Group items tagged

"Technology Fosters Communications and Parental Engagement" Communication, recognition, and motivation have long been challenges for educators. Parents often struggle to obtain day-to-day information to support their child's progress while teachers strive to foster greater parental engagement. Although report cards offer specific performance information several times per year, most schools rely on students to be the main conduit of information regarding their daily performance, supplemented by periodic and often broad-based communications from the teacher or school. However, if we look at fundamental recognition programs in the business world, we see an approach that embodies a complete role reversal.

Engage Parents, Support Students Kikutext is a service that makes it easy for teachers to communicate with parents using text messaging, so students perform better.

"Welcome to the wonderful world of Ziggity Zoom where you can play games, color pictures, read and listen to stories about many different characters, watch kids videos or explore Play Worlds and other activities. This site is designed for kids and their parents to encourage creativity, reading and to really let your imagination soar. Our mission is to encourage kids to learn, be creative, be active, and to help parents by providing worksheets, tools, and articles that promote positive values and healthy living."

"MyKidsTurn is about our kids -- yours and ours -- and how we're going to make sure that they have the best opportunity we can give them to succeed at school. As a parent, you want the best for your kids. You want them to enjoy learning, and to succeed at school. You want them to grow up excited and engaged with their teachers. The good news is that helping your kids succeed in school isn't just something the teachers and schools have control over -- there's a lot you can do, too! The MyKidsTurn shows are all created by parents and educators. They're about the things we can do with our kids -- games, exercises, strategies, and fun activities that will help them understand concepts and ideas that are going to be important for them in school."

"A Science Teacher Shares Tech Resources For Teachers, Parents & Students"

This tool/app is simllar to Remind. You can create groups and communicate with them. Nice option to mass connect with parents.

"Only You Can Control Your Online Privacy * Kids are growing up in public -- and this is especially true when it comes to Facebook. * Everything they say or do adds up and affects their reputations. * You can help your kids protect their privacy by making sure they use their privacy settings. * Every time Facebook introduces new privacy controls, you'll need to update your settings."

Preston Girls' Secondary College Reading Wiki to show and share with students and teachers how web 2.0 tools can inspire students to respond to set texts in a more creative way. Making book trailers Filming their own '60 second recap Making animotos Creating toondoos Using Flickr to make a showbag Developing a glog Creating a Google Lit Trip Making a Prezi Creating VoiceThreads and responding in Twitterature style are just some examples of how students can creatively respond to a book. Each link explains how the tools can be embedded into the curriculum and shows examples of how other people have used these sites to develop a book response. Some responses are better than others and it would be good to discuss with students beforehand what made certain examples better than others. For some of the presentations, students may need a Flip camera (such as 60 second recap) however the rest of the presentations could use photos and images from the internet. A lesson on Creative Commons and Wikimedia before students are let loose would help them understand their responsibilities in terms of selecting appropriate images and music to use. Once finished, students could show their presentations to each other and have them critique their work. Permissions allowing, presentations could also be uploaded to the school website or shown on parent information evenings or parent/teacher nights. Challenge: My challenge to you is to ask students to use one of these tools (can be in conjunction with a written response) in their next text response.

"The Blogging Teacher: Setting Up Your Classroom Page Blogs ("web logs") are an effective way to communicate with parents and the school community about the learning and events taking place in your classroom. As a teacher, using a blog page as a method of sharing news and information can be helpful to parents (and students) by allowing them access to these things online - rather than by paper handouts and agenda writing. "

Text Students, Parents and Colleagues for free."

"HomeschoolMath.net is a comprehensive math resource site for homeschooling parents and teachers: find free worksheets, math ebooks for elementary grades, extensive link list of games, interactive tutorials & quizzes, curriculum guide, and math teaching help articles/lessons. The resources emphasize understanding of concepts instead of mechanical memorization of rules."

"HomeschoolMath.net is a comprehensive math resource site for homeschooling parents and teachers: find free worksheets, math ebooks for elementary grades, extensive link list of games, interactive tutorials & quizzes, curriculum guide, and math teaching help articles/lessons. The resources emphasize understanding of concepts instead of mechanical memorization of rules."

This is amazing, you need to READ it!!

"Parents: Focus more on 21st-century skills Schools must do more to prepare students for information-age careers, say respondents to a national ed-tech survey "

"One third of parents have cut their kids' extracurricular activities in response to the recession,"

"Level It Books app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch Scan your book's ISBN and view the Guided Reading, Grade Level Equivalent, DRA, and Lexile levels for the book. Perfect for educators and parents."

E is for EXPLORE is a one stop resource for teachers and parents. We develop unique learning activities, and search the internet and compile additional great ideas from other sources. Our index helps you find what you need quickly and easily. Where we have posted ideas from other sources we provide easy links to those websites. Please visit those as well to see what else they have to offer. All E is for Explore activities conform to state common core curriculum standards."