Digital Parent Engagement

In her presentation, Digital Parent Engagement (http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=628), Lorna Costantini reminds us just how influential parents can be in the success of their children’s education.  When parents are supportive, students perform better, drop out less, and achieve higher grades.   Even with this knowledge, Costantini suggests that it is still difficult to get parents and schools on the same page when it comes to educating students.  This is where technology can be useful. 

Costantini differentiates between parental involvement and parental engagement.  When parents are involved in their children’s schools, it typically looks like staffing fundraising events, organizing meetings, attending field trips, or reading in the classroom.  These types of activities promote an agenda which the school has already set.  When parents engage with teachers and administrators of schools, they set the agenda and make decisions together.  Parents become more involved as they participate and that’s a good thing.

Throughout her presentation, Costantini provided examples of technology which can be used to engage parents .  These examples come from teachers and schools in the USA, Cananda, and England.  One school used a “Parent Portal” to provide parents with secure, online access to their child’s grades, courses, and resources.   This tool eliminated the need for paperwork, ensured quicker and more convenient access to information, and allowed parent to sit down with their kids when it was convenient for them to talk together.  Other teachers utilized Web 2.0 tools like Twitter, Voicethread, Youtube, and Facebook to engage parents.  One parent shared that Voicethread provided her a window into the classroom, allowing her to see what her daughter was learning and, importantly, allowing her to reinforce the classroom’s lesson at home using the same language as the teacher.  Clearly Web 2.0 tools can increase access and parental support at home.

Overall, this was a useful presentation that got me thinking about ways to engage parents in their children’s education.  It also provided useful links to other video’s and websites where I could further explore the topic.  I would be interested to learn about Web 2.0 tools gone “wrong.”  Is there such a thing as too much access and engagement from parents?    

I really like the access that the K12 Conference Online site provides.  If it is good, keep watching.  If it isn’t, move on.