I got home from my 8th grade daughter's Open House yesterday with the normal stack of course documents and permission forms. But I brought home something new this year for each class: a list of tinyurls or login information for course websites. While each teacher had a similar "splash page" on the district webpage, teach had a different link to their real tech hub for their class. The science teacher showed us her Google Classroom and promised to send out an email "soon" with a new parental link. The history teacher demonstrated her Edmodo site, with insistent flashing ads for Office Depot. The math teacher showed us a document -- maybe a Google doc or a Microsoft Word document -- with a table representing a calendar with hyperlinks in each box. The French teacher called up her Schoology website. The English teacher shared a webpage built as a Google site with tabs across the top of the page for each unit and with an "about me" section with pictures of kids, grandkids, dogs. One of the teachers said that he was planning to move over to a Canvas site when he had his account set up.
Each of these sites had different features and logons and different ways to access, each one a little electronic maze with electronic passcodes and gatehouses barring the way. Each one, from the 10 minute introduction that we got, seemed to be filled with important information, though it was hard to tell immediately where the important information (daily homework, posted resources, the current unit, etc.) was located and where the reference material (the course introduction, the grading scale, the number of binders and dividers needed for class) was. Many of the classes had additional web links for supporting apps and materials: No Red Ink, Quizlet, language apps.
It struck me that this was confusing for me, and I happen to be a teacher who already knows each of these types of educational websites. I stopped writing down tinyurl addresses about halfway through my daughter's schedule. I worry about the parents who are befuddled by this, especially the parents who struggled with English.
I'm sure the goal of electronic class sites is to organize information and communicate with parents. If so, they're falling pretty short. Instead of feeling like I knew something more about the classes, I felt like a lawyer during discovery segment of a trial: having access to far too much unorganized information.
Here are my thoughts:
1. While it's great that teachers are trying on their own to research and build class websites. But their expertise is not course organization and the combined effect on parents (and kids) is bewildering. Schools should choose a single LMS system that's used by all teachers. Schools should support teachers in learning how to use the LMS, and develop one or two different templates that all teachers use. These templates should be professionally designed, or at least designed with parent and student input. I know it would cramp some teachers styles. But the goal is for clarity for students and parents.
2. Schools should also provide a template for what goes on during these Open House events. I know that it's "common knowledge" at my school that parents "just want to make sure that the teachers aren't crazy." But as a parent, I really wanted to get a sense for what's going on in "science" or "history"... is it any different than when I went to school? Do teachers really need to speak for 8 of the 10 minutes about accessing these web pages? Wouldn't it be better to see some actual work or a normal daily lesson in miniature?
3. Teachers need to sit in the audience from time to time. The presentations on the Promethean boards were universally bad -- dim always and crammed always and too many words on the relatively small screen always.
4. I think that all the gadgetry can be a crutch. Maybe the best presentation materials are a chalkboard and a page for parents to take notes?
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