cc licensed flickr photo shared by Victor Bezrukov
On my way out of the office the other night, I noticed that my brother tweeted there was an Elluminate session on Digital Citizenship that he was moderating. I decided to check it out and was planning to write a blog post about it after the session.
Noticing that one of our school parents was on Twitter (yes, we have parents from my school active on Twitter!), I encouraged her to check out what an Elluminate session was like. Kim decided to check it out, and knowing that I asked her, I messaged her on Twitter and asked her what she thought to which she replied, “it is amazing!”. I then encouraged her to write a blog post about the session and was amazed and inspired by her writing on the topic.
Here are some of the things that she wrote (read the whole post here and I encourage you to comment):
- Although I was once leery of having laptops etc.. available to my children in elementary school, I have become somewhat of an advocate for our children to have whatever tools they need to broaden their horizons. By allowing our children to experience the wide range of diversity in the world they will be far better equipped to make solid choices that make them who and what they are.
- The more questions our children ask and the more information we can give them, the better their critical thinking skills will be.
- Monkey see-monkey do is what our children learn from so therefore we must have a good digital footprint in order to teach our children to have one as well.
I was so impressed at what Kim wrote on this topic. She has always shown her intelligence to our school community but she did not even know of the world of blogging and twitter until the last few months. She was willing to jump in and learn though. The whole reason that she became involved was that she knew it was essential to understand the world her children were going to become a part of. She decided that knowledge is power, so she would leverage this to the advantage of her children. Amazing how in such a short time, she has shown such an incredible understanding of social media and how it can benefit the learning of her own children.
In one of her replies to a comment, she summarized one of my major beliefs on social media in schools:
If more people educated themselves the fear would not be there.
We are blessed to be in a school community with parents that are not only willing to get involved in social media for the benefit of their kids and are open to learning from other educators, but are now using their voice to be advocates for the future of their children! I appreciated how this parent listened to the knowledge of others, reflected upon it, and then connected her thoughts and shared them with the world. The learning process Kim openly displayed is something that we want for our students. What an incredible role model to not only her children, but our entire school community!
Working with parents who are willing to not only learn and grow, but also reflect and openly share their learning process with our school community, only helps us to create greater opportunities for our students. There is so much we as educators can learn from our parent voices. It is amazing to envision the future of education if parents, students, and staff are willing to grow together as a true learning community. The possibilities for our kids would be endless!
