Prompt
Response
| Communication technology | Benefits | Drawbacks |
| Emailing Newsletters | Emailing newsletters have the benefit of being able to reach a large number of parents at once with the information a teacher feels is most important to the classroom. Some things that can be included are reminders, thank you notes, highlights of community resources, etc. (“Keeping Parents Informed”). Also, in many surveys, it is shown that parents read them and consider them a useful source of information (“Keeping Parents Informed”). | One drawback to this way of communication is that it can become too time-consuming or expensive if a teacher does not make it brief and to the point (“Keeping Parents Informed”). Another drawback is that it will not allow a teacher to provide parents with information personalized to their childlike in other forms of communication. |
| Phone Blasts | A phone blast has the benefit of being able to reach a large number of parents at once with a quick and easy set up (Guide to Phone Blasting:Â What to Know Before You Start, 2019). It can be used to give out essential information about upcoming trips, school closures, reminders, etc. | A drawback of using phone blasts is that they can be easily mistaken for spam and unimportant information (Guide to Phone Blasting:Â What to Know Before You Start, 2019). This can lead to the effectiveness of this method being hindered in its beginning stages. |
| Mail Merging Letters | Mail Merging letters have the benefit of being able to provide a student personalized letter to parents at quicker speed due to productivity software. These are created automatically with software allowing you to send letters that may include student names, grades, and personalized forms (“Mail Merge Report”). | The drawback to this type of communication is that it may be hard for a person who is not good with computers to set up. |
| Parent Video Conferences | The benefit of parent video conferences is that teachers and parents will be more likely to communicate in real-time due to reduced schedule conflicts. To get real-time communication the parent will not have to attend the school and can do it remotely (Teleconferencing Video Calls for Parent Meetings). | The drawback of parent video conferences is that parents may not always be tech-savvy enough to follow through with the video conferencing procedure. Also, video conferencing software is prone to failure. |
| Social Media | The benefit of using social media to communicate with parents is that it makes it easy for parents to quickly communicate back since they’re so many already using it (“Parent Communication: Using Social Media”) | A drawback of using social media is that it requires the creation of teacher’s accounts that are revolved around the classroom (“Parent Communication: Using Social Media”). This may be time-consuming for some. |
Works Cited
Keeping Parents Informed. (n.d.). Retrieved March 7, 2020, from https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/keeping-parents-informed/
Guide to Phone Blasting:Â What to Know Before You Start. (2019, October 3). Retrieved March 7, 2020, from https://www.monarchbroadcast.com/blog/guide-to-phone-blasting/
Mail Merge Report. (n.d.). Retrieved March 7, 2020, from https://support.schoolfront.com/kb/article/510-mail-merge-report/
Parent Communication: Using Social Media. (n.d.). Retrieved March 7, 2020, from https://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/stenhouse/classroom-communication-social-media-tips.shtml
Teleconferencing video calls for parent teacher meetings. (2018, January 10). Retrieved March 7, 2020, from https://hc.services/teleconferencing/teleconferencing-video-calls-parent-teacher-meetings/
Reflection
To me, the purpose of this discussion board was to help me gain insight into the many options that I will have in contacting student’s parents. While working on this, I learned that mail merging and social media are methods that can be used to contact parents. I used to previously think that emails, phone calls, and face-to-face conferences were the only method in which teachers could communicate with parents. This discussion board also helped me decide that I want to start learning to create mail-merged documents, as I find the system extremely efficient when I would want to create outreach documents that have a student personalized aspects to them.
