The title of the K12 On-line Conference that I attended was Kicking it up a Notch.
Some of the main points that were made are that parents live in a Web 1.0 world and the students live in a digital social networking world. Informed parents will be better prepared to help their child succeed by giving the Web 2.0 tools a shot, creating a Facebook or MySpace account to better understand what their child is doing on-line. Parents are challenged to find the time to be included with learning the Web 2.0 tools. The new Web 2.0 tools could connect parents in a non-traditional way with the school by having an on-line parental forum or recording educational speakers and posting them on a web page where parents could post, ask and answer questions. Parents and teachers need resources and training. Motivation is a key element for parents to communicate, collaborate, become partners in the classroom.
I do find value in the on-line any time delivery of professional development as a training tool for parents after training some of the staff and administrators of the Web 2.0 tools.
I think it would be very beneficial to parents to have schools create interactive forums and show videos. I just can’t imagine that many administrators would have the time to learn and/or orchestrate this type of intensive online presence. Maybe there are schools with personnel that are devoted to just doing the websites but not at our school. However, I think schools can start by having one event that incorporates web 2.0 tools, such as a facebook event, to promote learning with any by this type of online tool.