who are empowered to seek and share information.
One of my primary goals this year is to help parents get connected and stay connected with the events going on in their child’s classrooms. One method for parents to stay connected is to create a personal and secure Netvibes page on the internet. When teacher blogs are updated, the Netvibes page will automatically be updated which saves parents the time of having to visit each and every teacher blog. I will help parents set up a Netvibes page during parent coffees, PTSA meetings, open house, or even if they drop in the middle school computer lab if they happen to be at school on any given day. I’ve also created a screencast to walk you through the steps at home on your own.
The information you receive will provide you with a conversation starter around the dinner table. Especially for middle school students, the more detailed the question we ask them, the more detailed they answer!
I only got three teachers’blogs for my kid on 7th grade,i.e.Science, Spanish and Strings. I am really looking forward to seeing more blogs created by teachers.
Can’t get the screencast video to work. Only see a blank, black screen.
[…] that’ll let me know whenever any of my students blogs, and I also have a page that lets me know whenever one of the teachers I work with blogs - without having to go and individually check their […]
[…] new information as it can all come to you on one page. To learn more on setting up your own page, Amanda Decardy our Middle School tech Specialist has created a short screencast demonstrating how easy it […]