Getting Parents Involved with technology

Each year that our school has gone through an iPad pilot we discuss how to get parents involved.  With the rollout of iPads, parents often find this new piece of technology in their house with no idea how to move forward.  What rules should (or can) they put in place?  Why does my child have this device?  What are they supposed to do with it? The questions go on and on.  In my role as Innovative Technology Facilitator (ITF), I wanted to make sure that I was supporting parents as well as the staff and students at RMHS.  

With the help of my amazing team of ITFs, I created an evening for parents called, “Closing the Generation APP.”  The purpose of this evening was to give the parents an opportunity to BE students.  I invited all parents of freshman, since this is the first year we were doing an all class pilot, but I limited the enrollment to 30 families.  This event was only one hour and occurred in the Library at RMHS.  Each parent was given an iPad to use, thanks to our library iPad carts, and student tutor.

The agenda for the evening began with a talk on digital citizenship.  I showed the parents the same videos that were shown to their children during library/technology orientation and talked about several of the same key points.  The theme of the conversation included being a safe and productive citizen online.  This allowed for a 25 minute conversation, which really could have continued for an hour.  My favorite question for this segment was, “Is there a help line or parent’s blog that I can be a part of to see if I am doing things right?”  This was a perfect time for me to explicitly show parents commonsensemedia.org.  

The second part of the evening was when things really got exciting.  My student tech tutors passed out iPads to the parents.  Each parent was given a login to schoology.  In schoology I created a course that allowed for the parents to participate in a class poll, a class discussion, and an individual assignment.  The assignment had to be uploaded into notability, completed, and then turned back into schoology.  The end of the class concluded with a survey that the parents needed to access using Safari and the provided website.  

Several wonderful things happened that evening including:

Parents had hands on experience of what their child goes through in a typical class that uses the iPads.  They were able to understand some of the frustrations that go along with the learning curve of using technology as well as get a glimpse at how iPads are changing the way classrooms are run.

The entire 2nd half of the session was run with STUDENT tech tutors.  Each student was paired up with two or three parents.  They helped the parents navigate through the class and also added their own special touches to their teachings.  It was an absolute JOY to see how amazing our students are and how much they believe in the technology.  Their leadership was a testament to how hard we are working at RMHS to prepare our kids for the future.  

When the session was over, parents wanted to stay and continue the conversation.  They were excited about what was happening and curious about what more is to come.  

The event concluded with a survey for the parents to fill out.  I was happy to read that all of them said they would recommend this session to other parents and many felt fairly comfortable with the understanding of how Schoology worked.  In my final question, I asked them to list the most interesting thing that they learned that evening.  Learning about the digital footprint and digital privacy was the most popular comment; followed by the general appreciation of knowing what their child is doing all day with this technology.  

As a follow up to this event, we will be hosting an “iPad In The Classroom” exhibit in the cafeteria during our parent conferences next week.  This exhibit will consist of several stations representing many of the applications being used on the iPads.  These stations will include: notability, Moodle, Schoology, iMovie, video, presentations, portfolios, puffin, and our freshman iTunesU course.  Parents will be able to stop buy any station and learn how that particular application/LMS is being used in the classroom.  Again, this will be run by student technology leaders.  

I am looking forward to creating more opportunities to get parents hands on experiences with the technology that their children are immersed in.