Connect 2.0

Last week we had another great Parent Technology Coffee Morning. This time around we talked about the power of social networking, not only for students, but also for parents!

We started by watching the Common Craft video: Social Networking in Plain English:

The video prompted some interesting discussion about the hidden connections we all could discover with social networking. We talked about:

• The fact that international school families move from country to country regularly, and online tools, like Facebook, enable our students to stay connected with friends from one school to another. Whereas when we were in school, we would have had to stay in touch via long-distance phone calls, students today can stay connected for free (or the price of your internet connection) using tools like Facebook.
• Being able to stay connected with friends from previous schools helps students feel more at home in new locations and helps alleviate some of the stress when moving from a favorite school or city to someplace new.
• In addition to being able to stay connected with “old” friends, we also talked about the potential for social networking tools to connect us with new friends - people in places that we’re moving to, schools that we’re going to be attending, or even places we just plan to visit. The best way to find out about a new place is to talk to someone who’s already there.
• Finally, we talked about using social networking tools to stay connected with family and friends in our home countries. Quite a few parents (along with Tara and Kim) shared stories about reconnecting with old friends “back home” and keeping up-to-date much more regularly with family and friends.
• For the last part of the session, we demonstrated the various ways to adjust your privacy settings on Facebook so that only the people you want to see your updates, will be able to see them. We talked about creating “friend lists” to differentiate the different groups of people you might be connected to, and offered advice on keeping students safe online by adjusting their privacy settings. For a quick overview, read this article: 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know.

Thank you to all of the parents who took time out of their busy day to attend this monthly session! We so enjoy learning with you and sharing new and exciting ideas from our ISB 21st Century Literacy Team!

Our next meeting will be March 4, 2009 at 7:30 am in the Learning Hub Project Zone. Topic: Digital Storytelling: This session will be an introduction to the uses of digital storytelling in the classroom, as well as a demonstration of some of the digital storytelling tools that our students regularly use (for example VoiceThread). We will also have a hands-on session with our new iPods in the ES Learning Hub (thanks to the PTA for donating all 10!), and Tara will bring in her Kindle so we can all experience the future of reading!

We hope to see you there!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 9:33 am and is filed under The Parent Connection. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.