Duration: 2:32
Parents from Holy Cross School explain how they are able to connect easily with the school, using mobile devices and different forms of electronic media such as the school website, Facebook, email, text, and Google docs. This anytime anywhere connection enables them to engage with and support their students learning.
Pesio Matiseni
The purchase of an iPad, or a mobile device, for our family has been absolutely beneficial in my child's education. It’s just given her such a renewed interest in her schoolwork and also just opened up a whole new world of research. Technology’s given me a lot of different options to communicate with the school – some of them via the text messaging service to notify them of any children being absent for the day. Another one is using the Facebook page whereby I can ask you know questions about what’s happening – you know certain events. Some of the other ways are the website where I can quickly download the latest newsletter and just be kept informed. I am also able to email various teachers, including my own child's teacher with any concerns about schoolwork and also, just I suppose, just keeping tabs of homework and seeing what’s happening there.
Aurora Fakasiieiki
It helps me to understand and support them by learning at the same time through emails from the teachers, what applications would they need to use to complete their homework, or how to achieve their goal that they have set for the term. It’s just a step by step process and we do it all together, I’ve got seven kids, so we do it all together as one.
Pesio Matiseni
The benefits are that it just saved me a lot of time. You know, I don’t, quite often I can be running through daily errands or going to work and just quickly, you know, pulling out whatever device, you know – a phone or an iPad or whatever – and just sending a quick, a quick message, and you know it doesn’t take any time out of my day. In my daughter’s class they use Google docs where the teacher sets up homework for them. So a few times, actually yeah quite often, she’s been able to login to the docs there and show me what they’re doing. I can, you know, peer over her shoulder and just see what it is she’s working on, and how she’s doing. Even though, even mentioning that sometimes I don’t understand but, you know, then I can say to her, “Oh well what’s that? How does that work?”, and it just rolls on from there and, you know, it just gets her excited to be able to share her learning.