Tonight sees a change to the usual #ukedchat. Usually there is a vote and we try to decide which topic is most worthy of discussion. But this week I’m in charge, so no vote this time. Last time I moderated, I suggested parental engagement as a topic but it didn’t win and then last week, the subject of parents came up a few times during the chat so it seemed right for our first non-vote topic, we would look at:
How do we engage with parents?
So when discussing this, I’d like you to think about things you do in your school already or things you’ve tried before. Also, what are you planning to do with the parents in your school? It is important to remember that ukedchat is about the non-techy ideas and solutions as much (and maybe more) than using ICT.
Do you involve parents in workshops? Do you put on any events for them? Do you train them on how to use various bits of software? or numeracy strategies? or any new thing that happens in your school? How do you keep this up? What about for non-attendees? How do you cope with them? Do you provide guides or do you video sessions? How do you entice the reluctant ones into school in the first place?
What about when writing policies or action plans? Do parents have a say? Are they shown it when it’s written? or do they not see policies ever? One aspect of a ‘high-scoring’ ICT Mark is that policies and plans are written in conjunction with the whole school community. Does your school do this? How?
Can the children see their child’s work online? Is this through a blog? a VLE? or somethig else such as MyEBook/Animoto?
Can children see reports online? Are you thinking about this? What is the best way of doing it?
There are many areas to think about when discussing parental engagement that it makes a great topic for a UKedchat discussion. I hope you will join us tonight at 8pm on Twitter or at the very least, read through the archive later on. I’ll post links to that when it’s ready.
Oh…if you’re not sure what ukedchat is, check out my previous post here: http://ianaddison.net/?p=288
Really useful set of guidelines to those of us who are newbies! Thank you!
no problem! we need newbies, we need new ideas and we need to share. UKedchat can be overwhelmning, but it sure is fantastic!
Great topic – I’m afraid I can’t make the chat but this is something we do a lot of work with schools on. It normally starts with speaking to parents to see how THEY want to engage! Then taking it from there…