Holding Virtual Parent/Teacher Conferences

[alunsfor]

I was approached today by one of our admins about holding virtual parent teacher conferences.  With the unpredictable weather here in Indiana we are thinking of holding virtual parent conferences.  I am wondering if Canvas might be a good avenue for this or if you have another idea.  Our Conference day is in February so we have a little while to set this up.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated?

[jaime_ledbetter]

I also would love to explore this option! I feel like using the Canvas conferences option would be spectacular! The parent would probably have to be logged in under their child's Canvas account in order for this to work. You could try inviting them to a conference at a specific time and holding a video conference. 

[alunsfor]

I guess then you would have to set up a conference and then invite each

Parent to the conference.

On Fri, Jan 24, 2020 at 11:31 AM jaime.ledbetter@ftcsc.org <

[MBlackwell_GCA]

I work with Georgia Cyber Academy and we are a completely online virtual public school. So, all of our parent-teacher conferences are held online! While this is our first year with Canvas and I am curious to read responses about how this could be possible in Canvas, I can share what our school has been doing this year. 

We send email communications to families to let them know that parent-teacher conferences are coming up and that they can schedule theirs using our teacher's Calendly link. The Free Online Appointment Scheduling Software - Calendly works with the teacher's Outlook calendar or Google calendar to show parents the teacher's available times. Once a time is booked, the event is automatically added to both the teacher's calendar and the parent. So, the time now shows as booked and cannot be double-booked. That's the booking part. Next is the meeting part. Previously, we used Blackboard Collaborate for all our classes and meetings. New this year, we are using Zoom (Video Conferencing, Web Conferencing, Webinars, Screen Sharing - Zoom ). With Zoom, you can set your Calendly response to share your Zoom classroom link to the parent upon confirmation - remember, this will be sent to both teacher and parent. If you have ever attended a webinar, it looks just like that. Click the link, sign in, ta-da! Now, the teacher can and should set the room so that attendees will enter a waiting room. This will prevent interruptions while meeting with the current parent. The next conference will enter a waiting room and with one click will be added to the main room when ready. Teachers and parents will have the option to use webcam, chatbox, microphone, and even screen sharing.

There are free Zoom accounts and there are professional accounts. Since GCA uses these daily, we have professional accounts but all of the above is available using the free version. And their tech support is responsive. 

It is wonderful that your school is meeting parent's needs this way. I think your teachers will have much more communication and relationship building using video conferencing! 

[chrhitch]

I am also in a totally online school and we use Zoom as well to meet with students and/or parents. 

[alunsfor]

Thank  you so much for this information.  We will be looking into this for the future.  Being a school in Indiana we are always worried about the weather and this will be a great option for us.  

[jsimon3]

If the parent is an observer the easiest way to do that would be to utilize Big Blue Button(BBB). Please refrain from using Zoom if you care about the students and parents. BBB is already integrated into Canvas and on the navigation menu for your canvas class there is actually a list item that says Conference. The parent can join even from the parent canvas app if they are not at a computer and it would be displayed in their calendar. 

[alunsfor]

Thank you very much. i appreciate it.

On Wed, Apr 8, 2020 at 12:31 PM jsimon@uview.academy <instructure@jiveon.com>

[alunsfor]

The only benefit to zoom over BBB right now in my option is the ability to have a waiting room so you could allow parents in at the time of their conference.  I would assume you would have to set up a conference for each of the parents and invite them separately, which would be fine for scheduled conferences, but if we have the open forum type of conference we would need a waiting room.

[jsimon3]

New York City bans Zoom in schools, citing security concerns – TechCrunch  I was referring to security issues with zoom all public schools here and New York City have already banned use of the application https://www.macrumors.com/2020/04/14/zoom-accounts-sold-on-dark-web-hacker-forums/ 

Apple is silently removing Zoom’s web server software from Macs - The Verge