Technology and Effective Communication with Students and Parents

 

Technology and Effective Communication with Students and Parents

Author: Santosh Kumar Biswa, Sr. Teacher, Damphu CS, Tsirang, Bhutan

 

Teachers and parents play a promising and most influential role in the educational success of any student. The major factors that bring the academic success of students depend on how a teacher communicates with their students effectively. Effective communication with students makes them feel at home, narrowing the gap between students and the teacher. Simultaneously, communication with parents is also equally important because it enhances their relationship to provide physical, emotional, and intellectual support to the students in their learning processes (Digital Promise, 2014). The teacher will also be able to create supportive parents by building relationships with them digitally using the technologies.

Establishing timely and clear communication, and reinforcing students’ accountability with parents influences the success of students (Walker, n.d.). It enables a teacher to have supportive parents despite their busy schedule because they will be well aware of the teacher’s concern about their children. According to Brady, Fryberg, Markus, Griffiths, Yang, Rodriguez, & Martinez (2020), they stated that parents praise those teachers who constantly keep the parents informed about how their children doing in the classroom and who offer ways to supervise at-home learning.

The best and most common ways of communicating with parents at present time are through the use of mobile that carries the entire world just in the pocket. The teacher can communicate with parents through text messages, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Telegram, email, etc. Mostly, in our case, we create WeChat or Telegram Groups with our parents to communicate with them, and it is compulsory within our system. Technology has made text messaging through various platforms easy without hassle. Such things would enable parents to respect teachers’ professionalism as well.

On the other hand, one best ways to improve teacher-student communication is through the use of classroom technology that is created for a personalized learning environment to influence teacher-student communication (Davis, 2017). Technology has become the most common forum for both the student and the teacher to communicate at any time, both inside and outside the classroom. Mostly, teachers rely on the use of tablets, computers, or mobile to communicate today with the use of software, and means from social media. Students are easily provided with feedback, insights, and instructions through it (Teach Thought, n.d.). It keeps both parties better connected 24 hours a day. In our case, mostly, we use Google Classroom, Telegram Group Forum, Messenger Group, Kahoot, and Padlet to communicate, discuss, submit assignments, clear doubts, solve quizzes, etc. with the students’ engagement plan to let them attain success in their academic.

It is known that we hardly get time to meet with a person and everyone prefers to communicate with the help of text messaging, instant messaging, use of social networking sites, and e-mail. So, effective communication through the said platform is important for us to know that could embrace 21st-century technology to improve communication. Therefore, a teacher, while communicating with parents and students using technology, should be proactive with the use of language. The teacher should be communicating with empathy using respectful vocabulary and providing positive feedback so that the conversation environment becomes safe. Any form of complaint about the students should be handled wisely so that it doesn’t appear to be negative in the minds of the parents. Students are also to be taken care of by providing constructive feedback through the media that the teacher is using. One of the most important things is making digital citizenship in the classroom should be the priority of the teacher. Students should be taught about the use of technology with responsibility, internet safety, communication skills through media, and handling digital dilemmas thoroughly to maintain effective usage (Mace, 2021). It can be done by setting a technological mindset in their students and trying to prepare the students to be friendlier with the technology so that they can contribute through their ability to collaborate and produce their own. They should be critically sound to exhibit a range of functional skills through information literacy, media literacy, and ICT literacy at a large scale so that they can filter media bias and ethics enabling them to be informed citizenry.

 

 

Reference

Brady, L., Fryberg, S. A., Markus, H. R., Griffiths, C., Yang, J., Rodriguez, P., & Martinez, L. M. (2020). 7 Ways for Teachers to Truly Connect With Parents. Retrieved October 17, 2021, from https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-7-ways-for-teachers-to-truly-connect-with-parents/2020/12

Davis, M. (2017). How Technology Improves Teacher-Student Communication. Retrieved October 17, 2021 from https://www.macroconnect.net/technology-improves-teacher-student-communication-2/

Digital Promise. (2014). Using Technology for Effective Parent-Teacher Communication. Retrieved October 17, 2021 from https://digitalpromise.org/2014/09/17/using-technology-for-effective-parent-teacher-communication/

Mace, N. (2021). 8 Strategies to Manage the 21st Century Classroom. Retrieved October 17, 2021 from https://resilienteducator.com/classroom-resources/using-classroom-technology/

Teach Thought, (n.d.). Popular Technology in the Classroom. Retrieved October 17, 2021 from https://www.teachthought.com/technology/how-technology-is-changing-how-teachers-communicate-with-students/

Walker, J. (n.d.). Using Technology to Improve Parent-Teacher Communication. Retrieved October 17, 2021 from https://otus.com/using-technology-to-improve-parent-teacher-communication/