Bridging Home and School: Digital Tools for Powerful Partnerships

Outline

I. Introduction (3 minutes)
-Hook: Brief storytelling about a successful digital family engagement experience
-Overview of session goals and outcomes
-Quick poll: Audience's current level of digital family engagement

II. The Why: Importance of Digital Family Engagement (4 minutes)
-Key statistics on family engagement and student success
-Benefits of digital tools for diverse family structures and needs
-Mini-discussion: Attendees share challenges in family engagement (30 seconds in pairs)

III. Digital Tools for Family Engagement: An Overview (5 minutes)

-Survey of popular platforms (e.g., Seesaw, ClassDojo, Google Classroom)
-Key features to look for in digital engagement tools
-Live demo: Quick tour of a digital platform's family engagement features
-Q&A: Rapid-fire questions from the audience (1 minute)

IV. Strategies for Effective Digital Family Engagement (8 minutes)
-Showcasing Student Work (2 minutes): Best practices for digital portfolios
-Activity: Attendees brainstorm creative ways to showcase work digitally (1 minute)
-Two-Way Communication (2 minutes): Techniques for encouraging family participation
-Supporting Diverse Families (2 minutes): Addressing language barriers and accessibility needs; Cultural considerations in digital communication
-Overcoming Common Challenges (2 minutes) Strategies for families with limited tech access;
Tips for maintaining engagement over time;
-Quick share: Attendees post one challenge and one solution to a shared digital board (3 minutes)

V. Measuring Impact and Continuous Improvement (4 minutes)

Key metrics for assessing digital family engagement
Tools for gathering feedback from families
Activity: Attendees draft one goal for improving their digital family engagement (1 minute)

VI. Implementation Planning (4 minutes)
Steps for getting started or enhancing current practices;
Resource sharing: Providing attendees with a digital toolkit;
Pair-and-share: Attendees discuss first steps for implementation (1 minute)

VII. Conclusion and Q&A (2 minutes)
-Recap of key takeaways
-Call to action: Commit to one new digital engagement strategy
-Final Q&A: Address remaining questions from audience or shared digital board

Engagement Tactics:

Use polls and quick questions throughout
Incorporate pair discussions and group sharing
Utilize a shared digital board (e.g., Padlet, Mentimeter) for ongoing question submission and idea sharing
Include a live demo of digital tools
Provide a digital resource toolkit for attendees to reference post-session

Supporting research

Schultz, K., & Baily, S. (2022). Building Inclusive Family Partnerships: Strategies for Effective Cross-Cultural Communication in Schools. Educational Leadership, 79(7), 54-59.
https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/building-inclusive-family-partnerships

Povey, J., et al. (2021). Engaging parents in schools and building parent-school partnerships: The role of school and parent organisation leadership. International Journal of Educational Research, 105, 101728.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883035520318930

Harvard Graduate School of Education - How to Build Effective Family-School Partnerships (2021)
https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/21/05/how-build-effective-family-school-partnerships

Edutopia - Family Engagement (updated regularly)
https://www.edutopia.org/topic/family-engagement