Introduction

Communication between parents and teachers is a very important aspect for the childs
learning experience. It is important for the parents to be aware of the childs grades, behavior
inside and outside the classroom, and assignments inside the classroom. Parents being aware of
the childs learning helps the students to better preform inside the classroom. With todays
technology constantly improving teachers are getting away from writing letters home to parents
by the students with the fear of it not reaching the parents on time. With technology being such a
big part in todays society teachers now prefer to use technology to communicate with parents,
this helps the parents stay up to date on special dates for school events, grades, behavior, and
much more. Some technology teachers are beginning to use is: remind.com, social media, google
classroom, and classroom websites including blogs to communicate with their students parents,
while using these tools it is important to stress internet safety to the students.
Technology to Enhance Communication
Remind.com:
Remind.com is an amazing application that helps the teacher contact parents, and
students to notify them of important information as well as remind them of upcoming events.
This application is free and allows the teacher to send messages to the whole class or students
individually without displaying any personal numbers or information. Teachers will use this just
as a text messages to the parents and students by composing, sending, and receiving messages.
Teachers can use this application to also communicate with the parents about the students
learning and behavior. According to Enhancing parent-teacher communication using technology:
A reading improvement clinic example, When parents and teachers have rich and frequent

communication, they can forge the partnerships that produce benefits for children (Merkley, D.,
Schmidt, D., Dirksen, C., & Fuhler, C., 2006 ). Communication between teachers and parents is
vital to help the student be the best student possible. Teachers could also use this to communicate
with the global community by having anyone who would like to receive the messages to sign up
to receive them. Teachers could use this to inform the global community of things happening in
the school and that may give them the idea to do the same or similar.
Social Media:
Teachers can use social media by creating a school or personal page for their class use
only, by doing this teachers can post important dates in the school: open house, sport events,
field trips, etc. The teacher could use this communication tool to communicate with the students,
parents, and global community by creating a post with the intended information within the post.
It is important that the teacher does not post any photos of the children or let out any information
as to where the students will be outside of the school due to possible threats from scammers.
Teachers could also use social media to post interesting facts or websites that is important to their
lessons. According to the enlightenment meets twitter: using social media in the social studies
classroom, social media services can help cultivate more democratic, participatory, and studentcentered educational experiences while implicitly teaching digital citizenship and social media
literacies (Krutka, D., & Milton, M. K., 2013). Using social media to show the students
interesting facts about the subject and having them answer questions about it while using a tool
the always use, social media, the student is more interested and more likely to learn the
information. Using this also gives the parents a chance to learn some of the things that the
students are learning. This tool can also be used to communicate with the global community by
allowing them access to the same links and possibly sharing within their own classroom teaching

schools.
Google Classroom:
Google classroom is another tool great for communicating with the students, parents, and
global community. Google classroom allows teachers to post assignments, grades, and make
portfolios for students. Teachers will use this tool to communicate with students by posting their
grades, assignments, and portfolios to show students their progress. Teachers will use this tool to
communicate with the parents in the same way of they do with the students, but they will also be
able to discuss the students behavior inside the classroom, and their weaknesses in learning.
Teachers will use this tool to communicate with the global community by demonstrating example
assignments they can use inside their own classroom. Also the teacher can post websites to
access helpful learning tools for the access of parents, students, and the global community. By
using google classroom the teacher could communicate with the global community about the
assignments they are on and effective ways of learning and teaching. The teachers could post
videos of themselves teaching the assignment and the students learning the lesson and post it to
the website for others to see. According to Developing a Web-Based Tool Using Information and
Communication Technologies to Expand the Reach and Impact of Photovoice, the tool use
information and communication technologies that integrate the use of an online learning
management system, tailored messaging, gaming technology, interactive features, and the
application of social medias power to increase the capacity of communities to employ
comprehensive strategies (Strack, R. W., Orsini, M. M., Fearnow-Kenney, M., Herget, J.,
Milroy, J. J., & Wyrick, D. L., 2015) Using these online tools helps the teachers communicate
with parents, students, and the global community while teaching the students to use
comprehensive strategies, these tools help in many different ways.

Classroom Website:
Teachers are able to create a website for their classroom by using free webpage creating
websites. The teacher can add many tabs to allow the parents, students, and global community to
look at on the website. The teacher will be able to communicate by adding a calendar for the
month containing all the work that is going to be done on the day it will be done. The teacher can
post announcements to remind them of special days and dates to remember. Teachers can post
websites for the use of students to better learn the information and to have further practice. Also
the teacher can add a blog to communicate back and forth with the parents, students, and global
community. The teacher can also post video tutorials on the lesson they are teaching to allow the
students to go back and re-watch it at home slowly to try to better understand it. According to
Situated Learning with Online Portfolios, Classroom Websites and Facebook, Having an online
repository for this material is helpful for students in that it provides a convenient space in which
to share with others the many artifacts they have created throughout the program (Shaltry, C.,
Henriksen, D., Wu, M., & Dickson, W., 2013). Having a classroom website helps the students
show off what they have done inside the classroom and gives them a sense of achievement which
motivates them to do more.
Communication Internet Security and Safety
Teachers should address internet security by enforcing to their students that if they
download information from the web that they do not know it could cause possible viruses,
problems with their computers. Teachers should also talk to the parents about how much harm
could come if the student does download information that has virus threats so they can monitor
them at home. Also teachers should have the students to sign an agreement agreeing to not

download anything without permission. Teachers should teach about internet safety by telling
them things that could happen if the student puts too much information on the internet. Also
teachers could create a fake social media page and make some posts with too much information
and tell them the outcomes that could possibly happen for having too much information. Lastly
teachers should talk to their students about talking to people they do not know online and
scammers.
Concluding Paragraph
Technology has made communication a lot easier, the use of remind.com, social media,
google classroom, and classroom websites allows teachers to communicate with parents, student,
and global community while being anywhere or doing anything. Before teachers had to
communicate by telephone, postal, or sending a note home with students today with the advances
of technology teachers do not have to do that. These tools allows the teacher to communicate
with parents, students, and global community all at once or individually. The teacher is able to
remind the parents and students of upcoming assignments, events, and special dates without
having to make a phone call to each parent. Technology has helped tremendously in the effort of
communication.

Reference

Krutka, D., & Milton, M. K. (2013). THE ENLIGHTENMENT MEETS TWITTER: USING
SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE SOCIAL STUDIES CLASSROOM. Ohio Social Studies
Review, 50(2), 22-29.
Merkley, D., Schmidt, D., Dirksen, C., & Fuhler, C. (2006). Enhancing parent-teacher
communication using technology: A reading improvement clinic example. Contemporary
Issues In Technology & Teacher Education, 6(1), 11-42.
Shaltry, C., Henriksen, D., Wu, M., & Dickson, W. (2013). Situated Learning with Online
Portfolios, Classroom Websites and Facebook. Techtrends: Linking Research & Practice
To Improve Learning, 57(3), 20-25. doi:10.1007/s11528-013-0658-9
Strack, R. W., Orsini, M. M., Fearnow-Kenney, M., Herget, J., Milroy, J. J., & Wyrick, D. L.
(2015). Developing a Web-Based Tool Using Information and Communication
Technologies to Expand the Reach and Impact of Photovoice. American Journal Of
Health Education, 46(4), 192-195.