Posted by dhovey on October 9, 2007 at 4:44pm
What would be a recommended approach for giving parents a view of their kid(s) work? Ideally, when a parent logs in, they would see the names of their kids throughout the school system. When they select one of their kids, they would see what assignments they have due, their current grades in their class(es), attendance record and any notes from the teacher that relate to the class or specifically to the child (i.e. "Billy is doing great on his math homework.")
My theory is that each family would need to become an organic group itself for this to work. Any help or links to where this is already discussed would be very appreciated.
Thanks.
Comments
Nodereference or Usereference
You might be able to use either Node reference or User reference fields in CCK for this, then use some custom coding to present the blocks to the parents. My suspicion is that this would require some coding to do. It would be a good project for a developer to set up a module that allowed for this information to be easily accessible.
Dave
Excellent idea!
Although I have nothing of value to offer for a fix, I am also quite interested in something like this. Currently we use Moodle for our course management system and it allows for us to do this. Parents login, they see their students and then can click on whichever child they want to view and it logs them in as that child. It is not real effective considering that you have to figure out how to log back to your parent account or just log off and log back in. I'm looking for something that would just display the child/children's courses. Then again, I'm also having to figure out how to tie this into our new school management system so the parents can see their children's grades as well.
One idea would be to create
One idea would be to create a role called "Parent" and then allow this role (via a dropdown to link to its children) this would be send as an approval to the webmaster/headteacher who would not only approve the new user but also its right to see the child's data. Once approved when the parent-user logs on the system treats them as if they were the youngest child (Sally Smith) and their data is loaded (but the system is aware of the parent flag). At the top you could also show tabs for the other children (Harry Smith and Tom Smith). Clicking on Tom's tab would automatically log out of Sally and load Tom's data. If you went to Tom's maths class info and wanted to send a message to the teacher - it would be as if Tom had sent it but the Parent variable would be appended so it would say "From Tom Smith's [parent] Sanda Smith...
Or another idea for discussion would be that if user role is Student then on login present two buttons
[Student] or [Parent]. If parent is clicked then that variable is flagged throughout the session.
I'd probably try to solve this
Using Buddylist2 or the User relationships module -- you'd need to first establish a relationship between users (ie, Parent/Guardian --> student) and then decide on some rules about what the P/G could see. For example, many schools would have some pretty strenuous objections to allowing parents free access to all of their child's classes. I've looked into this on a few occasions over the last few months, and, IMO, solving this well will require a clearer spec, and, once that's done, some code to implement that spec.
So, I see this as a problem with two dimensions: first, how do you create a simple mechanism for parents to facilitate constructive communication between teacher, student, and parent; and second, what level of oversight should be technologically mediated (as opposed to happening via conversation, etc, in a way that empowers the student)?
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers
FunnyMonkey
Another issue to consider...
... would be the school itself. Being a k-12 independant school, we would have very different needs than a 9-12 private or public school. Even within the same system we would have different needs- lower school (preK-4) would have different needs than middle school (5-8) and upper school (9-12) for students, parents and teachers. It becomes increasingly more complex when a parent would have different access levels/permissions for each of their children.
Like Bill said, how much access should be given to parents? After all, what is it that parents want to see? They want to see assignments and grades- they may be interested in reading the blogs, listening to podcasts, and seeing what is going on in the class, but they wouldn't need any more than a "read only" status. Since our parent accounts will be connected with students accounts via the school management system, I'm thinking of just trying to link to the classes through the pages within the SMS part of the site (the part that has homework lists, grades, and attendance information).
We just set up something similar...
This is the first semester we've been trying this, so I'm still working out some kinks in the system. I'm also not drilling down to quite the detail level you're talking about. We have a PreK-8 parochial school. I set it up with Organic Groups for each classroom, and the teachers use their group to post homework assignments, upcoming events, class birthdays, and their weekly newsletter. It works pretty well for what it does. It does not address individual students though.
Be sure to consider how much the teachers are willing to do. We have quarterly reviews and report cards, so parents typically know how well their kids are performing, and being the lower grades our parents know their attendance reports as well. It's been a bear to get some of the teachers to use the website, and I'm certain we wouldn't get any of them to be willing to keep it updated with comments about students' progress on a weekly basis. Knowing that "Billy is doing great on his math homework" is a good idea, but if you had the system in place - would teachers and parents both use it reliably?
complete replacement for existing grading system
I've been thinking about this, as it's likely where we will want to head in another couple of years. The biggest problem I see in using it is the teachers don't want to duplicate efforts. The mentality surrounding our school's site is it's complimentary to other methods of communication between parents and teachers, not the primary method. The primary method being the printed weekly classroom newsletter (which ranges in frequency and level of detail dependent on the teachers). Some of my teachers love the website and rely on it for their primary method of communication, but only a couple. Some teachers only have one entry on their homework and class news lists: "See log book sent home."
The biggest hurdle for us is making the website the primary communication tool. In order to make that happen, we'd have to replace the existing grading system with the drupal one, there's not a chance they'd use two systems. So, in order to make this happen, the drupal-based solution would have to meet not only the needs of the website as a communication tool, but would also have to work with the other things their existing grading system does, like print out report cards, manage the attendance, generate emails/contact lists, etc. The ideal solution would be if the existing grading system kept all its info in a mysql database I could tap into! But the likelihood of that is very slim...
I'm a dear caught in the headlights
I am being "forced" to come up with a solution for this right now. I implemented our new site (www.hpa.edu) four months ago. Our old site was a very "thin", conventional Web site. Now we have this CMS and I am trying desperately to make an environment that is attractive enough for everyone (parents, students, faculty, past parents, alumni, and even staff) to use. I agree with cindyr, "teachers don't want to duplicate efforts." The teachers have made websites and blogs on other public sites and have shared these with parents and students. We went so long without a centralized CMS that everything (calendar, website, Intranet, blogs, grades, enrollment, etc.) are all in different places and administered by different people.We had an incident yesterday that was caused by having too personal of information on our site about our teachers and I was forced to remove all of the bios. There has been a lot of discussions in the NAIS listserv about what to show to the public and what to put/hide in the "private" part of the site.
Currently I (U1) am the only one that can login to this site. I want to open it up, and use it like it was meant to be used, but I need to really think about how the inside is going to look. Here are a couple of the questions that keep popping up in my head:
1) What permissions do the student, parent, and teacher roles have and what other roles should be created?
I agree with bberretta that the parents should have "read only" type rights throughout. However, being a k-12 school, the role of student will vary greatly as the grade gets higher. Does this mean a role for every school (lower, middle, upper)?
2) What are the groups that I should create? (Sports, math101, upper school, etc.)
If I create a "First Grade" group I will have to remove everyone from that group next year and put the new kids into it. However, if I create a "class of 2019" group, I just have to change the group manager of every class group at the end of the year. What are pros and cons?
3) Are any of the choices I make going to interfere with future modules?
I am very exited about Gradebook module. What is the best design so that I don't have to redesign when this module is ready for production?
4) and the list goes on...
I am not the principal or head of the school, so I can't force anyone to use the system that I create. I will have to make it SOOO attractive that they can't hep but use it.
More thoughts and reflections
A school website should be a tool that facilitates but does not replace all forms of parent-teacher communication.
The site should allow parents to only see information that relates to their own children. At a minimum, as a parent, I would be checking to make sure that my child was in attendance as expected and meeting academic and social aspects of the classes.
The site should be able to facilitate administrative elements for teachers also. For example, if teachers have access to the site on a computer in their classroom, they should be able to bring up a class list and mark a student as absent or tardy right away. If a parent had already called the office and reported the child as sick or away, the office would be able to update the student's attendance record centrally and that would be already reflected on the attendance management screen for the teacher. If a school still uses attendance sheets, the sheet should mirror an administrative interface that a school admin can bring up to mark the attendence record. Then, each morning, an attendance record for each class would be printed and distributed to the teacher's mailbox.
A rating system for student conduct would be nice also. (Bear with me, I am in the 1st grade mode of thinking right now. In my son's class, they have stars that are different colors and every day each child has a blue star, which is good. If the star changes to yellow, they have been given a warning, and red means they lose recess time.)
Oops, end of the day. Gotta go. I'll try and add more thoughts later. Please add your thoughts also. Let's make an ideal list for universal application across any grade, and one for elementary, junior high/middle schools, and high schools.
talking about (at least) 3 separate things
Hello, all,
As I see it, this conversation covers 3 or more separate things:
These three things are related, yet, IMO, different. They require different role structures, and each site has a different intended audience, and therefore a different purpose.
WRT jhall189, re: "I am not the principal or head of the school, so I can't force anyone to use the system that I create. I will have to make it SOOO attractive that they can't hep but use it." -- while a principal or a head of school has the authority to force people to use a site, they can't force faculty to care about how they use a site. My advice in this situation is to start small, and target one clearly defined piece of functionality that is attractive to a group of users. Nail that, and you are on your way to fostering trust and, over time, widespread adoption. Instead of trying to get everything right the first time, try and get one small piece right. Match the rollout to your audience, and recognize that your initial audience might only be a subset of the entire school community.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
Tools for Teachers
FunnyMonkey