Talking to Parents

This is my fifth year of blogging in my classroom.  Every year I felt like I was doing a better job at blogging and being transparent about how I was using technology in the classroom.  And every year, in May or June I would get these bizarre questions from parents clearly indicating that what I thought I was communicating was not what they were hearing.  Many, many, many misconceptions about the internet, what was on the internet and how to access the internet became apparent.  I spoke with my awesome friend and tech mentor, Kathy Cassidy about this disconnect and she shared that she often hosts a technology night at the beginning of the school year to talk face-to-face to parents about the internet.  This seemed like a great idea, so I did my first Technology Night last year.  About 1/3 of the families in my classroom showed up and I counted the evening as a success.  However, 2/3 of the families had not attended.  What about them?  Nonetheless, I had no strange conversations about students being online, last year.

This year, I aimed to take it up a notch.  Not only would I host a face-to-face evening (which I did last Thursday night, again with 1/3 attending), but I created a video of my internet/digital citizenship presentation.  I added significantly to the presentation from last year, based on content from this class, in particular Ribble’s 9 Elements of Digital Citizenship.

Here it is: