Blogs, & Wikis and New Tools for Community Development

[baynard]

Please share your experiences with working with your school communities to develop community. It seems that wikis and blogs are new tools for us to use to develop a sense of sharing and connection amongst parents, students, teachers, staff and community members. Please share your stories here.

[Marianne Cane]

I added points on the map for all of us.Check it out on the map tab at the top of the page. If you want to include information about yourself or about your school (or, if I got your location wrong) please, feel free to add, correct, and augment the map. We have a lot of members, so the Google Earth tour takes a really long time. I think it is fun to see how far flung Sonya and Baynard's project has become.

[Abbey Daniels]

i started a www.shutterfly.com account and when u create your "share site" there is a classroom template that you can base yours off from and personalize it to make it appropriate for your needs. I have a homepage with general information, a page for calendars and forms, a page for a "forum" site so the parents can communicate as a community and support group, a page as a "blog" where i will input my "daily journal" of what happened during the course of the day, and an area for contacts and our weekly classroom newsletter.

I can even put in video and pics (albums) and set aside a page for this. It is a private site and we teachers of the classroom are the "owners" and the parents are the members. I invite the parents specifically through an email invite to the site. No one else from the public can see it unless i invite them

I am also going to encourage monthly get together's with the families for community and parent partnership in the classroom. we ask for 2 parents to be "room mom's."

18-36 month olds
class in Carlsbad Ca

[Marianne Cane]

Abbey,
This sounds perfect. I wonder if flickr has something similar.

[Marianne Cane]

Hi,
The Minnesota Reggio Network has a new website with beautiful resources. Check it out at http://www.mnreggio.org/

[Natalie Merry]

I have been exploring the idea of doing a blog to keep parents up to date on what is happening in my classroom. My director has always hesitated because of the control factor over comments. What if parent use it as a forum to critisize our school? I feel like as scary as that is it would be better to be open to those conversation than to avoid them. So far we have had limited success sending electronic weekly newsletters. The parents to be able to check in with what thier child's day is like at home via the internet. There is talk of us moving to dailies but the teachers fear that too much email will just clog in boxes and won't get read.

[baynard]

Most blog engines provide the admin the ability to control the amount of conversation. If you choose "moderate comments" then only comments you approve would be public.

Then you start to get into the realm of "acceptable" comments, which is a sticky wicket. I think more and more though schools will need to embrace a sense of open dialogue, as people are tired of "message" or propaganda. Parents and students want real dialogue with teachers and administrators and ultimately attempts to control the truth will only backfire, imho.