Shaun attended the Rotorua Educamp and made a short presentation on the benefits of ClassDojo. He also ran a small workshop at the request of a group of local teachers who were interested in how they could use ClassDojo to develop student and parent engagement.
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When reviewing the data collected from Blogger, regarding the source of traffic to the website, the numbers referring from Class Dojo seem really small, given that links are provided in many of our Class Story posts to our Blogger pages. We have decided to test the links by sending all of our parents a one-off message about the competition our Support Group are running at the moment. Parents will need to click on the link to enter the competition, taking them through to Blogger for details. What we will do is then check who viewed this post, and see how many are actually counted as having directed to Blogger. It's not totally scientific, but a competition with a great prize should have some interest, and we should see a significant increase in traffic directed to Blogger. If not, then we might need to consider that Blogger's system for recording traffic referral sites may not be reliable.
Survey: We both feel we need to survey our parents again, regarding their preferences in using Class Dojo, Blogger, our School app, (and for Sonja Weebly), to find out their preferred method of communication (ranked in order), how they are finding Class Story and Messaging, parent/whanau perception of engagement in school/class/child's learning, ideas, problems anything that they would like to see/recommend etc. Messaging: Shaun has used the general messaging more often than Sonja, and has found it an excellent way to get general information to parents quickly. This term, we'll both be providing quick, fast reminders and information for parents often. Shaun sent a short personalised text to each parent on a day last term, and found that to be an effective strategy to engage parents. This term we both plan to do this in Week 5 and Week 10, related to their child's learning/successes. When we collect our data at the end of term , we should see an increase in individualised active conversations between us and our parents/whanau. We have had our Grassroots application accepted and requested a full day's release to set up this website and to analyse the data collected from the end of term 1.
The data from Term 1 will be added to our data page (accessible at the top of this page) along with other significant information. We've now had a term of using the Class Dojo features Class Story and Messaging to engage with our parents/whanau, and we've provided support to help most connect. We now both have all families connected bar 5. For the remaining parents, access to a device is primarily the reason for not connecting. We need to ensure we keep the contact up with these parents through non-digital means. We have finalised the application and plan to send if off (in hardcopy) this week. What we have decided is that our focus needs to be more specific in terms of this application. While we will promote the school app, and student e-portfolios, we want to focus our inquiry on the usage of Class Dojo to build parent engagement with what is happening in the classroom, and to provide quick, easy messaging with parents as a whole, and individually where necessary.
Meeting to discuss the Grassroots Project application process. The application has many parts to it, and we have decided to share them out to make the process less onerous. We plan to have the application filled out ready to go by the end of this month.
The results of the survey are in, We had a total of 55 parents/whanau respond to this survey out of a possible 66.
Here are our results: Access to the Internet All of our families except 3 have access to the internet at home, work and/or via a Smartphone. Device for accessing the internet The Smartphone is the preferred device for accessing the internet, with a laptops and PCs. a close second. Ten families use a tablet device for access. Access to Student E-Portfolios:
47 families would like to see posts every few days or once a week, and 9 families would like to see them less often (once a month or less). Help to view/comment on Blogger or Class Dojo?
Less than half our families have subscribed to the class blog (to be manually subscribed by us). Downloaded School App We have an almost 50/50 split with those who do have the school app downloaded, and those who don't.
We have decided that a starting point to improve parental engagement in school, class and student learning, would be to survey the parents for their thoughts. opinions, ideas and access to our school's different forms of digital communications. Today our classes have each taken home a survey form for their parents to fill out. They are strongly encouraged to return the form this week, completed. 100% returns are needed to truly understand where our all of our parents sit on this.
◻ Sonja blog (link) ◻ Parent Survey ◻ Forced subscribe parents ◻ 2015 Blog stats - Room 12 Blog Stats 2015 ◻ Research Shaun and I met today to discuss the ideas we have that could be an inquiry on this programme. We have decided on the focus of building parent engagement, and thought that there are three separate areas to focus on
We are going to manually subscribe each parent to our class blog, and then individually to their child's blog. This does rely on them accepting the subscription, and there will be additional information going home to clarify and encourage parents. We have already invited our parents to our Class Story page via Class Dojo and we have both had a good response with parents accepting. Not 100% yet, but that is definitely our aim. We undertake to post a minimum of 2-3 posts on Class Story, and a minimum one post a week on Blogger of a more detailed nature. Our next step is to create a survey to find out about how parents feel in terms of engagement with learning last year, the work on blogs, homework, keeping in touch with what was happening in class, and for this year, whether they are subscribed to Class Dojo, if not why, and the same for Blogger, if not why? We'll ask about the type of communication they prefer, if they use a smartphone to access info or not, whether they have the school app? and if so if they use it? We want these surveys to go out on Tuesday and be returned no later than 26th February. Once they are back we will collate them, and together with research from re- parent engagement (minimum 1 each) we will look at other measures we can take to build parental engagement at school. We will also look at the statistics for last year's blogs (views, comments etc), and compare that information with what the parents are telling us, and the results we get throughout and at the end of this inquiry at the end of term 3... We have some ideas for each one:
Parent and School through our app, maybe this could be a
We would be more focused on Parent and Teacher (Shaun had a great idea of using the Class Dojo app to communicate quickly and easily with parents either as a group or individually, in addition to using their class page feature to quickly create posts that parents can view by notification on whatever device they have). We recognise the big target is Parent and Student engagement and it is here that we need to do a bit of research but we already have some ideas that we could try out in 2016.
The application process requires point of contact is made with the research lead to first determine if there is a space for an application. Do you know who this is, and how we make contact? Also do you want to be part of the application process? We envisage this is something we would do early term 1. Ideas Use school app: Use Class Dojo: Class Newsletter on blog by students |
Meetings and Minutes
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October 2016
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