Community Engagement in Education - Recently Updated Pages

Useful Resources

CherylDoig — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 18:37:32 CST

If you are wanting to stimulate conversation with staff, parents, caregivers, whanau, students or community here are some video clips and websites that may be useful. For more information regarding websites and blogs that are focussed on future trends go to www.thinkbeyond.co.nz Check on the education or blog tabs to find direct links to a wide range of sites. If you know of others add them to this wiki so others can use them too.

Here are some useful starters:

No Future Left Behind
This presentation was prepared by students of middle school years. It poses questions and challenges teachers to come on the journey...

Parents/Caregivers/Whanau

CherylDoig — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:52:48 CST

This section contains some starter ideas for engaging with others. Many of the ideas are not specific as the skills used to engage are the same. The ability to step into the shoes of others, the forming of strong relationships and the ability to listen are foundational. Scroll down to the attachments for more ideas on community engagement.

Using web 2.0 tools to connect with community is one of the obvious ways of connecting with parents. Nottingham teacher, Tom Barrett, is exploring the use of Googledocs to report to parents on a regular basis. He has permission from his headteacher to do so during to 08/09 school year. We will keep up to date with this project to see how parent engagement develops as part of this work. Check out Tom's blog for more information.

The Assist Beginning Teachers website has some interesting resources for engaging with parents and community. It also provides some great material for exploring your own assumptions using Mostert's 10 assumptions. In really engaging with parents/caregivers and whanau it is important to understand the values, beliefs and assumptions that influence you personally. What assumptions do you make about learning? about students? about parents? How does this come across to others? Take time to discuss ideas and then to explore the role of empathy in working with commuity. How can educators take time to really know their communities and their needs?

The Harvard Family Research Project contains some great resources regarding research being undertaken in the USA. One provides some thoughts on the use of the internet in developing family school communication.

Cheryl's latest presentation to Learning@School Conference
Check out http://www.slideshare.net/CherylDoig/slideshows for other presentations.

Student engagement

CherylDoig — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 03:52:07 CST

This page provides information on ways to engage with students. If you scroll down the page you will find the powerpoint pdf from a workshop run by Cheryl Doig. You will also find some links to webpages that may stimulate conversation or provide ideas for engaging students. Please contribute your own ideas too.

Latest information
Cheryl's presentation on student engagement - Learning@School Conference. Check out http://www.slideshare.net/CherylDoig/slideshows for other presentations.

Student Voice

CherylDoig — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:20:54 CST

Here are some websites that will lead you to articles, research and ideas connected with student voice and its role in education. This ties in closely with personalised learning and student engagement.
You can add to this list through the easy edit function.

Five Freedoms discussion

Engaging students in an online environment
Hear what students throughout NZ say and think

Listening to student voice on technology – research paper

http://www.nwrel.org/scpd/scc/studentvoices/index.html
This site provides excellent tools to involve students in continuous school improvement.

Student voice in transforming education.
This site has lots of links to articles that may be downloaded.

www.educ.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/07_06rudduck.doc

www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/edulibrary/public/publ/research/nws/Research_eLert_Issue_11_2007.pdf

www.pupil-voice.org.uk/Student%20Voice%20resources%20ESRC_for%20web.pdf

Community Engagement in Education Home

CherylDoig — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 18:53:27 CST

This wiki allows you to share information, ask questions and co-construct ideas. Use it to develop your own understandings of how your school can engage with its community, especially in relation to the development of a school curriculum.

The introduction to this page can be found on the pdf presentation below. This presentation reflects on the different stages of community engagement and why you would want to engage with the community in the first place! Scroll to the Attachment heading at the very bottom of this page and click on the the pdf link.

Please feel free to add to the wiki or to use the ideas found to engage your communities. To start with, you might also like to click on the headings to the left and view the presentations from the CPPA meeting held on Thursday 15 May. The power is in the sharing so please contribute too.

Here is a voicethread allowing you to comment/provide examples of how you engage with the community http://voicethread.com/share/361503/

Some other resources you should be aware of are:

The NZ Curriculum Project Interact	This is the Ministry of Education's initiative to build up resources and ideas to implement the new NZ curriculum. This is the interactive part of the Curriculum Online Project. It is important that we all contribute to this with our stories. The power is in sharing - and it is where you can find examples from other schools (eg Owairaka).
NZCER	NZCER are currently undertaking their own research into how schools are consulting with their communities. If you would like more information contact Keren Brooking.
NZ Government Engagement Good Practice Participate	This NZ site asks for feedback into building better government engagement with community and voluntary organisations. It also has links to a range of successful projects across sectors, including examples from different ethnic backgrounds. This website is a resource for government employees that promotes good practices in community engagement. Each section has a 'related resources' area featuring case-studies, useful links and further reading
PLOTpd Core Education	This is a website developed by Joan Dalton and David Anderson, in collaboration with Education Queensland. It is worth subscribing to if you want to gain a greater understanding of facilitation. They also run week long Art of Facilitation Workshops. For more information contact Core Education.

Other Websites

Building Engaged Schools

This USA site is based on the book of the same name. Although ideas are based on an American paradigm there are some useful surveys and resources that may be of use. I particularly like the list of faulty assumptions about learning. We all base what we do on the assumptions we have in our heads - what assumptions do you have about community engagement?

For any further support contact Cheryl by clicking on the Members tab above or through www.thinkbeyond.co.nz

Remember that this wiki is free and open to all. If you know of educators who would benefit from using it let them know it exists (you can do this through the email tag above - simple!). Ask questions, discuss ideas through the conversation threads throughout and add your own content.

Use of Technology

CherylDoig — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:21:13 CST

Technology can enhance community engagment. Web 2.0 tools such as this are free and easy to use. The original presentation from Cheryl can be found by scrolling down to the Attachments section. What technology have you used and how have you used it. Consider starting a conversation thread on this topic.

You might also like to link to other examples of web 2.0 technologies connected with learning for the future. Here are just a few - please add!
http://21stcenturylearning.wetpaint.com/

Go to Student Engagement Survey for an example of a web 2.0 tool in use

The Southern Oregon University Educational Technology Course 534 focuses on the use of technologies to engage future students. Digital Immigrants and Student Engagement has some links to interesting sites such as furl. Check out the entry "Why should teachers blog?"

An teacher in England using Googledocs to report to parents re student progress. Check out Tom's blog for further information.

Research at Harvard University Tapping into Technology: The role of the internet in family-school communication suggests that the use of social networking tools wil enhance the communication between schools and the parents of adolescents.

Island Bay example

CherylDoig — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 04:14:48 CDT

Island Bay School - Wellington

Perry Rush, principal of Island Bay School, has been consulting the school community through the use of focus groups. All the community are kept involved through the school newsletter. The example below shows how a newsletter can be appealing and memorable.

Further examples from this newsletter can be downloaded by scrolling down to the Attachment section.

Planning and facilitating tools

CherylDoig — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 04:29:07 CDT

Add any tools that you have used to facilitate discussion or to gather data.

One process that you might want to explore is Dotmocracy. Dotmocracy is an established facilitation method for collecting and prioritizing ideas among a large number of people.It is an equal opportunity & participatory group decision-making process. Participants write down ideas and apply dots under each idea to show which ones they prefer. The final result is a graph-like visual representation of the groups collective preferences. The website has a complete set of instructions for using this tool and many ideas explaining how it can be used.

Scroll down to Attachments to find other tools to download. The first of these is the Lotus Diagram. This is a great tool for identifying key ideas and exploring each idea in depth. Put your main idea in the middle, then identify the eight subcategories of this. Put these in the eight circles surrounding the key idea. Each of the other grids are used to unpack each of these ideas in more depth. From here you can assign tasks to various groups, prioritise ideas or develop an action plan.

For more information visit www.thinkbeyond.co.nz

Student Engagement Survey

CherylDoig — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:58:09 CDT

This is a test page for setting up a survey using Googledocs. This idea came out of the Use of Technology thread on web 2.0 tools. Rob Clarke, Associate Principal at Fendalton School taught me this. It has lots of potential - try it and see what you think.
To set it up I simply created a spreadsheet in Googledocs. Once completed I clicked on the Share button on the right hand side of the page, pushed fill out a form then "Preview and Send". This opens up a new window. Click on "Embed" in the top right hand corner and it will give you the code to embed in your website or wiki. It was really simple putting it into this wetpaint wiki. I just clicked the Easy Edit Toolbar, clicked on Widget then selected "Other Widget" - a quick paste in of the code and then adjusted the size.

I trialled the sheet by putting in data and it works like magic - it appears on my spreadsheet automatically. I can choose to let other see the results (which I will do and see if anyone responds) and also to "Share" which makes the spreadsheet available on the Googledocs spreadsheet list. You can see it here.

Diversity

CherylDoig — Thu, 15 May 2008 04:46:21 CDT

Diversity is a strength in schools. A greater understanding of can lead to greater community engagement. Explore some of the ideas in the Community Diversity pdf below. Think about the world view you bring to your role. How do other cultures view things? What about other thinking preferences?

Give One Get One Photos 2

CherylDoig — Thu, 15 May 2008 04:37:17 CDT

Ideas 10 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08	Ideas 11 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08	Ideas 12 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08
Ideas 13 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08	Ideas 14 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08	Ideas 15 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08
Ideas 16 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08	Ideas 17 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08	Type your photo caption or credit here.

Give One Get One Photos 1

CherylDoig — Thu, 15 May 2008 04:27:12 CDT

Ideas 1 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08	Ideas 2 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08	Ideas 3 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08
Ideas 4 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08	Ideas 5 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08	Ideas 6 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08
Ideas 7 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08	Ideas 8 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08	Ideas 9 Collated ideas from a Give One Get One activity 15/5/08

Collaborating across schools

CherylDoig — Mon, 12 May 2008 01:58:00 CDT

There is no abstract available for this page revision.