Teaching Students w/ASD 5.2: Sharing Information

Communicating with Families

 

In my district, we must make at least 5 communications with families per year. Two of the five are the mid-year report and year-end report, 2 others are in-person goal-setting meetings, and then there should be one more communication. (VSB, 2020) Common forms of no-tech communication, include writing notes in agendas, phone calls,  emails, meetings, informal conversations before and after school, and through a communication book (usually for students with exceptionalities). I do tend to do all of these throughout 

the year, though, I regularly communicated with parents through Freshgrade.

I use Freshgrade to communicate learning, share artifacts and self-reflections from students, and send general reminders and updates. Students often wanted me to share their work with family, so my class started using "selfie sticks" (see image above) to let me know when they wanted a picture of a piece of work. They would attach a selfie stick to it and put it in a bin for me to photograph and share on Freshgrade. Soon after the implementation of this, I added a caveat to the use of a selfie-stick; students had to add a post-it telling me why they want to share it.

The following tools for communication are what are common in my district and recognized as FIPPA compliant.

 

Platform	Description
My Blueprint	My Blueprint is a portfolio platform that can be used with students’ MyEd student numbers. Students create a portfolio, add interests, and share their voice and video. Teachers can also provide feedback and comments on artifacts. Teachers can also send messages to the entire class and their families or send individual messages to families. Families can access their child’s portfolio using their PC, iPad, iPhone, tablet, Android phone, or Mac. My Blueprint claims it is accessible to every student and has text-to-speech software built-in.   Personal Experience: I do not have experience in using my Blueprint, but I plan to make the switch over to it next year. I think that because it links to MyEd, it will end up being the primary platform to communicate student learning in my district and is also accessible to SBT members.
Freshgrade https://freshgrade.com/	Freshgrade is another portfolio platform that can be used for teachers, students, and families to communicate. Each stakeholder has their own app or account that they log in from and it can be used on ios, Android, PC, and Mac products. Teachers and/or students can post student artifacts like photos, video, or audio which parents and their child can comment on. Teachers can also send out mass messages to parents or send a note home to an individual family. There is also a gradebook feature and some other useful features.    Downfall-Different devices seem to show different tools and features. For instance, gradebook is not available on the iPhone.   Personal Experience: I have used Freshgrade the past 2 years and have found it as a wonderful and simple way to communicate with families. It is also familiar to families in my school community because other teachers have used it and continue to use it, so caregivers don’t need to have multiple platforms downloaded. In the early primary years, teachers can use this with a class iPad and students can share their work through the teacher’s account with their parents. When students are capable of logging in independently, they can sign up with their own student account and manage their portfolio a little more independently.
SeeSaw	SeeSaw is a platform that, like the others allows students to share portfolios filled with their learning and artifacts. An interesting feature of SeeSaw is that teachers can search a variety of activities and use them as assignments for students to take part in, which can be great for students to practice a particular skill and teachers to quickly assess it. Teacher can comment and communicate with students and parents through Seesaw just as the other apps.   Personal Experience: I explored this app for a short time before deciding it wasn’t right for me. I have head great things about it, but I really like platforms with basic, simple, features and didn’t need any of the extra activities that were available on it.
MS Teams (works with Microsoft Office)	Microsoft Teams can be used as a tool to communicate with caregivers and can easily be accessed by SBT if they are added to a particular channel for the student. MS Teams is not particularly user-friendly, but if a teacher creates a digital classroom (a “team”) then they can have multiple channels (threads) which can be a great way for on-going communication with parents. It is not a portfolio-type platform. Teachers can load pictures, audio, video, and comments which can be replied to by SBT members or parents via their child’s login information -This is best for early primary students or students with exceptionalities who might not be able to use technology to communicate efficiently yet. Personal Experience: I explore using Teams to communicate with parents during COVID-19 distance learning. Students needed to move to the online classroom anyways, so it made sense to stop using Freshgrade and continue to use Teams in its place. While it is not ideal to navigate and does take time to learn to use, I found it a great way to communicate with students and parents through the private channels I created for each student. These channels also allowed for video conferencing with students and parents, and I invited SBT members and counselors of students to particular channels for students on their caseload. I found my relationships with parents grew during this time and collaboration between SBT members at an all-time high.
Showbie	It is a platform that can be utilized as an online classroom, somewhat like Teams, to add assignments, activities, host discussions, and messages to the class. Students have the opportunity of completing work by video, audio, images, text, or drawing tool. There is a portfolio feature within this platform that allows students and teachers to choose work to share with caregivers.   Personal Experience: I haven’t used this app, but it is very similar in features to Microsoft Teams, which my school community has grown accustomed to over the past few months, so I don’t think I would use this. For classroom teachers that will be doing a mix of online and in-person instruction and are not onboard with MS Teams, this is an ideal platform for you since it is FIPPA compliant unlike Google classroom, Edmodo, and Class Dojo.

VSB. (2020). K-7. Retrieved June 20, 2020, from https://www.vsb.bc.ca/site/csl/k7/Pages/Reporting-Requirements.aspx