Parent Ed - Web 2.0 Study Group Meeting #1 Summary

Even with a nasty Wisconsin snow storm brewing, we still managed to have four hearty souls join us for this ongoing study group experience for our parents! A few additional parents listened in to the conversation from home via a live ustream broadcast (the broadcast has been archived and is available online).

I was seriously considering postponing due to weather, but as it turned out the drive home really wasn't that bad at all. And I'm glad we didn't cancel, because I enjoyed the conversation that was started last night. We have such a sharp group of folks assembled for this study group experience. While everyone last night shared a different set of goals for their participation, it was clear that everyone is eager to roll up their sleeves and personally engage in this new landscape. During our first class meeting we skyped with Vinnie Vrotny and our partner school for this project, North Shore County Day School, to do a little meet and greet exchange. We also spoke with Lorna Costantini, a parent involvement leader from St. Catherine's Ontario (Canada). Lorna will be working with be learning along with us and it was nice for everyone to have the opportunity to hear from her. As a side note, Lorna and I are looking for parents who are interested in joining us on upcoming editions of a live webcast show, "Parents as Partners." Please contact Lorna or myself if you are interested in joining us on an upcoming show. I'm thrilled to be working with this study group and I'm looking forward to learning and sharing throughout this experience.

At this point it looks like we are tentatively scheduling our next face to face meeting time for Friday, February 29th from 10:00 am - noon at the Mequon library. We hope to have school parent, Anne Reed, join us to talk about how she uses some of these 21st century tools in her career as an attorney. We'll also have a little "lab time" after Anne's talk, so be sure to bring your laptop computer along if you have one. Listen to a recording of Anne on the Lake Effect show from the Fall of 2007 as she talks about jury selection in the 21st century landscape (scroll down and click the media player that says, "Jury Blogging.")

In the event that any parents are reading this from our group, remember that you have two assignments:

#1 - Leave a comment (text comment, audio comment, or a video comment) about your goals for this experience on the voicethread that I started.

#2 - Join the North Shore Country Day online learning community at moodle. Vinnie created a brief screencast that leads you through the process of joining this community. When you are there, be sure to join both the "Growing Up Wired" course and the "Gaining Digital Citizenship" course (the digital citizenship course is from North Shore's study group experience from last year).

Photo courtesy of Thomas Hawk on flickr (photo is licensed in the Creative Commons for non-commercial use)