A couple of weeks ago we held a workshop for parents in our district which centered around web 2.0 technologies being used by our teachers. The first thing that we realized was just how little the parents knew about what their kids were doing. Our team of of presenters was comprised of our Director of Secondary Education, our district’s technology teacher, one of our 6th grade Language Arts Teachers, and one of the Middle School Guidance counselors. Each of these presenters brought with them a different area of expertise and the parents moved between four classrooms to learn about the various topics. We used a wiki to present called Sparta Goes Digital which was a great way to show the parents the technology we were talking about in action.
The night was a huge success, and please visit the wiki for a complete idea of what we spoke about as the topics ranged from internet safety to searching smarter using computer search engines. The topics were planned ahead of time of course, but the parents that attended had many, many questions of their own. There were about 30 people there that night out of a school with about a thousand students. Busy schedules aside, the parents that did show up said that a lot of people that heard about the “tech” night new the terminology like “wiki” and ‘blog” so they didn’t feel it was necessary to attend. After the nigh, however, they were very glad they came and they learned how much more there was to web 2.0 tools.
The most interesting discussion of the night was the idea that our students are so much more competent at using these tools than we are. The idea that this generation of students will flock to and master any piece of technology you through at them and use it correctly. For an educator’s point of view, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. The students we see are comfortable around the technology but few know how to make it work for them. Things like getting what you need from search engines and going past the first couple of entries by using site: .gov in google to narrow down your search to academic sites. . Things like using wikipedia as a starting point by scrolling down to the bottom of the page to the references and then using ths for research. These are the tools and the “digital literacy” our students will need to succeed in “those jobs that don’t exist yet” and to solve “those problems that aren’t problems yet.”
These digital literacies and the ability to choose the right “tool” for success, be it technology based or not, are what our kids need and the only way to help them is to get everyone involved. This night was the first step for us and it was a way to open the lines of communication to devise ways in which to bridge the gap that exists between home and school and as a way to encourage people in the community to be “lifelong learners.”
