Personal Digital Assistants and Pagers: A Model for Parent Collaboration in School Discipline

There is a need to update the methods schools rely on for communicating with parents. A field test was conducted to assess the potential of two new approaches. One strategy allows teachers, using a common set of codes, to record the notable conduct of students onto personal digital assistants (PDAs). A second method uses pagers to contact parents quickly so that they can assume their priority role for corrective guidance or reinforce reports of good behaviour. Staff of a high school faculty documented the notable behaviour of 108 students for a semester and reported to parents by pager. Over 90% of faculty staff concluded that PDAs facilitate accurate records and sending messages by pager is a more efficient way to contact parents than by telephone. More than 90% of the parents indicated that interpreting coded messages from pagers was easy. Plans for the next phases are outlined.

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