Instructional Management:  Parent Education Websites

The Opportunity:  Early in 2016, I began working with our parent educators on expanding some of their technology skills.  Our three parent educators all wanted to find ways to better use social media and the Internet to build better community and make their lessons more accessible to parents.  We did some early experiments with Facebook groups and sharing Google Docs.  Near the end of the 2015-16 school year, all three agreed to commit to building teacher websites for the 2016-17 year.

Our parent ed group expanded to five teachers for 16-17.  They were interested in making websites their PLC goal for the year.  After some discussion, I helped them to refine their goal and change it from being technology-focused to being communication-focused.  Their goal became to increase the percentage of parents that use our online parent ed resources.  Their initial survey of parents in their classes showed that only 5% of the parents used the online resources referred to in paper handouts from class.  The PLC set a very modest goal of doubling that percentage.

The Challenge:  Each of our parent educators was in a different place in terms of their use of technology.  One had build a website previously, for a photography business she owns.  It became very clear that we needed to leverage existing skills.  Initially, we focused on building sites using linked Google Docs that the teachers already knew how to use and share.  I purchased domain names for each of our teachers, such as teacherdeb.com.  The sites had to be ready to use by November.

The Outcome:  Some of the teachers were concerned about the look of a Google Doc-based site, so we began to use the new Google Sites.  All of the teachers had at least some content on their sites by November.  Deb Webster and Eve Clarke reported the most success, though all five teachers were surprised by how positive parent reactions were.  Deb Webster's parents have become particularly heavy users of her site, and she reports that parents are asking for assurance that her site will always be available to them.  To this end, Deb has been redesigning her site to become topic-based rather than class-based.

The post-survey of parents really surprised our parent educators.  85% of parents reported regularly using the teacher websites to find materials they had been exposed to in class.  This exceeded everyone's expectations and has our teachers thinking of even more ways to reach their students beyond class time.