Building connections with parents and whānau

Shane Buckner:
In our school one of our values is about making meaningful connections and I really believe that during this project that we’ve been on the pilot for that. The communication has been enhanced both to me, through the children to me, I know definitely through the parents to the classroom teacher.

The PYR is a piece of software that enables me to actually look at all the children in the class and see what they’re doing, see when things have been updated, the latest blog or the latest piece of writing.

One of the positive things that have come out of this has been the impact of more feedback, more feedforward from a variety of sources actually. Their peers are always commenting on we’re they’re going to next, what they’re working on, parents as well, and through the device it just seems to be that they take it on board so much more.

The parents are in there in the mornings, in the Year 5 and 6 class, (in the mornings) and in the afternoons looking at the work of the children. They’re actually engaging with their own children other people and that’s exciting seeing them interested in sharing what other children are doing as well because they know about it already. Someone, their child is actually showing them at home, they’re actually able to comment both face to face and in the blog as well.