Reflection on e-learning

From the beginning of this initiative, I have gained exposure to a number of alternative opportunities in which my site can engage and partner with families in order to support student success. It is my intention to implement the initiative in the fall of 2014, as I foresee implementing it this late in the year might detract from its potential to reach parents who are now very focused on transitioning their child into kindergarten. By waiting for the start of the next school year, I will be able to introduce it as part of our Beginning of the Year package. This will address another challenge that I foresee, which is that I don't want parents to feel like participating in LORE is a chore, which it might feel like at this time as their focus is primarily on their child's transition into k-12. The beginning of the school year will feel like less of a 'crunch' time which means that parents are more likely to be open to exploring a new platform for engagement, and they will be able to get comfortable using it so that it doesn't feel novel to them come Spring 2015. I think it is worth it to wait on implementing this initiative because ultimately, it will allow us to reach more parents. Most parents at my site work long hours in the food industry or in factories, so they do not have the luxury of long lunch breaks or working regular 9-5 shifts. By giving them a quick way to connect with our school, they can be more informed about their child's progress, which many families have expressed their interest in when they come to pick up their child at the end of the day.

I think that, as a platform, LORE lends itself easily into being used for future e-learning initiatives for both teaching/learning and professional development. For example, teachers can use it amongst themselves to share resources they have found when implementing a unit plan. What often happens now is that teachers either don't share resources with one another even though we are doing the same unit, or we share them during our lunch break which isn't a sustainable practice.

I came into the course thinking that e-learning faced many obstacles to providing the quality of learning that face to face learning produces [when done effectively]. The biggest shift I see in my perspective is that both face to face learning and e-learning have the capacity to be effective or ineffective, depending upon multiple factors that this course focused on, such as setting up the environment for success and techniques of effective facilitation. The facilitation activity we did as a team for this course provided me direct experience with the challenges of increasing rigor in an e-environment, but it also provided me direct examples of higher order learning happening when the conditions for it were created and sustained long enough. Being in the same room as someone does not guarantee that higher order learning will follow, which is something that I am well aware of, but prior to this course I held a prejudice against e-learning in that I believed being face to face was universally better than e-learning. I see now how that perspective is damaging to both my professional development as someone in the education field, but also to students who are growing up in an increasingly technological world. They need to know how to learn in these e-settings just as much as the f2f settings, and this course has greatly shaped this perspective I now hold.

Reflection 1

Context and Impetus for E-Learning Initiative

The success of ECE programs is heavily dependent upon parent partnerships. As such, the focus of this e-learning initiative will be on how to establish and sustain strong lines of open communication with families in order to facilitate wellness of the whole child. Whole child wellness is a focus of HeadStart programs which funds the schools Gabriel and I work at, which is why we have decided to collaborate on this initiative. Families are one of the most important influencers in our students' lives as they are 3-5 years old. We also recognized that several families have a social media presence in some form, in addition to having access to a smart phone. Since many families elect to send their child to a center over a school due to the longer hours available for service, families often do not see their child between the hours of 7:30AM and 6PM. When both parents work and must commute on a daily basis via public transportation, as is the case for several families at our schools, a natural roadblock to two-way communication occurs. Additionally, we want to keep parents current with what their child is learning and how that learning is directly applicable to the skills and tools they will need in order to be successful as they navigate the k-12 school system and beyond. Working families often only catch a glimpse of their student during the drop off and pick up periods of the day which are weak indicators or what learning takes place in the classroom. By inviting parents to use a platform such as LORE, which operates in a fashion very similar to Facebook and Twitter in that there is a ongoing feed of updated content posts, they can be privy to information on the go. This information can pertain to a number of parent and family interests, such as professional development opportunities, family engagement opportunities and classroom updates.

Why LORE
LORE features a Class Wall that streamlines updates in the form of posts. Upon joining our online parent engagement initiative in the form of a course, parents will be able to view all posts under our Class Wall. Updates will serve a variety of purposes. For example, parents can access our page in order to see updates relating to site-wide events, such as Community Potlucks and Parent Policy Committee meetings. Additionally, they can see quick snapshots of student work or cover images of books we are currently reading at school that they may want to check out at their local library. To this end, LORE is a quick and easy way for parents to be up to speed with school and classroom specific events. Beyond that, parents will also have access to post on the Class Wall. They are welcome to post questions, provide feedback on the activities we are engaging in in the classroom and to make their own suggestions. Parents are a valuable resource, and often times we seek out parents to volunteer in the classroom. An example use of LORE would be to post announcements relating to specific volunteer needs to see if a parent can provide their time/skill, such as asking if any parents work in the food industry to come and talk to students while they are learning about the process of getting food from farms to tables. In this way, LORE helps to facilitate ongoing communication with families, even if it cannot take place face to face.

Bringing It Back to the Classroom
The sustained communication between school and families that LORE facilitates will benefit the classroom by strengthening the home-school connection which can put students at ease who struggle with their initial transition to a school setting. Given that many of our students have never been in a school setting before, we want to ensure that they feel safe and valued by establishing a trusting learning space. By bringing in and upholding their families as resources for learning, we will encourage students to feel safe enough at school that they may engage in higher order learning.

A progress report on our initiative is forthcoming - be on the lookout!