Campus Location

Abilene Campus

Date of Award

Spring 5-12-2018

Document Type

Manuscript

Department

Teacher Education

Degree Name

Master of Education in Teaching and Learning

First Advisor

Jill Scott

Second Advisor

Andrew Huddleston

Abstract

Parent-teacher relationships can make or break a student’s academic career. It is possible that taking advantage of parents’ media-connectedness to form positive relationships may be more effective than more traditional methods like hand-written notes, phone calls, or emails. In this study the researcher sought to understand what happens in a kindergarten classroom when one technology in particular was used facilitate communication: Seesaw (a digital portfolio app used to post pictures and videos of children as well as communicate with parents using its private messaging feature). Data was collected through parent surveys, observations, and interviews of parents, students, and teachers. Analysis of the data included the use of the constant comparative method and coding all quantitative data for themes. It was found that Seesaw allowed parents to get an accurate idea of what their children were doing at school during the day, opened the lines of communication between parents, teachers, and students, and helped teachers communicate with traditionally hard-to-reach parents. Although much of the feedback from parents and teachers was positive, some potential drawbacks and suggestions for changes to the app are mentioned.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.