Winter 2005

The Assessment agenda

PowerPoint comes to Maningrida

Technology has revolutionised the way teachers report to parents of K–12 students from the Maningrida Community Education Centre in remote Arnhemland. Join GAI WRIGHT on a fascinating journey.

Maningrida Community Education Centre (CEC) is a large remote-area school for Indigenous students situated in Arnhemland in the Northern Territory. The school provides programs in three languages—Ndjébbana, Burarra and English—for over 600 students from preschool to year 12 in a Hub and 13 Homeland schools.

In 2003, a community consultation was commissioned by the school in an attempt to find out how to strengthen the dialogue between school and community. Electronic reporting has become part of a larger plan to improve that dialogue. Electronic reporting is the compilation of a PowerPoint presentation of students’ work that can include writing samples, recorded speech, pictures, charts, videos and any other scanned samples of work. The PowerPoint presentation takes the place of a paper report and is best presented on a computer or as a Light Pro presentation.

Teachers at Maningrida have often expressed their discomfort in presenting written reports to parents whose own literacy may mean they cannot access the information they contain. Teachers have tried other means of reporting, such as pictorial or personal visits, but still felt that the message about what goes on at school, what impacts success at school and student achievement was not getting across in any meaningful way.

Teachers’ main concerns about the message were as follows: parents didn’t understand the nature or extent of activities the kids were actually involved in at school—they thought our curriculum was not as comprehensive as Darwin schools; parents did not seem to feel comfortable talking to teachers about school; parents didn’t seem to know what sort of questions to ask and so the teacher did all the talking; reporting was not a positive or meaningful experience for parents, kids or teachers; teachers were never sure about the language of the reports—did they need to provide information to address the needs of parents or other teachers?

In 2003, Maningrida CEC received funding for an IT project in the school. The principal at that time had seen electronic reporting at another school and thought that it provided answers to many of the aforementioned concerns. Following is a summary of the benefits to date.

Electronic reports allow parents to actually hear and see what sort of activities their kids are involved in at school. This is expanded upon through our own TV station that allows us to broadcast slideshows and videos of school activities out into the community. We rely a great deal on the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Electronic reports provide teachers and parents with something to talk about and take the focus off parents being talked at. Electronic reports are a very positive experience for all with lots of laughter and surprise. After much experimentation, electronic reports allow us to provide information about school more efficiently and appropriately to both parents and teachers. Teachers have little trouble deciding if they would like to browse a single CD containing the reports of their entire class or to browse a filing cabinet of record folders.

There were also some unexpected benefits to electronic reporting. Firstly, it allows students to be involved in the construction of their own reports. They not only have input into their portfolios, but are involved in a process that helps them to better understand and articulate to parents what school is all about. Secondly, teachers have been called on to develop very extensive skills with a variety of information technologies. Electronic reports require skills and knowledge of digital cameras and videos, scanners, Light Pro, CD and DVD burners, the school’s server and all associated software. This in turn has allowed teachers to feel more confident about passing on these same skills to students.

In 2003, we trialled electronic reporting in one primary class. Overall the teacher reported a very positive response from parents, but our next open night was the true measure of how electronic reports had affected the community’s attitude to school. We had double the number of parents attending the class that had been electronically reported to before the open night. It was also quite obvious that parents who had been visited and shown an electronic report felt more comfortable about going into a classroom. Many of these parents brought along other family members and asked to see the reports again. We were delighted with these results. At the end of 2003, we trialled the whole of primary, delivering reports with generally poor IT skills and only three laptops and four cars between 15 teachers!

In 2004, we had very few new teachers so it was only a matter of refining the process. Some senior teachers had created proformas for reports and by the end of the year all teachers had been issued with laptops by DEET. In the final term of 2004 we trialled a whole school approach to reporting to parents using electronic portfolios. The whole school trial presented some problems.

Throughout 2004 there was some frustration expressed by teachers in the delivery of reports to the community. One teacher wrote a report about the delivery of reports, relating lack of extension cords, the impossibility of 20 adults viewing one laptop, families not being home, dogs walking over computers and the problems of delivering large numbers of reports to homes who have many students attending school. The teacher related the incidents in a light-hearted way and, in general, the euphoria of teachers about the successes of electronic reports somewhat masked these concerns. It wasn’t until the end of 2004 that it was obvious that some of these issues needed to be addressed.

At the start of 2005, teachers were asked to comment on what they thought could improve electronic reporting. The response was generally that teachers preferred making electronic reports to laboriously writing reports; the process was enjoyable because it was creative; and the students loved being involved in choosing what to show their parents. Teachers also felt that parents were really getting a good picture of what their kids were doing at school, but there was again the occasional comment about some of the problems of going out to the community to deliver reports.

This was somewhat surprising as going out into the community was meant to be one of the greatest benefits in the whole process. Teachers explained that it was fine when just the primary section had gone out to present reports but, one teacher exclaimed, ‘Imagine yourself as a family with ten kids living in Maningrida and it’s report time!’

This teacher had actually seen parents hide as the tenth enthusiastic teacher came over the hill armed with laptop and a great desire to show and talk through a very comprehensive report. It was taking up to 45 minutes for each report to be shown!

After discussion, a very reasonable alternative has been put into place. Open nights will be advertised over our TV station, in our community magazine and with posters around town. Each classroom has at least seven computers available. Parents with their children can come into classrooms and view reports and teachers will offer support when and where it is appropriate. Some teachers would still like to go out into the community and we feel that is good advertising. Some parents may request a visit and we are happy to accommodate such requests. Homeland teachers feel very comfortable reporting directly to parents, as they live in the smaller communities and tend to spend time at night with parents anyway.

Electronic reporting has proven to be a more meaningful, enjoyable and creative way of interacting with community, students and other teachers about school. In conjunction with other multimedia, electronic reporting has greatly improved community understanding of what goes on at school. There is still work to be done but it is a very exciting time for teachers, students and parents at Maningrida.

Gai Wright is the acting principal of Maningrida Community Education Centre.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au