Last night I delivered an online presentation to parents of Year 11 English/English Literature students. 50 parents were in the room as well as myself and a colleague from the English department. We had numerous e-mails from parents who wanted to get in to the meeting but couldn’t due to the fact that we were over capacity. While that is frustrating, it is also very exciting. The highest number of participants in previous online meetings had been a little under 40 – a new record for the school. We are going to look into the capacity issue so it can be resolved for future events as the Science and Maths departments are due to do similar meetings in the very near future!
Link to the Online Meeting. (Link removed at request of school SLT)
A little background on CCC and its use of online conferencing:
At my school we have been using Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro for some time; video conferencing having become “a part of what we do”. Our most prolific use of Connect Pro can be found in our delivery of an “Online Games Design Course” that is attended by Creative Media Diploma students and any other students who have an interest in games design. This is currently running on Thursday nights between 7:00 and 8:00.
The meetings are led by @rhadad who is a teacher/games designer from Chicago. She beams in every Thursday at 7.00 along with a guest presenter (Moses Wolfenstien, @camaxwell, @gtrefry) to teach the students about games design.
This was pioneered by @greghodgson and @hstower last year and is now set to become a yearly course. I (@jamesmichie) have been supporting the delivery of the meetings this year along with @iusher who continues to be an invaluable resource to us, in all of our online endeavours – including the session with parents last night.
Right, back to last night’s meeting!
The parents were invited to attend the meeting in a multitude of ways: text message, e-mail, postcard – each one had a link to the meeting room and brief explanation of how it works – Connect Pro install a patch the first time you run it. As far as I am aware the parents had no problems with this. We also put a banner on the front of the school website as a reminder.
We received many e-mails in advance of the evening from parents who wanted to be there but had prior arrangements . As I mentioned earlier, after the meeting we received numerous e-mails from parents who could not get in and many e-mails also from the parents that did get in for a copy of the PowerPoint presentation that I used to show useful ideas, web links, our VLE and an iPod touch app (Flashcard Touch).
The number of parents online (or who wanted to be online) is amazing. It felt during the presentation and afterwards that there was a real buzz – which continued throughout today. Most importantly the response demonstrate that parents want to be involved in their child’s education and they want to be informed. Below is the PowerPoint presentation I used in the meeting:
[Update]: Presentation is no longer available.
[Aside] I also learned that I need to find better lighting for future meetings – I look too much like some strange lurker in the dark!
In conclusion:
It was a great experience! The buzz throughout the day has been great. Since I began writing this post I have had over 20 more requests for a link to either the presentation or for copies of the PowerPoint. The school switchboard has had a similar number. Adding the total number of participants to the number of e-mails we received from people who could not get into the meeting, we could have had over 90 participants – which would have been a third of the year group!
As a colleague put it: “We do all this hard work throughout the year but it’s just 20 minutes on a Wednesday evening that could make the difference.” Hopefully the “difference” will be seen in the students results this summer!
If you would like to know more about what we are doing with online conferencing you can e-mail me or tweet me @jamesmichie.
Thanks for sharing, James. Impressive stuff! I was hoping to try to use something like this for revision sessions, as I struggle to do after school stuff because of childcare arrangements, but getting parents on board too is a great idea.
You're welcome. It was really worthwhile, the feedback from parents has been very positive. I think they really liked getting more informed while in the comfort of their own living rooms.
I like the idea of using Connect for revision sessions. I might offer that to my Year 13 Media Studies class…think they will be receptive to the idea.
extraordinary use of technology in a way that makes it become part of normal teaching – that i think is the beauty of what you have achieved here.
Thanks Brian. The response from parents has continued – I have now replied to over 60 e-mails requesting the presentation I used and booklet that I referred to. It has created a new level of parental engagement.
Many of the e-mails have also commented on the use of technology and the fact that it was actually so simple to use. Perhaps mist tellingly many of the parents liked it because they did not have to come all the way to school to get informed!
Planning a couple of other meetings for after Easter – will blog about them after they have taken place.