When my son Brady was in the fifth grade, he came home with a report card that was, shall we say, less than impressive. This bright, hard-working boy was getting D’s in social studies, science, and health. The first parent-teacher conference of the year was held 10 weeks after school began, and it wasn’t until then that I learned of the problems he was having.

At the conference, I asked his teacher a favor. “Please let me know what Brady needs to know in these areas, when the test dates are, and when the projects are due. I will help make sure he knows what he needs to know!”

A bit flustered, the teacher said she would get back to me.

I never saw the list of competencies or test dates, but I also noticed Brady never received less than a B in her class again. While at the time I viewed this as a victory for proactive parenting, I have since worried that the skills and knowledge Brady should have gained during that year fell by the wayside.

Increasing Parental Involvement
Genuine, regular, real-time collaboration with parents can make a positive difference in a child’s learning experience. Parents of children with work completion problems can become allies in helping these children manage their time and turn in quality work. Answers to questions about class rules, policies, and supplies should be readily available.

The problem is that collaborations like these take great communication and planning, which, in turn, takes time.

Happily, teacher-created Web pages available on the Internet can help simplify communication and planning efforts. Sure, most if not all of the information an actively involved parent might like to have could be made available through printed materials sent home with students and through earlier, more regularly scheduled face-to-face conferences. But as we all know, print material sometimes doesn’t make it home or out of the backpack. Conferences are difficult to schedule and are real time eaters. The Web can help overcome these problems. (For parents without home Internet access, such Web pages can be printed by the teacher and distributed by traditional means.)
 

Designing Class Web Pages with Purpose
A well-designed class Web page can serve a variety of purposes. These purposes include:

• Providing a general description of the classroom or course (Table 1).
• Providing a general outline and timeline of the units covered (Table 2).
• Providing specific information about individual units or projects (Table 3).
• Providing real-time information about the progress of individual students (Table 4).

As a parent, I can also look to see if my child has any areas in which he or she needs special help. I can work with the school to see that tutoring or a special class might be offered. My goal as a parent is the same as the school’s: to make certain my child succeeds to the very best of his or her ability.
 

Implementing with Ease
But that is also a lot of information for a teacher to not only put online, but to keep current. Those of us with Web pages know that keeping them current, accurate, and organized is an ongoing chore. But there are strategies that can be used to reduce the work and anxiety associated with maintaining a Web site. These strategies include the following:

1. Using forms to create Web pages
While the use of editors such as FrontPage have made the creation of Web pages much easier, creating and maintaining a Web site using Web-based forms is possible without knowing any HTML authoring. A “fill-in-the-blank” approach that automates organizational links and into which information already word-processed can be pasted eases both site creation and updating. It also leads to a uniform, school-wide look and consistent placement of information that will ease parental access.

While a variety of commercial Web sites [www.eplay.com, www.highwired.com, www.achieve.com] offer such forms and storage for teacher pages, it is important to remember that “free” services are usually supported by commercial messages, and parents might view these messages as product endorsement by the school. Our district is contracting with a company to help us develop a customized Web interface and forms. These pages will include integrated access to an online grading program. The pages will also import information like attendance from our student management system.

Much of the information that should be available from individual class sites can be provided by links to district sources of curricular information. Does every third grade teacher need to enter information about the reading curriculum when it is standard within a district? Do all world history classes in a district have common objectives and projects? Can the page link to descriptions of the state requirements that are met within the class? Creating and linking to such generic sites can ease the burden of the classroom teacher.

2. Phasing in the project
In the Mankato school district we will be taking a multi-year approach to the creation of class sites. (See our planning chart.)

For the first year, we are asking all teachers to have a page that simply lists contact information, class rules, and expectations, with a link to the building calendar. We will also be piloting the online gradebook at a volunteer site. Our current electronic gradebook will be replaced as new staff begin using it or current staff members ask to switch to it. We anticipate that the ease with which grades can be entered from home will be an incentive to move to the online gradebook.

We will also encourage increasing the amount of information on class Web pages as goals for buildings in the district. I expect that the information contained on well-developed pages will be useful enough to parents that they will encourage other teachers to make comparable information available online.

3. Phasing in the online gradebook
Sharing the kinds of information contained in their gradebooks with parents will be a new and possibly disturbing idea for some teachers. We anticipate teachers using the gradebook for at least a semester before giving parents access to it.

The security and privacy of the information being made available is a major concern of many educators. Both teachers and parents need to know that parents will have access to their child’s information only and that security and password confidentiality need to be taken seriously. We will ask parents to come to school to pick up their usernames and passwords in person.

4. Providing support
We all know that nothing helps a project succeed like great support, and nothing kills it faster than a lack of training and working equipment. We will work to provide our teachers with powerful, reliable desktop computers and networks. Training will be scheduled during the school day or during in-service times. Our school media specialists have additional training on both the Web-based forms and general Web page creation so they can provide in-building support to teachers when needed.
 

Conclusion
As a parent, I currently have the choice of sending my son to the local public school in my neighborhood, to a public school across town, to any public school in a variety of nearby communities, to a variety of private and parochial schools, or to a local charter school. I can choose to home school my son, enroll him in a virtual school, or get him early admittance to a post-secondary institution. I can as readily choose the kind of school I want for Brady as I now choose his dental clinic or clothing store.

As a savvy consumer, on what will I base my choice of school? Convenience, of course. But I will also want to be sure the teachers in my son’s school communicate well, are organized, and see me as a valuable partner in his education. As important as a good education is to his future, I can do nothing less. Schools can take an active role in making parent-consumers aware of the quality of their teachers and programs by having useful, informative, professional class Web pages.

 
 

Communications to the author may be addressed to Doug Johnson, Director of Media and Technology, Mankato Public Schools, Mankato, MN, or by e-mail to dougj@doug-johnson.com.
 

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