Russell Street School in Palmerson North, NZ, offers parents, students, visitors or anyone involved in the school a one stop spot where they can access any information they need and stay up to date with what students are working on. They have one big Google Site where you can find the school calendar,  community newsletter, ads from community partners, school reports, posts from the principal, any news or announcements that parents should be aware of, etc. From that same site, anyone can access the class blogs for any grade. It makes it easier for parents and guardians who have several kids in the school to only have to go to one place and check on what new announcements and posts have been made. Although they could always subscribe to the blogs, this offers an easy start.

It was wonderful to see that all rooms (or most rooms) have a blog that they post to regularly (some rooms more than others, but in general pretty balanced). There is even a blog for the Gifted and Talented room. Teachers at Russell Street have been using the blogs to post important announcements, quick last minute updates, showcase student work, share what they are learning about, and extra resources or home extensions for parents to use at home to reinforce learning. It seemed like there was not a blog for the Resource Room but I think that that would be very empowering for those students.

I love that there are lots and lots of pictures of student work or classroom happenings. However, I observed that there wasn't much teacher-parent, parent-student or teacher-student conversations or discussions. I expected to see more dialogue. I personally love Seesaw so I was happy to see that the majority of the blogs are using Seesaw Blog. It made me feel reassured that it is a good tool since so many are using it successfully. Another thing I noticed that I liked a lot was that not only parents commented on student work, teachers did too! Several teachers left positive comments to encourage students to keep working hard.

It was my impression that some blogs seemed to have more teacher control and others are more student-centered, where it seems like students can post anything they would like about their learning versus the teacher making most of the posts and giving the authors credit for it. Finally, I observed that teachers gave students the opportunity to create something completely digitally OR physically and then taking a picture. It felt like this gave students some choice on their creations while not defeating the purpose of sharing it with bigger audiences.