Congratulations to Parent and Child whose mahi in whanau communication will feature within the Ministry of Educations Web information for ECE. One of our seven one-year centres who are reviewing the shared understanding they have with whanau around learning at the centre have been finding Picasa Collages of the session sent home each day receive a great response. Parent and Child is a unique centre where parents attend sessions, playing and learning alongside their child. There are over 160 families attending this service with teachers providing learning experiences, building connections between families and discussing the learning that is happening for children.
Profiles books and wall displays never seemed to attract parent’s comments but using Picasa to email learning stories and photo collages is generating wonderful feedback and parent’s voices. Lorraine, the Centre Manager at Parent and Child believes this is because parents access this information at a time that is convenient to them. “Response is easy as parents can hit the reply button after viewing the stories and add their comments about the learning occurring for the child”. A further benefit of completing the learning stories this way is that centre families are able to forward these on to their wider whanau including family around the world; resulting in even wider connections with the families.
The extra work learning to use picasa and initial obtaining family email addresses has been well rewarded. “The written feedback from families has just been a joy,” says Lorraine “for once we feel a connection to our families”.
Lorraine adds that for them the use of Picasa “has been a breakthrough. We are able to reach out to our families in a way that has not been possible before. It is truly amazing and we are rewarded by such positive family feedback”.
We've used email to share photo's with home, newsletters, request materials, but it hadn't ocured to me we could email the stories home. You're right it would make a great way to get that feedback. I know as a dad, photoboards and profiles that live at kindy have little viewing by me which is why we print a black and white copy of stories to go home) this is another good way. I take it picasa helps you make the photo's into a more friendly size.
ReplyDeleteHi, so great to hear from you all at Hunter Park! The great features of Picasa are that it is free, within the programme you can select photos, collages for emailing and it makes this quick by reducing to friendly size and saves going out to open outlook or entourage to do this. I think it is really important for teachers to hear that displays are not getting the viewing we imagine and that Teacher time would be more effectively spent emailing stories and visuals home.
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