Community Building Examples
In-class and/or school-wide community
Source:
http://fourthgradeflipper.blogspot.com/2013/11/tried-it-tuesday-remind-101.html
https://www.remind.com/features
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=486gZe0wCbU&feature=youtu.be
Participants: Fourth Grade teacher and her students/parents.
Strategies: The “Fourth Grade Flipper” uses the Remind101 app to communicate with her students as well as parents when need be.
Role of technology: Teachers sign up on the website which takes less than two minutes, and it only takes seconds for students or parents to join a class. This tool safely and privately delivers the teacher’s messages and never see students/parents phone numbers and the students/parents will not see theirs.
Benefits: Teachers can easily communicate instantly with their students or the student’s parents if a reminder is needed. This creates a great sense of community as the students are connected and aware of what is going on and expected of them in the classroom.
Challenges: Students could easily become dependent of these reminders and not independently learn to manage tasks and events. The blog posts comments on students are parents requesting more reminders (i.e. daily for homework) and the teacher felt that that was the responsibility of the students to be writing down the assignments before leaving school. Therefore, this site could cause students to become less independent.
Local Community
http://forhisgloryteaching.blogspot.com/2015/02/instagram-for-classroom.html
Participants: Ashely, a third grade teacher, and classroom parents/students.
Strategies: Ashely created an Instagram account for student’s parents to follow the daily engaging classroom activities. The account is private and open only to the classroom parents.
Role of technology: This experience is made possible through an application for iPhone or Android that showcases photographs and short captions to document and explain what is happen in the photo.
Benefits: Instagram can be used for a variety of ways to keep parents informed and engaged in classroom happenings. Simply, photos of what is happening in the classroom can be posted, ,field trip reminders, short videos of school activities or performances, photos of school activities like assemblies/special guests, and for last minute homework reminders/ communication.
Challenges: Like any social media website, parents and administration may question the safety of Instagram use with student photos involved. Teachers would need to proceed with extreme caution and be ensured that the profile created is safe and private as promised to the parent. A plan would also need to be in place to protect all student’s privacy. I also read in some comments from the blog post that some schools will not allow teachers to use such an outlet to establish community.
Global Community
http://kidworldcitizen.org/2012/02/06/how-to-skype-with-kids-around-the-world/
Participants: Becky, a mom of multicultural and bilingual students who shares ideas on how to make students more culturally aware.
Strategies: Becky introduces the tool Skype in the Classroom to allow our students to connect with kids all over the world.
Role of technology: Teachers and educators would go to to education.skype.com to create an account. Over 20,000 teachers are already registered on the site and are ready to connect with other classrooms around the world.
Benefits: As teachers, we should be encouraging students to investigate and explore our world outside of their community. We must unleash different perspectives and reveal the world around them. By interviewing and communicating with students from all over the world, student can gain this remarkable experience!
Challenges: When communicating with others from other parts of the world, language barriers, cultural considerations, and also time zones (when can you connect at the same time), must be considered. Additionally, implementing such a program would definitely take some time for the teacher to learn the site, explore possible projects, and set up the execution of the experience.