The website developed by the 1.b class at the Augusta Šenoa elementary school is, first and foremost, a pioneering work stemming from cooperation among teachers and parents. The purpose of the website is to inform, activate, and involve parents, students and teachers who work in the classroom. Each activity is documented, giving insight into the everyday activities, and making the classroom visible and transparent to everyone. The project uses new technology (forum, gallery of student work, class mail), and enlists a partnership of parents, who made parts of the website.

1. From the field
Website – A Partnership between Parents, Students
and Schools
Author The website developed by the 1.b class at the Augusta Šenoa elementary school is, first
and foremost, a pioneering work stemming from cooperation among teachers and par-
Sandra Vuk, August Šenoa
Elementary School, Zagreb ents. The purpose of the website is to inform, activate, and involve parents, students
vuksan@gmail.com and teachers who work in the classroom. Each activity is documented, giving insight
into the everyday activities, and making the classroom visible and transparent to every-
one. The project uses new technology (forum, gallery of student work, class mail), and
Tags enlists a partnership of parents, who made parts of the website.
School website,
cooperation, school-family
relationships, primary school 1. Forms of cooperation between parents and teachers
Cooperation between parents and teachers can be divided into three parts: a written form
that the teacher presents to the parents, an individual form in which discussions between
the teacher and a parent take place, and finally, a group form.
Figure 1: Forms of cooperation (breakdown)
Advantages and disadvantages of new technologies
Advantages:
• Speed – all participants save time. Information is received and transmitted fast. A record
of emails and communication remains (similar to a paper trail).
• It is possible to communicate at any time. You can select the tone of the response.
• A quick and inexpensive way of communication.
Disadvantages:
• Can only transfer short information. No extensive comments.
• Not all parents have access to a computer, nor internet access.
• Lack of computer literacy on both sides. Irregular checking of email.
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2. From the field
2. Website – Classroom website All of the above does not replace the need for live conversations
or the necessary presence of parents at individual conferences
The purpose of launching the website1 was: the ability to gain
as needed, parents’ meetings. It does not imply that access to
insight into the everyday happenings in the classroom (student
the classroom website as an absolute necessity.
and teacher), participation in activities (class projects), control-
ling homework, checking the class schedule and calendar, as- I perceive the classroom website as: a communication tool that
sistance in monitoring accessories, and faster communication allows students to express their thoughts and ideas, as an op-
between parents and teachers. Additionally, the website helped portunity to apply what they learned, as well as the ability to
familiarize the student’s family with their projects - art2 and lit- encourage creative expression and eloquence in the use of lan-
erary works. The website would also serve the purpose of allow- guage.
ing the students’ successes to be shared with others and there
We (parents and teacher) decided to use technology that is ap-
would be a faster flow of information.
propriate for our generation - the computer (connected to the
1 https://sites.google.com/site/senoa1b/ Internet). Creative educational ideas have lasting value, if they
2 https://picasaweb.google.com/nasrazred.b proceed in a creative way. Through the process of making a class
Figure 2: The classroom website’s homepage
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3. From the field
Figure 3: The classroom’s photo gallery
website parents approached it jointly and creatively (consider- I consider it important to note that all of the activities that were
ing that most parents are IT educated). Published posts and ad- implemented and were accompanied on the class website were
ditional Croatian language materials helped me to better meet an integral part of the teaching process. In fact, the connection
students’ interests, effectively evaluate their progress, and I between the teaching process and the publication of results
would send the best ones to various children’s contests. gives meaning and vitality to the idea of classroom websites.
Displaying the children’s artwork in the photo gallery enables
students to experience the joy of creation, but also to see the 2.1 The website’s content
results of their creativity. Their creativity grows wider in social The website and it’s appearance depends upon which provider
meaning. By publishing projects on the classroom website, the of free website building services is selected. In our case I chose
children received feedback in the form of comments from peo- Google Sites3, as one of the strongest providers of services (1GB
ple who have visited their site.
3 www.google.com
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4. From the field
Figure 4: A project example and it’s appearance on the website
of storage for documents, 1GB of space for web pages and con- listed. It should be noted that it was because of parents’ initia-
tent, 1GB of space for a photo gallery, and 1 GB of space for tive that a forum4 was opened for both parents and teachers.
email).
With regards to the biggest success as a result of the forum, I
The class website is divided into the following major sections: can mention the project A Healthy Diet, which was fully agreed
our events, our class, classes and calendar, notices and news upon, planned, and conducted on the forum, while the part of
releases, letters, and entertainment. Each section was continu- the project that incorporated real food was implemented in the
ously updated with content throughout the 2010-2011 school classroom.
year, accompanied by all the events that the class participated
The website menu is located on the left hand side. Those who
in.
develop their own classroom website can choose to have the
Looking at the analysis of website traffic, the most visited part
of the website was a subpage where the daily homework was 4 http://prvasici.forumcroatian.com
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5. From the field
menu located in a different spot as well as the material and top- 4. Conclusion
ics that will be published on the site.
Personally, for me, this period of two years that I am editing and
creating classroom websites is interesting, sometimes hard, but
3. Website security and participants very nice and exciting. The hardest part for me was opening the
Google provides its users the option to view visitor statistics, door to my classroom and “baring” my teaching to the world,
measure retention time on the site, and who and what was showing everyone the beautiful and somewhat sad side of our
downloaded (taken off) from the site, etc. business (equipment, layout, classrooms, water buckets instead
of a sink, etc.) and be
present every day on
the Internet.
The teacher in the
teaching process is
alone, he or she does
not have anyone
with whom to share
their good or bad ex-
periences. Through
discussions on the
forum, I received
feedback that was
not superficial like
the casual and brief
conversations usually
held in the staff room.
These substantive
suggestions from par-
ents, other teachers,
friends who encour-
aged me to think and
didn’t leave me indif-
Figure 5: Google Analytics
ferent, but encour-
aged me to change
Images of the students were taken during “Carnival” and are my classes, myself and introduce new ways of teaching, accept-
displayed on the website. Photos of students’ activities (field ing a network connection as part of everyday life, making the
work, field trips, birthdays) are published with the consent of most out of what the website could provide.
parents (signed) and students are not named for privacy rea-
The website led to new friendships with teachers from around
sons. If unusual activity is noticed in the photo gallery, albums
the world, these connections proved to be one of the most im-
are locked and parents receive a password via email. Three par-
portant characteristics in the recognition of teachers, regardless
ent meetings (workshops) were held on network security and
of language. Such that at this time we are collaborating with
how students should use computers.
Indian teacher Unmesh Inamdar; with Chiu-Chu, an American
professor at the University of Michigan, exchanging artwork,
discussing ways of education, displaying pictures of projects and
so on.
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6. From the field
Literature
Zloković, J., Dečman-Dobrnjič, O. (2008). Children at risk
– the responsibility of families, schools and society. Zagreb:
HPKZ.
Zloković, J. (1998), School failure - the problem of students,
parents and teachers. Ri-jeka: Faculty of Philosophy.
Bašić, J. i dr. (1994), Integral methods in working with chil-
dren and their parents, Zagreb: Alinea.
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