Letting Parents into the Classroom Electronically

Here is an interesting story (video) from ABC on electronic notifications that allow parents to track students grades and attendance. The online software featured in the video is called ParentCONNECT, which is produced by Pearson Education. You can see a screenshot of the information it offers in the image to the right (right click- view image, to see larger version).

Now, I like this information being shared with parents. There is really no reason not to share this information as most of it is tracked electronically these days and giving access is just a matter of permissions. But this can not be the ONLY information you share with parents. As in pretty much everything else in life, numbers with no context lead people to bad decisions. You can't just say here is the kids GPA, here is his score on assignment X, here is how many times a kid was late to class without knowing what is going on in the school that is leading to those numbers.

So here is the problem with this kind of technology. You are giving parents just enough information to be dangerous but not enough information to actually know what is going on. Can this surface-level information lead to parent-teacher meetings, phone calls, discussions with your kids? Sure. I would hope so. But as you saw in the video, a parent's natural reaction to this is to track it like a stock price. The price goes up, good. The price goes down, bad. Why is the price going up and down? Who knows, but we know that up is good and down is bad and you punish bad and reward good.

This kind of technology is easy and safe and doesn't require a lot of effort, which is probably why it is beginning to be used so widely. I think this is a good use of technology and I don't mean to suggest we should throw it out the window, but it is surface-level only. And surface-level information is usually not good enough.

Now, let me show you what's technologically possible with a little extra effort. Check out Mr. Williams 6th Grade Math. Cool, eh? You combine that kind of classroom level information with the student's progress scores and suddenly parents have some context for the scores. You see that when the math grades dropped slightly, the issue was adding integers, for instance, and Mr. Williams was kind enough to provide you the slideshow used for that lesson so you can go back with your son and daughter and address the reasons for the drop in grades. But, providing this kind of context is much more difficult. I don't know how much time Mr. Williams devotes to the blog each week, but to do it right probably requires at least a half hour a day. It takes a pretty devoted teacher to give that kind of time on top of everything else that is happening and without reward or demand structures in place, this kind of information sharing is going to continue to be a rarity. So, we need to move toward expecting the kinds of information sharing that Mr. Williams is doing and refusing to allow the quick fix, ParentCONNECT, to be the only fix. 

Comments

[J.D. Williams]

Thank you for the kind words about our classroom blog. I'll have to share them with my students. They are always amazed when someone other than us check out our class blog.

It really doesn't take much time because I'm already spending the time creating the slide shows. We have a Smartboard in the classroom and use it for all of our presentations. The only extra is usually uploading the files to slideshare.net then linking to them in the class blog. It actually wouldn't be to hard to teach a student how to do it and have one of them be responsible for uploading & the posts.

[Justin B.]

My pleasure J.D. - I have actually had your blog in my aggregator for a while because I remember thinking when I saw it the first time how superbly it integrates your class and it is one of the best teaching blogs I have ever seen. I was really impressed and I even learned a few things myself over the months. You will have to tell your students they are not the only ones learning from you ;) - And I am glad to hear your are not spending a TON of time on it. Having students upload the slides is a really good idea too. I will have to remember that for my own classes.

Keep up the great work. You are doing a super job.