In order to complete this activity, I gave considerable thought to what format an effective Parent Newsletter should take in order to give parents in our school guidance on helping their children learn. In my role as Educational Technology Specialist, I provide front-line support for parents and students having difficulty with our website and I create and send all of the school’s electronic communications, including the weekly email newsletter we send to all families every Friday afternoon.
It occured to me that, rather than write a piece for an imaginary Newsletter, I can simply share a short video tutorial I created recently for parents to learn how to use the login portion of our school’s website. Our teachers use online tools with their classes and both students and parents can log in to the website to access these class materials, grades, calendars and other information.
Here is a video (http://www.hillel-nmb.org/page.cfm?p=477 )I created recently showing parents how to log in and access these pages.
I chose this project to share here because I believe it reflects to sort of dynamic, electronic communcation media we need to use to keep students and parents interested and returning to our school’s site. Short videos like this need not be limited to topics as prosaic as how to use the tool and, in the hands of the right teacher, this sort of media can be an exciting way to get parents and teachers involved in what’s happening in a class. I share tutorials like this one with the faculty as often as possible in an attempt to inspire them to create their own.