Using Technology to Increase

1
Using Technology to Increase
Family Participation
2

• A collaboration between

3
Goals of Session

• To present Family Technology Nights as a model
  to
• Increase family involvement in their childrens
  education in low performing schools
• Provide teachers with a professional development
  opportunity as they engage in active learning
• To provide Nuts Bolts guidance about designing
  and conducting your own Family Technology Night.

4
Families in low performing schools may bring

• Different expectations/experiences about what it
  means to engage with teachers and schools
  (expertise/authority)
• Different Values regarding parent-child
  interactions (autonomy/authority)
• Less fluency and flexibility with Academic
  Literacy Skills as in the case of many second
  language learners.
• Rich Experiences

5
Setting the Context
How many of you have conducted or attended a
Family Event at your school? What elements of
these Family Events have made them successful?
?
6
Elements of Success of Tech Nights

• Integration with schools goals
• Process of establishing clarity vision for the
  evening
• Teacher participation
• Adequate Publicity (Personal contact)
• Creating a budget
• Taking into account limitations of technology
  (hardware software) available at the school
• Making it a recurrent event
• Prizes (or some other incentive)
• Food

7
What do Family Tech Nights Offer?

• Insures that participants become comfortable with
  the technology that is so prevalent in their
  lives today.
• Motivates and adds excitement to learning for
  children, parents and teachers
• Offers access to a tool that can help us
  integrate many subject areas (academic and
  practical).
• Provides visual and audio aspects can that can
  provoke empathy and deepen affective connection
  to academic topics.
• Levels the playing field EQUITY

Focus on technology for the whole school
community Teacher, students and their families
8
What do Family Tech Nights Offer?

• Teacher Professional Development

• Teachers as learners Walk the talk
• Provide teachers the opportunity to acquire
  experience, to collaborate with colleagues, to
  plan and organize a school event.
• To experience how the technology available at
  their schools can be used to help parents assist
  their children with homework and school projects.
• Give them a chance to learn how they too can
  incorporate technology into their every day
  lessons.

9
Features of Family Tech Nights

• Partnership with CFY
• Global Goals ? Local Objectives
• Common Elements
• Incentives Raffle for tech prizes
• Family Computing Workshops
• Computer Repair Clinic
• Teacher Participation

10
Setting Global Goals

• Family Involvement
• Use computers as a catalyst to
• Help parents better support their childrens
  learning
• Increase friendly contact between parents and
  teachers
• Enhance family communication
• Teacher Professional Development
• Computer Repair
• Internet Counseling Clarification

11
Determining Local Objectives

• Poll students about their interests.
• Conduct needs assessment with teachers.
• Consult Technology Standards.
• Multiple objectives may be accomplished with the
  same activity.
• Keep in mind to plan ahead how and when
  will you follow up on the selected objectives?

12
Examples of Local Objectives

• School 2 (Brooklyn)
• Show parents how to access understand specific
  information about their childrens test scores
  (Princeton Review).
• Show families where to find and how to use
  resources to help children improve their
  performance (On-line tutoring and
  interactivities).
• Train teachers to use the Princeton Review
  resources.

• School 1 (East Harlem)
• Focus on improving parent/ child communication
  around authentic work products.
• Show families how students projects are
  assessed--what has value and how one demonstrates
  what she/he knows in a school setting.
• Use a content specific tool the WWW to support
  learning and research (ISTE Standard)
• Develop parents interest in the Internet through
  a fun, personalized project-like activity.

13
Designing Activities Examples
School 1 When You were Born Web Quest and
Design Project
School 2 How to Use Princeton Review On-line
Tutoring to Help Your Child Succeed
Handouts
14
Organizing the Event

• Segmenting the event into phases Before, during,
  after.
• Identifying roles in each phase.
• Assigning people to these roles.
• Creating a detailed schedule with assignments.

Handouts
15
Lessons Learned

• Time Considerations
• Limited time for workshop.
• Single session vs. workshop series.
• Participant Considerations
• Varying levels of technical expertise.
• Varying levels of literacy.
• Various languages spoke by parents
• Different expectations about parent-child
  communication.
• Providing childcare.
• Offering Family Tech events at different times of
  day

16
Lessons Learned

• Workshop Content
• Tension between teaching content itself and
  teaching strategies for finding further
  help/support.
• Level of specificity Broad overviews vs. deep
  slices.
• Full Administrative Support
• Ensures that teachers can fully participate in
  planning the events.
• Budget
• Evaluation
• Indicators of success.
• Increasing family involvement in planning?

17
Further Information

• The Impact of Parent/Family Involvement on
  Student Outcomes An Annotated Bibliography of
  Research from the Past Decade (Susanne Carter)
  http//www.directionservice.org/cadre/parent_famil
  y_involv.cfm
• FAMILY TOOLS TECHNOLOGY (FTT) is an
  afterschool program in which children and adults
  come together for seven weeks to investigate, to
  explore, to problem solve and to learn and
  understand how the world works.
  http//www.rci.rutgers.edu/cfis/ftt.html
• Harvard Family Involvement Network (FINE).
  http//www.gse.harvard.edu/hfrp/projects/fine.html
  

18
Thank you!
Please complete a Quick(E)valuation
19

• Reina Huerta
• Integration Technology Instructional Specialist
• _at_ Department of Education of New York City
• RHuerta_at_nycboe.net
• Kallen Tsikalas
• Director of Research Learning Services
• _at_ Computers for Youth
• ktsikalas_at_cfy.org

20
Examples of Rich Experiences

• Intimate experiences with poverty and politics
  Children are often able to hold sophisticated
  conversations about these topics.
• Exposure to multiple cultures.
• Multiple social roles Children often have to
  assume greater responsibility in their families
  in their families and therefore become good
  resource managers.