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What are some limitations with digital apps?
What are some limitations with digital apps?
Accessibility for all students, schools, and staff
Cost
Parent/ Teacher digital efficacy
Teacher time
Accessibility, cost, and teacher or parent digital efficacy are a few of the major barriers found in the use of these digital tools. Other factors can be that these digital applications began as assessment and class management tools, and therefore can be overlooked by schools and teachers as ineffective to create a positive learning environment to actively engage parents with their children through conversations. Parents may also be wary of connecting to school for many reasons, language barriers, socio economic issues, or the lack of efficacy they may face with school systems and/or with technology use.
Continuing the research may prove the potential for digital tools to lessen parental barriers when their own child is discussing learning with them. Some of these barriers include, but are not limited to:
social and economic factors that schools may use to group parents as hard to reach, or as not involved (Crozier & Davies 2007). Single parents, divorced parents, or parents on shift work may struggle with engaging in their child’s learning because of lack of time. As Minero (2017) states in her study, the ability for digital tools to reach those parents who can never talk on the phone during school hours due to shift work, working two or more jobs, or other limitations, are still able to know what is going on in the classroom and feel connected to the learning.
language barriers (Olmstead, 2013). These applications have the ability to change what is sent into over 30 different languages to ensure that parents can connect to the teacher, and students are able to use voice recordings to discuss learning with their home.
busy schedules (Olmstead, 2013). Many busy families, who may not have a computer to communicate with, would most likely have access to cell phones, and would be comfortable using digital tools to communicate (Laho, 2019), as well as find the time to quickly check a notification on a digital application and see what their child is learning in class. Even with a parent’s busiest schedule, the most common barrier, (Olmstead, 2013), those parents would check their phones throughout the day.
parents own self-efficacy with the schooling systems (Goodall, 2016, Fadum, 2019, Grant, 2011, Olmstead, 2013). A parents own lack of education, or their inability to understand the educational process (Olmstead, 2013) gives parents a sense of inequity (Grant, 2011) or a power imbalance (Dockett, Mason & Perry, 2006 as cited by Goodall, 2016) with teachers and schools and therefore those parents are not as engaged in the learning process and their students take on those same values (Galindo & Sheldon, 2012, Goodall, 2016, Laho, 2019, Olmstead, 2013).
Additional limitations, cited in the literature, include the cost for schools not equipped with classroom technology, and time of educating teachers on newly developed applications (Charles, 2019). With limited classroom technology these applications will be harder to navigate, but not impossible, as these tools can be used on personal devices that teachers, administrators, and parents already have access to. Using these platforms on personal devices does not mean giving out cell information to parents, which the majority of teachers refuse to do, (Olmstead, 2013), but instead all content is stored within the applications without having to hand out personal phone numbers (FreshGrade Privacy Policy, 2017).
The limitations mentioned in regards to teachers for the use of these digital tools would be lack of instructional time, and lack school wide communication practices (Kraft, 2016) to implement the technology. These applications are very user friendly but will require some time to learn, but can “enhance the efficiency of time teachers already spend communicating with parents,” (Kraft, p. 17, 2016). The lack of teacher training, PD on these applications, or lack of teacher mentors at schools are barriers that would need to be addressed to change the way teachers communicate with technology (Graham-Clay, 2005). If digital tools are not easy and efficient to use by both teachers and parents, then it will not be productive and will not engage parents with their children's learning. These digital applications, FreshGrade, SeeSaw, and ClassDoJo are easy to use, and even the most technologically challenged person can easily use them (Soroko, 2016).
Resources
Resources
Charles, B. (2019). CLASS DOJO AND STUDENT SELF-REGULATION: AN
EXAMINATION OF BEHAVIOR PATTERNS AND ACADEMIC OUTCOMES. International Journal of Teaching & Education, VII(1), International Journal of Teaching & Education, 2019, Vol.VII(1).
Crozier, G., & Davies, J. (2007). Hard to reach parents or hard to reach schools? A discussion
of home—school relations, with particular reference to Bangladeshi and Pakistani
parents. British Educational Research Journal, 33(3), 295-313.
Fadum, K. U. (2019). Digital portfolios : engaging parents to support early learning (T).
University of British Columbia. Retrieved from
https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0377235
FreshGrade. (November 1, 2017). FreshGrade Privacy Policy.
https://freshgrade.com/privacy-policy/
Galindo, C., & Sheldon, S. (2012). School and home connections and children's kindergarten
achievement gains: The mediating role of family involvement. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 27(1), 90-103.
Goodall, J. S. (2016). Technology and school-home communication. International Journal of
Pedagogies & Learning, 11(2), 118-131. doi:http://dx.doi.org.qe2a-proxy.mun.ca/10.1080/22040552.2016.1227252
Graham-Clay, S. (2005). Communicating with Parents: Strategies for Teachers. The School
Community Journal, 15(1), 117-129.
Grant, L. (2011). 'I'm a completely different person at home': Using digital technologies to
connect learning between home and school. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 27(4), 292-302.
Kraft, M. (2016). The Underutilized Potential of Teacher-Parent Communication. Communities
& Banking, 27(2), 15-17.
Laho, N. (2019). Enhancing School–Home Communication Through Learning Management
System Adoption: Parent and Teacher Perceptions and Practices. School Community Journal, 29(1), 117-142.
Minero, E. (2017, November 22). Parent Engagement in the Digital Age. Retrieved July 4, 2020,
from https://www.edutopia.org/article/parent-engagement-digital-age
Olmstead, C. (2013). Using technology to increase parent involvement in schools. TechTrends,
57, 28–37.
Soroko, A. (2016). No Child Left Alone: The ClassDojo App. Our Schools, Our Selves, 25(3),
63.
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