Thinking about technology and parents...

I just finished the first round of conferences last week and I think I'm still tired. Conferenences have actually gotten a bit more pleasant since I started here two years ago.

During my second year at "The Grove," parents were encouraged to sign up for ParentView access to my online Gradebook. At first, I was really quite nervous about this whole situation. Was I oing to have parents emailing me day and night, wondering I hadn't posted the scores of the tests I'd given that morning? Was I going to get angry emails and phone calls if I didn't update grades in a timely manner? These fears were shared by many in the building.

ParentView was implemented and although I did get a few of those emails from die hard "helicopter parents," it was mostly business as usual. The place where I've felt the greatest impact is in conferences. I no longer feel like I'm ambushing parents with their students' grades. Most parents walk in with a copy of the ParentView printout, prepared to hear what I have to say and more interested in talking about what the student needs to do to improve than yelling at me. Conferences have become more productive as well as pleasant.

I started thinking about this during Dr. Lopez's lecture last week in class. I thought how useful Web 2.0 tools like websites, social bookmarking sites, and blogs would be for communicating with parents. I think this could also serve to improve student learning by making sure that they're getting support, encouragement , and sometimes a well-needed kick in the rear at home as well as at school.

I really enjoyed Dr. Lopez's lecture last week and I feel like I learned a lot about these newer Web 2.0 developments. I'm starting to think about how I could use a social bookmarking site to help students with their writing or provide them with resources for a project or samples of a certain kind of writing or genre. Another neat idea would be to have kids create a fake Facebook or Myspace page for a character from a book. Filling out the sections like interests, place of employment, and so on would encourage them to really know a character. Then, they could role play conversations through postings on each other's Walls. Wow! That idea came to me just now and I really kind of want to use it for my next novel. :)

At any rate, I think there are a lot of possibilities for using Web 2.0technologies in the classroom. I have notihng left to say about them right now though, as I'm pretty exhausted.

Until I post again...