Candidates utilize digital communication and collaboration tools to communicate locally and globally with students, parents, peers, and the larger community. 

 

One of these artifacts is a screenshot of the messaging component of my Class Dojo page. This is one of my favorite parts of Class Dojo. I send out messages to all of the parents at once, or I can send messages to individual parents. I can also message students through this site as well.  I was turned on to this site by a former colleague. Once I created my class I have used it ever since. The other artifact is a screenshot of the staff eClass page for my school. This page is the main tool the staff uses to communicate. Our administrators post a weekly newsletter on this page, training opportunities are posted here, we offer words of encouragement to each other on this page, and many other forms of communication occur through this page as well. 

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These two artifacts demonstrate mastery of standard 3.7: candidates utilize digital communication and collabortaion tools to communicate locally and globally with students, parents, peers, and the larger community. Using class dojo to communicate with the parents of my students, and the students themselves makes communication easy and immediate. Class dojo has an app that you can download on your phone, and will receive a notification when a message is sent to you. I have immediate access to my students and their parents this way, and they have immediate access to me as well. The staff eClass page that my school uses makes communication much easier. We have a large staff, and this site enables us to get information out to the entire staff quickly. These are great tools for communicating locally. Regarding global communication I have just started using Skype in my classroom. I am currently in the process of setting up a virtual field trip for my class through Skype. This field trip will be conducted by a graduate student in Panama who will be teaching the class about coral reefs. I am also looking into scheduling a guest speaker through Skype as well. Using Skype in the classroom is a very easy way for me to collaborate with other educators around the world, and expose my students to global communication and experiences.  

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Using Class Dojo for communication has taught me how easy, fast, and effective teacher-parent communication can be. This site makes it so easy to stay in contact with parents about what is going on in my classroom. It also makes it easy for parents to keep me informed about all the things I may need to know about. Elementary aged children don't always remember to give notes to their teachers, and this way they don't have to. The staff eClass page has taught me how effective having one central digital location for communication can be. I feel like I am always aware of what is happening at my school, and in the community, and that is in large part due to this page. Creating this artifact has also taught me how easy it is to expose my students to other parts of the world that they would normally never get to experience. One thing I would like to improve regarding using Class Dojo to communicate with parents is I would like to have 100% of my students' parents sign up for an account. Right now, I have about 3/4 of the parents connected through Class Dojo, but I would like it to be everyone. Next year I am going to have parents sign up for during registration in hopes that this will help me reach that goal. 

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The use of Class Dojo impacts student learning. Having effective communication between school and home plays a large part in improving a student's education. When parents and teachers are on the same page it greatly increases the student's chances of success. The use of eClass impacts school improvement and faculty development. This site ensures that all of the faculty are aware of the happenings at the school, and that directly affects the success of the school as a whole. Our school conducts many surveys with the parents and teachers, and at least one of those focuses on how effective the communication is between home and school and within the school. This data can be analyzed to measure the impact of these communication tools.