The components of web site
design indicated above are the most promising in terms of improving
communication between schools and families. But do schools utilize these
components in their web sites? Barron & Ivers (1998) report that
they analyzed the content of web sites included in the Web66 directory.
They found that 84% of elementary and 71% of secondary public and private
schools used the web sites to share information about the school. The
researchers indicate that many school web sites present school history,
its philosophy of education, and information about the school population.
However, Barron & Ivers (1998) discovered that some schools do not
include information of how parents can contact the school. For instance,
they point out that only 65% of elementary and 59% of secondary schools
posted school phone numbers, and only 71% of elementary and 70% of secondary
schools provided the school address. The information about the content
of school web sites is included in Figure 3.
Figure 3
|
Type
of Information
|
Elementary,
%
|
Secondary,
%
|
|
Student
work
|
43
|
20
|
|
Newsletter
|
29
|
41
|
|
Homework
helper
|
11
|
10
|
|
Cafeteria
|
19
|
9
|
|
PTA
or PTO
|
26
|
18
|
|
Calendar
or schedule
|
51
|
55
|
|
Principal
page
|
47
|
33
|
|
Teacher
page
|
20
|
30
|
|
Student
page
|
20
|
27
|
Figure 3: Specific
types of school information on web pages (Barron & Ivers, 1998,
p. 39).
This table demonstrates that
many school web sites still do not inform parents enough about the school.
Elementary schools do a better job of showcasing student work and informing
parents about PTAs or PTOs. However, secondary schools are more likely
to post school newsletters and offer links to classroom pages. Informing
parents about the school and student activities is an essential component
for establishing family-school communication. Therefore, schools have
to work harder to incorporate as much information on the school web
site as parents may need.
Ultimately, a school web
site should link families to their children's classroom. A classroom
web site can be used to complement instruction and communicate with
parents. Therefore, a teacher maintaining a web site can inform parents
about the curricula and course objectives. A classroom web page can
also display the projects completed by students, provide the information
about the school work assigned, and suggest tips for parents about how
they can help their children to complete homework. In addition, if a
server is secure and has extra capacity, the teacher can install a digital
video camera in the classroom to broadcast lessons over the Internet.
Parents, who are interested to observe how their children learn, may
use passwords to view the broadcast. In addition, teachers can record
any fragment of the lesson they want, digitize it and make available
for parents to view at a convenient time. A classroom web site can also
give students and parents the opportunity to access their grades after
they enter a password. For example, the Learning Network project (http://mygradebook.com)
allows teachers to log in and edit their gradebook from any Internet-connected
computer at a time convenient for them. Teachers can assign and distribute
passwords to their students and parents, which allows them to check
upon grades and review attendance summaries. Thus, teachers can take
advantage of this inexpensive, secure, easy to use, and accessible 24-hours-7-days-a-week
service.
Figure 4
Used with permission
of Eileen D. Gerrish, the designer of the site.
http://home.adelphia.net/~global2/globalhome.htm
Certainly, there are numerous
ways for school and classroom web sites to be attractive for parents.
District, school and classroom web sites ideally should be part of a
network of web sites that all have useful information for students,
parents and school staff. These three levels of web sites should complement
each other. If one level is missing, web sites on the two other levels
should compensate for it. In the worst case, if two levels of web sites
are missing, much more effort will need to be invested in order to accomplish
the goals.
Even though informing parents
about their children's schooling is necessary, it is not sufficient
to establish two-way family-school communication. Besides being informed,
parents have to be able to provide feedback to teachers and school administration,
and to get timely responses. The Internet allows parents to communicate
with schools through e-mail. However, web site technology is unique
in how it can handle most functions of other telecommunication technologies
presented earlier. For example, a school or classroom web site can contain
a QuickTime Video showing an episode of a lesson or containing a message
from the teacher or the school principal. (Alternatively, schools may
prepare a sound file that contains a necessary message.) When parents
click to the video/sound link on their Internet-connected multimedia
computer, the movie/sound track starts to play. However, Barron &
Ivers (1998) report that only 1% of elementary and secondary schools
utilize QuickTime video while 11% of elementary and 3% of secondary
schools use audio as an element of web site design. (These data reflect
using audio and video components for any purpose. Therefore, in 1998
very few schools might be using audio and video to support PI. Unfortunately,
more recent statistics are not available.)
Web technology also allows
list servs and chat rooms to be incorporated in a school web site. In
terms of supporting PI, list servs can be used to regularly disseminate
information from the school to parents' e-mail boxes. Chat rooms can
provide a unique opportunity to interact with other parents and the
teacher or principal. Since chat rooms support synchronous communication,
they assume that all parties will go online simultaneously. While people
can interact one-to-one in chat rooms, chat rooms are used more frequently
to support interactions of "many-to-many". Therefore, including
a chat room in a school/classroom web site can promote a large spectrum
of school-family interactions.
