Stuckey Family Interfaith CDC is a suburban/rural agency in eastern Ohio. They are a 5 Star Step Up To Quality rated center comprised of a variety of programs, including privately funded, state funded, Early Head Start, and Stuckey Endowment programs.
In order to get all the families on board initially, staff held a meeting with all the families, where they demoed the program, handed out individual parent codes, and supported families with downloading the app and creating accounts. The teachers then followed up with any families who did not sign up, and supported them individually.
Beth believes that the success of Learning Genie at their agency has to do with the awesome attitudes that teachers had when trying new technology. They weren’t afraid to play around and experiment, and they were rewarded with innovative family engagement!
When the Learning Genie was introduced to me, I was very excited about sharing with the parents what I was teaching to the children on a more personable level. One of the most valuable features that I used was taking photos of the children doing activities and being able to send the pictures electronically to the parents on a daily basis. The parents were very excited each day to receive their email and see what their child had learned. The parents would use information we provided on a daily basis and talk about what they learned at school. This was a great conversation starter. Most children would come home from school and ask their child what they learned at school today and most would say “nothing I just played”. With the daily information I found that the children showed what they learned at school sometimes teaching their parents some things.