Our first Parent Tech Meeting of the year was held on October 29th. The focus of our discussion was Internet Safety with Elementary Aged Children. There was a brief overview of what we are doing at ASW to teach the students ways to be safe online and then we discussed ways parents can keep this conversation going at home with their children. 

We looked at some tips for keeping children safe online and how important it is to talk with their children about their expectations for online use at home. We then walked the parents through two excellent online resources, Common Sense Media and NetSmartz. These two sites provide a great deal of information about online safety as well as reviews for movies, apps, web sites, and TV shows. 

A great discussion was sparked when parents began sharing their fears, concerns, and situations they are experiencing with their own children. They began to see that they are not alone and they all struggle with similar issues. But they also began to realize that it is important to take an active roll at home when it comes to monitoring their children's computer and internet use outside of school. And that first steps include sitting down and having discussions with their kids about what they do technology and what is appropriate and not appropriate at their age and why.

Below is the handout presented at the meeting. You can click to download the document below.

Back in November we held our second Parent Tech Meeting. The topic of discussion was how the parents could use their iPads to promote creativity and critical thinking in their children and not just as a device to plug them into to consume videos and play games. 

We provided iPads  for the parents and also encouraged parents to bring their own iPads to the meeting so we could introduce them to a number of different creativity and critical thinking Apps and give them time to play and experiment with the apps. 

For Creativity we introduced Drawing Pad, Pic Collage, and Book Creator and for Design/Critical Thinking Apps we pointed them towards Bubble Ball, Cargo Bot, Hopscotch, and Minecraft. 

Lots of good discussion and ideas were generated by parents surrounded by these apps. You could see the lightbulbs going off in their heads and smiles come to their faces as they realized how their iPads could be used to get their children to create and think critically as opposed to just consuming content.

Below is the handout presenting different creativity and critical thinking apps we use at ASW that would be useful to parents to have on their personal iPads. At the bottom you can click the link to download the document.