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  This tool allows us to contact home in a more efficient and professional way. Parents may not have access to their email or they do not check their email often. Also, many teachers may not feel comfortable giving away their private phone number to try to contact home. This platform ensures that both parties are protected and respected. 

Case Study 1: Parent Square

Overview

ParentSquare is a communication tool that can be used to interact with individuals or a mass amount of people. I am able to contact students or parents individually about behavior or grades. I can also contact the entire class/class parents about upcoming deadlines and important information. 

User Engagement:

Students, Teachers, and Parents communicate and respond to each other about extracurricular, in-class needs and important information. 

Influence on Communication:

This allows students to reach out for help if they are too shy to ask in front of the class or find themselves too shy to ask in person. As well as help working on assignments during after-school hours if need be. This also creates a closer link to parents and teachers. They are able to access all of their child's teachers in one place, not needing to hunt for emails or numbers. It is a great link between their children's academics and home life. 

Information Consumption:

ParentSquare is able to send multiple forms of contact, video, and audio, but the primary method is text. 

Impact on Learning:

Positive Impacts

Able to contact home more often and potentially easier to ensure parents understand expectations and goals. 

More universal way to contact home. Teachers are able to keep conversations and document them in one area. 

Negative Impacts

Not every household is set up with ParentSquare.

Teachers and students both may feel overwhelmed that there might not be a break between school hours and home life, due to constant communication. 

Privacy and Safety: 

ParentSquare is set up with the school email and password safety nets. It is meant to keep conversations private. 

Required Literacies:

Digital Literacies- Using the online server and creating a "professional" message for the other party. 

Implications:

Our goal as educators is to connect their personal life into the curriculum. Parents are a major factor in a child's education. If the child can see the parents are engaged in their life, they tend to work harder and not slack off from their assignments. This allows parents and teachers to stay connected to ensure the best outcome for all students. 

Case Study 2: Edpuzzle

Edpuzzle is an online video questioning application. Teachers can cut videos and create questions that will pop up as the video progresses. The students are able to rewatch and pace the video/questions as they see fit. 

Engagement: 

Students can log in to their school account and log into edpuzzle. Teachers will assign videos based on the content for that day. Students will watch the videos and have the ability to rewatch them if needed. The questions can be Multiple Choice, Short Answer, Listing, and much more. 

Influence on Communication:

Students cannot interact with each other on this platform, but they are able to create their own viewpoints and interact with videos. Students not only have the ability to read the information and follow along with the subtitles but can also listen to the narrator/voices. 

Information Consumption:

We are able to create our own videos, upload from youtube, or upload from other mediums. Teachers are able to share their own questions and assignments that go with each video or create their own questions. Teachers need to work together to create the best environment for our students.

Impact on Learning:

Positives

Engaging multimedia that reaches a more diverse group of learners. 

Students are able to go at their own pace. 

Negatives

Students need internet/computer access to use Edpuzzle. 

Students may not listen to the audio and only complete the questions. 

Required Literacies 

Digital Literacy- Using an online server to type/read the questions as well as listen to the audio from the video. 

Visual Literacy- The students will be asked to watch videos of varying topics/genres and answer questions throughout the assignment. 

Reflection of Implications:

Students are surrounded by videos and other multimedia literacies. It is important to incorporate that into our curriculum. By using Edpuzzle, students can interact with this media at their own pace. Information comes fast in many videos, and it is extremely important that students can rewind and keep watching if they are missing key facts.