Week 29 - Activity 5

Activity 5 Week 29
My Audience
The audience that my inquiry focused on was mainly my parents and students at the early stage. As an Associate Principal of my school, it is part of my job to find ways to improve our communication with parents and find ways to get our community engaging with us about their children's learning. This has proven difficult in the past as we would always see the same parents at any event we put on, so through carrying out this inquiry it has led us to see that the way we communicate with whanau needs to change, because society has changed and our parents just don’t have the time to come into school for a hui.

Analyse the audience perspective
One challenge I have had is finding the best digital platform for my parents to interact with. I have had some parents prefer Facebook as it is easy for them to access and posts come up on their newsfeed when they log on. But then I have parents who prefer Seesaw, because they like the fact that they can get access to their child’s learning progress and can comment directly to the teacher and their child and not everyone can see, so privacy is a huge plus for the Seesaw app.
“Today’s teachers are increasingly turning to a variety of digital technologies to make communication with parents easier and more current. Social-media tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, are helping teachers keep parents and other community members informed. Teachers are encouraged to go where the parents are; more parents are apt to be on Facebook or Twitter every day, whereas they might check the class webpage only once in a while or when reminded”.

Addressing the context of different audiences and their perspectives while taking action.

As this inquiry cycle is coming to an end, I have started to think how I will take this data/findings to the next audience, which is the wider staff and the Board of Trustees. I have started to plan a  staff meeting where I will share my findings and showcase the digital platforms that I have used with my whanau and share my parents feedback. When I take my findings to the Board of Trustees I will be encouraging them to consider making the two digital platforms mandatory for the school. This would mean that all parents are able to access  data and communicate with teachers in the same way across the whole school. I will work with the senior leadership team to create a school policy around this as well, that will have clear guidelines of appropriate use.

Reference list

Parent Communication: Using Social Media


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