I have been actively trying to make my website a valuable resource for my students and their families. Through this course wikis have been discussed many time as a useful tool to use with our students. I have recently been thinking about why couldn't a wiki be just as useful with the parents and families. I think it would take a lot of effort to make it work but I would like to set up a wiki where parents can share resources and strategies that they find helpful. During parent teacher conferences I was amazed at how many of my parents spend a lot of time researching their child's learning disabilities and things they can do to support their education. Parents are the experts on their children and why shouldn't they have somewhere where they can learn from each other.
I am still working towards achieving my first goal of finding technology proven to be successful for the diverse needs of my special education students and I will continue to work towards this goal as opposed to creating new ones. Something I would like to look into is finding grants that may be able to bring in some of the new technologies I find into our district. School districts everywhere are facing budget cuts and mine is no exception, there will be no money for new technology that doesn't already exist in the schools.
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Using a wiki to help parents communicate ideas to one another about their children's learning is a great idea! Since wikis are so easy to use, I am sure many parents could figure out how to add information to one quite quickly. My only issue with this would be the fact that a lot of my parents do not have access to the internet so they would not be able to use this tool. However, I guess you could print a few pages of the wiki to send home to a parent who might not have access to this great resource to keep them in the know.
ReplyDeleteYou have mentioned about using wiki and getting the parents involved. I am not a great user of wikis but in our resources this week, there were a number of suggestions provided by Vicki Davis. You may want to try some of these.
ReplyDeleteI think it is great that you are willing to try something new that incorporates parents and technology in your classroom. A class wiki with parental access to editing can be great for sharing resources and ideas for their children. My only suggestion is be very careful in outlining what is acceptable for parents to post on the wiki. You do not want it to become a parent forum where information about the school, classroom, etc... can be publicized or misrepresented.
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