Parental Involvement

Overview

Lorraine Sanda – National Development Officer for Parental Involvement evaluates the impact of parental involvement through Glow.

Following a recent standards and qualities LA school visit to Sumwher school an area that was identified for improvement was parental involvement in the school, in particular in the following areas:

Provide

• more accessible information to help parents understand and become involved in their children’s learning
• regular updates for parents throughout the year on  developments, including Curriculum for Excellence
• more opportunities for parents to share their views on key issues
• improved information for parents on children’s progress and

Context

Sumwher school have been using Glow for teaching and learning for 6 months. All students, teachers and staff have Glow log-ins. Parent users for Glow are planned to be introduced during the next school session.

The school has an ICT group and it advises on the content for the school pages in Glow. A member of the school administration team and the ICT co-ordinator are responsible for updating the school site.

At each staff meeting time is set aside for staff to share what they have done in Glow.

The school has a green policy and their aim is to reduce the amount of paper that is used.

Sumwher has an active Parent Council.

To address the findings of the school report the school and Parent Council has decided to use Glow and Glow groups as a medium to provide relevant information for parents.  A Glow Group for the Parent Council will be created. A sub-group of the Parent Council has been formed to  manage and administer  the Parent Council Glow Group and it will be a standing agenda item for the Parent Council meetings.

Ingredients

Prior to creating Parent Council Glow Group

Parents were provisioned as users in Glow. Demonstration and training in the use of Glow given to the Parent Council

Format of Glow Group and its contents decided. Who will update the contents and at what regularity, decided.

All parents and carers invited to an ‘Information Evening’ on using Glow. Children in the school will demonstrate Glow and will be given a homework task to help their parents access Glow at home.  Parents are invited to request user names and passwords from the school, after signing an Acceptable User Policy.

Create the Glow Group to the specification below.

Parent Council Noticeboard

This video will show the creation of a Group and assigning permissions for Parents to the Group – the permissions are set to Reader with Discussions which allows parents to read all information and contribute to discussions.
Setting Permissions

This video will show how to remove any pages not required, using ‘Advanced Settings’, renaming Web Parts and how to remove the web parts that are not required.
Advanced Settings

This video will show how to create a survey. The video is in 2 parts, part 1 shows the creation of the survey and part 2 describes the placing and customising the view of the survey.
Create a Survey – Part 1

Customising a Survey – Part 2

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