More Parent Involvement with Less Stress this Back-to-School

Online Signup Sheets by VolunteerSpot Save Time {and Sanity} 
Guest Post by Karen Bantuveris
 

Inviting parents to participate in the elementary classroom builds positive rapport and sets the foundation for a successful school year for all.  Parents feel involved and engaged, kids see that their parents value their education and are on the same ‘team’ as their teacher, and teachers get much needed help and an opportunity to begin natural conversations with parents about student success.


Parent participation is good, even great....right?! But one busy teacher coordinating the parents of 20-30+ kids as class helpers or for parent-teacher conferences can be a daunting and stressful proposition, even for the most seasoned teacher. On the busy parent side of the equation, juggling multiple requests from multiple teachers and school committees can seem overwhelming and cause some parents to opt-out of volunteering all together.

Skip “Reply-All” email chains and clipboards this year!

Simplify communication and make it easy for more parents to pitch-in and support your class activities with VolunteerSpot.com ‒ FREE online sign-up sheets save time and boost parent participation. Simply set the schedule of needs and invite parents to sign up with a link {on your class website or facebook page} or with an email invitation. Parents click to choose when to help or what to bring —even from their smartphones. The site keeps the signup calendar up-to-date in real time, and sends automated confirmation and reminder messages that help parents keep their commitments. Parents without email can be given assignments manually and VolunteerSpot sends you a reminder alert {so you can then call the parent or send a note home}.

Kris W., a 1st grade teacher in the Washington, DC area had this to say about VolunteerSpot, “That was so easy! I set up my class ‘table time’ schedule, sent out the link, and in 48 hours, I had the whole semester filled…like magic! The best part is, VolunteerSpot sends reminders so I don’t have to stress about parents forgetting!”

And David C. of San Jose commented on VolunteerSpot’s facebook page, “VolunteerSpot rocks- I use it to coordinate Parent Teacher conferences for my 120 7th and 8th graders!”

 

VolunteerSpot was designed with simplicity in mind – if you can shop online, you can use VolunteerSpot. Use it to organize anything - classroom readers and parties, parent-teacher conferences, recess and lunch volunteers, supplies and snacks, field trip chaperones, exam proctors and more. Teachers who use VolunteerSpot report that 20% more parents show up to help, more working parents participate, and most importantly, that they save up to 2 hours a week in administrative busy-work.  More parents helping are good for teachers, for parents, and for our kids!


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You can take a live demo today at www.VolunteerSpot.com  and check out VolunteerSpot on Facebook – we’re giving away $500 in school supplies this back-to-school season!

Karen Bantuveris is the founder & CEO of VolunteerSpot, a time and sanity-saving online coordination tool that empowers busy teachers, parents and grassroots community leaders by making it easier get involved. Karen is passionate about helping more parents get involved at school and funding education technology. She lives in Austin, Texas with her daughter and husband. @VolunteerSpot @VSpotMom

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5 Ways to Connect with your Children through Tech This Summer

This week I shared "5 Ideas for Connecting with your 21st Century Child this Summer" at VolunteerSpot. The purpose of the site is to make coordinating volunteers easy with free online sign up sheets and scheduling software. They celebrate local heroes – volunteers, teachers, parents – making a difference in our schools and communities.  

Below are the ideas I shared.  



1. Communicate in Online Environments
2. Utilize Online Environment to Connect with Passions
3. Play Games to Get Smarter, Develop Leaders, and Get Fit
4. Go Places
5. Know When to Disconnect to Connect


Check out the original post here to find out more about each idea.

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The Innovative Educator Talks to Parents as Partners about Fixing the School and Not the Child

I'm excited to be joining Parents as Partners on Monday May 2, 2011 at 9:00 PM Eastern Standard Time (GMT-4) to talk about my free ebook for parents “Fix the School Not the Child” which you can download right from my blog. 


I wrote this guide after watching the movie "Race to Nowhere" because I was surprised that the parents featured in the film, whose children were suffering because of school, seemed to feel they were powerless to do anything different.  I thought, wow?  Really?  They just kept subjecting their children to the same thing that was causing them to suffer. I intended to write a blog post in response, but that quickly turned into a twenty page booklet containing 20 ideas for parents who are sick of "Waiting for Superman" and tired of having their children in a "Race to Nowhere."  


To date there are more than 8000 people who have read the guide and have been empowered with ideas to do what is in their children's best interest.  My goal is for parents to share it  far and wide with other parents in their children’s school and, if they have online spaces, I hope they will place it there as a free guide for others.


Location: http://tinyurl.com/ETTPasp
You can join me in the elluminate room at http://tinyurl.com/ETTpasp The chat conversation will be held in this room. If you have a USB headset with microphone you can come to the mic to ask questions.


Link to Parents as Partners webcast: http://tinyurl.com/ETTpasp
Test your computer settings http://www.elluminate.com/Support/?id=62/
The audio only portion of the webcast will be on ustream at http://edtechtalk.com/live
Miss the show? check back for the recording at www.edtechtalk.com/ParentsasPartners

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Empower Students to Bridge the Home-School Connection by Teaching Parents Tech

Google has a fun way for students to connect with parents with their Tech Support Care package that enables students to teach parents how to do the following:

• The Basics
• World Wide Web
• Communication
• Media
• Find Information
  

This is a fun idea that in part answers for parents, "What'd my child do in school today?"

The idea could also be taken to a whole new level with the class creating their own videos in areas of interest for others to learn from like Eric Marcos student's do with Mathcasting.

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Back to School Questions for Innovative Families to Ask Their Children

Over at the Technology Teacher blog Mrs. V shares how she took Will Richardson’s blog post about his children starting at a new school a step further. Will (one of my favorite bloggers!) shares that he has high hopes for an authentic education for his children at their new school stating that he wanted to be sure to ask his kids more interesting questions than the usual “How was school today?” or “What did you do at school today?”

After reading his suggestions, Mrs. V did what Technology Teachers do. She took his idea and added a little innovation by turning the questions into posters.

Every innovative educator should be sharing questions like these with their student's families and these posters really bring the questions to life.

Here are some more ideas for questions from Will:
-->What did you teach others?
-->What unanswered questions are you struggling with?
-->How did you change the world in some small (or big) way?
-->What’s something your teachers learned today?
-->What did you share with the world?

I recommend schools come up with their own additional questions and consider making posters with students. Perhaps this is even some sort of contest. These can be shared on the parent/family page of their website or wiki and be printed out and used as reminders for family talk. I am sure innovative parents and other family members could think of some great ways to capture student answers using a traditional journal, or perhaps a blog, or video collection of answers or maybe even status updates on Facebook or Twitter with a special tag for this topic.

What are your questions? What are your ideas around using these questions?

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Text and Email Alert Systems Can Increase Home - School Communication

My colleague the Techomnivore often talks about and has shared in his blog information about how Notification tools are increasing parental involvement in their child’s school life. Though I haven't had personal experience with schools that are using these systems, I do believe that cell phones provide a powerful resource as a home-school connection tool. I was recently contacted by one such service that is available free (with advertising). If this is something your school might want to investigate, here is an overview of Schoohoo, one such service. You can read the Techomivore's post for additional resources.

Innovative educators who are looking for ways to better communicate with parents, students, faculty and staff may be interested in looking into Schoohoo. They offer a free web based service at www.schoohoo.com that allows schools of any size to send text message and email alerts to parents, students, faculty, and staff. Developed by parents of elementary school students, they set out initially to just make a system that made sense for their own school district in Champaign, Illinois. They had come up with the idea years ago, but it wasn't until an emergency lockdown in their elementary schools that they put their own financial resources into developing an easy to use and universal program that any school could make use of.

Jonathan Hoover, Executive Director shared that, "We wanted to build a system that was easy for everyone to use, from both sides - that of the school district and that of the parent". To that end, the software is entirely web based, and yes - entirely free. Eventually they hope to get local sponsors behind them, to append a brief text only message at the end of the alert - maybe from a local grocery store, class ring jeweler, or other school-approved vendor. Until then, they’ve put their own funds into it and with low operating costs they can keep it going for years without a hiccup. They've also kept it very easy for schools in several ways. One important feature is that schools don't have to maintain the contact list - parents register via the Schoohoo website and "subscribe" to the school or schools they want to receive messages from. These schools can be across several districts, public and/or private, and the parents only have one contact form to maintain - leaving the schools free to simply inform them of the service and send alerts.

Mr. Hoover is happy to answer any questions you may have - he jokes that it often takes a couple of conversations before people get that it really is free, and that Schoohoo is truly just out to do some good in tough economic times. He can be reached at Jonathan@Schoohoo.com, or you can leave a message with Schoohoo’s answering service at 217-819-4678.

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